6 ms·

Ask HN: Most beautiful personal blog UI you have ever seen?

153 points by ms7892 7mo ago

Hi HN! Asking out of curiosity. The best blog UI you have ever seen in your life.

wps 7mo ago
I quite like this one: https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/ https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/ Although it is a bit slow to load sometimes.
mitchbob 7mo ago
I think Eric Meyer's is a nice one: https://meyerweb.com/ https://meyerweb.com/
- random_duck 7mo ago
  Very esthetic.
wonger_ 7mo ago
Tasteful: https://colly.com/ https://colly.com/ Artsy: https://anhvn.com/ https://anhvn.com/ Simple yet elegant: https://www.lkhrs.com/ https://www.lkhrs.com/ and https://arun.is/blog/ https://arun.is/blog/ Maximalist: https://henry.codes/ https://henry.codes/ and https://garden.bradwoods.io/ https://garden.bradwoods.io/ and https://blog.maximeheckel.com/ https://blog.maximeheckel.com/ Old-school / indie web: https://ribo.zone/ https://ribo.zone/ Text mode / ASCII art: https://adelfaure.net/ https://adelfaure.net/ Typography: http://davidcole.me/ http://davidcole.me/ and https://www.petemillspaugh.com/ https://www.petemillspaugh.com/ I have more. You can keep rolling the dice on https://indieblog.page/random https://indieblog.page/random and eventually you'll stumble across some pretty sites. Usually the nicest ones are from frontend / design engineer types of people. EDIT - oh and the sites in the internet phone book! https://internetphonebook.net/ https://internetphonebook.net/ as well as browsing screenshots at https://personalsit.es/ https://personalsit.es/
- absoluteunit1 7mo ago
  Some of these sites - wow. I literally can’t fall asleep right now (reading this in bed) scrolling through all these. So many good resources. Thank you for sharing. This is why I love HN
- ykl 7mo ago
  I hadn't seen arun.is before; I really like this one! Thanks for the share!
- ms7892 7mo ago
  Some of the Websites literally took my breath away. I mean just wow all of the sites in the lists are.
vismit2000 7mo ago
https://www.joshwcomeau.com https://www.joshwcomeau.com
MilnerRoute 7mo ago
This isn't a blog, but more than 20 years ago I saw a Flash web game which I've always remembered as the most beautiful piece of interactive online content I'd ever seen. It took a while to find it again... (I searched Google images until I found a screenshot that looked right.) Somebody archived it and resurrected it with Ruffle. (It looks better if you go to "Full Screen" mode.) But the aesthetic was just incredible... I give you -- "A Murder of Scarecrows." https://www.gamesflow.com/jeux.php?id=2062366 https://www.gamesflow.com/jeux.php?id=2062366
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
bryanhogan 7mo ago
I prefer simple designs. Steph Ango's website comes to my mind: https://stephango.com/ramblings https://stephango.com/ramblings I guess I also really like my own: https://bryanhogan.com/ https://bryanhogan.com/ I also realised writing this, 3 other pages I wanted to share didn't include a blog (1. https://www.yasmins.site/projects https://www.yasmins.site/projects 2. https://www.alasdairmonk.com/ https://www.alasdairmonk.com/ 3.https://glenn.me/ https://glenn.me/ ). Very artsy but also nice: https://www.nicchan.me/about/ https://www.nicchan.me/about/
tlhunter 7mo ago
Mine is pretty cool looking: https://thomashunter.name/posts/2026-02-26-alpaka-elements-tech-case-camera-bag https://thomashunter.name/posts/2026-02-26-alpaka-elements-t...
Tomotoes 7mo ago
Not sure if it counts as “most beautiful”, but I spent a lot of time tinkering with my own blog UI and interactions: https://simonaking.com https://simonaking.com
- bendevcat 7mo ago
  For me, it is ! Very impressive
- burner420042 7mo ago
  Wow!
jackyli02 7mo ago
https://lynnandtonic.com/ https://lynnandtonic.com/ is really well-built and has a distinctive style. Recommend checking it out!
vivzkestrel 7mo ago
