Last week’s hit had been accomplished in the fog, but this morning, the moment was beautiful. The mist that rolled off the Northern Pacific coastline embraced Harry like a long-lost friend. He had risen before James, quite a feat in itself, and had set out early in the dark.
His prey was a delicate creature, one that spooked easily. Harry didn’t want to chance the loud noise of a gun firing – if they missed, they’d scare away the prey. Instead, he had persuaded James to make this a silent hunt. The bow was perfect.
Harry made it to the coastline before the sun rose to burn away his blanket of velvet grey cover. He found a spot on the cliffs overlooking the tiny retreat below.
He only had one arrow. He’d make it count.
Settling in on the narrow ledge, he nocked the arrow and clipped the quick-release to the loop, drawing the bowstring back. Muscles tensed and then relaxed. The beauty of the compound bow was that he could hold the draw for a very long time without tiring.
With the sight aligned on his target, Harry looked beyond the arrow, visualizing a clean shot before the arrow even left the bow…
Today’s drive-by consult is for the Bibliophile’s Retreat, the blog of Melissa Meeks. Here’s a glance at the site at the time of the hit:
(click to enlarge image)
The first impression is that Blogger, which makes me give a mental sigh, hosts the blog. Blogger offers a horrible process for leaving comments, and already I know that I’ll face difficulties if I want to join the discussion.
The immediate blocks of transparent lavender are distracting. The site could be pretty, though. The color theme is soothing, but the huge blocks of lavender are distracting and make the site difficult to view.
The banner is bland, difficult to read and the title text gets lost in the haze of lavender. It’s also very large for what it’s displaying – there are only two lines and the height could be reduced so that it doesn’t overlap the tree image of the background. The background is pretty, so I would have liked to seen something similar reflected in the banner.
The text of the content is easy enough to read, despite the fact that there are two different colors being used. The left sidebar isn’t at all easy to read, though, because the picture in the background eats up the text.
The placement of the About Us is not traditional, and I would have preferred to see it on the right, not the left. Moving it would allow the tree image to shine through and be visible without the text of the About Us being lost.
Also, the moment I see shades of lavender and pink I immediately think, “This blog belongs to a woman.” That’s not a bad image, but it’s not something that attracts me to stay, as I feel left out.
I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a three-column layout or a two-column layout, and the pattern seems a little confusing. Down lower on the the page, I see a third column appear on the right-hand side. I wonder if this is a problem or if it was an intentional part of the design.
Either way, it becomes a problem and shouldn’t be there. Also, the Rated G seems a little silly and could be removed to save space.
Speaking of saving space, there are a LOT of links down the sidebar, and if they don’t really serve a purpose, they should be removed. Giving readers options and more to see is good, but this is definite overkill.
The RSS and subscription options don’t show up until the very bottom of the page. They should be located in the top right of the sidebar to encourage people to sign up and come back. By having them so low, you’re forcing people to bookmark your blog instead of signing up for RSS.
If the blocks of lavender were removed and the banner redone to be more appealing, the site could look quite nice. Try to make it less feminine while still keeping the soothing aspect. You could have your text directly on the background image versus having the mauve blocks. Move the left sidebar over to the right, remove some of the links and place your RSS subscriptions high up above the fold.
Harry flinched when a twig snapped behind him. Without letting go of the drawn bow, he turned his head slightly and saw James approach, creeping as quietly as he could.
“This one is tough.” His words evaporated and melted into the surrounding mist. But he set his eye back on his target as James crouched beside him.
And then the moment came. The door opened, the victim stepped out… Harry didn’t breath. Another step, one more, and she was directly in his line of sight.
He released. Silently, the arrow sliced through the air and hit its target dead on. It was a fatal shot… but one that would take time before all life passed on into the land of shadows.
“Good one,” James whispered, hardly daring to speak in the quiet morning’s dawn. Both men watched and waited, and when the victim went down, they packed up slowly, never speaking a word.
Want more? You got it. Check out our upcoming hit jobs:
May 4 – Blog Badly
May 18 – Rhodester
Is your blog next? Are you ready to see how many hits it takes? Sign up in the comment section for your free drive-by, and we’ll schedule you in.
Or maybe you can’t wait. Maybe you like private affairs. Hire us for your drive-by. For only 25$, you get your private consult shoot-out within five days via email. It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s objective and it’s dirt cheap.
Contact us. Come on. You know you want to.
The bow! Harry used the bow! YEAH!
Brett Legree’s last blog post..do what you love, and the underpants will follow.
There’s lavender and then there’s wayyyyy too much lavender. I have a purple/lavender blog, but I think I have enough white to balance it out so it’s not in-your-face girly.
I’m not a fan of background images at all… so I’d ditch the tree or find a way to make a header involving the tree and just keep the background for the posts plain.
Geek’s Dream Girl’s last blog post..e on 4e D&D: If you build it, they will come. If you tear it down and rebuild it, they’ll be pissed for a while, but eventually they’ll get over it and come.
Hmm, Sunday morning… slow… need to give all regular commentators a flat white to perk ‘em up.
I’m looking forward to the next installments of this. It would be fun if someone wanted a really nasty make-over, and you guys used a minigun next time LOL
Brett Legree’s last blog post..do what you love, and the underpants will follow.
Brett- Harry used the bow!!!!!A quiet hunt, but deadly. Could feel the snap of a clean and sure hit.
Harry-I have to agree with the whole blogger comment obstacle. I think I get more emails than comments so I am hoping WP helps there. I will go see the site so I can say something smart and helpful…no coffee yet.
James- Bien fait. Your whispers are even eloquent.
Janice C Cartier’s last blog post..The Essence of Cakeness
Harry,
I’ve been waiting all week for the bow. Nice choice.
The lavender is indeed too much. Too girly for many ladies, in addition to being too much for a gentleman like you.
Conceptually, I like the island retreat image. Maybe it would be better used as part of the banner?
Though it didn’t bug you, I felt like the content was difficult to read. Light-on dark is always a tough choice; light-on-not very-dark is pretty hard on the eyes. I’d say lighten the main body background and darken that type a lot.
Nice review. Good luck with it, Melissa!
Regards,
Kelly
Kelly’s last blog post..Tip of the Week: The Simplest Way to Avoid Naming Disasters
YES! Archery! Sagittarians ROCK!
Awesome post, gentlemen.
Tei’s last blog post..Dandelion Hunting
One of the nice things about this is being exposed to new sites that I might enjoy. I love, love love books so this one is a natural for me. Unfortunatly that light blue is hard to read on my less than twenty year old eyes. I totally agree with the lavender comments too.
Love the tree though and the island. Anything that would make me want to curl up with a good book under a tree can’t be all bad!
I really enjoy these !
Wendi Kelly’s last blog post..Masterminds and Daffodils
@Harry – I’m just waiting for the day you guys choose to use a pen as a weapon to do a hit.
@Melissa – Harry made some great points and Kelly also made a good point about the text area. Maybe consider making the text a little easier on the eyes.
I’d like to add that the About Me title just above your picture should probably be a link (in addition to your picture).
And speaking of your picture, it’s a bit grainy. That’s because it’s a large picture you forced to shrink by use of “height” and “width” tags in your code.
To fix the problem, I have shrunk the picture for your homepage and the blogger profile page. Just plug these two files in their respective places and you’ll notice an immediate image quality upgrade:
For the home page about picture, download this file and replace:
http://www.eventurebiz.com/melissa/81w_by_55h/l_6c4bb29cec92a30a6e1a7e132a0c49c6.jpg
For the blogger profile picture, download this file and replace:
http://www.eventurebiz.com/melissa/150w_by_101h/l_6c4bb29cec92a30a6e1a7e132a0c49c6.jpg
Hope you find them useful and best of luck to you
John Hoff’s last blog post..A Special Offer For My Blog Readers Only
I agree that the light font on the lavender is tough to read. But my monitor doesn’t digest light colors well so I’m not the best judge.
I think the blog has great potential, though… and I’m wondering if Melissa knows her review is up. Hm, methinks an email is in order
Good suggestions. I also found the text difficult to read. I still want to have a closer look at the content in Melissa’s blog.
All the best with your blog Melissa!
Jenny Burr’s last blog post..Meniere’s Disease: Part One
Awesome hit, guys! Definitely fun to read these, and I love the way you present ‘em.
