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Under The Microscope: Ali's Adventures

(9 posts) (5 voices)

Started 2 months ago by Rebecca Sebek
Latest reply from Dutchie

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Under The Microscope

Rebecca Sebek
Moderator

Website: Ali's Adventures
Link: http://aliadventures7.wordpress.com/

What Works:

1. Clean website - not cluttered.
2. Blog content is current.
3. Photos are a nice touch.

What Could Be Better:

1. Expand the About page. You mention that visitors can ask you tips. How can they contact you? Add your email address to the About page or incorporate a Contact page.
2. A theme that has a touch of color. Sometimes all "white" themes wash out the content and context of a blog. A "punch" of color could spice it up!
3. Add more pages. I saw your "guest post" for Brooklyn Nomad. You could create a page titled My Guest Posts or Portfolio (showcasing your travel writing). This way you can direct people to your website if they want to see samples of your work. As I mentioned before, you could add a Contact page.

Suggestions:

1. Add social media icons.
2. Consider changing the theme; add some color
3. Consider adding a custom logo.
4. Make the subscription to the blog stand out.
5. Add videos and photos of your trips.
6. If you want to earn some extra cash, consider putting affiliate links (not too many) on your website that are aligned with your niche.
7. I like your tagline: WINDING MY WAY THROUGH THE 7 CONTINENTS OF THE WORLD. Your About page indicates that you enjoy sharing your travel tips. You could incorporate this aspect into your blog or take the blog in another direction such as guiding people through the 7 continents. You could provide tips and "how to" posts. I read The Joy of Planning post. You could provide visitors with this type of information for each continent and country.
8. You may want to ask yourself these questions: What is my goal for the blog? What do I want to accomplish by having this blog? (Blog about my travel adventures? Earn some extra cash? Teach people about traveling to the 7 Continents of the World?)

Posted 2 months ago #
Dutchie
Member

What works:
* Nice site, very clear simple theme
* Easy to navigate

What could be better:
* It looks a bit empty, because many of the common blog features seem to be missing. With this I mean social media buttons, categories, recent posts, contact form, re-tweet button, commentLuv etc.

Suggestions:
* I realise your blog is a wordpress.com blog and this gives you less options than a wordpress.org blog. Like what Rebecca said my suggestion for you is to find out what you want with your blog for the future. If you want to extent it you might want to consider switching to wordpress.org. Although this is not a free site, it does give you more options with regards to themes, plugins, widgets etc.
* Add categories and recent posts boxes to you side bar, so that navigation becomes even easier.
* Put archives first in your side bar and then blogroll (after all you want people to keep reading your blog and not wander off to other people's blogs...).
* Add a contact form and other social media buttons (if your theme allows it).

Good luck!:)

Posted 2 months ago #
TravGirl
Member

Nice site Ali

What Works:

* Good content, up-to-date.
* I like that your subscribe option and Follow Me on Twitter are easily found.
* I like the photo in your header.

What could be better:

* The font color on your blog name is hard to read against the photo.
* The beige page background is rather blah and doesn't complement your header or photos well.
* The About page is a bit skimpy - I would guess that most readers would like to know a little bit more about where you've been (kind of an overview of the countries rather than anything in-depth on each).
* Like a lot of blogs, your entire post content is displayed on the home page, rather than an excerpt, making for a lot of scrolling. This could keep some people from exploring more of your content.
* There is no list of links to recent posts, or posts by category, in your sidebar, which means that new readers will probably not see older content.

Suggestions:

* Add a list of 10 most recent posts, and a list of categories, to your sidebar.
* Cut the posts on the home page down to just the excerpt (plus maybe a photo) so that it's easier to scroll through recent posts to find what interests you.
* Lighten up the font of your blog name to make it easier to read.
* Beef up your About page and consider including a couple of photos of you on your travels.

Posted 2 months ago #
Alison
Member

My apologies for taking so long to get back on here and read through all these, it's been a crazy few weeks for me. Thank you for all the great suggestions! I'm fairly new at this and I knew my blog needed some help, I just didn't know where to go with it. Thanks for the suggestions about my "about" page, I hadn't really thought about expanding it but that sounds like a good idea. And how did I not realize I didn't put a way to contact me on there? Oops! The theme I'm using allows for good background color changes, but it's in code so I had to play around with it A LOT just to get it to where it is. Maybe I should just bite the bullet and figure out how to use a wordpress.org page instead. I think I might need that in order to have the flexibility to do some of the things you all pointed out. I always take TONS of pictures when I travel, so adding more to the site shouldn't be a problem. I've been hesitant to adding any ads or affiliate links simply because I don't get much traffic, but it is something I should look into.

Thank you so much for all your great suggestions!! I'm going to take some time to really work on making some changes. Much appreciated!!

Posted 2 months ago #
Dutchie
Member

It took me a while to decide on a wordpress.org blog as well, but I am very glad I have it.
The difference between wordpress.org and wordpress.com is not that big. I have a wordpress.com blog as well and the dashboard is the same as on my wordpress.org blog.

If you're hestitant about switching because you think it will be more work to set up a .org blog, I can suggest the .org Suffusion theme to you. I have no experience with code at all and the Suffusion theme has allowed me to set up a blog with no problems at all. It uses a very clear 'one-click' system for setting up the whole blog and has an excellent help forum.

Good luck with your blog. I am looking forward to seeing what you do with it.

Maria

Posted 2 months ago #
Rebecca Sebek
Moderator

Ali,

I switched from WordPress.com to WordPress.org and haven't looked back. I understand what you mean about playing around with themes. They coding can be overwhelming.

I have a graphic design background and the web designers who design the "free" WordPress templates drive me nuts. They have no clue about white space, line spacing, font size, colors, fonts in general, and other aspects of design. I have a friend who's a graphic designer and she's teaching herself Dreamweaver. She says it isn't too bad. This is my next step. I want to learn about CSS, HTML, and all that web design stuff so I can design my own website. My goal is to hire a web designer because I'd like to focus on writing.

Posted 2 months ago #
Trisha Miller
Administrator

Hi Ali

If you haven't already read through some of the Case Study posts (the one I did last year with "Suzy") you might start at the beginning and work forward - there is a lot of good stuff in there that you may find really helpful.

One important thing to note if you decide to host your own site (instead of using wordpress.com) is that wordpress.ORG is simply where you get the free version of wordpress that you install on your own domain (MOST website hosting companies will automate that for you making it VERY simple). And you can migrate all of your old content too.

Also, if you have any thoughts of putting ads on the site down the road, you'll need to move because it's against the terms of wordpress.com's free hosting - you might get away with it for a short while, but they're pretty vigilante about that.

SO in addition to the benefits of hosting your own blog, here's my assessment:

What Works:
1. You do have great content and are clearly a talented writer;
2. There is a lot of your personality in your blog, from the title to your writing - that's great;
3. Nice use of Tags - a common mistake bloggers make is not using Tags well, or at all, but you seem to get it.

What Could Be Better:
1. The theme is clean and doesn't distract from your content, but it is a bit blah, and also doesn't enhance your writing;
2. No shortcut to skip to other recent posts or popular posts, or active discussions (most commented posts).

Suggestions:
1. Explore other travel-related Themes - even if you stay with wordpress.com, they do have quite a few Themes to choose from
2. Add a few more widgets to you sidebar to give shortcuts to recent, popular, and active posts;
3. Move the Blogroll down to the bottom of your sidebar - it's great to link to people, but your first priority should be keeping people at your site and giving them links to more of your own content;
4. Consider a Theme that gives "excerpts" of your most recent 4 or 5 posts on the home page, enticing people to click on the Title link to read more and to comment - that lets people see more titles that may intrigue them to stay longer and read more.

Good luck - use this Forum to get more help if you need it!

Posted 2 months ago #
Alison
Member

Thank you all so much for your suggestions and encouragement!! I have just purchased a domain (aliadventures.com was actually available!) and I'm going to get the hosting set up soon as well. Then I'm going to come back to this as a reference when I'm setting up my new blog. There are so many suggestions on here I never even thought of but are so obviously good ideas and things I should be doing. Once I have a good block of time away from my job to work on it, I'm sure setting everything up won't seem so overwhelming.

Also, Trisha, thank you for saying my writing is good. Since I don't have a lot of traffic, I mostly just get that comment from my mom, and she kind of has to say it

I still need to go through the other blogs on here and give my feedback. I feel kind of silly doing that since most everyone else is so much more experienced, but I would like to contribute and help out if I can. Just might be a few more days, I'm in FL for my brother's wedding.

Thanks again for all your help, you guys are awesome!!

Posted 2 months ago #
Dutchie
Member

Good luck with designing your new site! It can be frustrating at times, but it is fun.

Trisha mentioned the Case Study posts. I followed them setting up my own blog and they were a great help. I can really recommend following them.

And I am sure you have valuable things to say about other people's blogs, even if you don't have much experience yet.

Maria

Posted 2 months ago #

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