- S-TIER blogs are those that are animated, visual, interactive and absolutely blow your mind off - A-TIER are highly informative and you ll learn something - opinion blogs at the absolute bottom of the tier list because everyone everywhere ll always have an opinion about everything and my life is too short to be reading all that - these are the S-TIER ones on my system - https://growingswe.com/blog https://growingswe.com/blog - https://ciechanow.ski/archives/ https://ciechanow.ski/archives/ - https://mlu-explain.github.io/ https://mlu-explain.github.io/ - https://seeing-theory.brown.edu/index.html#firstPage https://seeing-theory.brown.edu/index.html#firstPage - https://svg-tutorial.com/ https://svg-tutorial.com/ - https://www.lumafield.com/scan-of-the-month/health-wearables https://www.lumafield.com/scan-of-the-month/health-wearables - these are the BEST of the BEST, you ll be blown away opening each page is how good they are. i am thinking of creating a bookmark manager that uses my criteria above and runs across every damn blog link ever posted on HN to categorize them as S-TIER, A-TIER, opinion and so on
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- orphea 7mo ago
  May I nitpick? Why do BEST of the BEST - require 3 clicks and 10 seconds to navigate to a subpage. No indication whether it's trying to load or not (growingswe) - have underlined headers that are not links (mlu-explain) - hijack scrolling, the back button and navigation history (seeing-theory) I do not disagree these blogs are awesome. Of these I knew ciechanow.ski and lumafield - famous and exceptional. Just... I feel a bit disappointed when someone pumps excitement, and your first experience with the websites are either weird design choices or bad UX, intentionally or not. Anyway, thanks for sharing!
  - vivzkestrel 7mo ago
    i didnt notice any difference in the scrolling part. how did you conclude it is hijacking the scroll. Also the other sites load fine for me. Also this is not about performance. I dont care if they take 10 seconds to load but the content to be presented in a way unlike any of the 451534856415348678513656 other blogs out there
gepeake 7mo ago
I just finished building mine! https://gpeake.com https://gpeake.com
yen223 7mo ago
The typography in Maggie Appleton's blog is unparalleled https://maggieappleton.com/ https://maggieappleton.com/
- vladsanchez 7mo ago
  Favorite! Both aesthetics and content!
never_inline 7mo ago
* gwern * lesswrong
- jayveeone 7mo ago
  lesswrong, the Rationalist cult blog?
aeldidi 7mo ago
I'm gonna use this as an opportunity to get some feedback on mine: https://ayman.eldidi.org/articles/unicode-identifiers/ https://ayman.eldidi.org/articles/unicode-identifiers/
- wonger_ 7mo ago
  I like how readable it is. Be sure to handle long lines that ruin page widths on small screens -- probably the commit hash should overflow-wrap: break-word, or in a horizontally scrollable container element, or a similar solution. One designy thing I've been practicing is to be intentional about every margin / piece of whitespace, and to use a proportional scale like https://utopia.fyi/ https://utopia.fyi/. You might find that if you align more elements and stick to the scale, things might look extra pleasing. (Maybe you already have, idk, just first impressions from my phone) - subscribe button placement looks uneven, esp on mobile. Maybe it could be a simple underlined link? - imo centered text is a crutch that often looks better when left justified instead, or rerranged with some other solution. I'm thinking of the mobile navbar and lengthy captions. This is more subjective tho - homepage could use more posts! Looking forward to your future writing - the most beautiful sites usually come up with some unique theme or visual identity or creative stunt to break away from a vanilla default theme. But people still like basic readable websites if the content is great.
Cider9986 7mo ago
There are some great looking websites here! I like https://vmfunc.re/ https://vmfunc.re/
ykl 7mo ago
One I like is Tom Macwright’s blog [1], which somewhat famously loads insanely fast thanks to having a sort of the web equivalent of a brutalist design while still looking nice [2]. [1] https://macwright.com/ https://macwright.com/ [2] https://macwright.com/2016/05/03/the-featherweight-website https://macwright.com/2016/05/03/the-featherweight-website
- leoh 7mo ago
  Tom is the best
kkoncevicius 7mo ago
https://simonsarris.com/ https://simonsarris.com/
- wonger_ 7mo ago
  Ah yes I forgot about that one, nice. Reminds me of https://www.fromjason.xyz/ https://www.fromjason.xyz/
asukachikaru 7mo ago
- https://henry.codes/ https://henry.codes/ - https://www.fev.al/ https://www.fev.al/ - https://hugo.blog/ https://hugo.blog/ I just like this type of typography.
- ms7892 7mo ago
  Brilliant
shelled 7mo ago
https://onethingwell.org https://onethingwell.org comes to mind https://web.archive.org/web/20170608203825/http://onethingwell.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170608203825/http://onethingwe... - used to be slightly simpler and less colourful. There might have been few more such blogs over the years but this one has stayed in memory long after I stopped going to it and eventually it stopped (sort of). It was not just the design but also the simplicty of the conent and being very accessible.
bronlund 7mo ago
This is rage-bait. Everyone knows discussing design will just end in someone mentioning Hitler :D
xeonmc 7mo ago
https://danluu.com https://danluu.com
brysonreece 7mo ago
I’m not sure about “most beautiful”, but I’m particularly proud of my own site: https://bryson.cc https://bryson.cc
- hairywalt 7mo ago
  Nice. One snag, your About link on the homepage points to your test site: https://bryson.test/about https://bryson.test/about
  - brysonreece 7mo ago
    Thank you! Lol, you just happened to catch me in the middle of a broken deployment.
- MarsIronPI 7mo ago
  Minor nit, so sorry if it comes across as snobbish or something: You may want to spell "résumé" with the accents. I believe that is the technically correct spelling.
  - brysonreece 7mo ago
    Heard! Thank you!
tyleo 7mo ago
Shoutout to my own: https://www.tyleo.com https://www.tyleo.com
leephillips 7mo ago
I’m disappointed to see how few of these sites contain a link, or at least one I could find easily, to an RSS feed.
chetangangappa 7mo ago
i recently did a overhaul of mine and I love it, i think can compete with the best https://chetangangappa.me https://chetangangappa.me
- MarsIronPI 7mo ago
  Why does it require Javascript to display some text and images? Can't you do that without JS?
  - chetangangappa 7mo ago
    there is noscript fallback if required with the same content. I have nice background mouse effect going on against the backdrop also it is no built as just a portfolio landing, it is built as an spa with plans for expansion much more. Needed to give myself the flexibility
cellUtils 7mo ago
I have been having a great time using Astro with https://github.com/lucernae/astro-blog-template https://github.com/lucernae/astro-blog-template . Looks modern and minimal, but not too minimal which i despise. On the technical side of things, Static Site Generation is perfect for small blogs, so after some tweaks I got its loading times down to milliseconds! Here's the blog I came up with: https://blog.cellutils.com/ https://blog.cellutils.com/
MarsIronPI 7mo ago
Maybe not the best, but I like the direction Luke Smith takes with his site: https://lukesmith.xyz https://lukesmith.xyz
swaptr 7mo ago
I like minimal UI so https://szymonkaliski.com/ https://szymonkaliski.com/ is my absolute favorite.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
nicbou 7mo ago
Ah darn, someone already mentioned Maggie Appleton's website. It's simply gorgeous. https://allaboutberlin.com https://allaboutberlin.com is optimised for readability and ease of navigation. That's what a website should do, although I love when bloggers use their own art in the designs.
- wonger_ 7mo ago
  Ah I forgot to put your site in my typography category! https://nicolasbouliane.com/ https://nicolasbouliane.com/ so elegant and well executed
  - nicbou 7mo ago
    It's a shameless rip-off of Maggie's website, but done too lazily to be noticeable. The colour palette was literally the same until recently.
mycall 7mo ago
While this might be pushing it, some have had blogs on it.. but, I will love the UI. https://www.yourworldoftext.com https://www.yourworldoftext.com
dankwizard 7mo ago
The amount of people promoting their own LLM generated blog has derailed this thread
essenceX 7mo ago
[dead]
Sir_Twist 7mo ago
One of my personal favorites: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
huhexian 7mo ago
https://github.com/huhexian/2012-huhexian https://github.com/huhexian/2012-huhexian there is a simple theme used on the WordPress.
battle666 7mo ago
[dead]
cravo 7mo ago
[dead]

