No Post Today
Today I have decided not to post anything in favor of spending the time on customizing this blog a little bit more and installing some more plugins. I may post about what I have done later on today but most likely I will just add it and maybe make a quick mention of it tomorrow.
Anyway I will be back to scrutinizing all things blog related tomorrow and I hope you enjoy all the changes I make here on Blog Scrutiny.
A Blog Scrutinized - jon lee dot see eh
Web Development Blog jon lee dot see eh is an interesting blog where Jon Lee, who has run websites since he was 12, writes about web development.
lets get onto a list of things I like and a list of things I dislike.
Likes:
- The blogs has the Do Follow plugin installed which means when you comment on the blog it is counted towards the link count to your blog when Google crawls jonlee.ca.
- Seems to have a regular posting schedule which, from what I can tell, is one post per day.
- Great quality posts including a great post about how everyone can work for Google.
- Top commentators plugin, which means that if you are one of the top commentators you can get a link to your blog or webpage increasing page rank.
- The blog is available in several languages.
Now on to dislikes:
- For a web development blog I would think that there were more posts about web development not things like MSN censoring IM’s or a review of a pair of headphones.
- I hate the theme for this blog it is too skinny and there are too many widgets in the sidebar.
- Too much self promoting why does there have to be a link to his RSS feed at the end of every post when there is already a link to it in the sidebar, slighty redundant I do believe.
I guess I only have 3 things I don’t like about this blog which is unusual because usually I can come up with a lot more. This time I can’t.
Two themes I hate and one I love
When starting a blog the first thing you have to do is get yourself a host then install Wordpress. But after that you find yourself a theme. I have to let you all in on a little fact that I just made up, 95% of all blog themes that have been made look like crap. Now I’m not saying that these two themes that I hate look like crap, I’m just saying that I hate them (obviously a personal opinion and if you disagree let me know in the comments, this is a conversation).
First theme I hate - Brownie [live demo]
First of all, the name “Brownie” tells you absolutely nothing about what the theme looks like or is. The theme basically look like a modified version of the default theme. It has two columns (already not to fond of it) and features a beautiful orange, brown, green, and white color scheme (horrific).
The only good things about the theme is that you can easily change the header image and it is widgitized, other then that the only reason I can think of for using this theme is if you are making a blog for your business and it uses the same colors as this theme (but probably your best bet would be to change your businesses colors).
Second theme I hate - Midnight [live demo]
I am only going to make one point about this theme. Unless you are creating a blog about werewolves or witches you should look elsewhere.
Third theme, the one I love - ColdBlue [no live demo yet]
I really love this theme because I feel that it is very simple, very elegant. Simple header and footer along with what seems to be a extremely nice width (I hate super skiny blogs). But to be honest I can’t really explain this blog any better then the creator did:
“Here it is; ColdBlue, the theme I mentioned a couple of days ago (then unnamed) is now ready and available for public use.”
I do want to mention that I do know that my other blog CyberSurge does have a skinnier theme then I would like but I have been working on customizing a new theme for it for the past few days that might even show up as soon as this weekend.
Why are bloggers putting adsense inside posts?
Why in the world are bloggers putting Adsense ads INSIDE OF THEIR POSTS? Alright guys I understand that they make you a lot of money because they are so close to the content but when go to a post and I can’t see ANY OF THE CONTENT ABOVE THE FOLD, we have an issue. Sometimes it is so bad I can’t even tell where the content starts and the ads end. I have ads on other sites and I keep the ads above the content or below the content not between the title of the post and the actual post itself, I mean above the title.
I will admit however that sometimes in certain formatting it is ok and it doesn’t really bother me. Such as on Ryan Shamus Dot Com where the ad is positioned on the right (not where the eye begins to look for the content) and has some distance around the ad to differentiate itself from the post.
But if you want to see something annoying look at a post page on CyberNetNews.com where there is a large ad at the top of the post in between the actual post content and the title, just annoying.
Bloggers, don’t make the ads annoying and ugly, if you need the revenue from ads at least TRY to make them look like they fit neatly into the blogs theme.
Single Line of HTML Crashes IE6
This isn’t exactly blog related but has to do with web designing in general. A Japanese blogger has found a single line of code that crashes Internet Explorer 6. His name is Hamachiya2 and I think it is amazing when someone finds a bug in IE6 because it is just one more reason for people not to use it. First of all I don’t know why anyone in the entire world would be using IE6, IE7 is out and it is 5 bajillion times better then IE6. Not only that but there are so many alternatives that quite frankly are better then IE. Firefox is my personal favorite but Opera is great as well.
So here is the code:
<style>*{position:relative}</style><table<input></table>
Pretty silly that something that seems so simple could crash the current most popular browser. And by silly I mean completely ridiculous.
[via I'm Mike]