Mirror Mirror on the wall

As bloggers I am sure all of us have wondered and carefully considered how much of ourselves (our true selves) do we want to reveal on our blogs and how much do we want to keep for ourselves. After all, our blogs are in the public domain and for consumption by the general online readers, and I am sure that all of us have our own self-defined limits as to where exactly we want to draw the line with our blogs.

Having said that there are more than enough elements in our blogs which provide hints to our readers, either explicitly or implicitly regarding our personalities, our likes, our dislikes, the genre(s) in which we blog, the topics we are passionate about and write about. And these likes are reflected in pretty much every aspect of our blog. This post will try and discuss the rationale for some of these elements in my blog per se.

The URL – When I started blogging, anonymous blogging was the way to go and I therefore chose a name which reflected what I felt my posts in those days would be – boring. And then when I migrated from the blogspot platform to WordPress, I went ahead and chose the same URL for the sake of continuity.

The blog header and title – To be honest, the only reason for my blog title being what it is today is because I wanted a word that would go with Mahabore (which itself is dictated by the URL chosen). Given the limited choice of interesting words that begin with M, I went ahead with Mumbles as it somewhat represented my ‘boring’ posts via my ‘mumbles’.

Layout – I have always believed in functionality being accorded a higher place than looks and this mindset translates into my choice of templates as well. I almost always opt for templates and layouts which highlight my content rather than the other odds and ends that decorate the sidebars.

Sidebars – Apart from the (almost) mandatory Social Media connectivity buttons such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ links, most of my sidebar widgets revolve around Calendar Archives, Latest Posts, Top 5 Posts, etc. Once again, the idea here is to highlight recent posts, posts which have seen some traffic and also provide easy access to my older posts as well.

Some of the other widgets I use are the GoodReads widget (given the number of books I read) and some other smaller badges declaring my affiliation to blogging groups that I am part of.

Now, the question is whether the URL, name, the layout and widgets reflect my personality? For which the answer would be resounding YES. All of these reflect a part of my personality which have a relatively compulsive need to be organized and methodical in my approach to life in general and blogging in particular. While the entire blog might not make too much sense aesthetically at first, as I had mentioned before, I always place a high premium on functionality rather than beauty and I believe that shows in my blog’s layout.

Of course, a huge disclaimer to this post is the fact that since I use a WordPress.com hosted blog, I live with the limitations imposed by this choice.

It would be wonderful if readers took this opportunity to describe the reason behind their own choices when it comes to their blogs. What is it that made you choose the particular template you have for your blog? How much of your personality is reflected in your post and on the blog itself? Go ahead and leave behind your reasons in the comments section.

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This post has been written for Project 365 : A post a day where the intention is to publish at least one post a day based on the prompts provided. Today’s prompt was “Think of your blog as a mirror: what does it reveal? Consider your blog name, theme choice, design, bio, posts… what does every element tell you about yourself?”