blog critique before and after

I was thrilled when it was finally my turn for a blog critique by the fabulous Melissa from MomComm, and to have mine featured as part of the Sits Girls Blog Critique Week was just icing on the cake. When I asked my husband if he had read my critique and what he thought of it, his reply was, "it was kinda mean". I didn't think so AT ALL. I asked for a critique and if all I heard was how wonderful my blog was (which I know it is), how am I going to make it better? So I was hoping for and expecting some constructive criticism.

I'll go through some of the things that Melissa, Fran, and Kat went over in my critique and show you how I (hopefully!) improved my blog:

Mel suggested I make the photography connection with my blog name (and blog itself) more obvious, and add a pop of color. While I thought I liked my old header (the one I made with the tiles at an art show in our town), after I changed it I realized how DRAB it was. I added a camera graphic and some color to the header and I do love it.

Mel also suggested that my menu bar font was too "boot campy" and while I didn't really understand what she meant by that, I realized later that it's the same font that Bloggy Boot Camp uses, so yeah, I changed that, to century gothic to tie in with my header. I also lightened the black font to more of a gray because black looked too stark.

While we're talking about the menu bar Fran pointed out that when a reader clicks on anything in my menu it would open up in a new tab or a new window. This was totally on accident and I don't know how I didn't realize it! This was an easy fix, I just had to remove target="_blank" from the code.

Yay! It's looking better already!

OLD:

NEW:



As a result of the critique I also:

• widened my sidebar columns
• added a flickr button to my social media icons
• renamed my recent comments widget from "say anything" to "things you said" to make it more obvious (at one time I was naming my widgets after movie titles, but had gotten away from that, so say anything really didn't make any sense anymore)!
• I added some more links to specific sections that I like (and I hope my readers do too!), I love how I varied the color from lighter to darker on those. Notice how I tied the font into my header font as well (it's called digs my heart, if you're curious).

• I created a graphic for my shop to make it more obvious as to what I am selling in my shop. I updated my photo in my sidebar, to that one day I had curly hair, and I created a new button to match my new header. (feel free to grab the new button while you're here).

• Another thing that was brought to my attention is that my photos had a drop shadow around them. I really like my rounded corners and I had no idea that the drop shadow was still showing up. It was a case of different browsers looking different so after a little googling I was able to edit my html to lose the shadow. If you use firefox or safari you may notice a difference now. If you use internet explorer (like I do) then things should look exactly the same.

Fran pointed out that it really feels like a community here and that just makes me giddy. That's really what I want for this blog. So hang around k? Be friendly with each other. Show off your shot each week and check out others' show offs as well. Everybody around here is awesome, and you will totally fit in too.

Oh, and one more thing. I love your comments, (they actually make my day) and I love to reply to your comments via email, but I can't do that if you are a "no-reply blogger" commenter. So please, take a second, and make sure that your email is linked to your profile. My friend Heidi recently posted here about how exactly you do that (don't worry, it's EASY).

So that's it for now. I still have a few things on my to-do list including adding a PR/advertising section, expanding my "about me" in my sidebar (note that if you click on that curly haired me in my sidebar it will take you to my about me page), and update my about me page (that's a lot ABOUT ME for one sentence, eeesh!)

 So what do you think? Do you like the changes? Do you have other suggestions? Let me know!