Reader Blog Critique : ThouShallBlog.com

Written by Kevin Muldoon from System0 on November 5, 2008

Welcome to the 11th Reader Blog Critique. Last weeks critique of Home Design Find had some great feedback from Rarst and Mary Ihla.

This weeks review is on Thou Shall Blog, a blogging tips site for beginners which covers WordPress, Search Engine Optimization, CSS Design and more.

Here are the questions the owner Yan would like to ask you all about the blog :

What is your first impression of the blog?

What do you dislike about the design?

Is the layout appeared too cluttered?

What do you think of the blog content?

If you took over ownership of the blog now, what’s would be your first change?

The most helpful and constructive commenter will get $10. Alternatively, if you prefer, I can register a domain for you at eNom and push it to your account Yan will decide who the best commenter was.

As usual, I remind everyone that positive or negative, all feedback should be constructive.

If you have any questions about any of this please let me know in this thread

Blog to be Reviewed : Thou Shall Blog

Written by Kevin Muldoon from System0 on November 5, 2008 | Filed Under Reader Blog Critique

Comments are closed since this post is older than 30 days. However, you can continue this discussion in our popular Blogging Forums

Brandon Cox | November 5th, 2008 at 7:09 am #

Thou Shall Blog looks promising. Out of the gates, it offers a very nice clean, magazine-style design. With smooth tabbed navigation (though a seeming glitch in the difference between normal and hover states), a grungy, yet well-spaced layout, and a pretty smooth color scheme. The fonts and typography are well thought-out as well.

Advertising on the site is obvious but unobtrusive and kept in moderation. There’s a pretty cool call to action (subscribing) built into the main focal area of the site right at the top. Information is organized well with the featured post area grabbing the reader’s attention immediately.

As for the content of the site, the author remains within a few carefully selected niches and manages to be disciplined about remaining within those confines. One suggestion would be to indicate the topic under which each of the front page excerpts is filed.

Titles for articles are well-worded and will surely perform well in organic search results. The end of the each article offers a selection of related posts, another call to action (subscribing), information about the author, and some social networking buttons. All of these are great individually, but also create a lot of distance between the article and the discussion that follows. The author might consider a way to reduce this space by grouping these elements more closely or choosing either the related posts OR the “people also read” feature as opposed to both.

One other thing I notice is the final call to action in the site’s footer. The subscription links are virtually undetectable until you mouse over the right words. In keeping with the soft style of the site, the author might consider making links an off color and not simply relying on the hover state.

Overall, this blogger has done a tremendous job of creating a visually pleasing and easily navigable experience for the user. We’re sure to hear and read much more from Yan in the coming days. I feel called to subscribe!

Desk Coder | November 5th, 2008 at 1:23 pm #

First impression - took a long time to load some of the graphics, and it ain’t halloween anymore. Not a lot of content above the fold.

Links on your top 3 categories need to be more link-ish, underline when I hover, or change the color.

When you hover your menu, I don’t like how it moves.

I don’t like the headings font in the sidebar.

Worthy links on bottom are hard to read.

Layout is fine, I like the way the comments link stands out.

The first thing I would do with this blog is try to get more above the fold. Try to get more information to your visitors before they have to scroll down.

tech | November 5th, 2008 at 2:31 pm #

I like it, but kind of hard working.

Mike Huang | November 5th, 2008 at 6:17 pm #

The design is very clean and very attracting

-Mike

Vincent | November 5th, 2008 at 9:40 pm #

Hi Yan Susanto,

Overall your blog have a very nice theme and I can say the design is great.

You have change the picture of the pumpkin to a pair of hands which I think is an improvement but what does the picture of the pair of hand serves? I think you should get a picture more related to your niche or maybe a picture of you will bring your reader closer to you.

More information above the fold would be recommended. The first visit on your blog doesn’t let us see much about your site. My 2 cents worth of comment Mike.

Cheers
Vincent
Personal Development Blogger

Hussein | November 6th, 2008 at 12:33 am #

I wonder if there are really someone who is winning in this reader blog critique. I haven’t seen yet anyone saying thank you for the prize. Does anyone here already got a prize? I have reviewed some blogs here but unluckily, never been a winner.

