2007 saw the art of blogging really hit the mainstream, to the extent that traditional and ‘respectable’ journalists started to sit up, take notice, whinge, and then head back to their boozy lunches to make up a few more half truths about Paris Hilton.
The medium really started to evolve, and the widget-heavy personal blogs of 2006 started to evolve into something much more like professional media properties.
As this happens, the look of some of the major bloggers blogs had a big overhaul with the likes of John Chow, and Problogger getting a new look.
The main characteristics of the new ‘magazine’ style are as follows:
Quick to react, a number of these themes became available from commercial designers, of which my favourites are:
The Revolution Series of themes by Brian Gardner (paid)
The new design of this blog is a heavily customised version of the last one.
If you want to raise the profile of your blog in 2008, and start to monetise it better, this might be a design route worth investigating.