Bloggeries Blog

Bloggeries is going to look at another personal blog pertaining to health, wealth, and happiness. The blog is called Katalina Mau. The blogger blogs about a little bit of everything, including a love for real food, real adventure, and real live. The blogger believes we are all entitled to create our own health, wealth, and happiness and blogs about ways that we can achieve this. Get a feel for this blogger’s philosophies by checking out any of their most recent bloggeries: Inspiration; You Can Quit Smoking, without pills, potions, or patches!; Which Wolf are You Feeding?; Changing Again; The One Heck of a Giveaway Contest, Blog Review – NorthxEast.com A Blog About Blogging; Need to Lose Fat? Cut Out Artificial and Processed Sugar; and 23 Ways to stay Healthy Year Round.

Bloggeries are in black text on a white background and there is a black bordering around the blog. Bloggeries are centralized and there is both a left and right navigation bar, as well as a navigation system in the footer. In the left navigation bar you will find featured sites and advertising, Recent Posts Menu, Categories Menu, Archives Menu, and more advertising. In the right navigation bar you will find Subscription information, ads, Link List, News from the Blogosphere, and AdSense. The Footer contains a Recent Comments Menu, Archives Menu, and an About Us page. The categories for this blog include Everything else, Happiness, Quotes, Health, Wealth, Business, and Websites and Blogs. Most bloggeries are accompanied by a relevant picture as well which adds some meaning to the blog.

I will go with a 3.3 for this blog for now. Right now I think the blog’s overall appearance is affecting the blog score the most. I would suggest changing the colors and formatting of the borders containing the navigation systems. With the black borders, the ads stand out far too much, they literally jump off the page and this is can be distracting from the blog content. I also think there is too much space in the navigation bars. Perhaps moving the navigation bar content into one comprehensive bar would fill up some of this empty space more. Another suggestion for this is to move the content from the footer into the left or right navigation bar. I think the material in the footer is good blog material, and it may go unnoticed by being left in the footer. The blog scores well for content. This is clearly more of a personal blog than anything, and I think the voice of the blogger is credible and has the potential to connect with its readership. Another idea is to have a search for the content inside the blog; at the moment the search is a google search and searches the web instead of the blog. I would increase activity a bit, or at least give it some consistency. Right now the blog is being updated anywhere from a day to a week in between bloggeries and it would probably get more traffic by regular updating. Overall, this is a great concept for the blog, and it is written well. With a few changes, the blog’s readership will be able to gain more from this content without focusing too much on the appearance issues.

-Chrissie

Fashion bloggers across the globe are doing everything they can during Fashion Week to make sure every last nitty gritty fabric details is noted, which celebs were spotted where, and of course, who they were wearing when they were spotted. Style It is not exception. Style It is where the fashion nerd meets the pop culture obsessed. Style It defines fashion nerd as the girl who knows who designed what and when it was worn. Style It also offers a wide range of celebrity coverage, and this is the pop culture component of the blog. The blogger of Style It is a 20 something girl with Southern Roots that is taking a break from higher education to pursue her dreams. She is obsessed with fashion and the people that make it tick. You can see for yourself exactly what Style It wants you to know about the collision of pop culture and fashion in her latest bloggeries: Fashion Week: Day Four from the Tents, Fashion Week: Day Two Live from the Tents, Fashion Week: Day One Live from the Tents, New York Fashion Week: Monopoly on Mania, Publicist Interview: Dina of Michael Rogers PR, Ask Style IT: Mexican Must Have, Obsessed: Conair Facial Sauna System, Define your Line with Borghese, and Hayden Panettiere in Lucky Magazine.

The blog is neatly laid out in a clean template which makes it very easy to navigate. Bloggeries are left marginalized and are in black text on a white background and links are in black. In the right navigation bar you will find advertising; subscription information; Links to add Style It to your facebook, Twitter, or MySpace; What’s Hot menu; and an extensive Categories Menu. The Categories Menu is divided into several main categories – fashion, beauty, celebrities, and entertainment, and these categories are further subdivided into more distinct categories. I did like this feature on the blog and found it very useful from a navigational standpoint. Each bloggery is accompanied by relevant pictures, which, for a fashion blog, truly adds meaning to the posts.

This blog gets a 4/5 from me. This is an excellent blog for fashion, beauty, or anything celebrity and it covers all niches very well. The blog scores well from a navigational standpoint as well as for appearance with its clean design and well-organized template. The blog is unique enough in that it offers its readers what they want in a very readable way. I enjoyed the style of the content as well as it wasn’t too technical, which some fashion blogs can be, and it read in a very personal almost tongue in cheek voice which gave the blog some flavor. The only thing the blog is really lacking is consistency in activity. Posts are coming in every other day to a week and some in between which may disappoint its readers. Overall however, this blog delivers to either the fashionista or the fashion nerd in every other way that it needs to.

-Chrissie

Fall is in the air this week in New York as designers and celebrities alike huddle in the tents for the long awaited Fall Winter 2008 collections. Providing excellent coverage of this event is the fashion blog titled My Fashion Life. The owner of the blog is editor Michele Obi, and she runs the blog as a publication that redefines the boundaries of a blog and an online magazine. She does this by taking advantage of the personal voice one gives to its blog readers, while at the same time providing news, articles, and coverage of critical fashion events that you would find in an online magazine. You will find on this blog industry news, exclusive interviews, reports on the latest trends, shows, sample sales, and a little bit of everything that is Michelle’s Fashion Life. To find out more of Michelle’s fashion life, read some of her most recent bloggeries on the coverage of New York Fashion Week AW08: Stop you’re killing us: Alexander McQueen, Fashion Fix: A Roundup, NY Fashion Week AW08: Karen Walker, Shopping: Magnes Sisters Gold Clutch, Rachel Zoe at NY Fashion Week AW08, NY Fashion Week AW08: Iodice, NY Fashion Week AW08: Rag & Bone and Alexander Wang, Features: Gap’s New Look, and London Fashion Week Starts Today!!

The blog is laid out in a very user friendly clean template making it very easy to navigate. Bloggeries are left marginalized and appear in black text on white background and links and headlines are highlighted in pink. I like how the pink accentuates the feminine aspect of the blog, but it is not too over the top either. The right navigation bar contains two navigation systems at the top, with one system containing pages of: Home, Archives, Forums, Streetstyle, and About pages. The bottom navigation bar at the top contains links to Articles, Interviews, Press, Advertising, and Contact Us. In the right navigation bar you will then find a tag cloud on all things that are fashion, Recent Posts Menu, Recent Comments Menu, Subscriptions, Regular Reads, Websnobs, Websites, and advertising that is incorporated very well. Each bloggery contains relevant pictures that add meaning to the bloggeries and relevancy to the overall theme of the blog.

This blog is getting a 4.8/5 from me, as it is clearly very well maintained. The blog does well in all aspects of scoring criteria. The appearance of the blog is neat and organized, and the concept of the blog is done in a unique and creative way. While this is another fashion blog, it is clearly not just ANOTHER fashion blog as it offers so much more to its readership. The content is well done with the news coverage being brought in a professional way, yet with a strong blogging personal voice. The activity is very consistent with several posts coming in daily. I am not too sure if this is specific to NY Fashion Week AW08 or if this is consistent on the blog, but either way the blogger is providing a much needed service to her readers and is doing it very well. For professionals in the fashion industry, or even for those interested in fashion, this blog is a Must Have. I just wish I could post a photo here; but the blog wouldn’t allow me.

-Chrissie