100pixel | November 6th, 2008 at 1:37 am #

I must say, the design is too cluttered and the initial screen impression is hijacked by the really big banner (do you really need so much of space to highlight the featured article? and what about the image – does it really serve any purpose?).

I think your bounce rate is too high in the home page – you are just wasting the most precious space of your blog. In my opinion, the best design is something that does not interfere and subtly supports the content or topic. Remove everything that you can do without. I think your target visitors are more interested in content rather than the design.

As far as content is concerned, edit, edit and edit again.

First change: Content
Second Change: Design

Desk Coder | November 6th, 2008 at 9:04 am #

@Hussein - It is because Rarst always wins. He needs to do some consulting, charge $20 for a 10 minute review.

Rarst has cool feed | November 6th, 2008 at 2:42 pm #

@Hussein

I won about 2/3rds of critiques so far and spent most of winnings just fine. I can also confirm I had chosen two winners (I had increased default prize) when my blog was up for critique.

So it works perfectly fine, but competition is tough.

Blog for Beginners | November 10th, 2008 at 4:39 am #

I guess I’m not receiving any more critique here so before the next one comes in, it’d be good that I made some comments here in response to those of you who had made some excellent feedback. Sad but it’s true, no one has ever left a simple comment on my blog.

Firstly, thanks to Kevin who has given me an opportunity to expose my blog to a great community of bloggingtips.com.

@Brandon:

Thank you for your kind words. As far as the design is concerned, the credit goes to Liam McKay who has done a wonderful job. All I did was to change the typography and did some tweaks to the sidebar.

All of these are great individually, but also create a lot of distance between the article and the discussion that follows. The author might consider a way to reduce this space by grouping these elements more closely or choosing either the related posts OR the “people also read” feature as opposed to both.

In keeping with the soft style of the site, the author might consider making links an off color and not simply relying on the hover state.

You are absolutely right about it. It’s something that I’ve taken for granted and definitely it is going to be on my next to-do list. Brandon, your attention to details is indeed worthy of praise. It doesn’t take me too long for me to decide who gets the reward…;)

@Desk Coder:

When I first got the design, I was too worried about the loading time but I loved it so much I made a little compromise then. There isn’t much I can do with it now unless I decide to change to another design. Speaking of which, I’m contemplating about it right now. Thesis by Chris is something I have in mind right now.

Try to get more information to your visitors before they have to scroll down.

I couldn’t think of anything else apart from putting one of my best articles on the featured list and that strategy alone is something that has worked very well for me. What do you have in mind?

@tech

I’m afraid I don’t understand what you are trying to say….

@Mike Huang

I do appreciate the compliment. Do you have anything to add?

@Vincent

I think you should get a picture more related to your niche or maybe a picture of you will bring your reader closer to you.

That picture is related to the featured post and not part of the blog design. Perhaps my choice of picture for “guide to beginners” isn’t good enough. Well, I’m not going to argue on this as I always believe as far as image (aka: art) is concerned, it’s just a matter of “One man’s trash another’s treasure.” Simply put, we appreciate art in different ways.

@100pixel

(do you really need so much of space to highlight the featured article?

It comes with the package and there is nothing much I could do with it.

I think your target visitors are more interested in content rather than the design.

I agree but how could they be genuinely interested if they don’t take the time to read the content. In much the same way, how could anyone be genuinely giving an impartial critique without even reading the content?

Now this confuses me the most..could you elaborate further? Are you referring to my writing skill, choice of contents, grammatical errors, use of language? I’m willing to listen to what you have to say on this….;)

@All

Thank you all. It’s been great knowing you guys. I wish everyone the best in everything.

Rarst | November 10th, 2008 at 7:43 am #

Hey, you forgot me and I promised. I made comment yesterday but it poofed for some reason. Repeating.
-
Time to critique.

I am constant reader of subject blog so I have some opinions formed (and voiced few to Yan in the past).

