Archive for March, 2008
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Posted by Bloggeries in Health and Fitness
If you have ever tried to quit smoking, or are in the midst of it now, then you may want to stop in and have a look at the Reformed Smoker blog. The Reformed Smoker is a blog run by a former smoker who has just recently quit his 20 years, 20-a day smoking habit. The blogger is hoping the blog will anchor him in his quest to quit smoking, and will hopefully provide some focus for him as he works on the reformed aspect of the reformed smoker. The blogger has quit smoking using the “Cold Turkey” method, and at the time of review, had been going strong for 63 days. Find out what is going on in the mind of this reformed smoker, as he battles this quit and writes his recent bloggeries: Insane in the Brain, Living Colour, Get Your Skates On, Their Or There, Sixty, Open House, Lock up the Fags, Merry Christmas, Bloody Certifiable, Orange Crush, and Tripple Pizza.
The blog is a personal blog of sorts and is laid out as such, offering a nice clean layout and organization to the blog that makes navigation easy. Bloggeries are written in black text on a beige almost yellow background and links stand out nicely in red. Most bloggeries are associated with relevant pics. Bloggeries are left marginalized, and there is a right-sided navigation bar. In the right-sided navigation bar you will find buttons for contact or subscribing to the feeds, About page for Reformed Smoker, Search bar for Reformed Smoker, Countback Widget (to last cigarette), Widget to create your own quit smoking certificate, Video of the Week, Gym Activity Tracker, and Archive Menu that also lists Recent Posts within the current month’s archives.
This blog gets a 3.5/5 overall at this point, and I think that score is largely due to the fact that the blog is quite young. The blog has a certain essence of sparsity to it, as if there is something missing, but I think as the blog grows this will change. The blog scores well for content and for activity, as the bloggeries are written in a clean personal voice that connects with the readers well. The activity is very consistent as well with bloggeries coming in every day at this point. The navigation scores could be improved, and would be if there was more ‘blog meat’ in the navigation bar. If the blogger added a recent comments menu for example it may encourage more comments from the readers, but also I think a Categories Menu would improve navigation on this blog. The appearance scores are being affected strictly due to the lack of content and blog meat in the blog at this point. Also, the main page of the blog only has one bloggery listed on it, if the blogger added more bloggeries to be shown when the blog loads the blog would look a little more beefed up. Overall however, this is a fun blog to read, and if you are one about to join, or in the trenches, of the battle in quitting smoking, this blog may add some company to your misery.
-Chrissie
Posted by Bloggeries in Politics
We are taking a look at another political blog, and this one is called Phronesisaical. This blog is about politics, philosophy, international affairs, and fruit. There are two main contributors to this blog, Helmut and Barba de Chiva. Helmut is a Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs and is located out of Washington D.C. Barba de Chiva is an English Professor writing out of Texas. Both of these bloggers offer a unique appeal and excellent writing as can be seen in any of their recent bloggeries: The Void, Flashes of Brilliance, Normalizing Hiroshima, A particular Universal Proposition, Anti-Jaguar Wall, Royal Democracy in Bhutan etc…
The blog is fairly simple to navigate and offers a clean well-organized design. Bloggeries are left-marginalized and are black text on a light green background and links are highlighted in dark green. In the right navigation system you will find the contributors profile pages, ‘Phronesisaicality’ Menu, Bloggery Menu (perhaps a blog roll?), News and Commentary Menu, Magazines, Philosophy, Ethics, Policy, Policy Information and News, Development and Environment, Photography, Fruit Photography, mp3 Blogs, Miscellaneous, Previous Posts Menu, Archives going back to June 2005 and Blog Widgets. What I don’t see in blog navigation is a categories menu or labels attached to the posts, so I don’t think the blog is organized by category. I think this may help the blog given its healthy nature of topics and issues that it covers.
I will give this blog a 3.4/5. The blog is very well written and is updated almost daily, so it scores well for content and activity. First off I believe this blog could use some more personality in the theme department. Something from a header with an image to a redesign where it tells you abit about the author and blog before you start reading. It’s currently generic not giving the blog the credit it derserves. I think the current location of the recent posts menu is not doing this menu any service. It is currently located at the very bottom of the right navigation system and would be very difficult to find if you didn’t spend a lot of time with the blog. I also think a deeper connection with the readership could be established if the contributors expanded on the purpose of the blog in the About Pages, or even define the term ‘Phronesisaical’ a little deeper. I don’t see any comments or hit counters, so I am not certain what the readership of the blog is. But I think this blog could reach a larger audience with these simple changes and I wish it the best of luck.
-Chrissie
Posted by Bloggeries in Blogging
Bloggeries is looking at yes, another blog on how to make money blogging. The blog is called ‘Dat’ Money.com. The blogger wants you to help him help you earn money with blogging tips through his own personal experiences. The point of the blog is to reach out to beginning bloggers to help them get on their way in terms of blog monetization. The blogger does this by discussing his own blogging experiences and showing what he has learned, and what he knows of the pros and cons of blog monetization. Dat Money blogger has been blogging for some time now and has numerous other websites including OurBS.com, Datcurious.com, and DatPPP.blogspot.com. To see exactly how the Dat Money blogger can help you, check out his recent bloggeries: NEW Weekly Cash and EC Giveaway at DatMoney.com, How to Find and How to Get Advertisers to Buy Direct Ad Space, Does Technology and Blogging Belong to the Young?, 13 Blogging Forums You Should Join or At Least Check Out!, Dedication for my Fellow Bloggers – Are you?, What to Post? When to Post it? and March Madness of Blog Contests.
