Reading List for Web Designers

33 comments | Posted: 16 February 07 in General, by Michael Montgomery

Update: Thanks to Mithrill, you can now download this entire list, in OPML format. Many feed readers will then allow you to import the whole list in one step. Download: Godbit reading list (OPML, 28kb)

“Have some RSS; it’s good for you.”

“What’s RSS?”

These are times that demand we learn and grow, just to keep up. So many exciting things are happening in the web design community, that it’s hard to know where to start.

As the amount of interesting content on the web increases, a bunch of people ask the same question:

Question: “How can I access, read and manage all the content I want, from all these websites, in one organized place?”

Answer: All that content pumping out of each site can be packaged in a “feed.” The feeds from all the sites you’re interested in can be managed, organized and read with a “feed reader.”

In other words, using a feed reader is like having your own customized, automatically generated news channel.

RSS Readers

There are lots of different feed readers. Some feed readers may be integrated in desktop software, such as your browser or your office productivity suite. Other feed readers are freely available online:

In any event, the one I use and recommend is Newshutch:

What to read?

This is a list of RSS feeds, which is based on the feeds that I read, on topics including the church online, photoshop, web design, etc.

By the way, understand that the term “RSS” in itself is a little ambiguous, since a feed can conform to any one of several different standards, some of which have different names. For simplicity, the term “RSS” in this article will refer to all types of feeds generally.

Add to the list

This article is an experiment here at Godbit, in that articles are usually written once, with a limited time period for comments.

Instead, during the commenting period, I will update this list based on your input, so that the RSS Reading List can be a resource for all.

So, if you have an RSS feed of your own, or one that you read and recommend, let us know in the comments.

Resource: RSS Reading List

Church

Comics

CSS Showcase

Getting Things Done

Godbit

Magazines

My (Clients’) Sites

My Host

Photoshop

Popular Blogs

Web Design

Web Design: Accessibility

Web Design: CSS

Web Design: DOM Scripting

Web Design: Events

Web Design: Information Architecture

Web Design: Jobs

Web Design: Podcasts

Web Design: Textpattern

Web Apps

Discuss This Topic

  1. 1 Dave Seah

    This is a fabulous list, Michael (and not just because I’m on it :-) I was looking around for references on web design / development sites, and this post is it!!

     

  2. 2 Matt (mithrill)

    I agree with Dave, this is a fabulous list Michael (and I’m not on it). I’ve just switched feed readers yet again (the updated version Google Reader is great) and was also trying to build up a nice set of references on web design / development sites and this list just saved me a ton of work! Great job.

    On a similar note, it would be great to get this list in an OPML file to make importing all of these sites into a reader quick and easy. If no one else already has one, I could create the file if you want to post it on this site.

    Thanks for sharing!

     

  3. 3 Michael Montgomery

    Glad you liked it. Many thanks to Nathan for some editing and suggestions.

    @Matt: The OPML file (a standardized listing of feeds, that can be automatically loaded into a feed reader) is a great idea. In fact, the first draft of the article was based on an OPML export from my feed reader, but I revised the list many times since then.

    If you wouldn’t mind exporting the file from your new feed reader and e-mailing it to me, I will make it available in an update to this article. Thanks.

    Anyone know of other sites that should be on the list?

     

  4. 4 David Appleyard

    I run Design Shack, a CSS gallery site which I’d recommend.

    Web: http://www.designshack.co.uk

    RSS: feed://feeds.feedburner.com/designshack

     

  5. 5 Erik Sagen

    Thanks for compiling and sharing this list, Michael.

    There are a lot of sites up there that I had never seen before and that’s always a good thing.

    Speaking of which, if I think of anything to add I’ll be sure to let you know.

     

  6. 6 Yannick

    Here are some more:

    * Site: Church Relevance — RSS

    * Site: Godly Creative People — RSS

    * Site: .Net Magazine Podcast — RSS

     

  7. 7 Boyink

    Thanks – very much – for the mention. Quite humbling to see my name amidst the others in that list.

    FWIW there are other RSS feed options available at Boyink.com – summaries vs. full posts, and feeds for each weblog category (available on the category index pages).

     

  8. 8 Michael Montgomery

    Added — Thanks for the suggestions.

    (Can’t believe I forgot a few of them. Oh well.)

     

  9. 9 Justin Hein

    As a novice and admirer of web standards and design who is eager to learn, this list is a gold mine. Thanks for taking the time to put together such a tremendous resource!

     

  10. 10 Montoya

    You could put me in the Design or CSS category ;)

     

  11. 11 Matt Heerema

    Mattheerema.com didn’t make it to the Godbit list? :(

     

  12. 12 Nathan Smith

    Matt H: I have updated the list, and it now includes your site. I apologize for that oversight. I am sure that Michael did not exclude you intentionally.

     

  13. 13 Matt (mithrill)

    @Michael: I don’t mind exporting the list from my feed reader once I have the chance to import them all in. I just moved into a new house and have been a bit busy with that this weekend. Plus, I don’t technically have internet access just yet. However, as soon as I get a chance to get the list together, I’ll send the OPML file to you. Thanks again!

