https://maggieappleton.com/ for her take on a digital garden. She also compiled more below [0] if opening your thought process to the public is your thing (adopting the concept actually got me to add more structure to my serious notes and actually post more)
https://brianlovin.com/writing/how-my-website-works because of how in-depth he went with hosting his notes, bookmarks, and other projects.
https://wattenberger.com/ for its reactivity/place for her d3.js experiments.
and here is a general collection of dope blog additions: https://brainbaking.com/post/2022/04/cool-things-people-do-w...
My overall advice is unless you're a designer flexing your skills is to focus less on the design and more on the actual writing! The internet is littered with the emaciated husks of nice good looking sites hosting nary an entry beyond "How I Made My New Blog With X"