HN Explorer

Ask HN: What are the best-designed personal blogs you’ve come across?

89 points by hippo-campus ↗ HN
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/.

42 comments

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LewisVerstappen
https://www.gwern.net/
atmosx
Yeah, 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
Can't believe I didn't mention this one. Definitely one of the best.
mixmastamyk
Fully justified text makes for lower readability imho.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
ajkjk
Really? 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
The 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
Best 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/

hippo-campus
Thanks for sharing! That's a great point about building from a template/theme.
neoncontrails
https://acko.net
labrador
I really hate websites that make me scroll down to see anything
dav1app
Read one of your articles about breaking React rules for fun and profit. Good stuff.
BossingAround
I think that website would benefit from having access to a professional UI designer. It's technically impressive, but experience wise, it's amazingly bad.
labrador
Some links I've saved. That said, there's no accounting for taste:

https://tylr.fun/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30440123

https://world.hey.com/dhh/google-suffers-from-a-digital-petr...

https://vpostrel.com/

https://h3rald.com/

https://bastian.rieck.me/blog/posts/2022/boring/

http://diveintohtml5.info/storage.html

https://moxie.org/stories.html

https://trevorklee.com/my-terrible-plan-for-reducing-opioid-...

https://mzrn.sh/2021/11/14/how-i-helped-build-a-profitable-m...

https://kilianvalkhof.com/2021/web/prescriptive-software-is-...

https://jessitron.com/2021/11/28/software-development-pushes...

https://www.tariqislam.com/posts/kubernetes-docker-dep/

https://p4bl0.net/post/2022/01/The-Truth-on-the-Blockchain

https://www.indiehackers.com/post/what-are-the-most-beautifu...

https://alexgaynor.net/2020/nov/30/why-software-ends-up-comp...

No list would be complete without:

https://thebestmotherfucking.website/

http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/

http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

joe_guy
http://danluu.com/
dprophecyguy
Man, it has page wide reading view, It's not at all good UX in any means.
prmoustache
Isn't relying on your window manager the best UX instead of relying on universally bad tricks from web devs?
j-krieger
No. 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
Have 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.

[dead] anonystick
[dead]
SteveDR
I just got a banner ad (fine I guess) and a pop up ad (much worse) on mobile. No thanks
d4a
I really like DF's theme, even though it looks terrible on mobile
jessfyi
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 because of how in-depth he went with hosting his notes, bookmarks, and other projects.

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-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

nicbou
The 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.