I spent a lot of time viewing other people’s blogs and it’s fascinating to see how blog designs have changed and how users and designers adapt to those changes. These changes can be attributed to the rise in blogs and blog designers, which leads to competition of the “mine is bigger than yours” type. But more noticeably is the need for practicality in an attempt to give visitors what they want in a simple and effective way.

Popular Trends :

Post Thumbnails : It’s much easier to find what you’re looking for by quickly looking at a picture instead of scanning a bunch of texts. Post thumbnails provide an insight into what is contained or referred to in the particular post.

Drop-Down Boxes : Drop-down boxes don’t exactly qualify as something new, but it does provide a way for designers to put a large amount of categories / pages /  posts in a small amount of space, and still have it look good.

Tabbing Systems / Ajaxified : As our world picks up pace we’re willing to spend less and less time on waiting for pages to load or moving our mouse or scrolling. Tabbed Widgets and Ajax provide, just like drop-down boxes, similar or the most important content, in a small area.

Simple Sidebar : Because we tend to spend less time on a specific blog, but a lot of single posts from different blogs, each blog must setup his sidebar in such a way that the sidebar is simple and only contains links or content which that visitor might want to read next.

“Indented” / “Shadowed” Headers : It’s used on many sites including the official WordPress site where headers look like they’re in a sense carved into the background. Gives a very professional and lasting feel if used correctly.