Blog website examples

Ideas

Blog website ideas worth stealing

Seven ideas taken from sites in this gallery. The first four hold for any portfolio. The last three are specific to running a blog.

• 1

  Show fewer pieces than you want to

  A visitor who sees twelve strong pieces remembers three. A visitor who sees sixty remembers none. Cut to the work you would want to be hired for.

• 2

  Lead with one strong image, not a menu

  The first screen decides whether there is a second. One image at full width does more than a grid of nine thumbnails and a navigation bar.

• 3

  Put contact one click from everywhere

  Contact belongs in the header, in the footer, and at the end of every gallery. Nobody scrolls back up to find you.

• 4

  Own the domain

  A custom domain is the difference between a portfolio and a profile. It moves with you when the platform changes.

• 5

  Put the blog in the main navigation, not the footer

  A blog filed under a submenu gets read only by people who already came looking for it. If the writing is part of how you get hired, it belongs beside the work.

• 6

  Tag by subject, not by month

  Archive dates tell a reader when you wrote something. Tags tell them whether it is for them. Subject tags also give search engines a route into the archive that a date does not.

• 7

  Write a real excerpt for every post

  The listing page is the page most readers actually judge. A truncated first sentence is not an excerpt, and a wall of identical grey blocks is the fastest way to lose a reader who arrived interested.