Having a custom blog design is a dream for many bloggers. You have to pay prices ranging from $300 to $3000 to have a good custom blog design. You need to verify whether your custom blog design meets some basic requirements before paying the full amount. I prepared a checklist for your easy guidance. Go over this checklist and don’t let your designer fool you.

1. RSS Button: Does your blog have a big RSS button which can easily attract your visitor’s attention? Tell your designer to place a big RSS button above the fold.
2. Widget Functionality: Check whether your new custom blog theme’s widgets are fully functional. Most probably you will face with a problem with widgets. Ask your designer to fix them.
3. Logo & Branding: Negotiate with your designer and try to get a custom logo design at the same time that is compatible with your custom blog design. First impression counts. A custom blog design with a good logo will rock!
4. Favicon: Tell your designer to create a favicon icon for your blog. Have you seen my favicon? It always appears before my blog’s URL on your browser’s address bar. It is a small version of my blog’s logo. You need to have a favicon for better branding.
5. h1 Tags: Ask your designer to wrap your blog titles with h1 html tags. This is good for the sake of SEO. Check this for more details on SEO for blog posts:The 5 Basic Steps Of SEO For Your Blog – Part 2
6. WordPress compatibility: Verify that your custom blog design is compatible with the latest version of WordPress. It is not an issue for quality designers, but chances are you may face with a problem.
7. Plugins: Make sure that your existing plugins are compatible with your new blog design. If you face with a problem, let your designer know immediately.
8. Search function: Verify that your readers can easily find a keyword or term easily with your search button. You don’t have any search button in your new blog design? Tell it to your designer immediately.
9. Advertising space: Ask your designer to create a space for sponsors.
10. Archive: Make sure your designer collects all your previous posts under an archive. If not, tell him to do.
11. Tag Cloud: Tell your designer a fancy looking tag cloud for your blog. This is good in terms of SEO and improving readership.
12. Add My Feed To: Look at my blog’s “Add my Feed To” section. Give a few options to your readers so that they can add your blog to Technorati, Google Reader, BlogLines, or Yahoo. This is a piece of cake for your designer. Don’t miss this one, it is quite useful.
13. Browser Compatibility: Make sure your blog looks good on both Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari. If not, inform your designer immediately before the payment.
14. Check your blog’s loading time: If you have a fancy looking blog which is loaded in a minute on many browsers, chances are you will break a bounce rate record! Keep your blog simple, and check the loading speed on browsers. If you are not satisfied, tell your designer. Keep it simple, simplicity is the best!
15. Get Your Readers Comments: Ask your loyal readers about your new blog design. They will be telling you a lot of problems which you may not notice.

Let’s assume you verified all the items mentioned above, what is next? You need to promote your new custom blog design to get the maximum benefit from it. I will tell you about how to promote your new custom blog design soon. Stay tuned and make sure you are subscribed to Search For Blogging RSS feeds so that you don’t miss any updates.