Siyab's Blog

Well I’m very sorry to all of you dear readers about no posts for over a month. The thing is that I’ve been VERY busy with the launch of a new blog, and it’s doing pretty well. And therefore I didn’t have time for this blog…. Also, I’ve my O’Levels coming up and those need studying!!!!

Anyways, I’ve decided to revive this old thing and give it a new focus, or theme. So, now, I’ll be writing about technology and stuff, giving y’all tips that I learn about technology…. cheers!

And oh yeah: I’m gonna be posting to this blog only once or twice a week, that’s understanble…

Popularity: 82% [?]

Siyab(hey, that’s me!) from Putting Blogs First is holding a blog contest. The prize is no small. A whole 90 Entrecard credits!

You don’t have to do much to take part, apparently. You just have to subscribe to the blog’s RSS Feed and them comment on on the contest post, to let him know that you’ve subscribed.

That’s it. Then you just have to wait, till 12 noon Pakistan Time, when he’ll announce the winners. The time now here(Pak Time) is 8:45 am. That means you have only about 3 or so hours left! Hurry!  :lol:

Popularity: 77% [?]

This blog is now at an Alexa rank of 377,664, and it can be confirmed by going here. Technically the rank belongs to the main site, but since this blog is a sub-directory of the site, I guess that applies to this blog too.

I think this achievement is quite impressive, given that this blog has been alive only for ~3 months now. A week-10 days ago we were around the ~449,000 mark, so its a great achievement for me.

NOTE: THIS DOES NOT MEAN IN ANY WAY THAT I WORSHIP(EEEOW!) OR THINK VERY HIGHLY OF ALEXA.

The main thing.

This post is kinda a petition to Alexa to donate some of our rank to our new blog, which is still a 4 day old baby. We’re planning to run a WILD promotion campaign for the blog, and thought a nice Alexa ranking would help!

Good Alexa, please do it!

ANOTHER NOTE: THIS DOES NOT MEAN IN ANY WAY THAT I WORSHIP(EEEOW!) OR THINK VERY HIGHLY OF ALEXA.

Nice readers, please have a look at the new black and tell us how you like it!!

Popularity: 76% [?]

We are proud to announce the opening of our new blog, PuttingBlogsFirst. Yes yes this is just another ‘blog-about-blogging’, but we hope to make it stand out from the rest of the crowd by providing good and useful advice. Truly good and useful advice.

Hope you like it!

Wait wait.

This brings us to a question: What should be done of THIS, current blog? I was hoping to convert it to a blog giving advice on blogging badly :twisted:, but there could be better, other than ‘about-blogging’ uses for it too.

What do you guys think??

Popularity: 79% [?]

It’s been a long time since I posted my first blog review and since then I have received several review requests. So here’s another episode of BlogReview. Today, the blog in question is BlogBadly, which is run by Max Miroff. Max has another blog, named MoneyMoose. On to the review…

What’s It About?(Topic)

BlogBadly is a blog about blogging badly. Exactly. It is a blog about blogging, but instead of being conventional and giving advice on improving your blog, Max has done the the exact opposite with this blog. Impressive. Very unique! It sure is a refreshing change from the normal! It’s good to be different from others. It’s like a black sheep standing in a large herd of white ones. You can easily distinguish the black one from the others. Great work, Max!

BUT, BUT, but, the blog is fairly new and there are only a few(5 or so) posts in it at the moment. I was going to cut points for this, but since the idea is great and impressive, and it’s readers seem to like it, the blog gets a handsome 8 outta 10 for the ‘Topic/Focus’!

The Design

BlogBadly has a Web 2.0ish design, which is high on usability. The header is nice and simple with a text(not image) logo. This somewhat helps in the SERPS. And it adds to the simplicity too.
There are no ads(except for the Global Warming ones[non-profit, I guess. Huh, Max?]) yet on the blog but Max will surely want to exploit the (huge) ad potential of this blog in the future, I guess. So ads may appear in the future. They should not affect the usability though, if placed carefully.

Another thing I noticed was that the RSS is fairly large and right above the fold. This is a great step as it maximizes the exposure the reader has to your RSS feed.

One thing that put me off a little was that the sidebars were too cramped together and I had a little difficulty in going through their contents. I feel that the colour of the headings is too bright and distracting. Changing it too the colour of the post titles or to something milder in colour, while still keeping the Web 2.0 look. Also, I felt that the font-size was too large for the available small space. Reducing the font size might help.

Going through the stylesheet file of the theme(I have my ways! :twisted:), I saw that numerical values for example the font size were often expressed in pixels, which a fixed measure of width. Using something fluid like ems or percentages is a lot better if you are considering optimizing for different browsers at different screen resolutions.

In this department, BlogBadly scores 7 on 10

The Content

First let me tell you that BlogBadly is a fairly new blog(only so many days old, I guess), and therefore it makes sense to not judge it on the quantity of the content. Instead, I’ll judge it on how accurate and well written the content is.

The posts are humourous in nature and are high on quality. I loved and enjoyed reading through them. I particularly liked this one and this one. On content, I award BlogBadly 10 on 10!

Usability

As I noted above, this blog is high on usability. Simple to use with little exaggeration of elements(particularly ads). I like it! 9 on 10

Spelling/Grammatical Errors

None that I noticed. 10 on 10!

Overall Thoughts

I think that BlogBadly is a great blog to visit if you’re looking for a break from your usual merciless blogging routine. But don’t forget to follow the advice!

This one goes into my bookmarks!

Popularity: 92% [?]