Blog Reviews by Bloggeries

Reviews of blogs from around the globe since 2006.
Bloggeries

Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

Website Reviews – Blog Review

Thursday, September 20th, 2007

rate2 Website Reviews   Blog ReviewIf you have ever found yourself wondering ‘I wonder if I could find a website on….’ then this blog may appeal to you. The blog is simply called Website Reviews. The blogger is Malthy Badri and she offers a wealth of websites and blogs that you can ‘stumble onto’ in any field. Malathy is a Math teacher in India and blogs for both fun and money. She will also review websites that appeal to her, but may take consideration for other reviews based on content, design, presentation, utility, and navigation. You can get a good feel for the types of sites that interest her through her recent bloggeries: Tools from Highfivez for blog promotion, Plug and play VOIP phones from Nimbus, Why Satrnum changed to Friend2Friend, Enter the Indian Thought Terminus, Read your Feeds through IM, The news feed merger, Join review bloggers blogroll, Listen to your own posts, free podcast, Adsense Alternative by Ask.com, and many more.

I generally like to say that blogs are easy to navigate, however this particular blog is fairly loaded with AdSense that I found it to be distracting from either navigation or content areas. The content is centralized and there are both left and right navigation bars. Bloggeries are a blue text on orange background and links are highlighted in red. The header is standard text with no graphics, and directly below is a large span of space that contains the About Page and some AdSense. In the left navigation bar you will find the about page and an Archive Menu that lists Recent Posts by link. In the right navigation bar you will find AdSense, sponsored links, tag clouds, and a feedburner that contains 1 reader. You will also find here the blogroll and a link of frequently visited links. There are labels attached to each post but at the time of review I did not see a categories menu. There also at this point no pictures associated with the bloggeries.

I will go with a 2/5 for this one, there is just too much going on here that has little to do with content. I think the AdSense is far too overloaded and it is the first thing you deal with on the blog. Also, while the site is very colorful, it loses some appearance points for not having pictures as well as the advertising issue. Content is well written but needs some activity. Currently there have only been 10 posts in August and more frequent posting would definitely help with traffic here. Being that this is a site on website reviews, a categories menu would benefit readers in knowing what kind of websites are reviewed. Also, some information as to how one would obtain a review would be extremely beneficial. For a blog that has been around since 2006 I am not much surprised that there is only one reader in the feedburner as this blog has too much distraction going on to allow the reader to focus on content. I hope the blogger can make some changes and consequently see this blog succeed.

-Chrissie

Apples 2 Apples – Save Your Money and Simplify Your Life!

Friday, August 3rd, 2007

rate3 Apples 2 Apples   Save Your Money and Simplify Your Life!If you are looking for a site that is geared towards simplifying your life and making it less expensive you may want to have a look at Apples 2 Apples Blog. Here the author welcomes you to gain more out of your life by simplifying it. The author says if you wish to live simple AND large, share your world with Apples 2 Apples to find cheaper ways to be both stylish and simple. The site covers a broad range of ‘simplifying’ methods, all geared towards finding you the lowest prices on products you already purchase. Included in the blog are also tips on how to make things easier in your daily living, for example renovating at cost or spending less time getting ready in the morning. You can get a true feel for the blogger’s objectives through any of the recent posts: Give your Furniture a Quick Make Over, More Coupons, How much Time do You Spend in the Morning, Six Tips to Help You Save Money on Makeup, Stock up on Swimwear, Atlantic Reviews, and LV 07 Fall.

The site is very colorful and extremely easy to navigate. Posts are left marginalized with black text on white background and an array of relevant pictures with each post. There is a right navigation bar that includes a welcome note, blog poll, categories menu, ads, search bar, and a link me button. Missing from the right navigation bar are a recent posts menu and an archives menu, so I am not too sure how old this blog is. The categories section is very comprehensive so if you are a coupon grabber or professional discount shopper, there should be something here for you. You can search through the Apples Café, Apples2Apple news, Cool find – Hunting for Stylish Products, Getting to Know Brands, Simple and Fabulous – Beauty and Fashion, Simple Home Style – Home Sweet Home, and there are so many other categories for simplifying your life here as the list is extremely comprehensive.