Speaking of hits, any chance you guys could take a whack at my blog, Technosyncrocity? I just got the new domain up yesterday and haven’t had a chance to push all my Blogger posts to the new site, but the design’s finished.
The delay in getting to mine will give me time to post a few entries and give more meat to the blog.
You can find Technosyncrocity at the rather-obscure URL technosyncrocity.com.
Ben Overmyer’s last blog post..Welcome to Technosyncrocity!
@ Ben – May 25 is all yours. Pick your poison
I just found your site — great resource! Don’t get the bow references yet, but I’m sure I will… I would love a drive-by of my lit blog…
@ Kirsten – You’re on, if June 1 sounds good. We’d be more than happy to gun your blog down (without the bows. We’ll use rifles.)
June 1 is great! Choose your weapon… I’ll be ready!
James and Harry-
Thanks for you time, effort and input. Hopefully between all the suggestions here and my attempts at implementing a good majority of them I can grab me some more Bibliophile buddies in cyberspace.
Kelly, Wendi and Jenny -
I finally got a few hours together to mess around with my design. I hope it is now much easier to read.
Guys and anyone else that isn’t as into Purple as I am -
I hope I’ve made the color scheme a little more neutral but kept the soothing feel and I couldn’t give up my “tropical island” concept it was too perfect for my title and content.
John -
Thanks for the tip on the pics.
Melissa (ForstRose)’s last blog post..Ruby Among Us by Tina Ann Forkner – CFBA
Well I know it’s been over two years going on almost three since you guys gave me a critique that I’ve since taken to heart. What in the world was I thinking going with blogger over self-hosted WP which despite a few false starts with updating the WP software my first few times around I’ve found to be so much more flexible and much friendlier for modifying layouts and such once you get a feel for the CSS and PHP code tweaking.
I was able to find a three column layout that I liked and switch out the header, colors, background, favicon and even the RSS button with a little help from GIMP and my digtal camera at no cost to myself other than a few hours of scrolling through CSS codes, FTP shuffling and of course the all important back-up of everything not nailed down. While it took me three WP updates to figure out I could save myself a good chunk of time by simply saving my modified theme settings, plugins, and code as well as backing up the databse which I did remember the first time – I think the big MOVE helped as much as time and some constructive input from all of you to evolve my hobby blog from looking like one to a much more professional and hopefully practical as well appealing to surfers/readers. If anyone is still seeing these comments I’d love to hear your thoughts on the new home of Bibliophile’s Retreat which will I hope be a permanent one now. Still perhaps to evolve even more as time progresses I would hope since perfect is pretty much a pipe dream in the world of technology and real life as an imperfect human who along with the rest of homosapien life on this planet is constantly discovering just how far I
OOOPS took too long or bumped a wrong button there so here is the rest of what I was saying picking up from the last full sentence of the comment I cut off midstream …..
perfect example of exactly what I was trying to say about never being finished learning and improving ……..
If anyone is still seeing these comments I’d love to hear your thoughts on the new home of Bibliophile’s Retreat which will I hope be a permanent one now. Still perhaps to evolve even more as time progresses I would hope since perfect is pretty much a pipe dream in the world of technology and real life as an imperfect human who along with the rest of homosapien life on this planet is constantly discovering just how far I truly am from being done learning new things and progressing forward in areas that I already know at least a bit about. What fun would life be if all we cared or bothered to do was plant ourselves and become glued to a stationery position in knowledge and abilities rather than continuing to learn and evolve in our understanding and abilities then sharing that knowledge with others who are following along our path a few steps or perhaps feet behind. Just like those people we’ve met along our own path that are a few steps or feet ahead and helping us to continue on behind them as they discover new concepts and such.
Again a HUGE thanks to James and Harry for their input and all the rest who stopped by to share bits of their own expertise and learning by giving opinions and input about my then rather amateurish looking site. I stumbled on the screenshot from this old drive and could hardly believe that at one time I thought it was a wonderful layout and design. But then I’ve learned a lot about myself over the past months and years too. The constructive comments all of you made about what you did or in most cases back then DIDN’T like were taken to heart and I can only hope that eventually those comments and my own efforts at improving the site have immensely improved the first impression to readers and “accidental tourists”.