My blog need tips...

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TheSEPH88

New member
Oct 21, 2010
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So I have started a blog...
http://goldencabinet.wordpress.com/

As you can see it is not nearly finished and I have only made 1 post so far. However this is my first blog I have ever made and I would apprichiate some tips antd tricks on how to costumize your blog and how to make it better...
Also I am using this blog as a personal blog.
Any tips are apprichiated.
 

DeadpanLunatic

New member
Apr 29, 2008
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I gave the thing a look just now, here's a few thoughts of the top of my head.

Firstly, and this a bit nitpicky to be honest: spelling and grammar. It's appreciate not apprichiate, on your about page you mispelt "and as" as "andas". The about page in general could do with less brackets and quotation marks and better syntax instead. In your first post the sentence starting with "This is not good" is severely lacking in punctuation, the "However" following up doesn't strike me as perfect word choice and lastly you placed a superfluous l in the word "until". (It's usually the posts where I get up on my high horse about grammar where I place most typos myself)

I know, there's more intersting stuff to consider about blogging then grammar, syntax or spelling, but these are the meat and bones of your writing. The reason you'll want to polish them is the same reason a dentist is decorating his waiting room: A bad first impression might scare some people off or at least give things an awkward start.

Second, visuals. The blog is a bit rudimentary in the design department, and I'll say that that's probably a good thing. Better to do something simple and get it right than to go overboard with complexity and screw the whole thing up. Dark font, light background is always a good idea and the contrast is high enough to make things easily legible. That's all there really is to it at this point. You might want to find a way to actually render your header golden to go along with your title, though.

Thirdly, content. There's not a lot to say here, based on the fact that you haven't said a lot yet either (The first half of your opening post is a bit redundant, but what you're gonna do?). Your about page could use a clearer structure, and I personally think it would be nice if you told us some things about yourself. Give us your credentials, so to speak. And maybe you shouldn't call it "the geeky personal blog", since it's hardly the only one and I doubt yours is the biggest and most important.

Lastly, writing. Here's some sentences I picked to highlight the biggest problem I see right now, awkward structuring.

There are however some things that will be added very soon and these are:
No. "and these are" is probably the worst way to connect ideas here, try ", namely" or ", including" or ", for instance". "There are some things that will" can be easily shortened to "Some things will". Once where already there how about active voice? You already said that it's only you running the blog.

Consider these versions: "I still have to add a few things, including:", "There's a few things I still have to add, for instance:", "This all still work-in-progress, I'd like to add xyz..."

Also todays real topic is the Sony scandal, what do I think about this scandal?
For the love of god don't start a paragrpah like this. Even talkshows try to avoid the "Today's topic is" mambo when they can think of a better introduction. "what do I think about this scandal?" is a weird rhetorical question to bring up on a personal site you'll exclusively use to share thoughts. Bring up the topic in one sentence (even if it's simply "So, what about that Sony shebang huh?"), then just start giving your thoughts ("Personally I've never been too fond of the company to begin with, but this breathtaking display of inaptitude was just too much").

This is not good the message that this sends is that "shit just hit the fan"
There's nothing terribly wrong with the first sentence, other than the fact you didn't place a full stop (Though Elements of Style would probably remind you that it is more forceful to say "This is bad"). The second one, however, is a perfect example to highlight one thing: You overuse the word "that". Tell me how your version is in any way preferable to "The message this sends is 'shit just hit the fan'".

There I hope that helped a little bit. I only recently ventured into the scary realm of the blogosphere myself (Shameless plug [http://deadpanlunacy.wordpress.com/], wink wink, nudge nudge), so I understand the plight of throwing something out there without anybody noticing. So if nothing else you at least gained a few views there. Just let me know if you need anything else.

Cheers,

Joe.
 

Mr Somewhere

New member
Mar 9, 2011
455
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Clean up the grammar, spelling, etc. Asides from that, the best advice I can give you is to find your voice, find your style, that will only come with practice. Find other little ways to practice writing. Keep up with other blogs, take notes, maybe. Try to be original and never compromise a topic (unless you're actually wrong).
Don't try too hard to be topical, talk about what you care about, get your own slant on things. Make some connections and get to know a community, that would help.
Just keep it up. I'm sure good things will come.