Cheers, you have done a great job buddy. I really enjoyed the time when i visited your site. It was very useful to me & i’ve gained lot of information from this tut 9 & from your other posts. Thx for sharing & Keep on doing such a great jobs.

“Essentially – I hope that you can see that while the style is definitely the same, I certainly wasn’t trying to directly copy anyone.

Now – as for WHY I chose to use that style? In short.. because it works! There’s a reason that those blogs get a lot of traffic – cause they have really great user interfaces. The ad placement maximises exposure for advertisers, the clear graphics demand user attention to the most important elements, and the post area is large and open to accommodate its content.

You’re right in saying that it’s not unique – but in my mind the only way to make it genuinely unique would be to do something totally different with the user interface. Which would definitely compromise usability.

When you think about it – a blog is a magazine…. and don’t all magazines look very similar too? There’s a reason for it, certain design styles work well for specific formats – in my opinion this is one of them.”

What do you think?

Interestingly, the German author who published the post had a very high level of traffic, and a loyal userbase… but all of them agreed with me.

Would love to hear your thoughts

The big buttons/tabs on my site were inspired by the bold navigation on sites like tutorial9.net, pixelresort.com and culturedcode.com because I think it makes navigation very simple, visual and easy for the visitors to use.

I haven’t tried to base my site on any one particular site but rather design something that is based on several styles and influences to make a website and interface that is easy for people to use.

Of course, it is still early days and I appreciate the layout is very generic and is like lots of other magazine style blogs which is something I’m hoping to develop and evolve over time.

Thanks for visiting and sharing your comments