40 Excellent Blog Designs

According to Technorati, there are at least 100 million blogs currently in existence. With that much competition, it’s a true challenge to create a unique and stunning blog design.

Here are 40 beautiful blog designs for your inspiration.

Blogworks

Blogworks is a specialist communication offering, from Scenario Communication Partners, delivering strategic solutions and know-how to brands & corporates for using ‘conversational communication and marketing' effectively.

Pay Attention To Mommy Bloggers

From a marketing perspective the ability to reach out and interact with mommy bloggers is critical to building a positive online brand impression.

Askablogr

A prototype blog that give you a free Q&A widget that enables you to receive and reply to questions from your blog readers.

Apture

Enhance plain text on your blog or website using multimedia. Lets you link relevant content to text on your page, which visitors can view without leaving your site. Add video, photos, even other webpages to create a rich media experience for your readers.

Rejaw

Micro-blogging with real-time chat.

Panels

This blog integration app produces little information bubbles or panels so readers see information about a topic while staying with the original article. Similar to the Snap plugin but without the ads.

ShoutEm

A free platform where you can easily start a co-branded micro-blogging social networking service. Features range from simple Twitter-like text micro-blogging to more advanced features: posting attachments, photos, comments, or even a private network for your company.

The Platform

If you're wanting to keep up with Cisco Systems, check out it's great blog site.

NBC World Blog

NBC News World Blog aims to provide a dynamic look at world events and trends -- both big and small -- from NBC News correspondents, producers, and bureaus around the world.

Top 10 food blogs from around the world

At the last count there were more than 10,000 food blogs online around the world with more being started every day.

Here are 10 worth checking out.

Why I Hate Food Bloggers By Mario Batali #01

Restaurateurs are slowly starting to go on the record with hatred for the food blogs (example), citing a slew of sneaky and unscrupulous, often self-serving, tendencies that make dealing with bloggers impossible. Mario Batali certainly has.

Blogebrity

Blogebrity, the blog about bloggers (but in a celebrity way, not that boring "how to optimize your SEO" way), recently relaunched with voter-determined A, B, C, and D lists. Readers vote how famous a given blogger is, and the votes are combined to form the definitive lists. The site gets precious little traffic, so the rankings will be skewed until more people vote. Treat it like a Q-score: it's not about who gets read, but who gets known. Campaigning to top Blogebrity's A-list would demean you, even to that guy trying to get into Forbes.

BlogPulse

BlogPulse is an automated trend discovery system for blogs. Blogs, a term that is short for weblogs, represent the fastest-growing medium of personal publishing and the newest method of individual expression and opinion on the Internet. BlogPulse applies machine-learning and natural-language processing techniques to discover trends in the highly dynamic world of blogs. BlogPulse is brought to you by Nielsen Online.

Blogads

Blogads are a unique tool for promoting your wonderful widgets, beat books, awesome auctions, candid candidates, pugnacious pixels, or dragon-headed dreams.

Bloggers are the ultimate intellectual entrepreneurs, networking their expertise with those of like-minded peers. With passionate voices and real-time news, blogs are where influentials converge to forge opinions. Blogs are a uniquely powerful place for advertisers to break through the Internet's gazillion page-view clutter.

Kmart Enlists Bloggers for Social Net Campaign

A sponsored social networking campaign enlisting the help of six well-known bloggers is yielding big buzz for Kmart and encouraging consumers to give the retailer another look during the critical holiday season.

Tips for A Successful Blog

Every blogging niche is different and each individual blogger has his or her own approach, but in the vast majority of cases there are a few factors that are absolutely critical to the long-term health of a blog.

Blog About Your Blog

Blog about your Blog (BAYB) is a place for good quality bloggers to come together and collaborate on one big project. At this site you'll find bloggers from all over the world, blogging about a variety of topics.

Weblog Tools Collection

For you bloggers who use WordPress to operate your blog site, here's a blog site devoted to WordPress templates, plugins, and other.

5 Tips for Successful Blog Optimization

Without proper planning, oversight and passion for the topic, blogs implemented purely for SEO objectives are doomed to fail. Additionally, social media referrals and recommendations are becoming a notable competitor to search traffic which can place SEO as a secondary promotional effort in some situations.

Davide Pozzi’s Interview

Davide Pozzi runs a popular Italian blog called TagliaErbe. Go here to read an interesting interview with Davide.

6 Ways To Add More User-Interactivity To Your Blog

One big difference between a blog and a website is the way visitors can interact with the blog author. Bloggers allow all their visitors to leave a comment anytime. If they asked a question, simple say they enjoyed the article or when you don’t agree with the author’s opinion. That’s the power of the blog.