153 points by ms7892 7mo ago

Hi HN! Asking out of curiosity. The best blog UI you have ever seen in your life.

wps 7mo ago

I quite like this one: https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/ https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/ Although it is a bit slow to load sometimes.

mitchbob 7mo ago

I think Eric Meyer's is a nice one: https://meyerweb.com/ https://meyerweb.com/

random_duck 7mo ago
Very esthetic.

wonger_ 7mo ago

Tasteful: https://colly.com/ https://colly.com/ Artsy: https://anhvn.com/ https://anhvn.com/ Simple yet elegant: https://www.lkhrs.com/ https://www.lkhrs.com/ and https://arun.is/blog/ https://arun.is/blog/ Maximalist: https://henry.codes/ https://henry.codes/ and https://garden.bradwoods.io/ https://garden.bradwoods.io/ and https://blog.maximeheckel.com/ https://blog.maximeheckel.com/ Old-school / indie web: https://ribo.zone/ https://ribo.zone/ Text mode / ASCII art: https://adelfaure.net/ https://adelfaure.net/ Typography: http://davidcole.me/ http://davidcole.me/ and https://www.petemillspaugh.com/ https://www.petemillspaugh.com/ I have more. You can keep rolling the dice on https://indieblog.page/random https://indieblog.page/random and eventually you'll stumble across some pretty sites. Usually the nicest ones are from frontend / design engineer types of people. EDIT - oh and the sites in the internet phone book! https://internetphonebook.net/ https://internetphonebook.net/ as well as browsing screenshots at https://personalsit.es/ https://personalsit.es/

absoluteunit1 7mo ago
Some of these sites - wow. I literally can’t fall asleep right now (reading this in bed) scrolling through all these. So many good resources. Thank you for sharing. This is why I love HN
ykl 7mo ago
I hadn't seen arun.is before; I really like this one! Thanks for the share!
ms7892 7mo ago
Some of the Websites literally took my breath away. I mean just wow all of the sites in the lists are.

vismit2000 7mo ago

https://www.joshwcomeau.com https://www.joshwcomeau.com

MilnerRoute 7mo ago

This isn't a blog, but more than 20 years ago I saw a Flash web game which I've always remembered as the most beautiful piece of interactive online content I'd ever seen. It took a while to find it again... (I searched Google images until I found a screenshot that looked right.) Somebody archived it and resurrected it with Ruffle. (It looks better if you go to "Full Screen" mode.) But the aesthetic was just incredible... I give you -- "A Murder of Scarecrows." https://www.gamesflow.com/jeux.php?id=2062366 https://www.gamesflow.com/jeux.php?id=2062366

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

bryanhogan 7mo ago

I prefer simple designs. Steph Ango's website comes to my mind: https://stephango.com/ramblings https://stephango.com/ramblings I guess I also really like my own: https://bryanhogan.com/ https://bryanhogan.com/ I also realised writing this, 3 other pages I wanted to share didn't include a blog (1. https://www.yasmins.site/projects https://www.yasmins.site/projects 2. https://www.alasdairmonk.com/ https://www.alasdairmonk.com/ 3.https://glenn.me/ https://glenn.me/ ). Very artsy but also nice: https://www.nicchan.me/about/ https://www.nicchan.me/about/

tlhunter 7mo ago

Mine is pretty cool looking: https://thomashunter.name/posts/2026-02-26-alpaka-elements-tech-case-camera-bag https://thomashunter.name/posts/2026-02-26-alpaka-elements-t...

