Name of Site: NFL Sheikh Site Genre: Sports Site URL:http://nflsheikh.biz Type of Review ( Full/Quick ): Quick Opening Date: October 23,2013. Additional Notes: COUPON CODE : BLACKFRIDAY
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NFLSheikh - Personal NFL Blog Quick Review by phio_chan
Analysis:
A quick notice before we start this review, is that I do not know what NFL is at all, honestly speaking. I did browse around a bit, but not to deep. I'm sorry in advance that I may not be able to give much advice related to the sport itself, but I'll see what I can do.
Without further ado, here goes the review!
Strengths:
Design and Color Scheme
The design and layout is very simple and straight to the point. The overall color scheme is a good combination, it doesn't make reading or browsing or viewing pictures too hard or troublesome. It has a good contrast. Starting from the top is the header/logo, which I think works in its simplicity. I noticed that the current NFL blog you use on the header reflects on the real NFL, but slightly modified. Quite an interesting idea, I should say, but I think if you can make your own icon to reflect NFL, staying original but still looking awesome with related things to NFL, it would be great. But for not, it works, and it matches the current blog theme. Moving on to the body, the font size of the posts bugs me quite much. I also feel like the side bar is too small to have an addition of a slide show there, which can be moved to another place or re-organized so every widget gets a spot light. The footer is very empty, while it's usually used for copyright/credits information for the theme (especially if you don't create it on your own) and other additional info. It actually can be explored more by adding icons related to NFL or re-organizing the widgets to be at footer if possible.
Regular Activity
First thing I would like to highlight is number of posts you have made. It seems like you started the blog around the end of October, so it gave you roughly a month of November to make some posts. You made a total of 10 entries within around 5 weeks, means around 2 posts per week. I see the rate of posting was slowing down on November; the time between each post was longer compared to October. Not bad for a starter, but can definitely be increased. Since this is a blog related to sports and because you seem to aim mainly about latest updates and happening of some teams, maybe there is not too many things to write. I also notice that you have been trying to add a variety to the posts, not only news but have been adding some opinions a bit here and there. That's a good start, can definitely be explored more. I will touch this on next section.
Weakness:
Content Variation
Now, on to the thing I recommend to be explored the most. It is about the content of your posts and its variation. The one thing that stands out a lot to me is the length of the posts. The big font size for the post content masks the fact that your posts are actually short -- very short, if I may say. At the most lengthy one, it's around two short paragraphs. One of your posts even only contain pictures. Here comes the tricky part. Running a personal blog may make you think that you don't need to pull out too many details, as you only want to share what you think without elaborating much. That in returns will lead to lack of comments or responses from any visitors because you don't offer many things to respond on. Some comments you already have are simply agreeing with what you said, supporting the group, or something similar. Not really to be called a discussion. So if you want to try to raise visitors' attention and drive a longer discussion, you will need to improve on content on the first place. I feel like you can definitely write more, for example by adding screenshots or videos of a game, analyzing it, why you think one specific group should win, why another group loses, who will win the tournament, what do you think of the current scoring, and so on. You have them all in tiny bits, not elaborated and not explored more. The prime example to this is the post with only pictures of rankings on it. In a simpler way I will say that your content lacks spirit, even if I were interested in sports (even worse since in truth I am not interested in sports at all). That is my main concern. Other than that I saw you made minor grammatical mistakes once in a while (like writing "lets" instead of "let's"). Just remember to proofread your post before publishing it and you'll be okay.
Layout
Some points I can think can be improved on are (1) the font size of the posts. It is the biggest font from all text in the design, even more than the articles' titles themselves. I think it should be the other way around, because the invitation should first start from intriguing and standing-out title. (2) I like the idea of slide show, but I feel it's too small over there. Aside from "click to set custom HTML" line there (which you should totally remove), the pictures are too small to be noticed, and no caption either. For my eyes or newbie eyes, it's confusing. I think a caption explaining who/what team it is/what event it is taken from will be a lovely addition, in regards to expanding the size of the photos. You also generally have (3) quite much empty space on the side bar. You can handle this by moving all widgets to the footer or moving them up before the posts, for example, so you can have full width of the blog for the posts, as well as giving more space to the widgets itself. Photos can be enlarged, categories and archives can be listed as a drop-down box if possible (assuming you're using WordPress, if I remember correctly it's possible to set it up like this through the admin panel). Basically it's about organizing the content of the page into an easier way to observe everything, giving space big enough for each point to stand out without making it hard for people to browse around.
Final Remarks:
Writing a blog is no less easy than running a forum. It requires as much care and as much thinking as a forum does, especially to offer a post which leaves readers with good impression and encourage them to let us know what they think of the case. Writing about a hobby is easy in a sense because it's something you love and you know quite a lot about it, so you only have to expand your knowledge deeper so you can write a lot more. NFLSheikh is still in an early stage, in my opinion; too soon to decide whether it's going to be successful or not. But for sure, unless you add your charm to the blog, visitors may only just take a quick glance and then leave. Good luck!
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