chrissie

If you are looking for yet another source on blogging, or more particularly, Word Press, you may want to check out Han’s Blog eruANNA.net. To get full advantage of this site, you definitely want to view it in Mozilla Firefox, as with IE I did find some formatting issues. However, with Firefox, you don’t even notice them. On the blog you will get a chance to meet Han, the owner and author of this blog. The blog itself is powered by Word Press, and Han has a passion for this. She uses the blog to post about her life and also to provide tutorials and resources on Word Press and other things for her readers – because she’s nice like that. I find it interesting how she describes the meaning of her domain – eruanna. The name means “grace” in Quenya, and her name Han, also means grace. And if you spend a few minutes on her blog, then you will see she is holding well to her namesake. Her most recent bloggeries include Dodgy Cupcake Things, Wow – Stumbled!, From a Dream, One of Those Posts – 17 WordPress Plugins, Who’s a Blogger, How to Write Your Own WordPress Theme and Why I hate Domain Email.

Navigation on the site is very simple and straightforward. Posts are centralized with both left and right navigation bars. The appearance of the blog is very appealing. Posts are black text on white background. The blog also has a very feminine appeal to it without being too pink or girly, but headers are in a very pretty scrolled font. Each of her bloggeries also contains relevant pictures that add to the relevancy of the bloggerie. My favorite picture on the blog so far is from her “From a Dream” post where she did some photo manipulation, however it is just a breathtaking shot that definitely reaches the readers.

In the right bar you will find advertising and widgets advertising her most recent visitors. In the left navigation system you will find a main menu that has links to Home, About, Contact, Downloads and Articles, Word Press Themes, Photoblog, Forum, Sitemap, and Advertise Here. This menu is followed by an Archives Menu, Find Me Menu (for her various social networking), Friends List, and a very handy Word Press Pull Down Menu.

I think a Recent Posts Menu would add further organization to the blog. Currently to access recent posts you have to dig through archives, or click on a button at the bottom of the page to reach previous entries. Overall I am going with a 4/5 on this one. I found this blog very appealing on many aspects. The blog scores well for activity, appearance, and definitely uniqueness of the niche. I also think the blog does well for the most part with navigation, but could do even better with a few of the mentioned changes here. The content as well is well-written and her tutorials are handled in such a way that they are extremely user friendly and knowledgeable enough to be credible sources. This blog is one that I definitely recommend if you wish to enjoy a little bit of personal experiences, as well as learn something valuable about blogging or web mastering at the same time.

– Chrissie

If you are interested in finding out more about the wonderful area of Key West, you may want to check out the Key West Chronicle Blog. Here you are going to find a local resident commenting on the island’s life, politics, play and the people that live there. You can get a true feel for the chronicles of Key West through the most recent bloggeries: Cay Clubs merger renegotiated down, Analysis of Key West Real Estate, Less Cruise Ships Visiting Key West, Why the Federal Reserve Can’t Bail out the Real Estate Bubble, Key West Condo lising prices Rapidly Declining, Florida is the Epi-Center of Real Estate Meltdown, What $850,000 Gets You in Key West, and Florida’s New Eminent Domain Law.

Navigation on the site is simple and straightforward. Posts are left marginalized and there is a right navigation bar containing the stuff of the blog. Posts are standard black text on white background and links and other details are accented in bright blue. Posts also contain relevant pictures with each entry. In the right navigation bar there is a series of links for Key West information, Recent Posts Menu, AdSense, and Archives menu. What is missing here is a categories menu and an about me page. This blog is an extensive enough topic that it could definitely merit a wide range of categories for those that may be interested in visiting Key West – dining, accommodation, and etc.

This blog is going to get a 2/5 from me, and primarily because there is not much to say about it. Content is well written but extremely sporadic with anywhere from one to two weeks between posts. I also think that at present the content is a little narrow and this looks more like a real estate blog for Key Westers rather than an information blog for those that want to visit the area. In the tiny about me information, people, politics, and play is advertised as the blog contents and I see very little of that. I think this blog could be organized into categories for those interested in the Key West area, and whether this becomes a Key West blog or Real Estate information, the topic is broad enough that several categories would be appropriate here. The posts are also very lengthy at this point and could potentially be broken down and spread over several days to maintain regular blog updates. Appearance scores are average as are content, but the blog does need work in navigation and activity issues. This blog has the potential to become extremely organized, and thus offer more substance to its readers.

Did you enjoy this review? Click here to join our forum. Get a review and join the community!

– Chrissie

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

If you are up for a fresh take on the human perspective, have a look at The Gospel According to Rhys where 1/6th of the world can’t access it, and 5/6th of the world doesn’t want to. You will find the blog at . It is difficult at first to determine what this blog is really about. But the blog is written by a 20 something self-proclaimed geek who lives in Colwyn Bay, North Wales in the UK. He has a long list of experiences on his resume, which I think allows him to offer a unique perspective in his writing style. He has been blogging for some time, and as such has appeared in the Guardian a few times, as well as on Radio Wales’s Mousemat. You can find links to his appearances on his About page. He also has been nominated for two years on the bounce in the Bloggies, but hasn’t attained the ultimate reward of a prize from there. Rhys blogs mostly about blogging, and specifically, how you can get better at it. Take a look at any of his recent blogs to get a taste for yourself: Sunday Speed linking for 19/08/07; Fair Review Friday – Batch 2; The North South Divide; Three Rubbish Things New Bloggers Do and Three Better Things to do Instead; What they Don’t Know Can’t Hurt Them; Football or Geeks?; The Weekend’s Events; Sunday Speedlinking from 12/08/07; Fair Review Project – Batch 1; and Sheds, Thunderstorms, and Cricket.

Despite its rather busy appearance, the blog is fairly easy to navigate. There is a top navigation system that contains links such as Forum, Advertise, Archives, About, Software, This Site, Donations, and Contact information. The posts are left marginalized with black text on white background with a grayish border. There are two navigation bars in the right hand side. The left navigation system includes featured sites, Me Elsewhere, Top commenters, Blogroll, Popular Posts, Recent Posts, and Recent Comments. The far right navigation system contains just advertising he refers to as adicons. There is a smattering of pictures here and there throughout the blog, and quite a bit of advertising throughout. There is also no Categories menu here on the blog, and given that it does take a bit to really figure out what this blog is about, I might recommend this addition. This would organize the blog more for the excellent readership that Rhys has.

I will go with a 3.6 for this one for now. As mentioned, this blog took some time for me to figure just *what* it was about. I would recommend the addition of a categories menu for this problem, as well as a more defined About Page. The About Page is a very interesting piece on what Rhys is about, but I would like to see more about what the purpose of the blog is. The appearance loses some points as well. I would suggest adding more relevant pictures in each post instead of in the odd post here and there. Also, the advertising is bordering on the excessive side. There is some advertising in the header, and in the right navigation systems as well. Overall it just makes the site look much busier than it actually is, and this leads to some distraction from the content. I might suggest just moving one of the nav bars to the left and centralizing the posts. That may make the difference. In other areas though, the blog does very well for content, uniqueness, and activity. His content is written very well, and even humorous which makes the topics more interesting and is probably what has attracted his 125 subscribers. His approach to the topics is appealing which makes the blog unique in its own right and he has been rewarded by that through a very steady following as is evidenced through his subscriptions and active commenting menu. I think after just a few of these formatting things got tweaked, Rhys could see an even larger readership.

Did you enjoy this review? Click here to join our forum. Get a review and join the community!

– Chrissie

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