Create a functional footer for your blog

If you navigate through the blogosphere you will realize that the vast majority of the blogs lack a footer. Even when they have one you will just find a copyright message there.

Most corporate or mainstream websites, on the other hand, do have a footer where you can find vital links for the site. As a result people are used to scrolling down to the footer whenever they have problems finding a particular information.

A functional footer for a blog should have at least two links:

a link to the homepage
a link to the RSS feed

You can also consider adding the following:

an email subscription box
a link to the Archives
a link to the “About” page
a link to the “Contact” page
the recent posts
the popular posts

Daniel Scocco on March 22, 2007 Subscribe to our RSS Feed

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34 Responses to “Create a functional footer for your blog”

Eli on March 22nd, 2007 4:01 am

I usually have my complete website navigation (consists of about 5 pages) in the footer, aswell as a feed link.

Works pretty well, I think
Bes Z on March 22nd, 2007 6:06 am

Good point. I have set my footer to be a replica of my header. I might have to optimize both a little bit more, though I usually avoid doing so because of wanting to let users get used to a standard of navigation instead of playing around all the time.

One thing I have near the footer, which you can also consider being a part of the footer, is a link to go back to the top of that page. For me, this can be handy in case someone reads or scrolls all the way down, and wants to get back to the top of the page quickly.
Mike Panic on March 22nd, 2007 6:11 am

I plan on working on this over the weekend, as mine only has a sitemeter counter and an uptime graphic for my web host.

As Bes said, having an anchor tag that takes you to the “top” can really help out if you have a long blog or long articles.
menghua on March 22nd, 2007 9:49 am

good point here Daniel.. Now to think of it, I think I should make a new footer too!! heheh..
George C. on March 22nd, 2007 10:24 am

Thanks for the tip Daniel, good work! I think I’m going to consider this.
StatMan on March 22nd, 2007 12:30 pm

Thanks for the tip. I never thought about it, but I do scroll down on a lot of sites to move on from there.
Samsara on March 22nd, 2007 1:29 pm

Hopefully the audience OFTEN ends up at the footer.
I agree with this article.

The space needn’t be wasted at all.
Daniel on March 22nd, 2007 2:17 pm

Samsara, absolutely, but its our job (the bloggers) to produce engaging content and make readers scroll until the footer
paul peterson on March 23rd, 2007 3:03 am

How do I do this with Wordpress… the basic edition?
Daniel on March 23rd, 2007 3:15 am

Paul, if your blog is hosted with Wordpress.com you will need to buy credits to customize your theme. Perhaps a more efficient use of that money would be to purchase your own domain and move out of Wordpress.com.
Mikulla on March 23rd, 2007 10:50 am

Since my site is a mainly an art and photography portfolio I used to just have my copyright info at the footer. I have since changed it to a functional footer and I quite like it.

I think it even adds to the visual appeal : http://www.artrogue.com/
egon on March 23rd, 2007 5:08 pm

You have to pay to customize your theme on wordpress.com? eek. I’m glad I self-host it, I would have paid out the ass by now.
egon on March 23rd, 2007 5:09 pm

Oh yeah, great post by the way, this is commonly overlooked, including by me.
Dave on April 2nd, 2007 7:09 pm

Great tip. It’s been on my to do list for a while maybe I’ll work on that this week.
Ravi on July 17th, 2007 4:08 am

Thanks for these, I needed a list of the exact things to put in the footer. I managed to get everything but the last two in there, which my footer really isnt suitable for.
Logesh on September 19th, 2007 9:40 am

Thank u very much for your nice and useful tips !
Codrut Turcanu on November 5th, 2007 4:20 pm

why does your blog have one?

Cheers,
Codrut Turcanu.
“How To Succeed Against All Odds!” Break The Ice:
http://www.CodrutTurcanu.com
Vladimir on December 9th, 2007 7:30 am

Daily Blog Tips has nothing of the above.. Wonder how can you take this article serious?
Daniel on December 9th, 2007 10:09 am

It is on the to-do list. I need to make “Daily Blog Tips” linked to the homepage, but I will need to restyle the CSS else the link will look invisible.
pKay on April 5th, 2008 12:03 pm

Thanks for the great tip! I will try and incorporate this into my blog posts

Cheers!
SATISH ACHAR on June 8th, 2008 9:12 pm

Why is that Homepage link at footer so important, when you have it in the header? –>Usually the header image(logo) will be linked to your homepage and/or there will be a link below the header image(like in DailyBlogTips.com).
I thought that having the links to Advertise, Contact, About etc would be better, if it is in the upper portion of the blog(As there will be more chances of visibility to visitors and advertisers).

And if we have links both, below header image and in footer etc…won’t it create a bad imression with search engines(For linking to same pages from the same page more than once–and that every page in the blog does the same thing).
tiars on July 27th, 2008 1:24 pm

thank so much