The Weblog Review

Cold Climate Gardening is obviously a blog devoted to growing things in colder climates. It’s a collaborative blog which is only a few months old. I’m a gardener from a fairly cold climate [one hardness zone away from Cold Climate Gardening’s focus], so I can relate and I think this is such a great idea.

The bloggers who post to Cold Climate Gardening have a really good synergy. Their posts all sort of piggyback on each others, and, for those who understand the poetry of gardening, the writing is excellent. There’s discussion of how to plant certain flowers and issues of interest to gardeners, and book reviews.

The design of Cold Climate Gardening is very simple, but it really fits the blog. The greens are excellent and it’s very easy to read. My only complaint is the navigation. Archives only go back to November, but I found older archives by accident. There are no links between the old location and the new location of this blog.

Cold Climate Gardening has a great list of links to gardening information. In addition, readers can sign up to receive updates to the site. Contributors to the site are listed, but there’s no information about the contributors. I’d love to see a little information on each contributor – where they live, what kind of gardening they’re interested in, etc.

Aside from the navigational issues, the only real problem I could find is that the older archives show some broken image links.

Overall, Cold Climate Gardening is a good blog. I plan to become a regular reader. Because this is a blog with such a focused interest, I doubt it will appeal to a wide range of people, however.
Cold Climate Gardening

I’m always a little disappointed when I arrive at a blog to be greeted by a template I’ve seen on dozens of sites. Thoughts Gone Astray has one of two or three standard Blogspot templates that I see constantly. I never expect much on a common template site, because I suspect that if the blogger can’t be bothered to find a new template from one of the hundreds of blog template sites out there, the blog content won’t be that interesting.

Jesse isn’t a bad writer. He’s thoughtful and makes a real effort to flesh out most of his entries. Some entries start with a quotation, which I really like. It’s different from most of what I see in blogs, and I wish he’d begin every entry that way. Most of Jesse’s entries read like a personal and private journal instead of a blog meant for public consumption. He’s really tied into religion, so if you share that interest Thoughts Gone Astray might be a blog of interest.

I’ve already complained about the template, so I won’t say anything more about it. Navigation is kind of clunky – it’s not streamlined, and entries are archived by week only until September. Entries from November to the present are all on the main blog page. There’s no About Me type of page, or commenting capability or a guestbook. There is a link to email Jesse. Older entries reflect a different colored version of the same template. I recommend making the entire blog one template.

I doubt I would become a regular reader of Thoughts Gone Astray. It’s isn’t that it’s a bad blog – I just don’t know Jesse and reading about his day to day wouldn’t keep me interested.
Thoughts Gone Astray

Because of a TWR rule that states: “Any site that does not have either a public link to the archives or is a new site (created in the last month) can score no higher than a 2.0 in the rating. “, I have no choice but to treat 2.0 marks as 5.0 marks, since I really could not find any links to archived entries. So Disarm gets 1.0, which would be 2.5 under normal conditions.

(Text located on the main page of TWR:

Submitting your site

Please do not submit your site if you do not have the following

-A link to your archives that is available to the public


-At least a full 6-8 weeks worth of content to review Without either of these things, it makes it very difficult to review the site and will result in a lower rating. If you feel the need to have your site reviewed with out either of these things we cannot give a favorable review.)

Perhaps due to her host, who has basically the same layout with a different color theme for his blog, Cloe has a design that leaves the most part of the page empty, while her entries are squeezed into a not-so-wide strip on the left. The color scheme consists of purple words on a purple background, while the font is smaller-than-10 tiny. Anything that makes readers lean forward to squint is irritating.

From the little content that I can judge on, Cloe appears to be your normal early-teen young blogger that blogs more about songs, tv programs, movies, fashion and books than his or her personal life. The reader knows virtually nothing about the blogger. There are no introductions, no links – just around one month’s worth of blog entries. I can only say that to the average reader more than fifteen-years-old, Disarm comes across as a childish blog of little notable content. If you are a teenager, however, Disarm offers light-hearted, short entries, with occasional jabs at certain books/music/tv programs/movies, written with delightful sarcasm.

This is a teenager’s blog, and in all fairness should be judged as a teenager’s blog. As far as teen blogs go, Disarm isn’t bad, but there isn’t anything that stands out either. With the addition of some info on Cloe, a few links and, most importantly, archives, Disarm will fare better.

Disarm

Wow. I instantly liked the layout at this site. It loaded quickly, it was simple, and I didn’t go cross-eyed trying to make heads or tails of everything. It was easy to navigate, and very clean looking.

Jorge’s got everything here that makes a complete site.

I wandered over to the “about me” section of the site first to see if I could get a small glimpse of who I’d be reading about. While there, I found pictures, a brief synopsis of what his intent is with the weblog, and a nice timeline that fills in a few random details about the author. Very neat part of the site!



Other bonuses at this site: a “buy me sh*t” list, complete with pictures and links to things on Jorge’s Christmas list, an MP3 of Jorge’s choice that you can download, and a very well put together photo section of the site complete with tons of pictures of everything and in every format imaginable.



Oh yeah. The weblog! How could I forget? Since March of 2001, Jorge’s been entertaining his readers with a variety of writing styles. Sometimes, you’ll find some type of free verse or random song lyric. And even just a couple of hours later, Jorge will post a rant about current events or fill us all in on what he’s up to at any given moment in time.

Jorge writes very well. His writing is in a style that gives off the feeling you’re in the middle of a true conversation with him. You don’t feel intimidated or left wondering what or who he might be talking about, but instead you feel like you’re really getting to know someone. And with Jorge, you can’t help but like him.

I’m adding this one to my list of daily weblogs I visit, and would highly suggest doing the same to anyone who’s interested in reading about the life this guy, who really knows how to keep someone coming back to read more about his own life.

Almost There

Well, a-loooo-ha! Pessimistic Satisfaction certainly has an upbeat and floral design going on. From the name of the blog I thought I’d be greeted by something dark and gloomy. There’s something vaguely jarring about the color scheme that put me off, and I thought I was in for some boring reading.

Melinda, the writer, is a 17 year old from Australia. It appears that this blog is not even a whole month old, so there really weren’t very many entries to read. Melinda has a nice flow to her writing, and makes even the minutiae of her life seem interesting. I caught a few spelling and grammar mistakes, but nothing major. I do wish Melinda would flesh out some her thoughts – occasionally she hits on something interesting but doesn’t really say much about it.

There is an exhaustive biography section – anything you ever wanted to know about Melinda can be found here. In Pessimistic Satisfaction’s section called “Bits and Pieces,” Melinda links to surveys, her own movie and book reviews, and miscellaneous other things. The blog also has the typical things: guestbook, tagboard, guestmap, and calendar.

I’m not crazy about the design. The background color and the graphics don’t really match very well, and it was bugging out my eyes. Each element separately is fine, but together it’s not good at all. It is unnecessary to have scroll bars all over the place, and really breaks up the screen in an unflattering way. Navigation is a bit confusing – the reader must work to find his/her way around the site. I was unable to locate a link back to the blog section from other sections in the blog, and the link to the archives is hard to find. I recommend making navigation more self-apparent and streamlined. I also recommend coordinating your entire site to match the main page.

I might stop back in a few months to give Pessimistic Satisfaction another read when there are more entries to read. I like Melinda’s writing style, and I think if she finds a design that is more easily navigable her blog could be really wonderful.
Pessimistic Satisfaction