Review Of Two Blogs..

Today I am reviewing The Digipix and Broken Perfection - both of which belong to Michelle Minor. Michelle mentions in her about page that she suffers from dyslexia - my sister has this too. My sister finds that spell check makes this problem a little easier these days.

Spelling..

Michelle - I don't know what kind of browser you use. If you don't already use Mozilla Firefox with the built in spell checker option I highly recommend it. It will help you spot those errors when writing a blog post - any mis-spelt words are underlined in red automatically. The reason I mention that is I can see most of your posts are fine but some titles snuck through.

The trouble with mis-spelling on a blog is - advertisers and readers might make incorrect assumptions about you because of it. They might assume English is not your first language. They won't always read your about me page - and some of them would read it and say that's making excuses in a day and age where we have spell checkers. I don't agree with them personally - however I do think making good use of spell checkers can avoid this problem entirely.

Therefore spelling is one of the most critical things for us bloggers - I struggle with it a lot because in Australia we spell things differently to how they spell them in the USA. Words like color = colour. It annoys me when people think I spelt it wrong - that's how they taught me to spell in in school! You're in the US so lucky for you that's not an issue.

Spelling is such an easy thing to fix with the spell checker doing the work for you. The other option would be to write your posts - complete with titles - in a word processor (open office is my favourite and it is free) first and check them before pasting them into Wordpress.

The Digipix

The theme on this site is excellent, very professional looking and welcoming. I love the colors - green is my absolute favourite color to use on a website. I love the welcome at the top - it is unique. I rarely see a welcome section on a blog. I also love the date to the side of the post, and the way you have the clickable digg, stumbleupon, etc down the side of the post.

I would make the link color a slightly darker shade of green because it tends to blend in to the background currently. I would also change the color of your feedburner graphic to make it jump off the page rather than blend in with the design. You want to make that stand out so people can find it.

I took a look at your gallery and the photos were wonderful - I'm a photographer myself. There's not a huge amount of pics there at this stage but with a gallery system life will be a lot easier when it comes to organizing them..

Broken Perfection

I have to be honest with you - I'm not a fan of this theme. It is a personal blog and we all can choose how to display our personal blogs - but we all run the risk of offending potential readers with our choices.

I see a lot of blogs in my day to day internet wanderings. Many blog designers have taken into account the psychological meanings of color. I designed a scam victim support website and one of the first things we had to decide was - what color should we make it? Red was out instantly because studies show that red can have a physical effect, increasing the rate of respiration and raising blood pressure. We made the site green because that is calming - hospitals use green because it relaxes the patients.

I'd keep an eye on how much stuff you put in your sidebars as well. There's a lot there and it looks a little cluttered.

Things I Would Change -

The About Page -

Your name doesn't appear on your about page. I found it on the Digipix blog at the top of the site but only after a bit of searching. I'd recommend adding at least your first name to your about page.

No Contact Me -

I wanted to send you a couple of links and the next point privately however I could not find any way of contacting you privately. Shoot me an email - the link is at the top of my sidebar - and I'll send them to you.

The Alexa Redirects -

Despite what someone might have told you, Alexa redirects don't help you with your Alexa ranking. It does make people new to your site a little reluctant to click on your links, though. What is 100 times better is installing the Alexa widget. That then counts every hit to the site - on every page - because it is in your sidebar. I have two links which talk about this as I said above.

What helps you get a good Alexa ranking is to create content which is stumble-worthy, that stumblers (the majority of whom have Alexa installed) are going to love. I'd suggest putting a few of your photographs as posts, with just a small amount of text - maybe a meaningful quote that you like - and then stumbling them with photography related tags. One good photo can drive you good traffic for *months*.

Disclosure -

Your disclosure policy link should lead to *your* disclosure policy. Instead it links to the disclosure policy website. I couldn't see a disclosure policy of your own anywhere on either blog - though there was a URL on the disclosure policy image on Broken Perfection which seemed like it might have been it, the page did not load. I kept getting an error.

Calendars -

I am not sure why calendars appear on any blogs, ever. I know what date it is where I am, and it's never the same date as where your blog is because I live in Australia! It's a bit of a waste of space which you could use for something else.

Michelle, the reviews I have written might not be what you were expecting but I hope you can accept my constructive criticisms as helpful rather than hurtful. However anyone that loves Ikea is ok in my book. ;) My favourite photo - and post - was this one.