the air

John Chow has hit it big with his offer to have other bloggers review his blog. In exchange for their reviews, he will post a link to their review, possibly increasing the traffic to their site. If you think about it, it is a great way to gain some much needed exposure if your blog is new or struggling to find readers. The only requirement is that you simply have to have 200 words, have a link to John’s blog and to the instructions. Why? That way you are fully aware of the rules and keep John’s evil empire growing. Anyways, Zaib Kaleem used my contact form earlier and asked me to review his blog. I’m flattered he thought of me and I want to thank him by fulfilling his request.

The only requirements he set forth are:

• minimum of 125 words
• link to his blog
• link to the original post about the review offer
• send him a note using his contact form
• only blogs deemed safe for work (SFW)

I’m pleased to say that I can easily meet all of his requirements. So let’s get started.

First Impressions

At first glance, it is apparent that Mr. Kaleem is using the popular Misty theme for WordPress. Although there is nothing wrong with the theme, I feel that by keeping the default colors, it reduces the personalization aspect of a blog’s philosophy. I find the computer generated image of the B-2 stealth fighter a real eye grabber. I guess that has to do mostly with my interest with the aircraft. I also noticed that this blog is very new and not even a month old. In addition, I noticed that there is at least one image per post on the front page. That is actually great because it creates a colorful aura around the blog and the contents it hosts. Right off the bat, I dislike the sidebar component dealing with popular tags:

Although the intent is to show what the most popular tags being applied are, I think it distracts from the actual content too much. If it were located towards bottom of the sidebar it would appear normal and more fluid.

Content

I like the fact that the blog makes great use of images in each post. It really helps the reader develop a mental connection between the text and the actual product/service. Grammatically, the posts seem to be written quite well. This is one of the most important things I look for since I read a number of blogs that have poor grammar and poor speeling (pun intended). I also like the fact that at the end of each post is a row of icons where you can either add to your del.icio.us bookmarks or submit to digg. This is a handy feature should Mr. Kaleem ever write an interesting or noteworthy article.

Most of the posts seem to relate to either technology or wireless things. That is no surprise since Mr. Kaleem is a professional in the field of wireless devices and has strong experience in the industry. He does a decent job of acclimating his readers to his history, but I wish that he would have a picture of himself on there as well. Again, his use of images in his post is extensive and something I highly recommend for every blogger out there. I know I don’t use too many images in my post, but that is an area I am trying to improve on.

Areas to Improve

I think the most important thing to do here is to really go and personalize the blog. Although the Misty theme colors are acceptable, I find the original theme color to be disdainful and really tiring. Besides, I think this is a great opportunity for Mr. Kaleem to integrate some new colors and layout designs to really showcase his personality. I feel that blogs are an extension of our mind and personality and it should be reflected as such. Mr. Kaleem draws his inspirations from John Chow, but I feel that Mr. Kaleem’s website does not offer “personality”, unlike John Chow’s. In addition, I think he should edit the footer so that it looks more fluid. In addition, what is that funky symbol in the middle of the footer doing?

If I were Mr. Kaleem, I would also add buttons to advertise how users can add my blog to Technorati and maybe a more prominent RSS button so that users can find it much easier. Although there are RSS feed buttons near the upper left corner, one thing I find useful is to have prominent RSS buttons since users are more likely to click on it. In addition, using feedburner is not a bad idea either since it can tell you some useful information. One last thing I would change is to get rid of the “Continue Reading” page breaks found in many of the posts. Although this forces the user to click and view the post page, I think it is essentially annoying because I’d rather just scroll on one page than click on “continue reading” links. Besides, the recent posts sidebox module already shows the most recent posts on your front page so if I want to jump to a page, it can be done easily.

Conclusions

I think Mr. Kaleem’s blog is on the right track. It needs a bit of work in the aesthetic department so that it can seem more personalized towards Mr. Kaleem rather than a generic blog. Since this is Mr. Kaleem’s blog, I don’t want to sound that he should implement the changes I mentioned. Rather, I think it would be great if he would take it under consideration. What makes blogs like John Chow’s work is the fact that much time has been spent to understand what readers are looking for. I’m not sure what plugins Mr. Kaleem is using, but I recommend he search my blog or John Chow’s blog to get an idea of some really great plugins. The reason why I say this is because it will really help if the sidebar stayed constant throughout the entire site. When you go to a post page, the “archives” module magically jumps to the top. This is due to the way the theme is coded by the original author. That is why I highly recommend the widgets plugin. Mr. Kaleem’s blog is definitely interesting and I am going to be watching how it evolves over the next few weeks. I encourage him to continue personalizing his blog and learn more about how to reach out to your readers more.

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