Looking for Blog Advice

[Waski_the_Squirrel]

A few of you may know that I have a YouTube channel. Primarily, I review fountain pens. My specialty is the short review (4-6 minutes, unless it's a really special pen). I also aim for the lower end of the market with the occasional expensive pen.

This month, I decided to add a blog. Now, I've kept it quiet while I generated content. I put every single one of my videos onto the blog with at least a sentence or two, often more, of commentary. It has been a big undertaking, but I made it. I have 9 pages of content with 89 actual posts. Going forward, I plan to include more detailed photos of the pens and writing samples in the entries as well as specific written commentary about the individual pen. So, content isn't my problem for now. I'll probably have to learn how to write better content, but that will evolve the way the videos did.

The trouble is, the blog is very plain. It's white with black text, and the only images are the videos themselves. I don't want to create a super busy site, but some sort of interest is good.

I use WordPress as my platform. After all the work I've done, that is not going to change! However, I was wondering if there are templates or other really good ideas people have about setting up a blog on WordPress. For example, what pages should I include? Should I have links to other pen reviewers? What are good themes to use? What kind of content is important.

The basic, bare bones site is this:

http://www.squirrelscience.net/blog

and, yes, I did include my non-pen videos as well.

[stonerman33]

I use squarespace, so can't offer much insight on templates or anything, but I will say that I tend to prefer relatively plain blog designs. If it gets too busy, it takes away from the content. Tweak the look if you feel the need to spruce it up a bit, just be careful not to get TOO creative.

[Waski_the_Squirrel]

I use squarespace, so can't offer much insight on templates or anything, but I will say that I tend to prefer relatively plain blog designs.

I forgot about this earlier, but thank-you for encouraging me to stay with the plain blog. I was on a blog today that was not plain, and remembered your advice because it was an awful-looking blog. I'm sticking with plain!

[Lady Onogaro]

I looked at your blog, and I really like the simple look. Stonerman is right about a busy blog taking away from the content. I also like the way you have done the images. I don't like those blog pages that are huge. It's better (for me) if I have he choice to click on an image to make it larger.

[VegHead]

If it was my blog I'd be very happy with it.