Category: Uncategorized

The design of This Full House is weak simply because the left and right sidebars are so prominent that I found it difficult to keep my focus on the actual content. The color scheme, fonts, and font size all seemed a little archaic, and the fonts were generally too large, giving the blog a poor aesthetic quality. Within a few lines of reading, I figured out that the author is a mother and wife and that most of her content is related, if sometimes loosely, to these two topics.

I think you’ll have to be a parent, or at least female, to really appreciate the authors insights and talent. The posts are well-written, but they often relate the mundane aspects of her everyday life, from her dislike of brown rice to nighttime skinny-dipping with her husband. The writing itself is clear and sometimes clever as well. It’s written in an off-the-cuff manner, as if the author is just recording a conversation with a close friend, but the content of the posts is somewhat generic, tired out. It seemed to be the same old parental blog – an outlet for expressing the frustrations and joys of modern family life. However, the author is prolific enough that the reader gets an intimately voyeuristic look into her life and the lives of those in her family.

The layout needs to be tweaked a bit to bring a hierarchy to the content. The sidebars and the main entry column are almost battling for the readers’ attention. Also, the headers above her different groups of links are ambiguous – ‘enjoyed with a strong cup of coffee…’, ‘tossed with a nice crispy salad…,’ and so on. This might just be a pet peeve of mine, but I like to know why the author includes certain links on his or her page and cute ambiguity tells me nothing. The ‘about’ page is a list of 101 things about her. I read about 50 and the items did help describe the author, but I didn’t want to have to read 101 sentences just to find out a little information about her. Another pet peeve: a long list that doesn’t tell me much about you instead of a brief ‘about’ paragraph from which I can decide whether or not we share the same interests. Save the list for a post. Also, the links to The Philosophica Mother, an outside site, didn’t work.

I think you’ll like this site if you’re a parent (the author does get a bit racy at times to spice things up) and the author is a good writer, but I felt the content to be generic and it seemed like a lot of effort went into making the blog cute rather than clever. The rating of 2.5 could get bumped up to 3.5 with a design that focuses the reader on the content better.This Full House

This is a nice looking weblog with some celebrity gossip in it. The archives don’t work but are handy if you want to see what their template HTML looks like. On the other hand, the weblog has only been going three weeks anyway, so all the archives fit on to the main page.

The Blog’s URL is a subdomain of something to do with Ebay. It seemed entirely unrelated to the blog so I didn’t pursue the main site very much, but my guess is, there’s money to be made for the site owners somewhere along the line.

The site looks nice – it is black which I thought was quite sleek, clutter free and contains celebrity pictures throughout. The purple and blue text in the sidebar looks pretty as well. If I am going to have to read celebrity gossip, I guess a glare free site like this is as good a place as any.

I have no idea what the quality of the celebrity gossip is like because it is not something I am interested in. It seemed ok for the first three entries, then after that I got bored and just scanned the rest. Finding out that Britney Spears may have had zits wasn’t exactly the most meaningful piece of information I have acquired today. I currently have a zit on my chin at the moment and does anyone care? I don’t think so. Apparently the zits of a half-assed singer in America are more important than those of a humble weblog reviewer, which hardly seems fair.

Most of the information was relating to Hollywood stars, with a smattering of American sports stars and the occasional music or TV celebrity. To be honest, not being a fan of main stream culture (or living in America), I didn’t even know who half the celebrities were, let alone worry about whether they had been kissing someone else. The funniest entry was the first one. It lambastes Whoopi Goldberg for making sexual innuendos using President Bush’s name. Ok, you don’t have to be Einstein to make “Bush” a sexual reference, but apparently this shouldn’t be done because “This is the highest office in our land and the leader of the free world and no matter what you are to show it respect.” I guess insightful political commentary isn’t their strong point.

I guess if you like celebrity gossip, you could go out and by “Heat” magazine and be done with it (if you live in the UK that is – I am sure there are many equivalents in the US). I guess this site may have something extra to offer above and beyond the tabloid gossip columns, but I am rather doubtful in its present form.Scandal Snoops

Elisla’s Place is a pretty nice place to go visit really. Nothing really out of the ordinary but a positive place overall.

