HTML Inspiration is a gallery of real websites and a blog about why they work. It has been around in one form or another for a long time, and this edition keeps the original idea: show good, live websites, one screenshot at a time, and say something useful about each.
Who runs it
I am Dan Strand. For years I built websites for clients, mostly small businesses and people starting something of their own. A big part of that work was looking at other people’s sites: what made a homepage clear, why one store felt trustworthy and another did not, how a portfolio could be memorable in a single screen. HTML Inspiration is where I now keep the sites I study, with notes I would have liked to have when I started.
I also make WordPress themes and tools under the name The Web Architecture. When one of them comes up in an article, I say that it is mine, and I never put my own work in the gallery.
How sites are chosen
Every site in the gallery is picked by hand. I look for sites that do one thing clearly better than most: a first screen that explains the product, a layout that makes reading easy, a store that answers doubts before they are asked. Big brands and one-person portfolios sit side by side, because good ideas come from both.
A few rules apply to every entry:
- Real and live. Every site is a working website, not a template, a concept or a mockup.
- One honest screenshot. Each site is captured in a desktop window 1440 pixels wide, showing the first screen as a visitor sees it, with pop-ups and cookie banners removed so the design is visible. The capture date is noted on every entry.
- A note, not a score. Each entry has a short comment on what works and what you could borrow. I do not rank sites or give them marks.
- Nobody pays. There are no paid placements and no sponsored entries.
Websites change, and a screenshot is a record of one moment. When a site changes so much that the entry no longer makes sense, I update the screenshot or remove the entry.
The blog
The blog explains what the gallery shows: website design examples by type, the elements every site is made of, the trends worth following and the ones to skip, practical guides for designing your own site, and how to get a well-designed result out of WordPress. The blog map lists every guide and article.
Get in touch
If you spot a mistake, want to suggest a site or just have a question, the contact page has the details.