     

  14. 14 Michael Montgomery

    @Christian:
    I had included your CSS Liquid in the showcases, but didn’t realize you had another site.

    @Matt H:
    Ouch, sorry about that. Please forgive my oversight.
    (And I just talked with you recently, too.)

    @Mithrill:
    Thanks. I will appreciate it whenever you can.

     

  15. 15 Matt Heerema

    Heh, no worries guys, I wasn’t offended. In fact, I should probably write something for the site here soon if I want to be kept known as a contributer ;)

     

  16. 16 exp:monkey

    Great list! Thanks for sharing. Screenfluent is another good one for CSS Showcases though I’m not sure if it’s limited to CSS designs. Nice designs for some great inspiration.

     

  17. 17 Matt (mithrill)

    I’ve compiled the OPML file (a standardized listing of feeds, that can be automatically loaded into a feed reader) and emailed Michael. Once the file is posted importing all of these feeds into your reader should be nice and quick.

     

  18. 18 Michael Montgomery

    The update is up top, with a download link.

    Thanks, Matt.

     

  19. 19 Tim Bednar

    Many of these sites are included in my Google Coop search engine for nonproift web designers.

     

  20. 20 Matt (mithrill)

    Cool Tim. Just the other day as I was creating the OPML file, I thought it would be great to add all of these sites to a Google Coop search. I’ll have to check out your search engine since you’ve already done most of the leg work.

    Approximately, how many of the sites on this list are included? I was curious to see if it would be worth creating a separate Godbit related search engine or not.

     

  21. 21 Michael Montgomery

    @Tim: Thanks for that — I hadn’t checked out Google Coop search yet.

    Additionally, I discovered a site that aggregates a bunch (>200!) of design feeds.
    Not sure what to think about that….
    (Personally, I’d rather control the feeds to which I subscribe.)

     

  22. 22 Shawn Grimes

    Great list of sites going on here. I have quite a few of them in my feed reader already, but I actually need to go through and clean it out and then I’ll use the list here to refill it :)

    Thanks for taking the time on the list fellas.

     

  23. 23 Brandon Steiger

    Hey, I took the time to put all of these in a list for everyone to easily download. Everything is setup by groups so you should have the same groups and even subgroups. You can download at:

    http://www.synergema.com/docs/subscriptions_v1.opml

    I hope this helps everyone out!

     

  24. 24 Brandon Steiger

    I had to update the link because of the number of people downloading the list:

    Download the ZIP File

     

  25. 25 Brandon

    Okay – I feel dumb! I went right for the candy instead of reading the entire post. I now see that Mithrill has already done this. Sorry for going for the good stuff first before fully reading.

     

  26. 26 Marjolein Hoekstra

    Your Reading List for Web Designers could be made browsable right here on your page using Grazr. The most basic version could look like this: Web Designers in Grazr

    To embed the Grazr on your site, click on the + icon in the top-right corner of the Grazr panel.
    Grazrs are fully customizable: there are a bunch of themes to choose from and as of the upcoming release you can apply your own CSS.

    A recent example is an application I developed for Todd And that received some attention recently: Todd put together a list of 150 marketing blogs and I made it searchable and fully OPML and RSS-enabled. We named it the Power 150 Kitchensink. In addition to what you see here, it lets you create a custom RSS feed from any keyword search that you perform against the OPML.

    What do you think of this approach?

     

  27. 27 Marjolein Hoekstra

    It appears I’m not very good at encoding parameterized URLs using Textile here in my comment. Somehow the ampersands seem to be replaced by #38; and I don’t know how to fix it. To generate your own Grazr code, please go to the Grazr homepage and paste the URL to your OPML in the first box.
    Let me know how that goes.

     

  28. 28 David Tebbutt

    I’ve made an HTML page to host your OPML list in Grazr. You can play with colours, size etc. Gloss black looks good. I’ve done ‘sateen’. I presume that’s ‘satin’.

     

  29. 29 Anton

    Hey guys, thanks for adding my site to the list.
    I’ve just re-designed it, and also happened to update the location of my feeds (which I’m still resolving for two others).
    Here’s the new feed link for my journal:
    http://feeds.feedburner.com/AntonPeck/Journal

     

  30. 30 Michael Montgomery

    @Anton: Fixed here in the article.
    Will update the OPML file, one of these days.

     

  31. 31 Marc

    Thanks for the great list! I decided to share it with my readers.

     

  32. 32 Brandon

    This is a great list. Thanks for all that you do!

     

  33. 33 Chris Huff

    This is a great list! I’ve never used rss before (yes, I live under a rock), but this list is causing me to sign up with bloglines. Here’s a couple feeds to sites that I check from time to time that you can add to the list if you want:

    CrunchBoard – Web Design (and other technology) Jobs
    http://www.crunchboard.com/index?rss=1&noextend=1

    Friendly Bit – Web Development Blog
    http://friendlybit.com/feed

     

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