When it comes to online publishing, most of us are firm believers of the same old rule – Content is king. We’d like to argue a point that, even with the greatest blog that constantly pumps great contents, it’s not to overlook the importance of interface design. This includes overall color matching, the typography, attractive logo, proper text and paragraph alignment, clear navigation, etc. Another way to look at things is when you put an image and a row of text side by side, image is where the eyeballs are while the text plays a supporting role.

HongKiat has spent weeks going through hundreds and hundreds of blogs in the blogosphere, looking for blogs with nice and interesting design. They marked down those with great interface, graphically beautiful, unique personalities and styles. Here they bring you – 100 Nice and Beautiful Blog Design. You might learn something or perhaps inspired by these designs. Full list after jump and get prepared to scroll.

Source: 100 Nice and Beautiful Blog Design

Your company has decided to launch a blog, and you’re the lucky blogger. Maybe you’ve even asked for this pleasure, suggested it to the boss yourself. Only now, you have to deliver, and you have to stay consistent. It’s not always easy to keep up a steady blogging pace, and there are days when you might run into a roadblock or two that might keep you from delivering on your schedule. I am sure a sample blogging workflow will definitely help you.

Here are some ideas on how to build and maintain a steady blogging rhythm, be it for your personal blog or your business blog. Chris Brogan has covered goals, tasks, tools, and some bonus secrets for blogging

Source: A Sample Blogging Workflow

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HeadSpace is a powerful all-in-one plugin to manage meta-data and handle a wide range of SEO tasks. With it you can tag your posts, create custom titles and descriptions that improve your page ranking, change the theme or run disabled plugins on specific pages, and a whole lot more.

Because the configuration of meta-data can be a complicated and tiresome process HeadSpace provides several shortcuts to reduce your effort:

* Meta-data nesting – data is collected not only from the page itself, but nested parent pages
* Dynamic data extracted – why repeat yourself when you can extract data from the post itself?
* Full GUI interface – data is entered alongside post content, and with a full auto-suggested AJAX interface for tags and keywords
* Mass-editing – now you can edit meta-data for all pages and posts at one go!

Pricing: Free
Requirements: -
Source: http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/headspace2/

We have seen so many beautiful, highly decorated WordPress themes. We need a break, we need a Minimalist Wordpress Theme called Modicus Remix. This theme is based off of Upstart Blogger’s Wordpress theme “Modicus“. Thus aptly titled “Modicus Remix”.

The original Modicus theme may be a tad more versatile (such as a three-column option, which remix does NOT have). So if you plan on wanting another column, or a simpler starting point, I would recommend the original theme. Modicus Remix supports Wordpress 2.5. The HTML and CSS coding is improved and dramatically optimized. I really like this clean and comfortable WordPress theme, how about you?

Pricing: Free
Requirements: WordPress 2.5+
Source: http://www.artculture.com/wordpress-themes/modicus-wordpress-theme-remix

In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial we’ll be learning how to create a unique, and professional-styled bookmark/promote box for your personal Blog, or maybe even your website. Having a promote or a bookmark section at the bottom of your articles can be a great boost in traffic for your Blog, especially if your Blog is new and you’re looking for more ways to get traffic.

There’s nothing like seeing a huge peak in traffic then an influx of new subscribers to your Blog!

Final Image Preview

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OrderedList has conducted a Content Management Survey recently. You can see the result that WordPress is by far the most broadly used system. In general, people seem relatively satisfied with the CMS they have, though there is definitely room for improvement.

Overall, only 12% of respondants indicated any dissatisfaction with their current CMS, while 38% said they were very satisfied. Expression Engine was notable because the low level of dissatisfaction, and the high rate of ‘Very Satisfied’, even though the software costs money.

Source: Content Management Survey Results

Google Analytics for WordPress easily adds your Google Analytics tracking code to all pages within your blog. That’s it’s main functionality, it adds the following nice extra features as well.

Tagging outgoing links

This plugin adds the possibility to tag and segment all outgoing links, so you can see whether a click came from a comment or an article. You can choose where it tracks those links too! It also adds the possibility to track just the domain, instead of the complete link, so you get a better view of how much traffic you’re sending where.

Tracking downloads

This WordPress plugin gives you the possibility to track downloads with Google Analytics based on a set of extensions you specify.

Tracking AdSense clicks

By enabling AdSense click tracking, your AdSense clicks are tracked to /outbound/asclick.

Tracking image search keywords

Adds the possibility to track all image searches as organic and collect their keywords.

Adding extra search engines

By default Google Analytics only tracks a select group of search engines, which might not include your local big search engine. With this plugin, you can add extra search engines to those Google Analytics tracks by default.

Pricing: Free
Requirements: -
Source: http://yoast.com/wordpress/google-analytics/

One of the things you run into when your blog becomes bigger, is that you need to cram more info into less space, to make it possible to display all the information you want to show. One of the things Chris did to do that is add an icon for the date, and then a bubble over that with the number of comments in it. As you can see, the “shield” shows the day, the month, and the number of comments. “Date Badges and Comment Bubbles for Your Blog” shows you exactly how to get that effect.

Source: Date Badges and Comment Bubbles for Your Blog

Colourise is a gorgeous, two-column Wordpress theme with an ultra large header image, a dark backdrop and a fat footer. The colours are well chosen, the navigation bar is beautifully styled and the typography is first class. With a custom header image, Colourise could make a perfect personal or professional blog.

Pricing: Free
Requirements: -
Source: http://www.bestwpthemes.com/colourise/

WP Ajax Edit Comments (for WP 2.5+) allows users and admins to edit comments on a post. Users can edit their own comments for a limited time, while admins can edit, mark for moderation, mark as spam, and delete all comments. It looks very nice and it is really handy for blogger with lots of comments everyday. The version 2.0 has the following improvements.

• New theme independent comment-editing interface.
• Timer on both the post and in the comment-editing interface.
• Improved usability and look-and-feel.
• Better error and status messages.
• Entirely re-written codebase for maximum stability and extendability.

Pricing: Free
Requirements: WordPress 2.5+
Source: http://www.raproject.com/ajax-edit-comments-20/