I had no clue what to expect going into this site since the name is so simple, and the category given was Entertainment. Maybe it would be about movies, tv, music, partying, who knows. So let’s find out.
The page loads and it has a standard 3 column layout. Red left and right columns make up the navigation and other parts of the site, and a big white column in the center for the blog itself. At the top of the white column is a logo of sorts which doesn’t help explain the site at all as it is just a blue face with red hair in the middle of brendoman.com. But let’s have a look around and see what we can find out.
Immediately my eyes were drawn to the About Us page. This let me in on the fact that it was a group blog. This could be a good thing or it could be a bad thing. I am still not sure. So the about us page is just a photo of all the group members. Obviously they know each other outside of the blog which is cool. This can make for some interesting interaction between them on the blog itself.
So onto the blog itself: Yes it is a group blog. And guess what it is about? Movies, music, tv, and stuff they either did or plan on doing. Most of the site is devoted to movies and entertainment which is good to an extent. The problem I had with this is that they all seem to talk about the same thing over and over and over again. For instance, in the month of October there are 5 different posts for the movie Kill Bill. That seems like an awful lot. I am not even going to start on the number of posts about the number of LOTR posts.
Thankfully it isn’t just about movies. There are posts about tv shows, music, video games, daily life as I said. These posts serve as a distraction from the movies almost. This is very similar to that small subplot that just keeps popping up every now and then in a movie. It keeps the site from going down the drain quickly.
My biggest gripe is with the archives. The only page that has an original design is the front page. Every other page has the standard movabletype template. This is annoying. The template makes it very hard to read the archives as there is barely any formatting, and the difference between a headline and tagline and the body of a post are almost interchangeable. This needs to be fixed. Even if they just tweak the layout for the archive so that it is easier to read, that would be a good thing.
The group aspect of the weblog doesn’t really play into the site too much. There isn’t very much interaction between the people who post, which is probably due to the fact that they all know each other outside of the weblog. They all are obviously into the same things because without the taglines I wouldn’t really be able to tell you who posted what.
This site has a lot going for it, but unfortunately a lot needs to be worked on. I enjoyed my time here, but as I said, I would prefer if the design carried over to the archives, and I wish it would be possible to tell who posted what. An expanded about page would be really good to have too, but is not needed. So if you want to know about movies, music, and other entertainment stuff, this is worth the surf.
brendoman