Critique my blog, please!

Lars-Christian · #1 - 03-07-2007, 04:32 PM

Okay, so after finally getting through the giant lift of bringing Bloggst online, I have been pondering a bit about the future of my own personal blog, and what I should do with it. Right now it is doing okay, but nothing more. It might be that I haven't put all that much effort into it, but I feel that overall it is lacking something.

What? Branding. I'm not branding my blog at all. It's not targeted towards a specific niche, and is all in all just a large collection of somewhat random ideas for articles that pops up in my head, and the quality articles suffer because of this. I feel that if I am to take it a step further, I will need to find a niche to focus on, and do some more work on branding it. This of course will mean a complete redesign (eugh).

I am interested in hearing what the lot of you think about it? The link is in my signature. Go crazy

jardel · #2 - 03-08-2007, 07:01 AM

it looks cool, a legitimate personal blog, i suggest if you want to open a niche blog, get it in another URL, will be better, maybe you have some readers of your blog already and in a niche blog, talking about like isn't the best thing anyway, i mean, if you will talk about technology, talk about technology only, not about still life and another things, just an opinion

doolols · #3 - 03-08-2007, 04:03 PM

Okay. You asked for it ...

I hope you don't mind me telling the truth as I see it. I'd rather people told me if something I did was rubbish. Let me know if you think I'm overly harsh.

It's a bit ... plain. The use of white / blue is fairly dated now. And, for me, the nav links shouldn't be on the left. On a blog, the nav isn't the main thing - it's the post / main message, which should be most prominent in the normal left -> right reading pattern. On a traditional website, the visitor needs to be able to see what information he wants, and click to it. On blogs, the information should be right there, hitting him in the face.

I think the main text is bit a bit stodgy. What I mean is that there are (visually) big chunks of text, line after line, which dissuades the visitor from diving in and reading.

Problogger Darren annoys me, because his site's so cluttered. Okay, I know where his latest stuff is, so I can find it easily enough, but the layout is just so messy. Maybe this is a consequence of his visually high profile cash generating schemes. The colour scheme doesn't help.

Copyblogger is beautiful - so clean and so Web2.0, and that is where my blogs need to be heading (stylistically), I think.

Website design is so much about psychology now, especially if you hope to attract and keep visitors, and to use the site to generate income. In fact, this is one of my first in-depth articles on my new blog. When it's up. And when I've written it

Dinardo · #4 - 03-08-2007, 05:10 PM

Yeah, your layout kind of reminded me of my mom's medical journals. It's just too bare. It would probably fit other blog formats but I think personal blog layouts should have more personality to them to kind of give people the sense of the author's personality and the blog's general tone.

Looking at your current layout makes me expect to read a forensic report which is a shame because you don't read like it.

Also, since you tend to write long, quality posts, it'd be a shame to lose people's attention by getting their ADD overwhelmed by chunks of text as doolols previously mentioned. Maybe throwing in a couple related images into the mix would help catch people's eyes and keep their attention.

Jipdog7 · #5 - 03-09-2007, 01:45 AM

As others have said it is very stark on first view, maybe add a few pictures/photos to bring more colour and give it a bit more life? I do particularly like the 'LC' line breaks you use to devide the text, nice bit of personalisation.

DebNg · #6 - 03-09-2007, 02:00 AM

I wouldn't mind a bit of color, myself.

doolols · #7 - 03-09-2007, 03:50 AM

Hi again, Lars

Just thinking about some of the posts, when you scroll through available templates for Wordpress or whatever, there are heaps of them which are suitable for personal blogs - they usually have large images as backgrounds, and have big splashes of colour.

You talk about 'taking it a step further', but do you want to make it commercialised? In which case, these 'personal' templates would not be suitable.

I do wonder whether I'm trying too hard to go down the Web2.0 route, although for clarity and ease of use, I don't think that type of design can go far wrong.

Leonard Chen · #8 - 03-09-2007, 06:54 AM

Personally, I find that there are 6 things you need to do.

1. Add some colors. It's too bluey now.
2. Add some images. There's just too much text.
3. Change the fonts. Bigger fonts gets the attention of readers. Brian Clark of Copyblogger mentioned it before too, if I remember correctly. Shoemoney's font however is not big, but it looks nice enough.
4. Add a contact form.
5. Add some social bookmarks for interactivity.
6. Make your "Subscribe" stand out. Add a RSS icon or something.

Hope that helps.

Douglas · #9 - 03-09-2007, 11:18 AM

Like most people have said already, I would like to see a more "interesting" design for your blog. I'm a little intrigued on what you mean by rebranding it though? From what I read out of that, it seems that you want to commercialize it like doolols hints at. If that is the case, you definitely need to rid yourself of the personal posts I think, and like you said, a rebranding would probably do you well. You'd probably benefit from finding a more suitable domain as well, related to the niche you chose.

infektia · #10 - 03-12-2007, 02:30 PM

I agree with the others on that your design is too plain. Make it more interesting for the eye. Please the eye first and then the mind. That's how we all work :P