Simple is good

20 October 2009 By Leave a Comment

I was revamping my website, when I realize how simple Thesis really is.

The reason why I am revamping my blog is because of the blog critique I had in Problogger Forum recently when I put up my blog for people to critique.  I got to learn quite a couple of things from the blog critique which I wish to share with all of you here.

My previous theme is good as well.  I just need a theme which can allow me to tackle some of tricky questions that a professional blogger has posed to me.

Here’re the pointers she has mentioned to me:

  1. First, when I got to your blog, I thought – where’s the content? You have to scroll down pretty far to find a blog post and that was hidden under a huge banner ad.
  2. I would remove your bio from the top and put that under an About Page. The content is the most important item – you need to move it up to the top.
  3. Second, your posts need cut tags. At a glance, I should be able to see two or three of your most recent post titles.
  4. Next – topic. Your header says the blog is for reviewing software, websites and books. There isn’t one review on your whole front page. (10 or more posts?) You need to refocus your topic. Your interest seems to be in social media, if that’s the case, then revamp your header to reflect this.
  5. I can see you have some drive, I think you simply need to find a focus.
First, when I got to your blog, I thought – where’s the content? You have to scroll down pretty far to find a blog post and that was hidden under a huge banner ad.
I would remove your bio from the top and put that under an About Page. The content is the most important item – you need to move it up to the top.
Second, your posts need cut tags. At a glance, I should be able to see two or three of your most recent post titles.
Next – topic. Your header says the blog is for reviewing software, websites and books. There isn’t one review on your whole front page. (10 or more posts?) You need to refocus your topic. Your interest seems to be in social media, if that’s the case, then revamp your header to reflect this.
I can see you have some drive, I think you simply need to find a focus.

My solution

  1. I should have tackled the 1st pointer by now with a revamp of the theme.  The blog posts are now much more visible to the visitors.
  2. I have reduced my bio to be shown only on the left sidebar.  This is important to me because I need to stress on the branding that I am portraying to the visitors.
  3. With regards to cut tags, I am not sure what she meant.  But now, it is able to show 2 full posts, and the rest are in excerpts.
  4. Yes, I know that I am not really reviewing anything in this blog right now.  In fact, this blog is meant for me to show my online presence.  I am bringing my focus as an Internet reviewer on a separate blog.
  5. This sentence has caused me to re-think who I really am… And how I can focus myself to be a better reviewer.

Conclusion

Seriously, I think it looks much better now that I have made some amendments.  Don’t you guys think so?  If it is, do leave me a comment to let me know!  Thanks! :)

My next step

Now, I am thinking of re-categorize my articles I have done so far.  They are all in a mess with my existing categories.  I would probably want to refine some of the articles I have been writing so far too.

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Filed Under: Charles Ramblings

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