How Blogs Work

There is a good chance you have never seen a blog (also known as aweblog) or experienced the blogosphere. What are blogs? There are now millions of them -- where did they all come from?

Blogs Find Favor as Buying Guides

A majority of blog readers say blogs are useful when they make purchases.

How to Market to Bloggers and a Counter Argument

Start your blogger relationships before you need something. This approach allowed him to never start a relationship with a blogger by asking for a favor.

10 Reasons Web Designers Should Blog

Every designer could greatly benefit from running a blog if they have the desire to share their thoughts with others. Here's a list of 10 reasons for designers to blog.

Can You Be a Good Parent and a Good Blogger?

Most people believe good blogging is about two things: personality and passion.

Can You Be a Good Parent and a Good Blogger?

Top 11 Lamest Blogs

After an Internet-wide search, here are the 11 blogs that depressed--er, uh--impressed us the most with their lameness.

10 Great Mac Apps for Bloggers

If you’ve grown tired of standard front ends, and would prefer to utilize software to blog for work or for personal enjoyment, here are alternatives that you should know about.

Too Many Blogs in the World?

People had been predicting it for years, and in 2008, it finally happened. This was the first presidential election dominated by the Internet. Those ancient debates about whether the Internet lowers journalistic standards and drags the Mainstream Media into the slime have become irrelevant.

Creating a Podcast with Blogger

Ok, one more tip about using Blogger

How to use Blogger Mobile

How to help make your blog a little faster

The speed at which your blog loads is critical to attracting more readers to your blog. If your blog takes a long time to load, many readers may leave your blog before they have the chance to read it. Here are a few tips and tricks that will help your blog load faster and attract more users.

Kontain launches a new, pretty blogging service

There's yet another new blogging platform out there: Kontain. It's designed for non-technical users, and it's easy to use and very good-looking. I don't think I've seen an easier platform for beginning bloggers, in fact. Everything on the site is clear and simple. But there's a downside.

The negative of Kontain is that while it's easy to use, it's very limited on the presentation side. You get no blog templates to choose from. While the default layout of Kontain blogs is attractive enough, the lack of customizability is surprising in a product that is so strong on the authoring side. Also, the blog pages display slowly.

So What Should We Be Asking Bloggers?

Blogging certainly has its place in the SEO world. For better or for worse, many SEOs have found notoriety through publishing online.

25 Impressive Blog Footers

Footers are often an afterthought in blog design. The blogs on this list are excellent examples for the rest of us that the footer can be a helpful and interesting aspect of the design.

10 Easy Ways to Improve Internal Linking on Your Blog

An effective internal linking strategy is important for a few reasons: 1) It helps to increase page views and encourage readers to stay on your blog longer by providing enticing links to content that may interest them, and 2) it can help to improve the search engine rankings for your posts and pages.

11 Tips for Getting Readers for Your Business Blog

You've set up your blog and can't wait to start writing. Trick is, how do you keep your readers coming back and not go away?

50 Blog Post Ideas for Business Blogging

Business blogging is not always easy.

A business blog is subjective but unlike a private blog you still are writing for people interested in your trade, products and services and not necessarily you as a person watching movies and eating out.

Gary Vaynerchuck’s Tips on Blogging for Money

What blog posts bring in the most readers?

Jacob Cass shares his thoughts on what brings readers to a blog. Maybe you could employ the same strategies to get more readers to your blog?

Designing a Blogger Business Card

As bloggers we're used to doing all our networking and promotion online. None of us are likely to be taking out billboard advertising deals any time soon, but a business card is a cheap and easy way to network in the real world as well.

The Great British blogs

Blogs are brilliant. British blogs are even better. Gary Marshall has filtered, winnowed and sorted through the blogosphere to present the 50 best blogs from Blighty – ranging from the plain weird and passionately political to Doctor Who and Samuel Pepys.

Real Estate Blogging Methods To Remember And Avoid

Tips to follow, and avoid when blogging for real estate.

Tips on Curing Blogger's Block

You know you need to make an entry on your blog and facing a deadline. Then it hits...your mind goes blank. Now what?

Bloggers Making A Difference

Bloggers Unite is an attempt to harness the power of the blogosphere to make the world a better place. By asking bloggers to write about a particular subject on 1 day of the month, a single voice can be joined with thousands to help make a difference; from raising awareness for cancer, to an effort to better education systems or supporting 3rd world countries.

Ultimate Blogger 3

Ultimate Blogger 3 is a fast paced competition between internet pundits from around the world, all locking horns and braving carpal tunnel syndrome to win the title of the internet's best blogger.