The site scores well on activity, as posting is every couple of days at most, and navigation scores well also. The site is easy to navigate but I would like to see some additional navigation features to make blog browsing more simple, such as the recent posts menu and the archives menu. The uniqueness marks are average, I do not find this niche to be one that is extremely different from others in its category, so it garners average points here. The content is well written for the most part, though I do wonder if English is a second language here just through some syntax issues and contextual comments. However, this does not take away from the readability of the blog and the posts are extremely easy to read and follow. Appearance is where the blog suffers the most, I find there to be more advertising than posts, and in facet a few posts are advertising in themselves. While at first glance the purpose of the blog is geared as such towards this kind of writing, I would still like to see more of the authors personal voice and less advertising in the specific posts that are marketing a product. Having AdSense in every post also distracts from the readability of the blog, at least for me it does, so that has affected appearance marks as well. Overall however, this blog rates a 3 from me and I wish it continued success.

Did you enjoy this review? Click here to join our forum and get a review!

- Chrissie

If you would like feedback from your blog please make one of our Free Blog Poll’s!

The Religious Study Spirituality Blog – Review

Thursday, August 2nd, 2007

Religious Study Spirituality Blog ReviewIf you are feeling a little metaphysical or spiritual, you may want to open up the Religious Study Blog. to see if anything there can pique your awareness. Here you are going to find a one-stop center for all religious articles, insights, and views. This site proposes to contain a vast comprehensive collection of articles, and they encourage you to read, understand, and appreciate the various religions in the world. They are not one that seeks to create animosity or debates on difference of opinions but they do want to create a greater understanding of the various religions and consequently promote harmony in the communities people live in. What I liked about this blog as far as content was concerned was that it was not strictly about religion, but about spirituality and metaphysical concepts as well which anyone can relate to regardless of denomination. You can see this in their recent posts that include Types of Psychic Groups; Moving on, Moving Forward, The Q & A to Happiness and Freedom – Who are you?; The Spirit of Hinduism; Overcoming Unhappiness, and Touch Not My Anointed.

The site is easy to navigate with posts left marginalized and a right navigation system split into two bars. The posts are black text on white background with a sun, moon and stars theme in the header. The right navigation bar contains a recent comments menu, categories menu, links menus, and advertising. The categories are very comprehensive and sorted by the different religions in the world in addition to a general category, testimonials, and spirituality category. I did notice there were two general categories listed, so the authors may want to tweak that a little bit. There are currently no pictures on the website, which may be an advantageous feature to add. Reading blogs that are strictly text can get mundane regardless of how well the content is written, so pictures is something they may want to consider. Though there was a recent comments menu, I did not see a recent posts menu or an archive menu so these are also features I would recommend to make the navigation system easier to work with.

It is very difficult to determine the age of the blog or even the relevance of content as date stamps are missing from the posts and there is no archive menu. There are dates listed on the recent comments menu which are as recent in May but it is very difficult to guess how recent the posts following these comments are. I would definitely recommend adding date stamps to this blog. I also find the content to be beautifully written, though the posts can be broken down into pieces. They are currently a little lengthy, and Internet readers do not always take the time to go through long pieces. I think they could be broken up into series and spread over a few days to keep readership interest, and break down content a little bit. I really did need to dig to find older posts so the site definitely needs to work on its navigation issues. On the topic of navigation I think it would benefit the blog and its readers if the author added more posts to the front page. Overall this will get a 3 from me and with a few of these formatting changes the mark would definitely go up. I think this is an excellent blog with good content, but it needs some work logistically in the meantime.

Did you enjoy this review? Click here to join our forum and get a review!

- Chrissie

If you would like feedback from your blog please make one of our Free Blog Poll’s!

© Blog Reviews by Bloggeries. Powered by WordPress.
Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS).