Blogbuzz

If you spend any time dropping entrecards, sooner or later you’re going to run across Monkey Fables And Tales. The entrecard for it is easy to spot: A red background with an irate looking blue cartoon monkey asking “How about if I spank you?”

This blog describes it self thusly: “Nonsense served almost daily. Some of which may be true, some not so much. Plus some other crap.” and regardless of how true any of it is, there’s a lot of funny to be found here. One Prime example that’s had our house laughing heartily is this recent gem: I Could’ve Used Dear Abby’s Advice

Any time a blog post can manage to work in the phrase “Holy mother of methane, what the hell was that?!”, you know it’s got to be worth a read.

Readability 9.5

Text colors have just enough contrast from the background to make it easy to forget about reading and just enjoy the humor.

Layout 8.5

Slightly customized looking version of a standard “Blogger” theme

Load time 8.5

Not bad. firebug reports 10.8 seconds to load 74 requests

Scrollability 7.5

I found it to be a tad sluggish to scroll although I couldn’t identify the reason.

Writing 9.5

This stuff is Funny!

Total Score 43.5

Monkey Fables And Tales BuzzRank: 87%

It’s a pretty important issue because more and more people are dedicating some of the space on their blogs to advertising. This can range anywhere from producing enough to offset some of the costs of hosting and domain registration to providing a full blown income.

I’ve seen bloggers and conventional webmasters writing about how they’ve got their sites to the point where they’re earning anywhere from $100 to $3,000 a month from sources such as Adsense, Kontera, Clickbank, text links in and out of posts, 125×125 button ads and so on.

While I don’t want to take away from my original intent for this blog, I also would like to see it start earning it’s keep and help around the house. Granted, it’s probably not going to make my coffee in the morning but it could very well pay for the hosting and perhaps a computer upgrade or three.

With that in mind, I’m going to start by shopping around for a new theme. Something in a three column format that combines my favorite features of easy to read text and color combinations and still have enough room in the layout for advertising blocks. Then all I need to do is design the ad blocks so that they aren’t obnoxious yet still are noticeable enough that people will occasionally click on them deliberately.

Just out of curiosity, I’d like some input on what people think of the practice of time-shifting blog posts.

Obviously, there are situations when doing so would put you in violation of the terms of service of a company that you’re working for. I’m talking about regular, plain old blog entries where the content of the post isn’t in any way “time sensitive”. Like for example this post. I’m writing it on 4/7/08 but, because I’ve not been posting on this blog much and I don’t want to allow that big of a gap to continue existing in the archives, I decided to set the date on this post to 3/21/08, eight days after the last one to fill in some of that gap.

Now I know that there’s lots of people who’ll come along and say “thou shalt not time shift”, but then I look at the option on the Wordpress dashboard to edit the time stamp and think. “It’s my blog, as long as I’m not violating some agreement I don’t see why I shouldn’t fill some holes in my archives” Besides which, the post is also on-topic, in this case about time shifting.

Hmm.. that sounds good to me. In any event, This plugs a little bit of that hole in the archive. Odds are good I’ll do more of that from time to time but not to worry, they’ll always be on topic. This is still a blog about blogging and blogs.

Technorati Tags: archive, change+date, date, edit+time, time, time+shifting, timestamp

“The Blog of Rudy Amid” seems to be about pretty much whatever’s on his mind at the time which can range gaming on the Nintendo Wii to a post about a widget that presents Dilbert comics in color.

Readability 10

Very easy to read black text on white background with a font size large enough that I don’t have to strain even a little bit to read it.

Layout 9

It’s a good basic, minimum frills layout with navigation links across the top and a single sidebar with more. Almost all of the focus is on entries themselves.

Load time 9

Firebug reports 57 requests completed in 10.68 seconds

Scrollability 10

smooth and easy

Writing 8

A reasonably frequent poster with plenty to say about a variety of topics. Some posts do tend to be on the long side but they’re still interesting just the same.

Total Score 46

The Blog of Rudy Amid BuzzRank: 92%

My Life as Mama Jodi is a fun blog that’s loaded with a variety of topics from faith to family to just plain have some fun. According to the ‘about’ page, to say that the author is a busy person would be an understatement. Yet she manages to do all of that and keep two blogs with fresh, interesting and entertaining content on top of everything else she does.

Readability 10

It’s great. Good text size and the color combinations work nicely, very easy on these tired eyes.

Layout 8

There’s a lot packed into the three column layout but it still manages to keep the readers attention on the posts themselves.

Load time 7

Firebug reports 19.47 seconds for 99 requests to complete. Since the posts load early enough in the process, the reader can focus on that while the sidebar contents load.

Scrollability 9

It was a tad sticky while things loaded, but smooth after that.

Writing 9

To sum up most of what I saw in a word. Fun. I like a writer that likes to have fun, they’re easy to read.

Total Score 43

My Life as Mama Jodi BuzzRank 86%

For the first blog to be given a BuzzRank along with the review I present “Weird Facts“, a Blogspot blog that offers what it calls “your daily doze of odd news and weird stories that relate to web.”

It relates some odd facts and tidbits of trivia, a fair percentage of which are definitely strange bits of information at least in that anyone would ever think to collect them all in one place. On the other hand, strange little tidbits like this can be very entertaining if you manage to get enough of the right type of things.

Probably the one thing I could say to the author of Weird Facts is “Sometimes More *IS* better”. I believe that if the postings were more frequent there would definitely be readers interested in revisiting and / or subscribing via RSS.

Readability 8

Color combinations are reasonable and type size is easy to read although the link colors outside of the adsense blocks are a little pale

Layout 7

A mostly “plain Jane” Blogspot layout. What it lacks in fancy bells and whistles it makes up for by loading quickly. The adsene block right below the top entry on the page kinda distracts the reader a bit because it and the abbreviated post blur the distinctions of where the posting ends and where the advertising begins. The adsense block in the sidebar is better placed, visible but not intruding on the reader.

Load time 9

less than 10 seconds.. great

Scrollability 10

Perfectly smooth

Writing 6

Writing style isn’t bad but the author would do well to post more often.

Total Score 40

Weird Facts BuzzRank: 80%

BuzzRank is taking shape. While it is true that the factors that I’m scoring on are determined arbitrarily by me, I intend to apply these factors as fairly as I can. With that in mind, here are the things that I’m going to score on:

Readability - Factors include font, font size, text color vs background color, hover color, visited link colors. If it’s hard to read, that’s a deal breaker.. very few people will bother trying to read it or even do anything like highlight the text to read it that way. Like most people I’m a lazy reader, If I can’t read it without doing anything extra, I probably won’t bother.

Layout - Factors here are things like how easy it is to find navigation links, how easy it is (or not) to find the main article content among whatever advertisements are on page and the number of and overall use of graphics and background images as well as the ratio of advertising to content.

Loading time - if a page takes too long to load a lot of people are going to close the tab and go somewhere else. I know this because I’ve done it many times myself.

“Scrollability” - simply put, how easily or smoothly the page scrolls. I’ve seen plenty of blogs (even some of mine in the past) that have slow, jerky response to any attempt to scroll the page. This is something that will discourage people from returning and a lot of folks will consider it a deal breaker.

Writing - regardless of what you’re writing about or what your opinion on the subject is, being able to write in such a manner that allows readers to easily understand you is important. Being hard to understand is one of the fastest ways to prevent people from subscribing to your RSS feed or returning to your blog.

Each of these things will be scored on a scale from 1 to 10, the totals will be added up and a percentage calculated based on the actual score vs the maximum possible score. That percentage will be the BuzzRank Rating.

Yes, this system is very subjective because it is based on my opinions but I still expect that readers will agree that blogs with higher scores are generally better in terms of how easy they are to read, understand and navigate.

I may also refine this system as I go and if I do the changes to the system will be posted. Changes to the ranking system will not be retroactive for blogs reviewed previously, they will retain ratings based on standards in effect at the time of their review.

Just what the world of blogging needs right? Another Ranking system. Well, I think in this case that it’s true, this system is needed. I think so because it will be based not on popularity, or the number of inbound links or pagerank, rankspank, realrank, thoofrank or or how many diggs, stumbles, propellers, sphinns or whatevers that a page or site has.

Instead, BuzzRank is going to be about the blog being reviewed and ranked. It’s going to take into account such things as readability (which includes font, font size, color combinations), use of graphics, writing style, the ability of the writer to get their point across clearly without being needlessly vile or obscene, and other technical issues such as how long it takes to load and how hard it is to find the actual blog content as compared to things like advertising and navigation links and general layout.

Granted, BuzzRank will be entirely based on my own personal opinions, however it will be geared to reflect the readability and clarity of any given blog and the ease of use for that most important person, the reader.

I’m going to work out a list of the factors that I’ll be scoring each blog on. Each factor will be assigned a numerical value and then the total of all factors will be given, probably as a percentage. The idea is that a BuzzRank score of 100% is the ideal blog and 0% is the worst possible nightmarish waste of bandwidth you can imagine.

As I work out the values that will be included in BuzzRank I’ll post the details of what they are and how I intend to score each of them. Once I have the whole thing worked out, I’ll start assigning BuzzRank scores to all blogs reviewed here.

By the way, I don’t expect any blog to ever get a 100% score or a 0% score for that matter. I simply intend for it to be an indication of how good a blog is overall from a reader’s point of view.

FullosseousFlap’s Comments on the Dental World and More is an interesting mix of politics and dentistry. Written with a largely conservative stance, it’s author is tackling the presidential campaign full on and appears to not be pulling punches when it comes to any of the candidates while at the same time making clear their own preference.

The author uses a lot of visual material, pictures, videos, and political comic strips to illustrate what is being written about and what they’re trying to say about the current wind in the political world and what orifice it’s probably emanating from.

A good example is a recent post in which he takes a Clinton campaign ad and answers the question it asks with “John McCain”.

Flap’s opinions are made pretty clear throughout the various postings and potshots at assorted politicians.

On a technical note, I appreciate the use of easy to read fonts, type sizes and color combination. The only eyestrain you’re likely to get on FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog would be due entirely to spending a lot of time reading it.

I think Small-Business-Online.com is a good example of a blog used primarily as a marketing tool. The site is a direct to the point, no frills blog with content that is related to search engine marketing, SEO and web promotional techniques, tactics and tips. This article “Social Networking Insider Info” is a good example which talks about social networking strategies and a series of videos related to an article on WebProNews.

While the permalink to each article is give below the article, I think that they’ve missed a trick by not having the title of the article also be a link to that article. Also I think that the site navigation could be a little bit clearer because once you do follow the permalink for an individual article it’s not always clear which link takes you back to the root of the blog. Part of this is because it looks like this is actually several blogs that are very tightly interlinked. In any event, there is useful information and links to be found there, just watch where you click or you might get lost.