Malaysian Court Frees Activist Blogger

A Malaysian court freed the editor of an antigovernment Web site Friday, ruling that the government unlawfully used its Internal Security Act to detain him.

Some Blogging Basics

Here's a good list of blogging basics.

70 Fresh And Modern Blogger Templates

You can never have a too wide choice of templates for your blog, especially if you’re the experimenting type. Therefore, here are some Blogger themes, focused on fresh and modern designs,...about 70 of them.

How Big Companies Use Social Media

Eight major companies gathered in San Jose, CA this week to demonstrate how they are using social media the “right” way.

Blog Glossary

This glossary provides some basic definitions for the words when referring to blogs.

How to get traffic for your blog

Seth Gordin has just a 'few' things to suggest that will help drive traffic to your blog site.

A Beginners Guide to Blogging - Blogging Platform

There are a number of blogging platforms available and each has its advantages and disadvantages. The first decision you need to make is whether you want to have a hosted blog or a self hosted blog.

ROI of blogging

Good article on how to utilize ROI for your blogging needs.

The Internet's Top Blogs: What We Can Learn From Their Success

What are those recurring themes that contribute to a blog site being successful? This article may help shed some light.

The 10 Types of Business Blog Posts

Business blog posts generally fall into one of 10 types. When you’re trying to write for your business blog and you feel a little stuck (or if you’re new to business blogging), you can just pick one of these 10 types of business blog posts to use as a guide.

So How Much Do Social Media/Top Tier Bloggers Make?

The media world is changing and its jobs are changing too. The rise of the blogger is an often-told story, but are the lucky few bloggers who do it for a living well paid?

Blog Action Day Poverty

On October 15th, bloggers everywhere published posts that discuss poverty in some way.

In era of blog sniping, companies shoot first

During past downturns, layoffs were mostly a private affair. Big companies tended to issue vague press releases filled with jargon about "downsizing," and start-ups often gave people the pink slip without telling the world anything at all.

Not anymore. In the age of transparency, the layoff will be blogged.

Blogcritics: An Online Magazine

Blogcritics.org is a new kind of online magazine, an interactive community in which writers and readers from around the globe talk about stories, issues, and products. If it's happening in the world – from global political issues to obscure rock bands, from the latest best selling novel to the TV shows that aired last night – Blogcritics.org has it covered.

Blogged

Blogged.com is about discovering what the best bloggers are blogging about right now, and about finding the blogs that will interest you the most. Blogged is updated throughout the day to bring you the latest and most interesting posts from our index of more than one million blogs.

Blogged.com is a place for both readers and bloggers.

A Set of Principles for Successful blogging

There are so many books on how to create a blog that will be successful. But with so much reading, one can forget those steps. Here's a list about skills and habits that are important to help you meet your goal.

Taking Your Blog To The Next Level

A good article that provides some insight on how own a blog that you can run like big business: hands-off, by employing others to do your work and taking the left-over profits.

How to Design for Ads in Blog Design

Anyone who has been reading blogs for than a few days will notice that there are two common types of ads in blogs. Those two types are Google adsense, which is essentially a bunch of text with links and banner ad blocks, which often comes in the size of 125 x 125. Then there are three places it often gets placed, the sidebar, inside of a post, or at the bottom of a post.

10 Ways to Find Readers for Your Blog By Leveraging Other Online Presence

One of the simplest ways to grow your blog’s readership is to leverage other places that you have an online presence.

Chocolate & Zucchini

Chocolate & Zucchini is a blog written by Clotilde Dusoulier, a 29-year-old Parisian woman who lives in Montmartre and shares her passion for all things food-related -- thoughts, recipes, musings, cookbook acquisitions, quirky ingredients, nifty tools, restaurant experiences, ideas, and inspirations.

Blog's Eye View

Blog's Eye View

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: blogging social)

Skype Blogs

Blog about the latest Skype news, written from the perspective of the people who work at Skype.

50 Beautiful Blog Designs

We strongly encourage designers to break out the common layout conventions, experiment with new approaches and risk crazy ideas. Show what you are capable of!

Food Network and Blogging Habits

The best blogs are ones that are updated frequently in order to build a relationship with its readers. Someone who does this admirably is Tyler Florence.

Six Steps to a Stress-Free Blogging Habit

If most of us managed our money like we managed our blogs we’d either be bankrupt or deep in debt. We certainly wouldn’t have any savings!

Have you thought of adding gadgets to your blog?

You can make your blog site more useful by adding gadgets to your blog site via Blogger. Check out the YouTube presentation below for more help.

Are blogs becoming obsolete?

