I just wanted to make some comments on the direction of this blog and get some feedback so give me some.

What is happening now

I have been working on a really big article that will help wrap up the “Creating a Blog Design from Scratch” series. After that I will organize it so that there is a page that will link to each article so that it’s easy to find everything. Plus, I am going to redesign the sidebar again for the seventh time.

Once that is done, I will start finishing up the “Blog Design 101″series. I know some people have been waiting for the next article on that series so I just wanted to let you know I haven’t forgotten about it.

Future plans

In the future, I want to start touching on the coding side of blog design so this poll is to see which blog software most people are using. I will be covering WordPress for sure, but I want to see if it is worthwhile to cover anything else. Only pick the blogs that you are interested in reading an article about. If you have any other topics you would like me to cover, feel free to leave a comment or send me an email.

Comment design is an art. Comment design is often overlooked by a lot of web designers when they are designing their blog. It tends to be one of the last things a web designer works on and because of that it suffers. This list shows 30 blogs where the web designer didn’t just throw together the same old comment design and put extra effort into their comment design to make it fit with their blog design.

1. alwaysBETA

This is a snippet of what is inside the blog design gallery here and what is to come. In the future, the gallery will feature not only more great blog designs, but blog design elements as well. Enjoy!

1. 5Thirtyone

1. Weblog Usability - Top Ten Design Mistakes

Jakob Nielsen gives us the run down of the top 10 blog design mistakes. When Jakob talks, I listen… sometimes. I can’t help it, he has a lot to say. But his breakdown of the top 10 design mistakes is quick to the point so give it a read.

2. 13 Blog Cliches

Cliches suck, here are 13 of them for blogs. Yes, the calendar is one of them! Get rid of them please, they clutter blog designs and serve no real purpose.

3. 10 Principles of effective web design

Smashing Magazine does an excellent job of breaking down 10 important principles when it comes to web design, which also applies to blog design. Go read and learn.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time on the internet will quickly come to the realization that it is full of spam, people wanting to sell you something, and just downright bad information. In all that junk though, there are gold nuggets of information that can help you become better or solve a problem you have. In order for you to separate the best resources from the bad ones, you would have to get waist deep into that stuff to sort it out. Or you could just rely on lists.

The problem with relying on lists