Tomotoes 7mo ago

Not sure if it counts as “most beautiful”, but I spent a lot of time tinkering with my own blog UI and interactions: https://simonaking.com https://simonaking.com

bendevcat 7mo ago
For me, it is ! Very impressive
burner420042 7mo ago
Wow!

jackyli02 7mo ago

https://lynnandtonic.com/ https://lynnandtonic.com/ is really well-built and has a distinctive style. Recommend checking it out!

vivzkestrel 7mo ago

- S-TIER blogs are those that are animated, visual, interactive and absolutely blow your mind off - A-TIER are highly informative and you ll learn something - opinion blogs at the absolute bottom of the tier list because everyone everywhere ll always have an opinion about everything and my life is too short to be reading all that - these are the S-TIER ones on my system - https://growingswe.com/blog https://growingswe.com/blog - https://ciechanow.ski/archives/ https://ciechanow.ski/archives/ - https://mlu-explain.github.io/ https://mlu-explain.github.io/ - https://seeing-theory.brown.edu/index.html#firstPage https://seeing-theory.brown.edu/index.html#firstPage - https://svg-tutorial.com/ https://svg-tutorial.com/ - https://www.lumafield.com/scan-of-the-month/health-wearables https://www.lumafield.com/scan-of-the-month/health-wearables - these are the BEST of the BEST, you ll be blown away opening each page is how good they are. i am thinking of creating a bookmark manager that uses my criteria above and runs across every damn blog link ever posted on HN to categorize them as S-TIER, A-TIER, opinion and so on

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
orphea 7mo ago
May I nitpick? Why do BEST of the BEST - require 3 clicks and 10 seconds to navigate to a subpage. No indication whether it's trying to load or not (growingswe) - have underlined headers that are not links (mlu-explain) - hijack scrolling, the back button and navigation history (seeing-theory) I do not disagree these blogs are awesome. Of these I knew ciechanow.ski and lumafield - famous and exceptional. Just... I feel a bit disappointed when someone pumps excitement, and your first experience with the websites are either weird design choices or bad UX, intentionally or not. Anyway, thanks for sharing!
- vivzkestrel 7mo ago
  i didnt notice any difference in the scrolling part. how did you conclude it is hijacking the scroll. Also the other sites load fine for me. Also this is not about performance. I dont care if they take 10 seconds to load but the content to be presented in a way unlike any of the 451534856415348678513656 other blogs out there

gepeake 7mo ago

I just finished building mine! https://gpeake.com https://gpeake.com

yen223 7mo ago

The typography in Maggie Appleton's blog is unparalleled https://maggieappleton.com/ https://maggieappleton.com/

vladsanchez 7mo ago
Favorite! Both aesthetics and content!

never_inline 7mo ago

* gwern * lesswrong

jayveeone 7mo ago
lesswrong, the Rationalist cult blog?

aeldidi 7mo ago

I'm gonna use this as an opportunity to get some feedback on mine: https://ayman.eldidi.org/articles/unicode-identifiers/ https://ayman.eldidi.org/articles/unicode-identifiers/

wonger_ 7mo ago
I like how readable it is. Be sure to handle long lines that ruin page widths on small screens -- probably the commit hash should overflow-wrap: break-word, or in a horizontally scrollable container element, or a similar solution. One designy thing I've been practicing is to be intentional about every margin / piece of whitespace, and to use a proportional scale like https://utopia.fyi/ https://utopia.fyi/. You might find that if you align more elements and stick to the scale, things might look extra pleasing. (Maybe you already have, idk, just first impressions from my phone) - subscribe button placement looks uneven, esp on mobile. Maybe it could be a simple underlined link? - imo centered text is a crutch that often looks better when left justified instead, or rerranged with some other solution. I'm thinking of the mobile navbar and lengthy captions. This is more subjective tho - homepage could use more posts! Looking forward to your future writing - the most beautiful sites usually come up with some unique theme or visual identity or creative stunt to break away from a vanilla default theme. But people still like basic readable websites if the content is great.

Cider9986 7mo ago

There are some great looking websites here! I like https://vmfunc.re/ https://vmfunc.re/

ykl 7mo ago

One I like is Tom Macwright’s blog [1], which somewhat famously loads insanely fast thanks to having a sort of the web equivalent of a brutalist design while still looking nice [2]. [1] https://macwright.com/ https://macwright.com/ [2] https://macwright.com/2016/05/03/the-featherweight-website https://macwright.com/2016/05/03/the-featherweight-website

leoh 7mo ago
Tom is the best

kkoncevicius 7mo ago

https://simonsarris.com/ https://simonsarris.com/

wonger_ 7mo ago
Ah yes I forgot about that one, nice. Reminds me of https://www.fromjason.xyz/ https://www.fromjason.xyz/

asukachikaru 7mo ago

- https://henry.codes/ https://henry.codes/ - https://www.fev.al/ https://www.fev.al/ - https://hugo.blog/ https://hugo.blog/ I just like this type of typography.

ms7892 7mo ago
Brilliant

shelled 7mo ago

https://onethingwell.org https://onethingwell.org comes to mind https://web.archive.org/web/20170608203825/http://onethingwell.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170608203825/http://onethingwe... - used to be slightly simpler and less colourful. There might have been few more such blogs over the years but this one has stayed in memory long after I stopped going to it and eventually it stopped (sort of). It was not just the design but also the simplicty of the conent and being very accessible.

bronlund 7mo ago

This is rage-bait. Everyone knows discussing design will just end in someone mentioning Hitler :D

xeonmc 7mo ago

https://danluu.com https://danluu.com

brysonreece 7mo ago

I’m not sure about “most beautiful”, but I’m particularly proud of my own site: https://bryson.cc https://bryson.cc

hairywalt 7mo ago
Nice. One snag, your About link on the homepage points to your test site: https://bryson.test/about https://bryson.test/about
- brysonreece 7mo ago
  Thank you! Lol, you just happened to catch me in the middle of a broken deployment.
MarsIronPI 7mo ago
Minor nit, so sorry if it comes across as snobbish or something: You may want to spell "résumé" with the accents. I believe that is the technically correct spelling.
- brysonreece 7mo ago
  Heard! Thank you!

tyleo 7mo ago

Shoutout to my own: https://www.tyleo.com https://www.tyleo.com

leephillips 7mo ago

I’m disappointed to see how few of these sites contain a link, or at least one I could find easily, to an RSS feed.

chetangangappa 7mo ago

i recently did a overhaul of mine and I love it, i think can compete with the best https://chetangangappa.me https://chetangangappa.me

MarsIronPI 7mo ago
Why does it require Javascript to display some text and images? Can't you do that without JS?
- chetangangappa 7mo ago
  there is noscript fallback if required with the same content. I have nice background mouse effect going on against the backdrop also it is no built as just a portfolio landing, it is built as an spa with plans for expansion much more. Needed to give myself the flexibility

cellUtils 7mo ago

I have been having a great time using Astro with https://github.com/lucernae/astro-blog-template https://github.com/lucernae/astro-blog-template . Looks modern and minimal, but not too minimal which i despise. On the technical side of things, Static Site Generation is perfect for small blogs, so after some tweaks I got its loading times down to milliseconds! Here's the blog I came up with: https://blog.cellutils.com/ https://blog.cellutils.com/

MarsIronPI 7mo ago

Maybe not the best, but I like the direction Luke Smith takes with his site: https://lukesmith.xyz https://lukesmith.xyz

swaptr 7mo ago

I like minimal UI so https://szymonkaliski.com/ https://szymonkaliski.com/ is my absolute favorite.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

nicbou 7mo ago

Ah darn, someone already mentioned Maggie Appleton's website. It's simply gorgeous. https://allaboutberlin.com https://allaboutberlin.com is optimised for readability and ease of navigation. That's what a website should do, although I love when bloggers use their own art in the designs.

wonger_ 7mo ago
Ah I forgot to put your site in my typography category! https://nicolasbouliane.com/ https://nicolasbouliane.com/ so elegant and well executed
- nicbou 7mo ago
  It's a shameless rip-off of Maggie's website, but done too lazily to be noticeable. The colour palette was literally the same until recently.

mycall 7mo ago

While this might be pushing it, some have had blogs on it.. but, I will love the UI. https://www.yourworldoftext.com https://www.yourworldoftext.com

dankwizard 7mo ago

The amount of people promoting their own LLM generated blog has derailed this thread

essenceX 7mo ago

[dead]

Sir_Twist 7mo ago

One of my personal favorites: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

huhexian 7mo ago

https://github.com/huhexian/2012-huhexian https://github.com/huhexian/2012-huhexian there is a simple theme used on the WordPress.

battle666 7mo ago

[dead]

cravo 7mo ago

[dead]