Dwight Silverman offers his thoughts on why blogging is so 2004.

Henry Bloget

The one-time Wall Street darling is trying his hand at journalism after being barred from the securities industry. He says blogging isn't always easy, but at least he laughs more.

Starting a blog?

An interesting article on how not to get sucked in the page-view trap.

Feedburner may not be hearing your pings

Blogging is a fast medium, that's one of its advantages over traditional media. There are bloggers who specialize in reporting fast about breaking news on a wide variety of topics. Most of those bloggers use Google's RSS publishing technology FeedBurner as a middleman to deliver their posts to subscribers and capture analytics.

Habari the new WordPress?

WordPress may be one of the best blogging platforms around today, but that hasn't stopped a worldwide community of developers from thinking they can do better. There's a new game in town and they're called Habari.

State of the Blogosphere

Review Technorati's latest report on the state of the Blogosphere 2008 report.

Next Post Previous Post Big Blogger Pay Cuts At b5Media

Toronto based b5Media is changing the way it pays bloggers in its hundreds-strong blog network, according to an email memo sent out to partners by CEO Jeremy Wright.

Seven blog news trackers compared

Sites like Techmeme, Blogrunner, and Technorati have been tracking the hottest blog posts for quite some time. Now's a good point to take a look at what makes these sites (and others) individual and different from Google's blog search.

Teachers Turn to Blogging

The blogs give readers a perspective that standardized test scores can't offer.

Bloggie Award Winners of 2008

Take a look at the winners of the recent Bloggie Awards from around the world. There are a lot of categories stemming from best in country to best food.

Global Voices

Global Voices is a non-profit global citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a research think-tank focused on the Internet’s impact on society.

Global Voices connects with amazing people who are bloggers living in various countries around the world. They've invited these individuals as contributors or hired them as editors because they understand the context and relevance of information, views, and analysis being posted every day from their countries and regions on blogs, podcasts, photo sharing sites, videoblogs - and other kinds of online citizen media. They are helping to make sense of it all, and to highlight things that bloggers are saying which mainstream media may not be reporting.

The 'dangers' of blogging

Google Blogoscoped

Google Blogoscoped covers Google and the tech world, more or less daily since 2003.
This blog is featured in the Technorati 100 and the current Techmeme all time top 100, and is a Google News source.

OJB

The Online Journalism Blog publishes comment and analysis on developments in online journalism and online news, citizen journalism, blogging, vlogging, photoblogging, podcasts, interactive storytelling, publishing, Computer Assisted Reporting, User Generated Content, searching, online communities, mobile phone journalism, social media and all things internet.

Blogging habits

For Brits, technology and web companies top the list of brands most blogged, according to a recent “Blogs and Brands: A Study of the British Blogosphere” by Prompt Communications Ltd.

Supplementing Your Freelance Career With Blogging and Expert Content

Raj Dash shares his thoughts how to use the blog for enhancing your freelance career.

Using AideRSS to Help Identify Hot Topics to Cover On Your Blog

There are over 86 million blogs, and each one has an RSS feed. All it takes is a few subscriptions to the sites that interest you, and your feed reader is overwhelmed with a never-ending stream of hundreds of headlines. Like an aide or a personal assistant, AideRSS helps to filter and rank these feeds based on a number of criteria to help you read what matters, ensure that you find the good stuff, and to help keep things organized and manageable.

See the YouTube demo below.

10 techniques to get more comments on your blog

Still looking for ways to increase comments on your blog? Here are some fundamental tips that may help.

Marketing moves to the Blogosphere

Jason Calacanis, who got into blogging early and big, has quit.

He co-founded a network of blogs called Weblogs in 2003, before the medium cracked the mainstream, and then sold it to AOL in 2005, working there until 2007.

TF2

Welcome to the TF2 community blog  about the state of the game and some of the reasoning behind the choices they're making.

With 'followers,' Blogger gets--surprise!--more social

Blogger adds social-networking features to their software.

Roz's quest

Roz Savage is rowing across the Pacific ocean for herself, but more importantly, to call attention to the problem of plastics polluting the oceans. Check her blog for daily entries has she continues her journey.

Movie clip of her first attempt, plus check out her website.

Democratic bloggers shun official digs for 'Big Tent'

Why brave the painfully slow security lines and TSA-like hassles at the official Democratic convention center? For many lefty bloggers, it's a lot more fun to hang out at the Big Tent a few blocks away.

Looking for blogs on Apple news?

I came across three great blogs devoted to Apple news:

 Cult of mac

Appletell

 tuaw.com

Slugger Awards: political blogger of the year

Slugger Awards: political blogger of the year ... in spreading the word about the 'political blogger' category in the new Slugger Awards.

