Categories
Blog Improvement Project Other

Ten Blogs with Great Layout Ideas

In the spirit of Blog Improvement Project, I thought I’d highlight the best book blogs I’ve come across in terms of layout. The followings blogs each have something special, and I thought I’d highlight the things I love about each of them.

Listed in alphabetical order.

1. 1 More Chapter

I love the bookcases round the edges, it is so atmospheric! This site is also really well organised. The tabs along the top for each year are really useful, and the sidebars are packed with everything else you need to know.

2. Beth Fish Reads

Beth has done lots to improve the layout of her blog recently, and I think it looks great. I love the little touches, like a blog roll that displays the most recently updated blogs, and the slide show of her awards. Some clever little ideas!

3. Cornflower Books

This site is so clean and fresh looking. I also like the way that the book reviews are kept on a separate site to free things up a bit.

4. It’s Dark in the Dark

I was impressed by how many extras there are on this blog. There is a book store, and several other items for sale in the sidebar. It also has updates of his Twitter status  – I really should look into signing up to Twitter some time soon.

5. Ex Libris

I love the way this blog is organised. Everything seems to fit perfectly into it’s space. It looks really professional, and the posts are always really well thought out too!

6. Farm Lane Books

I know this is really cheeky, but I’d love you to have a look at my ‘About Me’ page. I found this great widget that displays where visitors have come from on a revolving globe. I think it is beautiful! I found that it slowed down the loading of the page quite a lot, so I moved it to my ‘About Me’ page, so that it didn’t interfere with normal blogging, but I thought everyone should have a look at least once!

7. Fizzy Thoughts

This site is clean and well organised too. I particularly like the ‘now reading’ slide show. A clear indication of which books I’m currently reading is missing from my blog at the moment, so I’m going to try to change this as soon as possible.

8. Papercuts

An example of how the professionals do it. This looks great, but I’m not sure I’d like all the adverts on my blog. I like the way this site feels as though it is just another page in a much larger site. There are so many different things to go and look at from this one page alone.

9. Poodle Rat

I spotted the header for this blog, and just had to share it! It is really clever the way photo is split into three sections – so beautiful!

10. Tripping Towards Lucidity

I like the way this blog makes full use of both sidebars. It is really easy to see which books have been read recently, or are coming up soon. Everything you’d ever want to search for is easy to see straight away.

 


There are lots of other great blogs out there, but I didn’t want to carry on listing them for ever!

Writing this post has given me some great ideas for improving my own blog, and I hope to slowly add some of these over the coming weeks.

Have you seen a blog with a really great layout? If so, leave a comment, and tell me which features of it you really love.

8 replies on “Ten Blogs with Great Layout Ideas”

I see so many inventive layouts on various blogs, and I am envious. If I could figure out how to do them, I would! It was like splitting the atom for me to just widen my post space…

Wow!!! Thanks!! I’m basically always unsure about changes. I truly appreciate your nod of approval. Makes me feel like I must be on the right track!

I love your layout — it seems so clean to me.

Ok, I had some time to check out the other blogs. You picked some great ones. You’re right that each has it’s own personality and some really cool special items.

And I love your revolving globe! What a fun little widget.

And thanks for introducing me to a couple of new blogs. I’m always happy to discover great places to visit.

I love your little globe, too bad it slows things down. That’s something I am careful about on my blog, too.

As part of the BIP I have been saving blogs where I like the design so I can change mine up a little. I look forward to checking out these that you’ve recommended.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *