Appearance and Style - (Out of 20)
The page width is off for me. It's a bit more than slightly off. While we're in the header, I would also recommend that you fix this too -
it looks out of place and odd there when it's blocking off that bar. Maybe if you even just moved the search box down just a little bit so that it matches with that border line it would look better?
I like your favicon a lot. However, it really doesn't go with the theme? It's red when the rest of the websites theme seems to be black and white.
I think you should remove "|Recent Posts|
|About|
|Copyright|" from the footer. The recent posts should automatically be coming up on the homepage, you can add a link to the "About" page in the header navigation bar or in the widgets if you can make a place for it there (same with copyright). I think it looks kind of out of place and sloppy in that place at the bottom.
The forum doesn't match the blog...at all. This is supposed to be a
blog review, so I can't really go into much detail, but I think that websites should try to keep a consistency as far as the theme or even color scheme goes..and the whole forum is blue while the blog is black and white?
I think that you should add the amount of comments a each blog post has next to the day it was posted and who it was posted by (above the blog post itself, under the title of the blog post). If someone were to comment, and get a reply to that comment then they would have to click back to that post to see if there are any new comments. It would be much easier for them if they could just look at the amount of comments that the post has to see if there are anymore from the time that they posted. Also, if a post has a lot of comments, it could possibly make more users read the whole post, because they know that it's most likely a hot topic, interesting, or controversial.
(Scored 15/20)
Blog Layout and Categorization - (Out of 20)
I really like the layout of the blog. I think that it looks neat and organized -- a bit clustered near the top, but I don't think that can be helped. Your blog posts are very easy to go through to find posts that would interest me (because of the category navigation bar above the blog posts), which is great. Overall, your blogs layout and organization is great. The categories are very nicely titled so that I can find topics of my interest easily. I can't find anything to criticize in this category, great job.
(Scored 20/20)
Commenting Activity and Other Interactions - (Out of 20)
I don't notice many (if any) comments in any of your recent blog posts. I would advise you to take some steps to get more comments:
-The most obvious thing, paying for blog comments. Whether real money or FP$, this is a good option for blogs that don't have many comments but do have some active readers. (If you choose to do this, it would be advisable that you look at previous posts on a forum or website that the person has done before buying from them to make sure that they consistently make decent posts.)
-Going on blogs of a similar niche and commenting on them with your link in the "website" field can get you some viewers and possibly more commenters if your replies are helpful or valuable.
-Asking your friends to check out your blog, or linking them to posts and asking them if they could help you out by making a comment or two is an easy and effective way to get posts.
-Piggy-backing off of the last way to get more comments or to possibly get more comments, linking your most recent blog posts as your social networking or instant messaging statuses can be very helpful. Assuming most of the people you have added on social networking or instant messengers then at least a few should be relatively curious about links you put on your status
-Why not ask specifically at the end of the blog posts about something specific in the article -- for example, if the article was about Google taking over the world, then why not ask at the end of the post if you would support it and if you're happy with it or if you would rebel against it.
Moving along, I did notice that in nearly every post, at least one person has tweeted the post (whether it's you or another administrator or not) -- that's good. Getting your blog posts out on Twitter is a great way to raise post views.
(Scored 5/20)
Quality and Frequency of Posts - (Out of 20)
From what I can see, the posting on the site is irregular and there's long gaps between posts. The last posts were posted on April 7, March 23, March 7, March 7, Febuary 27. Well, the posts don't exactly have really "long" gaps between them, but considering how broad your niche is, I would expect one at least once a week. But that's an opinion, so if your readers are comfortable and enjoy the frequency of your posts, then stick with it.
Your posts are of decent quality, but I'm kind of curious as to why you don't put your own opinion on the point of the post in the post? Take this post for example -
http://online-geeks.com/2011/04/07/comm ... w-on-sale/ - there's information about the Commodore 64 in it, but you never really said why you think it's good or bad, or why you think it's going to be as good as the Commodore 63 or whatever. I personally don't usually take the time to read blog posts that are all facts and no opinion, because it makes me feel like an internet robot is simply posting it for the facts. By that post I have very little clue as to whether it'll be worth buying or not -- and you posting your opinion on it would change that.
(Scored 13/20)
Spelling/Grammar - (Out of 20)
I can't find any grammar or spelling mistakes as far as the blog posts go. However, this bothers me a bit:
"The Old good Commodore had promised to come up with an Intel Atom based CPU – Commodore 64x
, which has now..."
"into the Hard disk
. The so called co..."
I see that you tend to do that quite a bit. It's not really anything that is "wrong", but since you have little to no spelling or grammar mistakes otherwise, I feel the need to point out that little thing. I can't see any reason for you not to put a period or comma directly after a word. It also just doesn't look like if you don't have the comma or period attached directly to the word that it's after.
(Scored 18/20)
Total Score - (71
Final Remarks:
What was most liked about the blog:
The organization of it.
What was disliked most about the blog:
The low amount of comments/activity on it.
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