Neutral colors, standard template. Hey, and no chimps. I guess there is some truth in advertising after all! No Chimps doesn’t reach out and grab a reader’s attention, but I must admit that my curiosity was piqued by the name of the blog.
Thomas, a student, dislikes Margaret Thatcher but declines to say why and has quite a collection of guitars. There are only a few dozen entries so far at No Chimps. Some of the entries are quite short and don’t say a lot; recently Thomas’ entries have gotten a little longer, a little more introspective. If Thomas continues to add thoughtful entries No Chimps will evolve into a good blog. As is, there are too many short entries to really hook me into becoming a regular reader. This is my personal preference, but cleaning up the occasional spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors would also really help with the flow of the reading. And, again personal preference, Thomas’ intermittent usage of capitalization is irksome.
The design really doesn’t do much for me, but it’s not hideous or anything. In fact, it is quite functional with fairly good navigation. As noted above, the whole design is just rather neutral. I suggest taking the quotation marks out from your page headers. I don’t really see the need to label the main page as “home” but maybe someone complained to Thomas about being confused. It would also be a little easier to navigate if the reader could get to the next entry or the previous entry from the current entry, instead of having to access all archived entries from the Archives page.
One of the most unique things about No Chimps is the section in the blog where the reader can download clips of Thomas’ songs. This is a really great feature – since Thomas doesn’t really have very many entries yet this may be the best reason to come to No Chimps. Thomas also includes the “Tombot” – a sort of Q&A about Thomas type of thing – and quizzes to test the reader’s knowledge of Thomas trivia. Both are really interesting elements. He also has a guestbook and an About Me page.
I might come back to catch up at No Chimps in a few months after Thomas has some time to write a little more.
NO Chimps