When I first entered the site, I noticed another Modblog (my second reviewed this week) and found it to be pretty similar to the first- photoblog, poll, chat console and rudimentary “About Me” page were all there. I know everyone has to start blogging somewhere and some people don’t want much hassle with it all, but I am always enthusiastic when people have explored the more creative aspects of how a blog can look. Ok, this isn’t exactly an offensive looking blog, and it has a nice titlebar, but it is not exactly cutting edge in terms of layout and I always think colours are good thing in a lot of ways. I personally don’t like this Modblog system at all really- it seems pretty clunky and there are better ones out there, but hey, I can’t take too many marks off for that.

I moved quickly on to the content and the blog has only been going a month or two so the archives didn’t take too long to get through and most of the entries are fairly short. There is a good mix of content though – some family (and other) photos, personal entries and discussions of wider issues. One thing which really shines in this blog is the fact that the personality of the author really comes across and all the entries are positive and fun to read. The author has clearly been through some bad times too, but she does not focus on these in the way some bloggers do (a point well made in this post here).

Not too much else to say about this blog really. As I said at the beginning, it’s ok. Nothing great, but it’s pleasant enough really and much like her husbands blog, little of any controversy to be found here. Elisla’s Place

Upon entering this blog, the first thing I saw at the very top of the page, was a row of baby photo’s,(including 2 of before the baby was born).

At that time, my first impression was that this blog may be of real interest, especially in a female perspective.

I looked in the top right hand corner and there was a brief description of what the blog was mainly about. It said:
… a blog about a journey through pregnancy, birth and life with a baby…

It’s always nice to see a description of some kind about the blogs contents. It gives readers a better perspective on things.

Erin (the author) is a 27 year old “stay at home wife and mother”, and also an ex writer for an advertising agency. At the moment she is loving every minute of staying at home caring for her baby. Her blog is devoted basically on her baby (Benjamin). She writes about his feeding periods, his sleeping habits etc. Being a mom myself, reading her entries brought a smile to my face . One of the reasons being that it brought back some fond memories of my own.

Erin started her blog in January 2003. Practically every post (except for maybe 1 or 2), is focused entirely on Benjamin. Erin has links as well posted on several of her entries which contain sites on parenting . Very helpful sites to new moms especially.

Erin has links on her entries as well, where you can actually hear Benjamin making baby sounds.

On the right hand side , Erin has several links arranging from Benjamin’s ultrasound photos, Erin’s pregnancy pics and even little home movies of Benjamin, (which were very cute indeed) There are also several adorable photos of Benjamin located throughout the blog.

Anyone can see that Benjamin is Erin’s pride and joy. Her entries are very well written and very easy to read. However, I wasn’t too fond of the colors on the page. But since the blog was about a baby, the colors suited it quite well. This would be a great site for an expectant mother to visit. It would give her a few insights on parenthood. No offense to the male population, but it would be good for them to visit as well. One of the reasons being that maybe they would get more of a perspective and insight on the female and childbirth.

There was a problem I had with the links on the right hand side. Every time I clicked on one, it wouldn’t let me go back to the previous page. It continued to knock me off of the blog completely.

In conclusion, I do recommend giving this blog a visit. It is quite interesting and informative. As I already stated, the links kept knocking me off the site. Well now that Erin knows about that problem, I am sure she will have it fixed in the near future.Tale of a Baby Human

Princess Joanna’s Kingdom opens to a pleasant blue and white page with nice readable fonts and a clean and not too cluttered sidebar. I did not find the about me page she said she was working on, and perhaps I did my review while she was updating it. In any case, it was not present.

Joanna has been here since March 2003. I read samples from each of the archived months and found entries talking about her job, what mood she was in, and what her plans were for the weekend. While the writing style is understandable and clear, the subject matter is rather mundane and not that interesting. Now I know that there are days in every writer’s life that we find ourselves at a loss for something meaningful to say. But at some point, at least in this blogger’s opinion, one has to show some deep emotion or reveal one’s passion for some aspect of life in order for the writing to be engaging.

A couple of constructive suggestions for improvement would be to step outside the immediate things in your life, and write a bit more about the wider world. And tell us what you are passionate about, the positive or the negative. Don’t let your writing be ordinary. Just writing down the facts of the day, with a side of whine does not make for interesting reading in the long run.

At this point, the target audience for this blog would be people personally aquatinted with the author. If you want to reach a larger audience, tell us what makes you tick. Or let us see your unique view of the world. That would make me want to come back and visit again sometime.

Princess Joanna’s Kingdom