Ever see something that looked amazing and perfect and some else decided to add their bit to it, and then someone else, and some more people, and by the time it is over, you can barely see what was originally there that moved you so much? That is how I felt about Blogging Poet.
Billy the Blogging Poet ™, yes that is trademarked, is just what it sounds like. A blog about Billy’s poems. This is a great premise for a blog as not too many people do this. Before I dive into the blog itself, a little more on Billy. He is a published author 3 times over, trademarked the name Poet Laureate of North America in addition to Billy the Blogging Poet, was a trucker for 28 and created a magazine. Wow that is a long list of accomplishments.
Now onto the blog itself. Please keep in mind I am speaking only of the “blog part” right now. The blog is amazing. Poems that are well written, posts that actually entertained me, short stories about his life, and guest bloggers who all make the cut fill this site up. Current postings are part of his 30 days of Christmas because “12 days of Christmas ain’t squat”. This is enjoyable.
Now onto everything else that is this site. When it first loaded I was taken aback by the bright purple background, dark purple text, yellow highlights, his picture, his 2 columns of other links, and well all I could say is wow. The site is over flowing with distractions. The only thing it was missing from a late 90’s website was the animated gifs. The sidebars consist of links to other things he has done, other bloggers, donate to his site, buy his books, buy t-shirts, donate by mail, buy this, and I think you get the point.
While looking for the links to the archives, I started counting the number of external sites Billy links to. I got tired at 70 so I threw it into a script to count. There are 390+ external links! Oh yeah I did find the archives. They were listed almost at the bottom of the page. Cause below the archive list, guess what I found? If you guessed more links and sponsors you are right. This made it very hard to actually read the site as the archives aren’t even marked as “Archives”. Instead I just get links in the format of 2004.12.01. Thankfully I have been blogging long enough to know that these were the archives.
I really hate to have to score this site below average as the blog part itself is amazing and I was very entertained by it. If the site was just the blog I would have score it much higher, but the fact that there are so many distractions and links to buy stuff and to donate just took away from my experience. I understand the need to promote your own work and to try to make a living off one’s website(s), but this was over kill. I hope that Billy will cut back on all the clutter and focus on what he does best; blogging.BloggingPoet.com