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A website design, marketing, and blogging blog from VandelayDesign.com
Recent Posts Tagged With 'blog design'
25 Beautiful Blog Comment Designs
Comments are a standard feature on blogs, but some blog designers have created a comments area that looks great in addition to offering the needed functionality. In this post we’ll showcase 25 blogs with excellent comment design. For more blog ...
Showcase of Excerpts in Blog Design
Many blogs are using excerpts to display content on the front page. The use of excerpts gives designers a little bit more freedom and some opportunity to create an attractive and unique front page. In this post we’ll showcase for blog front pag...
Examples of Excellent Blog Post Formatting and Styling
While front pages are usually the part of blogs that get showcased, blog design includes a lot of other details that can add to the overall look and appearance of the blog, not to mention usability. The pages of individual blog posts provide opportun...
25 Examples of Three-Column Blog Designs
When I re-designed this blog recently I decided to move from a two-column layout to just two columns because I felt that it made the layout cleaner and the content more readable. However, there are some well-designed blogs that make effective use of ...
15 Exceptionally Useful Resources for WordPress Theme Designers
One of the great benefits of designing and developing for WordPress is the amount of quality resources that are available from others in the WordPress community. Many times these resources can wind up saving you time in your own development. The only...
40 Inspiring Blog Designs
Creating an attractive and unique blog design can often be a challenge because so many of them tend to look the same. To help spark you imagination, here is a look at 40 well-designed blogs, in a wide variety of different styles. These sample blogs h...
Showcase of Twitter Integration on Blogs
You've probably noticed that Twitter links and updates are now very commonly found on blogs. There are a few different ways that Twitter can be used and integrated into a blog, and this post will showcase 30 blogs that are promoting a Twitter account...
Avatars in Blog Comment Design
Comment design can either help to give a blog theme a creative look, or it can be an afterthought that doesn't get much attention during theme design and development. Avatars are now being used by a lot of bloggers (partly due to easy integration wit...
25 Impressive Blog Footers
Footers are often an afterthought in blog design. I know firsthand, because my footer is about as basic and uneventful as it gets. The blogs on this list are excellent examples for the rest of us that the footer can be a helpful and interesting aspec...
Observing Major News Websites
Designers of news websites face significant challenges in trying to develop an attractive, usable site that gets all of the necessary items on the page with as little clutter as possible. Studying the layouts and design techniques used on news sites ...
Evaluating the Effectiveness of Your Blog Theme
One of the greatest benefits of blog platforms is that they make it easy to quickly get new content onto the site without the need to spend time on the design and layout of each page/post. Once the theme is set, all you have to do is create the conte...
Is a Magazine Theme Right for You?
Magazine-style themes, particularly for WordPress are very popular right now. The majority of premium themes for sale are magazine-style, and there are some very good ones. With the rise in availability and popularity of premium themes, magazine the...
Enhanced Sidebars with Dynamic Content
After writing Effective Use of Blog Sidebars a couple of weeks ago I decided to look into the topic of dynamic sidebars. Typically, most blogs will us a standard sidebar for the entire site. WordPress users have a lot of potential functionality that ...
Blog Navigation and the Ongoing Challenges that Arise
Navigation is obviously one of the most critical aspects of usability. Developing effective navigation is a challenge for most websites, but it's especially an issue for blogs because of the content that is continually being added. Think about the t...
Effective Use of Blog Sidebars
While sidebars aren't the primary focal point of blogs, they still have an important role in usability and appearance. A well-designed sidebar can make it easier for visitors to find what they like, which will keep them at your site longer and improv...
Designing and Formatting Blog Posts for Readability
Most of us probably put a great deal of thought and effort into the design of a blog, but once it's launched there is a tendency to type a post and hit publish without giving much thought to the visual elements of the post. I know I fall into that tr...
7 Factors that Separate Good Websites from Bad Websites
Most of us naturally form opinions about the websites we visit. Some of them we love so much that we come back several times a week, and others leave us with a bad experience that causes us to never return. But what is it that determines whether a we...
Excellent Uses of Excerpts in Blog Design
Blog designers consistently face the decision of showing full posts or excerpts on the front page. Personally, I prefer excerpts because they make it easy for the visitor to quickly scan the most recent posts and see what's of interest to them. The d...
Blog Design Madness - Round Two
Thank you very much to everyone who participated last week in the first round of our Blog Design Madness tournament. Today round two begins, with 32 blogs still remaining. The voting will close Monday night at 9:00 PM Eastern (US). As always, please ...
