Ranking 80 of the Top CSS Galleries
Published April 6th, 2008 in GalleriesWeb design and CSS galleries are a great source of inspiration for designers, and they are also an outstanding resource for designers to get exposure for their work. Getting a site featured in some of the most popular galleries can bring thousands of visitors and some valuable inbound links.
There are so many different galleries that it’s hard to know which ones are worth the time it takes to submit your site for inclusion. If you’re going to take the time to submit one of your designs to some galleries you might as well submit to those that will give you the best results.
What factors should be considered when choosing which galleries you would like to feature your work? Of course, galleries with more traffic will give your submission more exposure. Additionally, most galleries have RSS feeds and subscribers. So obviously the more subscribers a gallery has, the more exposure you will get. However, some galleries do not include screen shots in their feed. In these cases the subscriber will have to click-through to the site to view it, which will normally mean a little bit less exposure for your work. Also, with so many galleries out there, some are very active and some rarely add anything new. If you are submitting your site to a gallery that has added 75 new designs in the past month, you’ll have a better chance of being included than if you submit to a gallery that has only added 1 design in the last month. On the other hand, the more designs that are featured in a gallery, the less attention each one will get individually.
Because I think all of these factors should be considered by designers that are targeting CSS galleries, I thought it would be helpfulful to create a table that showed this data for a number of galleries. Using this information you can quickly identify which ones are the best choices to submit your work. The galleries are listed in order of Alexa rank, but you should also pay attention to the other factors as well.
UPDATE: Since this post was originally published, we have launched 5 galleries of our own:
- CartFrenzy – Showcasing the best e-commerce websites
- Minimal Exhibit – Showcasing websites with a minimal design style
- Folio Focus – Showcasing the best portfolio websites
- Blog Design Heroes – Showcasing excellence in blog design
- TypeInspire – Showcasing inspiring works of typography
| CSS Gallery | Alexa | Subscribers | Added in March | Pics in Feed? |
| CSS Mania | 13,570 | 12,635 | 311 | yes |
| CSS Drive | 23,116 | n/a | 29 | yes |
| CSS Beauty | 25,112 | n/a | 5 | yes |
| Web Creme | 25,559 | n/a | 58 | no |
| Favorite Website Awards | 27,391 | no feed | 31 | no feed |
| Best Web Gallery | 28,102 | n/a | 87 | yes |
| CSS Remix | 29,858 | 16,693 | no dates | no |
| Stylegala | 38,743 | n/a | 0 | yes |
| Cool Homepages | 38,783 | no feed | 3 | no feed |
| CSS Elite | 42,846 | 2,737 | 74 | no |
| CSS Vault | 48,978 | n/a | 31 | yes |
| FaveUp | 54,894 | n/a | 11 (CSS) | yes |
| CSS Creme | 57,050 | 289 | 179 | yes |
| Design Shack | 62,139 | n/a | 100+ | yes |
| The Best Designs | 65,228 | no feed | 59 | no feed |
| W3C Sites | 65,953 | n/a | no dates | no |
| Unmatched Style | 77,871 | 3,545 | 32 | yes |
| CSS Based | 82,349 | n/a | no dates | yes |
| Screenfluent | 90,287 | n/a | no dates | yes |
| Screenalicious | 93,621 | n/a | no dates | no |
| CSS Heaven | 96,061 | n/a | 4 | yes |
| CSS Import | 117,396 | 8,667 | 70 | yes |
| CSS Clip | 118,313 | 653 | 230 | yes |
| Styleboost | 118,431 | n/a | 6 | yes |
| Web Digity | 125,485 | n/a | no dates | no |
| CSS Gallery 2.0 | 137,614 | no feed | no dates | no feed |
| Boxed CSS | 142,164 | n/a | 29 | yes |
| CSS Website | 142,373 | 763 | 2 | yes |
| Design Snack | 144,613 | n/a | no dates | no |
| CSS Artillery | 158,827 | n/a | 50 | yes |
| CSS Glance | 167,939 | n/a | 100+ | no |
| The Daily Slurp | 182,358 | n/a | 100+ | yes |
| CSS Website Gallery | 196,126 | 46 | 5 | yes |
| CSS Collection | 199,695 | n/a | 45 | yes |
| CSS Reboot | 202,730 | n/a | 0 | no |
| Professional on the Web | 211,584 | n/a | no dates | yes |
| CSS Star | 220,491 | 76 | 173 | yes |
| CSS Tux | 235,692 | no feed | 14 | no feed |
| CSS Bloom | 237,028 | 1,527 | 0 | yes |
| CSSHive | 238,990 | 73 | 73 | yes |
| DesignFlavr | 242,301 | 1,282 | 84 | yes |
| Design by Grid | 257,249 | n/a | 6 | yes |
| CSS Daddy | 268,324 | 8 | 64 | yes |
| No Resolution | 272,482 | 5,954 | 2 | yes |
| CSS Impress | 290,353 | n/a | 32 | yes |
| CSS Princess | 314,182 | 20 | 9 | no |
| CSS Leak | 319,340 | n/a | 65 | yes |
| Web Design Gallery | 337,963 | 244 | 14 | yes |
| My3W | 385,465 | n/a | 78 | yes |
| Inspiration King | 391,490 | 5,700 | 0 | no |
| Pro Web Art | 396,603 | 324 | 65 | yes |
| CSS Flavor | 397,298 | n/a | 1 | yes |
| CSS Container | 417,117 | no feed | 100+ | no feed |
| The Horizontal Way | 417,158 | n/a | 0 | yes |
| CSS Burst | 439,050 | no feed | 0 | no feed |
| Hotwebber | 442,827 | 83 | 38 | yes |
| CSS Zone | 456,876 | n/a | 59 | no |
| CSS Hazard | 475,108 | n/a | 0 | yes |
| CSS Gallery | 502,992 | 4 | 83 | yes |
| design|snips | 522,013 | n/a | no dates | yes |
| Designer Source | 553,625 | 80 | 34 | yes |
| CSS Love | 573,271 | n/a | no dates | yes |
| Design Grabs | 585,085 | n/a | 100+ | no |
| Design Creme | 615,345 | 112 | no dates | no |
| CSSEM | 615,507 | n/a | no dates | yes |
| The Designed Tree | 625,271 | 256 | 5 | yes |
| Lookum | 635,229 | n/a | 5 | yes |
| CSS Moon | 731,776 | n/a | 69 | yes |
| Designs Creme | 767,905 | n/a | 0 | yes |
| NiceStylesheet | 780,609 | 73 | 50 | yes |
| CSS Snap | 797,809 | n/a | 0 | yes |
| Carted Up | 831,381 | n/a | no dates | yes |
| Genuine Style | 838,273 | n/a | 0 | yes |
| CSS Smooth Operator | 871,589 | n/a | 4 | yes |
| One Star Gallery | 890,050 | n/a | 10 | yes |
| Plastic Pilots | 894,329 | n/a | no dates | yes |
| CSS Band | 1,151,978 | n/a | no dates | yes |
| CSS Warfare | 1,166,983 | n/a | 100+ | no |
| CSS Fuel | 1,298,931 | n/a | 19 | no |
| Refresh | 1,490,008 | n/a | 0 | no |
Some other collections of CSS galleries worth seeing:
- The Great Web Design Gallery Roundup – CSS Tricks.
- Inspiration Overload: 100 CSS Galleries You Need to Check Out – Virtual Hosting.
- 101 CSS Galleries for Backlinks and Traffic – Caroline Middlebrook
118 Responses to “Ranking 80 of the Top CSS Galleries”
Great list. Thanks for listing NiceStylesheet here!
What an awesome resource! Thanks for taking the time to research and post this.
Unbelievable! Thanks for the compilation!
It’s great to see so much activity around CSS out there. Not only does it create great design inspiration but all web designers should be using it to make their sites easier to maintain and upgrade. Has anyone ever considered classifying a CSS gallery according to different applications – e-commerce, blogs, search sites, chat sites, etc?
Would be really cool to add a column for number of times the sites have been bookmarked on http://del.icio.us
Thanks for putting all this information together in one place. Very useful.
Great post! I’m going to add my site to a few!
Sam xx
Wow…Great collection of css galleries list.
I love the FWA, but they aren’t really a CSS gallery at all — most of the sites listed are Flash-based, and many still use tables for layout.
Great Post! Thanks for the compilation, will be going through them one after the other.
Don’t forget http://submitcss.com
It’s nice to see the breakdown. Nice work!
gr8 effort….
Nice centralized list of sites here. As our site has been lucky enough to grace a few of these galleries, I can attest to the traffic they send us. I just checked our stats from Dec 1, 2007 through today; BestWebGallery.com is by far the biggest referrer of all the galleries we’re on. 16,688 to be exact. The next gallery is TheBestDesigns.com with 7,314.
This post I read last month has some similar info to supplement your article here – http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/css-galleries-backlinks-traffic/
Tony
aliotsv,
You’re right. And there are some others like that on the list. Would have been more accurate to title it web design galleries instead of css galleries.
Thanks everyone for your comments. I’m glad the post has been useful.
Awesome post! This is a terrific resource for any designer. And it will even be useful for design-hacks like myself.
You should add http://www.bigowners.com
Having a column for which ones are search-able would be nice.
It’s surprising to me that with all the trouble most of them go through for tagging, ranking, categories, etc that enabling search within that data is not a standard gallery functionality.
If you’re using a Premium WordPress Theme as a starting point for site designs, you can also submit them to http://wp-premiums.com
With all due respect to everyone, just because a certain CSS gallery is ranked near or at the top doesn’t mean that their gallery displays excellent websites. I visit a lot of these often, and I am constantly disappointed with the preference for a web 2.0 template look, and regardless of all the “CSS” in their titles, most have very very poor coding.
Andrei,
I don’t disagree with you. My point of gathering this list is not to say that certain galleries display better work than others. I just wanted to help designers see how much exposure they could expect to get if they were included in these galleries.
Hmm. I responded on this post the other day but my comments are no longer here. Did I offend in some way?
Tony,
I don’t remember your comment. It probably got caught by Akismet for some reason. Sorry. The only comments I’ve ever deleted were for inappropriate language.
