While I was in search for a fresh theme for my blog, I glanced through many blog designs for examples (real blogs), and observed some new trends in blog design, which are intended to introduce the WOW factor among their dear readers. If you plan to get a custom theme or if you’re building a new cutting-edge theme yourselves, you may want to include these as well. Let’s have a look at some of ‘em.

• No: of Subscribers turned into text format instead of the traditional chicklet-display Quite a few blogs’ve started showing off their subscriber count as TEXT, rather than the animated CHICKLET display. This ensures maximum integration with your design and provides integrity to the same.Examples of displaying Subscriber-Count as text
  

  Subscriber Count as text

The traditional chicklet display :
You can have something similar to these, with this plugin.

• Custom Tweet Display Twitter has been phenomenal this year, with a growth rate of 600% compared to last year, and the probability that a blogger doesn’t tweet is 0.1237 ( keep it a secret !! ). While Twitter offers you badges to display your tweets anywhere on web, it would be nothing other than awesomeness, if you could show your tweets in a sophisticated or funky way like the ones given below :
  

  Giving a custom styling to display your twitter updates on your own blog in a funky way

  

  Creating a dedicated page for your Twitter Profile

• Promotion of popular/best posts through graphics on sidebar
  

  

  Promoting Popular Posts

• Increased spacing between lines A notable increase in the space between lines, in a paragraph have been advocated by many in their blog designs. This is a proof that blogs value their readers very much and always strive to provide them with a mesmerizing experience.

• Horizontal-aligned-comment field. This trend has been noted in some new themes and almost all premium themes. Conventionally, the comment section of a wordpress blog is set to 3 one-below-another parts
  1. Name
  2. E-Mail
  3. URL

  These 3 fields, which were on separate lines, are now being placed in a single row/line.
  
  This is certainly better than the conventional style, as it adds sleekness and I wonder whether this has been implemented in the coming major release of WordPress, 2.7

• Dynamic FooterDynamic footers like the one I’ve got here on my blog have been the favorite feature of many. This is not really a ‘new’ trend but is worth mentioning here.

Well, these wow-generating-features are the ones that struck me the most, when I sailed (wasn’t surfing, as I had to take a deeper look !) through newly designed blogs. Have you noticed some other feature/style that’s been showing rising interest ?

Thankfully, the spark for hitting the ‘publish’ button for this post, was sufficiently provided by Blog Design Studio with their Blog Design Group Writing Project, which has got a free custom wordpress theme, A free premium theme from Daily Blog Tips and blog consultation by Blogging Tips as the motivating rewards. This is not just a contest, but a Group Writing Project. And I hope, I’ve constructively contributed to the project by showcasing the new trends in blog design that imparts the WOW-Factor in the readers.