Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Blog Review - Thailand Gal

Thailand Gal

I've been reading Thailand Gal for about 7 months now, since NaBloPoMo and it has been an interesting journey. Chani is a very unique individual, that is 100% certain. She has not always been the most comfortable with blogging and having an audience and what it all means, but recently I think there has been somewhat of an earthquake in that area. Chani is finally becoming comfortable in her "blog skin" and it has been lovely to watch this happen.

However there is something even more unique about this blog. Somehow Chani has managed to draw together a group of people, almost a community of readers, who interact with each other through the comments section. People are respectful and polite, even when they disagree. People check back there a few times a day to read everyone else's comments, and conversations happen. This is not something you find on every blog. It's usually the first blog I stop by each day and I know I'm not the only one.

Blog layout and template.

Chani, when you changed the template, I was a bit worried. The yellows and reds seemed a little bright to me and let's face it, nobody likes change, right? However I've had some time to get used to it now and it's grown on me to the point I like it a lot. It suits your personality and the Thailand theme.

Thoughts for improvement.

1. Your title bar across the top, do you see how the little border doesn't go right round it? That's because your image size is 800 pixels wide, and the header border is set to 660 pixels wide. It's easily fixed, it just depends on whether you want to shrink the image to fit 660 pixels, or whether you want to get rid of the header border entirely. I think the image says plenty and doesn't need a border but it's your blog. If you want to remove the border it is fairly simple and I can send you some instructions, just shoot me an email. If not, it's no big deal. It's just a little cosmetic thing. ;)

2. Have faith in yourself, Chani. If you build it they will come, and as you can see many have already turned up. You can't be all things to all people, nobody can please everyone and sure, there's going to be people out there who won't like your blog, just like there are people out there who don't like lobster. Those people don't matter, it's the people who do like it that count. I'm one of them. ;)

So if you're looking for something unique and different, Thailand Gal is the blog for you. Check it out!

Saturday, June 9, 2007

Guidelines for reviewing blogs.

This blog was finally invented thanks to a blogger that I read daily and love being reviewed by a blog review site, and they weren't too nice to her. The basic concept for the site had been brewing for a while - who is the best person to review your blog? Someone who reads it regularly. So therefore any blogger can ask their readers to review them, we will publish the reviews here, or anyone can sign up to be a team member of this blog.

Just so we all understand each other, blog reviews will be deleted if they -

- contain swearing
- contain nasty comments about a blog
- personally attack the blogger that is being reviewed
- are snarky or bitchy
- are critical without offering suggestions for improvement.
- are negative overall about the blog being reviewed
- criticize the bloggers age, personality, writing style, grammar, etc. We're not the grammar police. :)

What we're looking for here are *positive* reviews about blogs you love. If you want to suggest improvements to a blog, that is fine however make sure you do it in a pleasant and polite way. Not "The color scheme sucks" or "I really hated (insert something you hated)".

We do not use a number rating system here. Please do not give a blog a number out of 10.

The most important thing to remember is that everyone has their own opinion. What you love someone else might hate. What you hate, someone else might love. This is a way people can find new blogs to read because people who do love them have reviewed them.

Anyway, we'll see how it goes. We're not looking to be the blog police either, but we do have to make it clear that negativity is not what we're after. ;)

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Coming Soon!

Blogzreview - a place where people who READ blogs can review them.

Contributors are welcome. Just send an email to us at blogz.reviewer@gmail.com and we'll send you an invite to become a team member here.