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Non Skweeter a person blog and personal blog from someone called Amanda, and unlike many blogs this blog does not seem to have one focus around trying to make the blog creator money, but instead a light hearted personal blog that is going to give you a few laughs. While it does not have a niche is certainly is a nice read.

The design is a basic WordPress one, however the title image is custom and does look great, the font used on the title image adds to the idea of the blog being a big light hearted, the colors used in the blog reflect a good clean look and is very easy on the eyes. We tested the design in Firefox, IE and Opera and we could fine no issues with any of the browsers, it is clear that the design has been picked well. The menu is to the right and shows the basic information such as recent posts, archives and links. The number of recent posts is just perfect and does not expand the menu to much when it does not need to. The links section can fix more links without looking like there is to much, so it is just the problem of finding someone to link exchange that the blog owner is going to have to deal with. There is no section for category, which for this blog suits as the type of posts are pretty much the same, as in being very general and no two are alike, and as such there would be a need for a very large amount of category’s. The style has a easy search bar on the top of the bar and it both looks great and works great, this really saves time if you want to look for a certain post.

The content is as you would expect on a blog of this type, the posts are not long but most of them did make us laugh. There is a section of “Shiny Vintage Bull****.” which is old adverts with a witty remark made by the blog owner, I laughed at every single one of them and the blog owner really deserves a good pat on the back. Some of the posts may not interest everyone however if you navigate your way around the site you are sure to laugh. However this site is not trying to just be funny, some posts are interesting with a slight comical twist to them. Alot of the posts are based around a picture of some kind, which should keep those who are into visual aspects happy. Some posts such as Share Because I Care could do with a image.

All together I feel this is a funny blog without a commercial aspect to it at the moment. The blog poster is a funny person and the posts reflect this. Overall I rate this blog a very high 4. It would of got 5 if the posts where longer and image file size was smaller.

Bridlepath is a blog about horses in a very general context. The main focus on the blog is to provide videos from the popular website Youtube.com, pictures from all around the internet. Along with the pictures and videos the blog also provides some in depth news and comments about horse related news.

The design is a edited version of a basic wordpress theme, however the colors go well together and the whole site blends well. The header image is somewhat generic and can draw the user away by in essence showing the site not to have to much unique content, however once the user looks past the header they will be pleased with the content. The main design was broken when I looked in IE, the menu that provides links to other areas of the blogs was stuck down near the bottom of the page, I suspect this to be due to the size of some of the images used in the blog, and in turn some users may get confused by the lack of menu where they would normally look. However the menu is clean and provides many links to useful resources, however the blog does also contain some rather excessive amount of links to both Blogging tools and other horse blogs, with around 100 outbound links on the main menu some users may think that the blog owner almost wants them to leave there blog and go somewhere else. The menu contains the ‘top posts’, there is no way of finding out how ‘top posts’ is defined, however one would guess it is the most read posts, and in which this is a very handy tool to interest the user and get them to the content that others liked, world example at the time of writing this post the top post is a topic about the world’s smallest horse. I do somewhat feel that the blogger has tried to stick to much into one blog, when looking over at the Categories the visitor sees the normal horse related topics such as books, history and more, however they also see rather random categories such as Paranormal, Spookies!. Despite these still relating to horses they are rather oddly placed in a site that one could see as being a good resource. I feel like categories of such content could work well own there own blog, however do not work as well if blended with other blog posts.

The content is dry and in fact I can not see much unique content, which is a great shame being how there is a lack of blogs related to horses. The large amount of youtube videos make them seem more like a vlog than a blog, and I feel that the area of horses has a target group of people who like to read and gather more information rather than sit and watch a video. There should be a mix, so for every video there should also be written content to relate to the video, if only a small paragraph. It is for the lack of content and the menu issues that I am giving this site only a 2

Blogger Tips and Tricks is a website focused on the area of providing tips and tricks for users of the popular blogging service Blogger.com, however many of the posts can be aimed at both Blogger.com users as well as many other blog providers.

The design of the site is a simple blogger design without to much customization, however this suits in essence due to the site being about Blogger, it gives a sense to the visitor that they can quickly tell the blog may be of interest to them. However the general feel of the website is that it cluttered, and in essence it could do with less confusion with the menus and more focus on the content, however this is always a issue when the website owner is trying to earn themselves some money, it is a fine balance and with some tweaking this blog can get to the thin blue line. The Google adsense adverts are located on the left of the site, and somewhat blended into the design using the colors that the blog uses for links and background color, this could be due to the web blog owner wanting people to see the adverts as content, under the Google adverts is Amazon ones, however they suit the layout fine and the visitor can quickly tell that they are in fact adverts. However these adverts are not to much of a bug and after the visitor first visits they can quickly get used to the style of having adverts on the left menu. On the right menu is the normal blogger type links, or at least that what I thought until I clicked one. They are very well blended links that easily look like site content links, however once again after your first visit you quickly can get used to the advert position. Also on the right menu is recent posts, which is pretty much standard with all blogger blogs, this provides a easy way for the user to be quickly view past posts if he enjoyed the current ones. Nothing else is different about the right menu than with any other blogger blog. The main content area is well designed into the template, splitting up each post to make it easy on the eye and using bold colors that allow for the user to quickly scan the title text to see if the post will interest them. One thing however that does look out of place is the border around “NEWER POST HOME OLDER POST”, this looks almost as if it has been grabbed from elsewhere and placed onto the blog. Except for the small advert blending faults the design suits this web blog very well and is very easy on the eyes.

However in the eyes of many the design is only a small aspect of how good a website is, after all Bill Gates can be quoted to say “Content is King”, and this is very much true in web blogs. First I signed up to a blogger account to see if I could follow any of the tips provided without getting confused, and indeed I did find the tips very easy to follow and I did not get confused. The posts are direct to the point and in that essence are quick to read which means you can quickly gather the information that you want. Most of the posts are very visual with screenshots and other images. A example of this can be found on a post about Blogger tricks in which the blog post uses 2 screenshots to show the user in simple terms what the blog post is about. It is in this visual experience that the user gets drawn into reading the rest of the post, and more posts around the website. Each post links to other sources so that you can research more information about the blog in question. The posts are interesting to anyone who owns a blog account, and even I who don’t normally use a blogger site quickly worked out how to do the listed things.

In summery the site is a very useful blog for another who wish’s to get that little bit more out of there blogger website, and minus a few problems with the advert the design is easy on the eyes. I would rate this site a high 3, it would of got higher if it was not for the adverts