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Ask HN: What are the best-designed personal blogs you’ve come across?
I’m about to start building a site for a personal blog, so I’d love to get inspiration from your favorites -- looking only at the design and not the content. Here are a couple of mine: https://joegebbia.com/dearairbnb and https://kk.org/thetechnium/68-bits-of-unsolicited-advice/.
- LewisVerstappen 4y agohttps://www.gwern.net/ https://www.gwern.net/
- atmosx 4y agoYeah, was going to post this. This is by far and large the best I know in terms of design and one of the most interesting regarding content as well. I hope this blog survives for centuries.
- hippo-campus 4y agoCan't believe I didn't mention this one. Definitely one of the best.
- mixmastamyk 4y agoFully justified text makes for lower readability imho.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ajkjk 4y agoReally? I feel like it's one of the most interesting but worst designed. It has some random cute design in it (like the ornate characters at the start of articles.. well I remember it having that, but don't see it now on my phone), but is basically unnavigable.
- willbw 4y agoThe design is really bad imo as well. I would prefer no css or styling at all than this. Its very difficult to tell what is going on.
- kradeelav 4y agoBest is entirely subjective. ;) I'm quite fond of my own(1), but it's pretty basic and heavily modified/hacked together from a very minimal wordpress theme. Let's start with the two you mentioned: looking at the source code, one's actually built from a squarespace theme, and the other is likewise built from a wordpress theme, feels like an slightly older one given it's not mobile responsive. That's not a knock, by the way - sometimes you want an audience that don't use phones or deliberately flock to the retro vibe. I don't know your budget or capability to self-code, but browsing squarespace's themes would be what I would recommend if you have a higher budget, and likewise doing the same with wordpress if you're operating on a shoestring mindset. There's some gorgeous ones on both, though squarespace is far more curated and caters to a more modern/slick looking audience and clientele. (1) (SFW) art log: http://log.kradeelav.com/ http://log.kradeelav.com/
- hippo-campus 4y agoThanks for sharing! That's a great point about building from a template/theme.
- misterioss 4y agohttps://poohitan.com https://poohitan.com (in Ukrainian but there are several posts in English)
- hippo-campus 4y agoI really like this one, thanks for posting it.
- oumua_don17 4y agohttps://www.t3x.org/ https://www.t3x.org/
- neoncontrails 4y agohttps://acko.net https://acko.net
- labrador 4y agoI really hate websites that make me scroll down to see anything
- dav1app 4y agoRead one of your articles about breaking React rules for fun and profit. Good stuff.
- BossingAround 4y agoI think that website would benefit from having access to a professional UI designer. It's technically impressive, but experience wise, it's amazingly bad.
- ksahin 4y agohttps://julian.com/ https://julian.com/
- dprophecyguy 4y agoThis is a gem!!
- labrador 4y agoSome links I've saved. That said, there's no accounting for taste: https://tylr.fun/ https://tylr.fun/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30440123 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30440123 https://world.hey.com/dhh/google-suffers-from-a-digital-petro-curse-908e919a https://world.hey.com/dhh/google-suffers-from-a-digital-petr... https://vpostrel.com/ https://vpostrel.com/ https://h3rald.com/ https://h3rald.com/ https://bastian.rieck.me/blog/posts/2022/boring/ https://bastian.rieck.me/blog/posts/2022/boring/ http://diveintohtml5.info/storage.html http://diveintohtml5.info/storage.html https://moxie.org/stories.html https://moxie.org/stories.html https://trevorklee.com/my-terrible-plan-for-reducing-opioid-deaths/ https://trevorklee.com/my-terrible-plan-for-reducing-opioid-... https://mzrn.sh/2021/11/14/how-i-helped-build-a-profitable-mvp-over-a-weekend/ https://mzrn.sh/2021/11/14/how-i-helped-build-a-profitable-m... https://kilianvalkhof.com/2021/web/prescriptive-software-is-better-than-descriptive-software/ https://kilianvalkhof.com/2021/web/prescriptive-software-is-... https://jessitron.com/2021/11/28/software-development-pushes-us-to-get-better-as-people/ https://jessitron.com/2021/11/28/software-development-pushes... https://www.tariqislam.com/posts/kubernetes-docker-dep/ https://www.tariqislam.com/posts/kubernetes-docker-dep/ https://p4bl0.net/post/2022/01/The-Truth-on-the-Blockchain https://p4bl0.net/post/2022/01/The-Truth-on-the-Blockchain https://www.indiehackers.com/post/what-are-the-most-beautiful-landing-pages-549677e19a https://www.indiehackers.com/post/what-are-the-most-beautifu... https://alexgaynor.net/2020/nov/30/why-software-ends-up-complex/ https://alexgaynor.net/2020/nov/30/why-software-ends-up-comp... No list would be complete without: https://thebestmotherfucking.website/ https://thebestmotherfucking.website/ http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/
- Tomte 4y agoYou've missed the best one of the *websites: https://bestmotherfucking.website/ https://bestmotherfucking.website/
- labrador 4y agoA new one on me! I know some are offended by the language, but I think a tough talking web designer is funny. They kind of give me that Maddox vibe. He started the trend of tough talkers for comic effect many years ago http://maddox.xmission.com/ http://maddox.xmission.com/
- oddlama 4y agoOme of the best I came across, regarding both readability and content: https://ciechanow.ski/ https://ciechanow.ski/
- xupybd 4y agoThat is truly amazing
- whalesalad 4y agohttps://tonsky.me/ https://tonsky.me/
- edmcnulty101 4y agoThe design is nice. The color...
