Nice2All

This week I have been invited to take a look at a site that can really be said to be a bit of a ‘mixed bag’. This WordPress blog is all about cricket, blogging tips and tricks, movie reviews and various other odds and ends. This is a blog that is featured on my blogroll and I personally have been subscribed to its feed for a while now. The blog is none other than Nihar’s World.

Just what does this woman think she knows about cricket? Nothing really, I do however enjoy some of the hunks that play the game. The picture to the left should illustrate the point. These are some of our local Protea players (the pic does not come from Nihar’s site).

Introduction

Now where was I? Oh Nihar, of course. This blog is one of those that could keep one busy for quite a while. There are little bits all over the show and some nice surprises as well, if you are prepared to poke around. Some great content awaits those who are prepared to go looking for it.

Compliments

Today I am starting off with the things that I enjoy about this blog:

• Normally I do not enjoy themes with dark backgrounds. This one however, is different. The actual area containing the content has a white background with dark text. This was well done and most certainly makes the theme different from the other ‘dark’ themes.
• The menu used at the top of the blog is repeated at the bottom, this is a nice touch.
• Nihar posts new articles very regularly. This to me normally means that the owner is planning to stick around for a while.
• The XHTML and CSS does not validate. So just what is this doing under ‘compliments’. Allow me to explain.
• The CSS makes use of some of the very latest stuff. Many browsers do not yet understand this stuff and the validator most certainly does not. I think the developer of the theme needs to be congratulated for his/her guts in trying the new things. This is my kind of developer.
• There is a similar story couple to the XHTML. The theme as a whole makes use of a lot of JavaScript (more about this later). If one keeps this in mind the number of errors in the XHTML validation results fades away to nearly nothing. It is obvious that the blog owner has made a conscious effort to get the markup as close to validation as what he could. For this attempt, I congratulate him.
• There is an impressive number of readers, the owner has to be doing something correctly.
• The blog has a privacy policy. This is something one does not see much anymore, but it is a nice addition.

Criticisms

Now for the bit that Nihar has been waiting for. There are a couple of things that I feel could be improved on the blog:

• Who is Nihar? Who is this guy speaking with such authority on various topics? Maybe a snippet or two on an about page would be very nice.
• The blog is slow, there is no doubt about this. I did not run the site through a checker but the slow download time is visible. The main culprit here is the Javascript used on the sidebar.
• JavaScript is used to show two fancy tab areas in the sidebar. in my opinion, one of these should go.
• Some of the stuff contained on the mentioned tabs have been duplicated in the rest of the sidebar anyway e.g. the archives are shown 3 times on the sidebar.
• If one turns the support for JavaScript off in your browser the sidebar does not display very well, it just ends up being one long list of various things (as mentioned, some of these are duplicated).
• Some of the lists on the sidebar could maybe be contained in drop down boxes or maybe even be moved to their own page.
• The blog is definitely over-monetized. If one takes a look at comments page on any article, you will find an ad above the title of the article, another between the title and the actual content and yet another at the end of the content. Over and above this there are ads in the header as well as quite a few in the sidebar. Even the footer has an ad in it.
• The sitemap does not work, or the link points to an empty page.

Final Impressions

Overall I like the blog. I most certainly enjoyed my visits for this review and I will be going back again in the future. Nihar, the hard work you have put into your site is evident, keep it up. You are providing a lot of people (myself included) with some great content.

What about you, have you submitted your WordPress blog for review?

Till next time.