I've gone back and analyzed the UX and design of my favorite websites using some hand-made (with love) wireframes. Because I'm a baller on a budget.
How to highlight the best content while also being able to optimize for subscriptions and advertising. The big design challenge here is optimizing for performance; these are high quiality images and they will eat bandwidth.
I need to take a step back from The Only Colors and focus on the choices SB Nation made here. Because it is a huge content network, they have an obligation to drive traffic to other blogs, while also showcasing the content on the current blog. Advertising and subscriptions were obviously an emphasis, while, once again, they needed to figure out a way to optimize for performance.
This wireframe only addresses what's "above the fold"; in other words, what the user sees before having to scroll. The challenges here were really making a decision about how much the author, title and image would be featured. Should the title go right in the middle, or should it be offset? Where does the author's information go? Do we emphasize how popular the article is?