Bloggeries is going to review a humorous personal blog today, and the blog is called Blogstress. The blogger is affectionately known as Aunt Bloggie, among many other nicknames, and blogs out of Istanbul, Turkey when not living in Baltimore, Maryland. Besides working at his day job, you will find him blogging at Blogstress and playing bass for the Turkish Rock Band sensation called 45 Degrees. From first glance it appears that the blog is a question and answer blog, with questions being submitted by readers and answered by Aunt Bloggie. Questions range on everything from Shakespeare to blogging, and you can see this all for yourself through any of the recent bloggeries: Aunt Bloggie Versus Sententious Drivel, Aunt Bloggie Feels More Alive, Aunt Bloggie’s “Ask Aunt Bloggie†Contest Give Away, Aunt Bloggie Knows You Know She Knows, and Delete or Not Delete?
The blog is fairly new, in fact not quite a month old yet, and contains little blog meat. While this does make the blog seem a little scarce, it makes navigation somewhat simple. Bloggeries are left marginalized and are in black text on white background with headlines highlighted in grey, and links in bold black. There is a right navigation system containing the Archives Menu in pull down format, Blog Directory, Blogroll, Recent Posts Menu, and a Recent Comments Menu. Otherwise there is little contained in the blog, and bloggeries have small images of a woman working at her desk, theoretically to symbolize the image of Aunt Bloggie. Otherwise, the blog is primarily textual.
Overall the blog gets a 2.8/5 at this point, however the blog is so new that perhaps with some time and growth the blog will improve. The blog is containing very little blog meat and this is affecting its overall readability. Starting off, it is very difficult even to tell what the blog is about, and thus, what it has to offer its readers. Two components would assist readers in this, a Categories Menu and an About Page. The blog currently only offers one of those elements in the About page, but the about page itself needs some work. From the About page we learn more about the blogger himself, and less about what the blog has to offer its readership. As such, the readers may be left questioning what the purpose or overall function of the blog is. Most blog meat is present, but a Categories Menu would organize the blog more as well making the bloggeries more available to the readership in an organized format. The appearance of the blog needs just a little tweaking in terms of fonts that are used, and cleaning up the appearance of the bloggeries. Right now bloggeries are not consistent in terms of fonts used, with font sizes ranging such that some bloggeries are very difficult to read. Also, the activity for a new blog should be much more consistent, daily if possible, in order to attract traffic, and this blog is updating every few days to a week or more in between. The content however is very well written, but because of some of these issues, is perhaps being overlooked by its readers. Perhaps with some tweaks here and there and some growth with time, the quality content on this blog will begin to stand out on its own.
-Chrissie
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