- joe_guy 4y agohttp://danluu.com/ http://danluu.com/
- dprophecyguy 4y agoMan, it has page wide reading view, It's not at all good UX in any means.
- prmoustache 4y agoIsn't relying on your window manager the best UX instead of relying on universally bad tricks from web devs?
- selfmodruntime 4y agoNo. Tablets and Phones do not have window managers. Also, a well defined side margin is not a "bad web trick" but an idea that's as old as print media, perhaps even as old as just written documents.
- prmoustache 4y agoHave you opened aforementionned link on a smartphone? I did and it renders well. Plain text is responsive by design. Also the browser on my phone allow me to dial font sizing in 3 seconds.
- anonystick 4y ago[dead]
- SteveDR 4y agoI just got a banner ad (fine I guess) and a pop up ad (much worse) on mobile. No thanks
- d4a 4y agoI really like DF's theme, even though it looks terrible on mobile
- siproprio 4y ago
- dprophecyguy 4y agohttps://www.nan.fyi/ https://www.nan.fyi/ https://garden.bradwoods.io/ https://garden.bradwoods.io/ https://ivov.dev/ https://ivov.dev/
- jessfyi 4y agohttps://maggieappleton.com/ https://maggieappleton.com/ for her take on a digital garden. She also compiled more below [0] if opening your thought process to the public is your thing (adopting the concept actually got me to add more structure to my serious notes and actually post more) https://brianlovin.com/writing/how-my-website-works https://brianlovin.com/writing/how-my-website-works because of how in-depth he went with hosting his notes, bookmarks, and other projects. https://wattenberger.com/ https://wattenberger.com/ for its reactivity/place for her d3.js experiments. and here is a general collection of dope blog additions: https://brainbaking.com/post/2022/04/cool-things-people-do-with-their-blogs/ https://brainbaking.com/post/2022/04/cool-things-people-do-w... My overall advice is unless you're a designer flexing your skills is to focus less on the design and more on the actual writing! The internet is littered with the emaciated husks of nice good looking sites hosting nary an entry beyond "How I Made My New Blog With X" [0] https://github.com/MaggieAppleton/digital-gardeners https://github.com/MaggieAppleton/digital-gardeners
- nicbou 4y agoThe illustrations on Maggie's website are gorgeous. I've been focused on content for 5 years (for my website that pays the bills), but the website is so bland. I'd love if people could go "nice" when they use the website. It seems like Maggie nailed that. Thanks for sharing.
- quintussss 4y agohttps://www.jakobmaier.at/ https://www.jakobmaier.at/
- unsignednoop 4y agoI really like how the side notes and references line up on the right. https://verdagon.dev/blog/hybrid-generational-memory https://verdagon.dev/blog/hybrid-generational-memory
- cweagans 4y agohttps://sambleckley.com/ https://sambleckley.com/
- caprock 4y agoBrowsing through these can be inspiring: https://webring.xxiivv.com https://webring.xxiivv.com
- manuelmoreale 4y agoMy friend’s https://cmhb.de/ https://cmhb.de/ and then I’ll shamelessly add in mine https://manuelmoreale.com/ https://manuelmoreale.com/