24Apr2006

Blog Comment Form Design Showcase

Previously I put together a showcase of interesting and creative blog comment design. It was a fun exercise and fascinating to see the different approaches taken to the standard comment format.

Going through this process, I was also struck by the creativity of the design work that went into some of the comment forms on these sites.

As I've been traversing the web since, I've been noting sites with comment forms that have that extra design effort put into them and have collected them into a blog comment form design showcase.

I hope you'll agree that there are some great examples of creative design in there.

The Few and the Brave

It's been somewhat surprising to see how few blogs put any additional design effort into their comment forms other than to make them readable and usable, even those of designers. Not that they should have to, of course. There is certainly no need to make comment forms antyhing more than functional.

However, this shortage certainly makes the comment forms that are more 'designed' stand out, be it in terms of field layout, the addition of extra graphical touches or integrating the form more fully into the overall design of the site.

So, for anyone looking for a little design inspiration, hopefully this collection will help in that regard.

Call For Submissions

I'm sure there are plenty of examples of great comment form design that I have missed. If you know of a site that is worth including, please let me know and I'll take a look.

Colophon

I should mention that I used the excellent Lightbox JS v2.0 to power the image gallery popup windows.

Posted on: April 24, 2006 | 14 Comments

14 Comments Posted

This is really awesome as I've been stumped on how to style the comment form for my own site.

1. Posted by Montoya on April 25, 2006

Christian - I hope it provides some useful food for thought!

Of course, I'm well aware of the irony that the comment form on my own site has absolutely no additional design whatsoever. One of these days...

2. Posted by Christian Watson on April 25, 2006

The fadtastic site has recently implemented a nice dropdown comment box with a subtle pattern design.

See this for example and click on 'make a comment' at the top.

3. Posted by Andrew Faulkner on April 26, 2006

That's a pretty cool list. It definitely gave me some inspiration. Funny that nobody ever thought of showcasing this before...

4. Posted by Arjan van der Gaag on April 26, 2006

I have moved the comments to the right column here, currently AJAX'ing it -> The undersigned.

5. Posted by Thomas Silkjaer on April 26, 2006

The comments box for this site is pretty hot; also check out his photo blog comments... nic.

6. Posted by Andrew Zirschky on April 27, 2006

Special thanks for the collection of comments and forms. A great idea for inspiration and new solutions.
I will write the tip for german readership.

7. Posted by Joerg Petermann on April 27, 2006

I customized the comment form on my blog in a way that's hard to explain, so here's an example.

8. Posted by Andrew Dupont on April 28, 2006

I've always been fond of my comment box. Yea, it may seem a little old now with the rounded corners but I've always liked the different colors which match perfectly well with my site design.

9. Posted by Ed Knittel on April 28, 2006

Hey there! Thanks for including me in your showcase. :) Now if I could just figure out how to do the live comment preview thing like you, I'd be all set! :D

10. Posted by Lindsay on April 30, 2006

All - thanks for your feedback and suggestions. I'll check them out for my next update to the showcase.

Lindsay - the live preview uses a script from Jeff Minard - it's not too hard to implement and there are plenty of others available if this one doesn't do all that you want.

11. Posted by Christian Watson on May 01, 2006

I feel that if someone responds with a post which is relevant to the topic, they should be reworded with the link they leave. Afterall, it's the topic related responses which work to better serve your blog site.

12. Posted by arthur on July 19, 2006

omg... i'm in the list