Critiquing a Blog Contest

Rebecca Laffar-Smith of Writer’s Round About is running a contest (WRA’s New Design Launch Contest!!! – and here’s the RSS feed) (with actual prizes, of course – Amazon gift certificates) involving a critique of her newly unveiled redesigned site. Because I like doing this sort of thing, I’m in. If it sounds like fun to you, too, give it a whirl.

If you’re in, you should know that the deadline is 31st January 2008 at one second before midnight. Although no time zone was mentioned… Yeah, I know – I should join Nitpickers Anonymous.

So, what do I actually have to do for this contest? Why, I have to critique their new site design, sparky! So here I go… Oh, also, please note that I’m using FireFox 2 to view the site. And please also note that I do see the irony in me, with my site that itself needs a complete overhaul, critiquing someone else’s site.

What I like

The basic design is nice – utilitarian, uncluttered, and attractive. No massive graphics that means page loads take forever – in fact, even with my unreliable Internet speeds, it loads fairly fast for me.

Rebecca, you have a very nice, very professional looking picture of you up.

It’s professional looking. No blinking text, no wild colours or fonts, no sound, no slow-loading java. Nothing that makes me want to shut it down immediately as I curse you. It’s so non-irritating that I didn’t mind staring at if for a half hour or hour or whatever while I did this critique. Oh, and no confusing background image behind your text – I hate it when that happens! Simple and classy. Professional. Nice.

It’s well-organized with logically-named pages. The banner is nice – simple and classy.

Dark text on a white background means good contrast and easy to read with little eyestrain. Well, the grey could be a little darker for this blind reader, but that’s me.

Ooh! I show up on the top commenters list! I definitely like that!!!!

The content. You write well, you have an interesting style, and your entries are fun to read.

What I don’t like

To view most of the page, I have to set my browser to maximum, which I hate doing, and even then, because the design is wider than 1024 pixels, I still have a scroll bar at the bottom. I prefer either narrower designs or, even better, a fluid design where I can have my browser set at whatever width I like. I don’t like having to set my browser at a specific width just because the design forces me to.

Space could be saved by making the two narrow columns narrower by, say, 10 or 15 pixels, and the white space between the columns and at the left-hand side could be minimized.

The calendar icon at the top of each blog entry cuts off the first letter of the month that’s right beside it. In this case, it covers the J in January.

"by Rebecca Laffar-Smith" is indented one space rather than lining up with the text below it in the blog entries.

Hmm. I would have organized the widgets in the two sidebars differently. I wouldn’t have broken up the sections that pertain to the blog itself by advertising. Yes, I know why the advertising is there – revenue is nice – but they make it more confusing for a reader to find what they’re looking for given that the advertising is interspersed with blogging widgets..

I also would have been inclined to make the subscription (subscribe to RSS, comments, etc.) icons at the top smaller and less obtrusive.

The sub-text beneath the title reads, "The early career of a freelance writer can sometimes feel like whirling in circles on a carousel. Here, fantasy novelist and freelance writer Rebecca Laffar-Smith, discusses writing and the writer’s life from inspiration to publication." I think it would read better if the carousel/whirly circles imagery were continued in the second sentence. Perhaps something like, "The early career of a freelance writer can sometimes feel like whirling in circles on a carousel. Here, fantasy novelist and freelance writer Rebecca Laffar-Smith, gives it to you straight by discussing writing and the writer’s life from inspiration to publication." Well, that’s not quite it, but hopefully, you get the idea.

Ah, I opened the comments page, and I’m not quite as happy with the contrast between background and text. The medium grey is too medium for my tastes – I would make it darker. I’m getting eyestrain from reading the comments.

Hmm, another thing I just noticed. Your categories with sub-categories load as collapsed. They show the number of posts in that category, and for Product Reviews, for example, it shows 0 posts. What doesn’t show are the subcategories (Blog Reviews 6, Book Reviews 9). If I wasn’t doing this critique, I wouldn’t have maximized that category and I wouldn’t have seen the number of posts in the subs. And there’s an indentation problem at the bottom – "Writing Lessons from Stargate SG1 Series". Now, you know that I am partial to SG1 and anything that ties into it, no matter how irrelevant it may seem. The problem here is that the word Series lines up with the main category, not the subcategory.

The event calendar takes me off-site to Google’s Calendar, and to view it, I had to sign in. If I didn’t already have a Google account, I would have to create one.. I’m not sure what the calendar is supposed to be for as it was empty. Public appearances? Seminars? Speaking engagements? Book tours? At any rate, I would highly encourage you to instead add a calendar of some sort to your own site rather than forcing your readers / potential clients to go through that. Too many clicks, too complicated a route, and you’ve lost readers. It’s got to be simple and direct.

Oh, no. The About Me page. It needs another round of edits – punctuation, mainly, but also for extraneous words. And I’m sad that you didn’t list Sri Lanka as one of the places you’d like to visit.

The Summary

Yep, I pointed out a lot more things I don’t like than I did like. I’m anal. Also called nitpicky. Consider it an OCD? Did I mention I was an accountant in my previous life? Did I mention I was a very very good accountant in my previous life?

Overall, I do like the design. It’s clean without a lot of extraneous unnecessary bells and whistles and it looks nice, but yes, it does need some work.

ETA: The comments form has a problem. The name field is larger than the other field. When I enter my name into that field, it doesn’t even show up. That field is also not lined up with the others – the look is ruined.

As well, with the changes you’ve made, Rebecca, there’s now a bunch of debug code showing up under the announcements section in the first sidebar.