Well I did have a slew of bad words about this lousy post but…I’m just kidding.
I actually was just saying how our site was lucky enough to land on a hand full of gallery sites. BestWebGallery.com has been our biggest referral with over 16,000 inbound visits; next up was TheBestDesigns.com with over 7,000. That is between December and April of this year.
Tony,
I found your original comment in the spam bin, My apologies, it’s posted now too. The article that you mentioned from Caroline is actually linked too at the end of this post. I liked hers and wanted to take the idea a step further.
Ha, thanks. Now I’m spamming your blog with comments! I did see that you and Caroline were tracking back to each other today. Didn’t catch that last time.
I have some data about web design galleries here. I personally am not a fan of Alexa, but I’m a fan of Google Analytics. I use some of its data in my list: http://logistetica.com/list-of-web-design-galleries
Excellent list, i recently posted a huge css gallery list on my blog with more than 100 galleries, including pagerank and submission features..i found some more in your list, thanks..
I would love to have CSS Loaf added to the list. CSSloaf brings together designs from 35 other showcases so that you don’t have to go all over the place to see the latest designs. We feature large screenshots so that each design is visible; no need to strain your eyes on tiny thumbnails.
You have an impressive list here! Ithought I had done well to find about 10 such sites, but your list provides lots of places to look for inspiration when designing a new site.
Well Done!
Here is what has to be the most complete 441 list of All CSS Galleries found at
topcss.stumbleupon.com.
Enjoy!!
Best Regards
TruSi
topcss.stumbleupon.com provides the most complete list of all CSS Galleries. There are 441 CSS Galleries listed.
Enjoy!!
Best Regards
TruSighT
If anyone’s interested, I created a similar list but with more galleries listed (and some pretty graphs thrown in).
You should also checkout, Cart Craze, a free eCommerce CSS Design Gallery. http://cartcraze.com
John,
Thanks for the link. That’s quite a collection. I bookmarked it.
I might add http://css.wearethebuzz.com which is currently the most frequently updated CSS gallery with a new design added every 4 hours!
Stay tuned.
here another one: http://www.makebetterwebsites.com
And another one: http://www.101bestwebsites.com
I’m surprised CSS Zen Garden is not on this list — unless I overlooked it.
Josh,
You’re right, CSS Zen Garden is not on the list. The reason is because the list was intended to help designers find places to submit their work. While you can create a zen garden design, you can’t submit your other sites there.
Thanks a lot for the list. I am actually looking for sites to submit my link. I already submitted to some of the listed css sites. I will submit again on the other sites.
great list. I will submit to those sites i havent submitted yet.Cheers
Thanks for the compilation. Its a great list indeed.
Very good list. You worked a lot for that. You should also add and rank http://www.fantasticss.com/. It shows the most amazing css sites…
lots of information here thanks, this list is huge.
you can visit as well my website made in Magento: http://www.website1service.com
Great list. Hopefully Delicious CSS (http://www.deliciouscss.com) can one day make it to the top of that list. Until then, we’ll do our best to make sure that we’re including some of the best designs from around the Web.
http://www.minimalsites.com is a css gallery only for minimally designed websties.
Nice one thanks, just dropped a link on as many as I could.
http://webdesigncompete.com is a ranking of the best webdesigner with CSS Gallery
Great resource! We are big fans of CSS Galleries and Design – We find them very useful.
Wow, thanks for putting this list together.
I feel compelled to leave a comment mentioning http://www.webdesignire.com – a niche gallery for Irish websites and designers.
I like this gallery. Here everyone can upload favorite site and Site will be showcased at once.
This is a great list. Thank you for putting this together.
This is a great list.thanks!
Cssscoop.com is a new gallery
Nice list, check out http://www.thecssgallerylist.com for more galleries. You can also submit your site to dozens of galleries all from one form
or try http://www.selected-webdesign.com with it’s nice category and filter stuff …
CSS Illustrated, a new CSS gallery showcasing illustrated CSS web design. cssillustrated.com
yet another one http://cssstyletime.com/
Mine, just launched:
http://styleprone.com/
Here is a core CSS Gallery name missing from your CSS Design inspiration list CSSGallery.com, Enjoy
This is a killer list, bookmarked for inspairation!! thank you
Please add this CSS Showcase too: CSS Arena, thanks.
Hi,
Trying to get through those 500+ galleries. Css luxury aim to establish the biggest database of well designed sites until 25th December. Until then we must post 5ooo websites (that means around 24 sites/day ), if we’ll not succed the website will be closed.
Every 2 months the site will get an enhancement. The first one will be on 1st July.
All the best,
This is a killer list, bookmarked for inspiration!….Thanks
New CSS Gallery http://www.webtava.com
Great post! New CSS gallery at Admixweb.com
Check it out! Thanks!
My personal favourite: http://inspiremix.com
Thanks for this great list of galleries!
I like this gallery. Here everyone can upload favorite site and Site will be showcased at once.
Hey.. huge list! .. may you consider updating your list with newer one?
cssfights,
It’s possible, but not likely.
Thanks Guys for the fine usefull list. Great.!!
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