Looking for feedback on my personal blog - OUTREACH

friends, any updates or feedback

with no reply since last 8 months, hoping someone can give me a feedback on my blog. thanks in advance for ur help

Hello Amar,

Sorry to hear find out that you didn't get a review for your blog till now. I hope the review I'm about to post is a bit helpful to you.

I'm not used to Wordpress blogs, and thus, won't be able to review it very thoroughly, however will try pointing out things that I understand quite well. As usual, I'll go topic by topic, making it easier for me to write an d for you to understand too:

BLOG DESIGN/TEMPLATE

I understand that Wordpress is a much more feature rich platform, offering more chances of customization than Blogger, and based on that assumption, I expect a wordpress blog to be better than a blogger blog, most of the times, atleast in terms of features and eye candy. With your blog, I missed that part. Nothing wrong with that, but, personally, I would have preferred it. Beyond that, the current theme is okay, however, there are a few things I think if you change, would make your blog look better. For example, like your template's background image. the image looks good, nothing wrong with it, however, the thing that is has been set to scroll along with the page, is, IMO giving a sort of disturbance. I'd suggest you to keep the background static. I would have loved a scrolling background had it been something continuous, but, here, it's not the case. Your Content area is too plain to my liking. It's not that there's anything wrong with the white background here, but, the white space has a more and distracting footprint. You can try correcting this with some changes in the text styling. The Font, for the post's title, is good, however, I'll suggest trying to make it bolder, so, as to allow it command the visitor's attention.

Your blog uses a three column design, however, you fail to use the entire space efficiently almost all your gadgets/widgets have been placed on the left hand side column, while the right hand side column has been left completely blank. You can try shifting some of the widgets on the right side too, and if you need the space, can always shift them. Doing this would give the site a much fuller look.

The number of posts you're allowing on your blog is too much, around 20. You can try reducing it to around half of that. This would probably result in a faster loading time for your blog's home page, plus, not forcing the user to scroll so much. AFAIK, scrolling is a bad thing in web terms, though, we can't always avoid it, we can still minimize it to the least.

POSTS/BLOG CONTENT

Your blog covers a number of topics, which gives you an advantage of catering to visitors interested in a number of niches. This however has a disadvantage too. You can't achieve a status of becoming an authority. As we can see most of the popular sites are usually authority sites, covering a particular niche. Even when they are covering various niches, they do that with the help of some known subject expert, who has a gained a credibility. I'm not in anyway implying that what you're doing is not good, or is bad in anyway.

Though, most of your articles are written pretty well, at a number of places, I found a few issues with grammar, mostly with the names being in small, while they are supposed to be in Caps (AFAIK). I see you're using a menu to provide an easy access to the various categories you blog in. In the category photography, I see some posts with photos, some of the photos are good, however, I didn't like the presentation. You can try putting the pictures in some different styles, also experimenting with the size to try getting a good presentation of the pictures. But, I, sort of didn't like your watermarking for the photographs. It obstructs the view of the photo, thus affecting the entire photo viewing experience.

Moving to the categories you've arranged the posts under, there's one called Research. I'm not sure what is your field of work/specialization, but whatever it is, I didn't find a post proper enough to to be termed as "Research". You talked about Earth Day, you talked about water loan, you wrote a contest post for the British Council contest, you talked about your favourite comedy show, to name a few, but, none of these posts seemed anywhere to be research centric. What I found the theme of that category was just to write a post on an event, the earth day, IPL, etc, but, it can't be termed as research. Though, I liked some of your "research" posts, with proper graphs, charts, and such, which help the reader understand the issue at hand. The hard work actually showed in the content and the amount of time you invested in writing those posts, searching for the content, and graphs, maps and such things, however, those can't be termed as "your research".

The About section, had everything except "about you". I don't understand the motive behind that, but, it has to contain what it says. You have a Contact Form, some random photo post, but nothing to tell the reader anything about you. You have to rectify that.

You do write about contests, so, I'd like you to please inform the readers about that too.

Moving to the bottom part of your blog.

THE BLOG FOOTER

Your blog footer itself is larger than a home page, in terms of its height. Don't know the reason for having such a huge footer. A Footer is a footer, it doesn't have to be so large as to look like a home page. I'd suggest you to remove some unwanted stuff, or atleast, move some of the stuff to the sidebars, and make it look like a footer.

There was no intention to hurt you. My only intention was to show you the "bad side" of your blog. The good side, is something you must already be knowing, and must be proud of. Most of us need a trigger to start working on the bad side. Maybe this review serves as a trigger.

Happy Blogging!

Amar It is a busy day for me today and I am not going to review many blogs, but I am gonna definitely try to review your personal blog so that you can get some success with your blog.

Change the Logo - I didn't like the Logo. It is looking very simple...You should add some colors and make it look little attractive.

Change the Theme - You should definitely make your personal blog look more impressive. You should get a theme which will attract the readers towards your blog, and they will start following your blog regularly.

Impressive Blog Title - I really liked the blog title which you have choosen for your personal blog. Outreach - Explore My World, the choosen blog title will make the readers understand that this is a personal blog of someone who likes to explore new things and new ideas.

Provide some Info about Yourself - As it is your personal blog you should definitely provide some info about yourself at your blog. When I went through the About Me Page I found that it is a contact form, and you have not provided any details about yourself. Amar I know that you are good at writing but if you want to get regular readers to your blog then you should definitely have an impressive About Me page at your blog.

Posts are Interesting - I went through few posts at your blog and I am impressed with your hard work. You have made very good use of images in the posts which can be very useful for the blog readers. You should keep including such images and at the same time try to provide more information on the topics which you are covering.

Start Replying More - I saw that you have tried to reply back to few comments, but there are many comments to which you have not replied. As it is a personal blog I will like you to answer to each and every comment. Personal blogs can grow to a very good extent if the blogger interacts with his blog readers.

Get Menu at the top - Your blog's menu is at the left side and many readers may fail to notice it. If possible try to have the menu at the top so that it gets visible to every visitor of your blog. 

Make the Blog Footer Look Better - I think that your blog only needs the Email Subscribe form and Recent comments at the footer. You can remove the other things or shift some of the important ones to the right sidebar.

Amar for making your personal blog popular you need to keep writing informative posts. You should try to get more friends at social networking sites so that you will be able to promote your posts in the best way. Once your blog will get popular it will automatically get some regular readers. Continue the hard work and never give up.