As a UK citizen I was a little dubious about attempting to review a weblog which called itself “The Patriot Blog”, it seems to me that such a title is aiming for a purely US centric audience. – and obviously being neither an American or patriotic in my own land I believed I was not the right person to review to this site. That said, I did, and these are my observations. On arrival at the site the reader is presented with a very plain simple two column layout – there is nothing remarkable here on first site, yet nothing offensive in terms of design or color scheme. I believe the site had been designed with a 800 x 600 screen resolution in mind because there was a minor problem with layout which I will touch on later.
There was no clearly defined ‘site bio’, although I do suppose to a certain extent that the subject matter is intrinsically linked to the blog name – that said it is always nice to have a little background information on the author, or in this case authors because as I delve deeper into the archives I discover there are more than one. There are a few interesting links at the very top of the index page – quotes from people’s comments on the Patriot Blog, links to the archive page, and numerous others of potential interest to the reader.
The blog, or so it seems by the archive page has only been in existence since the beginning of January, and that is finally where I find my introduction to both the site and it’s authors.
“The words of this website will be written by three of the most esteemed gentlemen around. The daily posters will be yours truly, Grant Anderson and the more blunt of the three of us, Mr. Mills [Ymmit]. We will be harsh on those who dont meet the “Patriot Blog” standards! Every week we will be joined by James P. Hohmann for the week in review on FRIDAYS… “
With that in mind I continued reading. The content of this site is largely made up of rants about various subjects – be it depth of patriotism or vegetarians. The entries vary tremendously in quality, and are strong on opinion but not necessarily objectivity. So, yes, we have another opinion blog full of upfront viewpoints which take no prisoners – which is fair enough, there are bound to be some readers out there who will find this mode of writing entertaining – possibly just Americans from a similar chain of thought as themselves. It did little for me, but then the site isn’t intended to appeal to an English vegetarian now is it? 😉
The design as I said is plain and unlike some of it’s content not particularly offensive. The small problem I mentioned earlier with regards to layout was this – although the site frame itself seems to adapt to browser size, the left hand column seems fixed in size. Now this isn’t necessarily a problem, but aesthetically it leaves a large gap on larger screen resolutions making the text appear very fixed to the left hand side of the column. The site is easy enough to navigate, although some method of moving from one individual entry to the next would really benefit a reader like myself – moving through the month archives is simple enough. Again I picked up on a problem here, albeit it a fairly minor one – the right hand calendar menu continues putting a link to previous months even when no entries are present.
The site overall is as I had initially expected – tailored towards an entirely American audience who share a similar chain of thought to themselves. Entries vary tremendously in quality, and as yet there isn’t a great deal to read, but content to date is mostly ‘opinion’ and rants. Standing aside from my personal preferences I see this blog having limited appeal – certainly to Americans, probably to those who share a similar chain of thought. That said, even a blog whose opinion I don’t share can hold appeal, but this failed to grasp my attention for too long. An adequate contribution to the world of the web.Patriot Blog