The blog is well organized with a clean template which makes it very easy to navigate. Bloggeries are left marginalized and there are two right navigation bars as well as a top navigation system. In the top navigation system you will find links to Home, Blogging Tips, Make Money, Contact me, About, RSS Feed, Special Thanks, Advertise, and Banner Designs. In the first right navigation bar you will find a lot of advertising, Blogroll, and blog directory widgets. Moving to the far right navigation bar you will find Popular Posts Menu, Recent Posts Menu, Recent Comments Menu, Categories Menu, Archives Menu, and a My Blog Log Readers Widget. Categories essentially contain everything you want to know about blogging including Blogging – Design, Blogging – MISC, Blogging for Money, Blogging for Traffic, Blogging Tips, Blogging Tools, Contests, and so much more.
I am going to go with a 4.2/5 for this blog, as it looks like it is doing well on all Bloggeries criteria. This was one of those blogs that I started reading for the review purposes and found myself wandering here there and everywhere forgetting that I was in the middle of a review. That being said, the blog scores very well for content purposes and definitely kept me interested in terms of the quality of the content. I did notice a few typos here and there, so the blogger may want to keep an eye on that, for example ‘conceded’ should be ‘conceited’ on the about page. The activity is coming in every other day it seems at this point so the activity score is hurt just a little there as I only give perfect scores there for daily activity. Navigation scores are good here also as the blog is clean and organized. The same goes for appearance as well, though I do suggest the blogger limit his use of hashmarks to cross out content. A little here and there adds some humor to the blog but they appear more than a little bit and it is a little distracting for the reader. Overall however, the blog is a good blog in terms of what it offers in content and appearance, and thus it serves its readership well. If you are looking for a blog about blogging, Dat Money is worth checking out.
-Chrissie
Posted by Bloggeries in Blogging
If you are looking for another blog that will offer you some tips and tricks on how to improve your Internet marketing, then check out My Trade Domain, a blog offering website hosting and optimization tips, offers, and tutorials. The blog is written and owned by blogger Dinesh. Dinesh wishes to use the blog as a venue for sharing his experiences in hosting, optimizing, and managing various domains. Dinesh has been involved with the hosting industry in one form or the other for almost ten years now, and currently manages a fair amount of websites on top of this blog. Having much experience in buying and selling domain names as well as hosting and related products, Dinesh feels he has a lot to offer his readers based on his experience and knowledge that he has gathered from reading books and online. To get to know Dinesh better, as well as see a sampling of what he has to offer, check out some of his latest bloggeries: SEO 101 – What Every Webmaster Should Know and Follow (a Two Part Post), Do You Time Your Blog Comment Responses?, Hide that Affilliate ID in your Link, Research the Blog Before You Advertise On it, Another One of those AdSense Optimization Tips, Ready to Advertise your Website – Wait Do this First, 4 Quick Checks to Qualify a Website for Sale, and Picking a Niche – Single Most Important Factor to Keep in Mind.
The site is fairly new making it extremely easy to navigate. Bloggeries are left marginalized and there are both a top and right navigation system. Bloggeries are in black text on white background and the blog is bordered in black but contains forest green accents with links and headlines in forest green. In the top navigation system there are links to Home, About, Archives, Sitemap, and Contact page. In the right navigation bar there is a subscribe button and the Categories Menu. This Categories Menu is fairly comprehensive, and also accessible through the footer of the blog. In the Categories Menu you will find categories such as Anatomy of a Blog, Domain Names, General, Getting Your Feet Wet, Hosting, How To, News, SEO, Starting Out, and much more. At present, there are no pictures on the main page of the blog, but most of the bloggeries contain a ‘continue reading’ link and this will lead you to posts with tutorials and such that contain relevant pictures for the bloggeries.
I will go with a 2.4/5 for this blog for now, though it does seem to have some promise. Activity is very good for a new blog with new bloggeries coming in about every other day. The content is user friendly for the most part, however readers coming to this blog will get more out of it if they are somewhat experienced in SEO techniques. By that, readers should have at least a little bit of knowledge to understand some basic terminology such as SERP’s and so on. If the blogger is trying to reach brand new bloggers and marketers, he may want to make his content a little more user friendly for the novice blogger. I also think the blog looks a little sparse, which I attribute to it being such a new blog. The blogger may want to see that pictures with bloggeries are featured on the main page of the blog to give it a little more spice, and should consider adding some blog meat to the side bar. Possible suggestions for this would be a Recent Posts Menu, or Recent Comments Menu, or even both. This will not only contribute to the overall appearance of the blog, but to the navigation as well. Overall however, this is a good blog with some great tips, and will definitely have something to offer those looking for SEO and optimization advice. I would also like to see the author fill the sidebar; there is simply too much empty space which makes the blog look bare when in fact it doe have good content. I like the blog and enjoyed reading it; unforunately the template and lack of graphics gave a less then stellar first impression. With these elements fixed it would score much better.
-Chrissie
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