Blog about Blogs

Six Apart, which makes the Movable Type blogging platform and hosts blog services TypePad and Vox, on Monday is launching Blogs.com, a new site designed to help readers find the best blogs on the Web.

Read the article here.

Blogging is not a crime

This chart plots the number of bloggers who have been arrested over the past few years, based on data collected by the World Information Access project.

Blog it, mail it

MailChimp's RSS-to-Email tool will automatically send your subscribers a newsletter whenever your blog (or any RSS feed) gets updated.

List for local business blogging success

If you're looking for methods by which to get closer to your community via a blog, check out this list.

Blogging for teachers and students, made easy

Edublogs hosts hundreds of thousands of blogs for teachers, students, researchers, professors, librarians, administrators and anyone and everyone else involved in education.

Edublogs are completely free, without any advertising, and come with 100MB of free upload space (easily extended to 3 Gig) and a heap of great features.

They cater to schools and universities looking to create, manage and control blogs at their own domain, with all the features of Edublogs.

Publish your blog in foreign languages

ICanLocalize is a new kind of website translation service, created to help both webmasters and translators.
Because of the way websites and blogs are constructed, translating them involves a lot of technical work. Instead of letting a person do all this work, and then charging money for it - this better be done by a computer.

Network blogging thoughts

Blog networks need to bring in a lot of money to keep afloat. This is because, while individual blogs have low overheads, blog networks do not.

Build a better photoblog

There are plenty of free ways to build an average photoblog, but if you have dreams of creating one that meets your needs and not just the masses, check out Pixelpost 1.7.1. Updated earlier this year with a bunch of new features including an Install Assistant, this MySQL/PHP-based application is a free download and needs only a modicum of technical knowledge and some server space to use.

New look & feel

Bloglines has launched first steps in designing a new look to its site.

40+ topics for corporate bloggers

Here' a good list of ideas for corporate bloggers who need inspiration to start a conversation.

Blog Catalog

BlogCatalog is more than just a social community for bloggers; we are one of the largest blog directories on the internet. Whether you are looking to search blogs, connect with bloggers, learn more about blogging, or promote your own blog, BlogCatalog is for you.

BlogWorld & New Media Expo

The 2008 BlogWorld & New Media Expo will take place September 20-21 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, with the exclusive "Executive & Entrepreneur" conference beginning September 19th.

Everyone has a viewpoint

Instablogs is a news ecosystem bringing bloggers, citizen journalists and traditional media together. It’s a place to discover, share, contribute and connect with the world and the people who are changing it.

Like the blog? Leave a tip

The future of professional blogging may lie in the age-old model of tipping — at least, that’s what Salon.com appears to be hoping.

Google maps you would've never thought of

This blog is dedicated to interesting and cool google maps/mashups!

I may copy it, right?

With blogging comes great responsibilty. You define the content of your weblog and you carry the full responsibility for every word you’ve published online. More than that, you are responsible for comments in your posts.

Inside Intel's blog

Welcome to the IT@Intel blog. This site features several of Intel’s top IT leaders, who share their perspectives and invite discussion on the issues they and other IT managers are facing today. The blog offers an “inside look” at Intel’s IT operations and provides opportunities for you to exchange ideas directly with the IT experts who keep Intel’s business running and growing.

Blogola Scheme

John McCain's campaign is bribing people to copy and paste his talking points in blog comments.

Dipping into the blogpond

Take a look down under to see Australia's top 100 blogs.

Blog Marketing: Optimize Your Blog Posts for SEO

Some other helpful SEO information on YouTube:

1-Google allinanchor
2-What is Search Engine Marketing?

36 Tips

What good is your blog if no one wants to read it? To help attract more readers to your blog, take a look at this list of 36 tips and resources for you to implement in order to ensure maximum usability. If your blog is easy and fun to visit, you’ll notice more readers flocking to your site.

UsabilityBlog

UsabilityBlog is where Paul Sherman writes about usability, user-centered design, and the user experience.

As a consultant his projects have included usability testing and interface design for IT applications, e-commerce Web sites, financial planning and portfolio management software applications, and telecommunications hardware and software applications.

How you measuring you blog?

If you've not tried Measure Maps, you might want to take a look.

Caution

Looking for some warning labels for blogs?

Mind gone blank for ideas

After a while we all run against a brick wall for blogging ideas. Perhaps this article will help shed some light.

Vlog Blog

Here's a great blog site regarding communicating through video on your blog.

Canada's Top 25 Political Blogs

Here are the July rankings for Canada’s Top 25 Political Blogs.