Answers to questions

1. My first impression (as far as I remember) was of very expensive looking and detailed design. Highly graphical.

2. It wastes enourmous amount of space in some parts. I like tight layouts. More on that later.

3. Opposite of cluttered. There is not enough stuff for space spent.

4. There are some very inspired articles. On other hand posting seems pretty irregular and sometimes after few days of waiting you get paid post which is hardly interesting.

5. Rethink space usage and home page, improve navigation, tone down advertisement.

Theme notes

6. Design is very heavy. Home page is almost 2Mb with ~50 images. Most of that is theme styling. I know you had some outages from excessive server load and I often experience slow loading or few attemts needed to load page. I see caching plugin used but it’s not much help with such a heavy theme. Better hosting or lighter theme and plenty optimizing. Otherwise with rising traffic it will blackout daily.

7. Doesn’t validate http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://thoushallblog.com/

Routine top to bottom.
Header

8. On home page header is huge. I can live with plenty of space around logo but huge image is simply boring. Pumpkin looked cool on holiday but generally there is something totally irrelevant there that just takes half screen. Not that I can suggest image relevant to metablogging.

9. Subscriber count is disconnected from RSS note. But looks connected to featured post. Could use some separator here.

10. On other pages header is better but still wastes plenty of space (for my taste).

Static pages

11. Navigation is cluttered. It mixes usual static pages with links to posts.

12. Some static pages have closed comments - it’s better to get rid of that note.

13. Why is contact page not called contact page? It could also use link to twitter and direct email.

14. Advertise page is untidy. Lots of strike test, mixing plain text with chicklets, etc.

Index

15. Three highlights are cool, I think it’s safe to fit four here.

16. Index is bad - ton of auto-generated excerpts. It’s totally wall of text.

17. I’ve been converted into “nothing between title and text” faith recently. I’d move date above title and drop author info.

Single post page

18. Color on strong text is bad - makes it look like links. Bold is better and common experience.

19. Area after post is over screen of different stuff slapped together and widely spaced. Worst area in blog in my opinion. Could use some serious optimizing and much tighter design.

20. Comments are excellent. Previous revisions had serious readability issues. Current is good.

21. Comment submit form is untidy. I’d lose all those explanations, font size and tags note. Notification could use mention that it’s via email and on my LCD it’s almost impossible to see where to check it.

22. hashscan antispam plugin you are using drives me nuts at times (I am using Opera which is always blocked). I’d really appreciate whitelisting of commenters with previously approved comments - less trouble for everyone.

Sidebar

23. Ten 125×125 is kinda lots. You could show less and raise prices - it would be more focused.

24. Sidebar has very few useful things on home page and zero on post page. If you land on post page it’s like “post and ton of ads, nothing else”.

Footer

25. About note could use photo - it’s big part of your brand.

26. Ugly paid links totally look like ugly paid links. Calling them worthy is a bad joke.

Overall

Blog is excellent but has few very obvious problems - hosting, navigation and amount of advertising. It’s fine to monetize but your amount is bordering annoying which is not a good fit for a blog that aims for friendly image.

I think you’ve used theme as it was out of the box - now it’s time to look at it and make it really fit your goals.

Rarst | November 10th, 2008 at 8:47 am #

Attemt number three to bypass antispam bugs… Go!
-
Time to critique.

Blog for Beginners | November 10th, 2008 at 10:05 am #

Rarst

This is what I’ve been waiting for. Let me get back to it sometimes later. You have some excellent points. I though you have completely forgooooootten about me…;)

Yan

Rarst has cool feed | November 10th, 2008 at 11:01 am #

@Yan

Kevin’s antispam kept killing it I had to email and keep bothering him half day to get this live.

Blog for Beginners | November 12th, 2008 at 3:16 pm #

I guess you have won the best review hands down and thanks for the feedback. The fact that you posted it thrice proved your sincerity.

Rarst has cool feed | November 12th, 2008 at 3:36 pm #

Glad to help. Good luck with improving your blog, feel free to mail me if you need help with anything.