Devan Harikumar would like you to review his/her blog.
[ http://devanexpresses.blogspot.com/ ]

Feedback please... birthday blog :)

Devan Harikumar
Devan Harikumar
from Ernakulam
12 years ago

It has been a while I wrote something on my blog. So I did just now. Your valuable suggestions to what more to be done is appreciated. please. My blog is celebrating her second birthday tomorrow.

Edited 11 years ago
Reason: update
Replies 1 to 20 of 20
induravisinghj
induravisinghj
from new delhi
12 years ago

Welcome Devan harikumar,I just saw your blog & find its good & neat.Keep writting,all the best Smile

Devan Harikumar
Devan Harikumar
from Ernakulam
12 years ago

Thank you induravisinghj for the welcome :)Wish u all the best too.

Devan,

First of all, let me say, thank you for coming by my blog and taking the trouble to put in a few lines for me.  I visited your blog and read your last post. I must say it was very engaging. You have a new follower. Smile I'll come by and do some more reading, I promise. I love your template - the greens and the neatness. You might want to move that fb widget to the right hand side because those colourful thumbnails on the green apple, can be a little distracting.

Over all, great work. Check out the comment I left for you and look out for more :).

Devan Harikumar
Devan Harikumar
from Ernakulam
12 years ago

Thank you D.Nambiar for your time. Your suggestions are always welcome. Any time, feel free to review my blog, comment there or criticize. :)I will occasionally look into yours too. You too, keep up the great work.

Leo
Leo
from Bengaluru
12 years ago

Before I review, I first suggest you to consider retitling this request itself. Though it is quite nice that a review be offered for a review, I think putting it in the title itself is sort of off-putting. Let the title be your Blog's name, or what your blog is on, etc. So ppl seeing the title will feel that they can look through it sometime and offer their suggestions to you! :)

 

OK. My two cents about your blog...

Positives:

  1. Nice useful widgets. Followers, FB page link, Mail subscription, Archive, Labels.. very much fine!
  2. Engaging writing style! Good mix of sarcasm and humour, the sly wit! Enjoyable.

 

To work on:

  1. The theme: The background is nice, no doubt. Its a good choice. But look at it for a moment n ponder. Is it color selected well? I find the FB page title, which is also a lightish blue, to be lost in the blue of the background. Only the "expresses" can be read, as it comes on to the green patch. Same for the dark blue colored links of label list (make it cloud if u can), or any other link in the sidebar.. Its not pleasant for the eye, I feel. Same for the color of the date header!
  2. The popular posts widget: People do look at it, but not for the top 10 or 11 links.. just two or three. Maybe 5 tops! It can be reduced in my opinion!
  3. The Feedjit: Similar to above.. ur readers hardly bother where ur other readers are from :) Keep it short, it'll attract! Put Google Followers list at the very top, then ur FB like box, then the mail.. pageviews can come above or below the feedjit, as can the Indibadge!
  4. About you: Your profile has nothing in that part. Your readers need to know atleast something about u before reading the posts, right?! Not too personal, but not nothing either.
  5. Fonts and alignment: Use a single font. One post is in Arial, another in Calibri, another in both fonts..  it doesnt show right! Similarly with the formatting, use justify align for the text posts.. I could see some in centre alignment. Feels odd..  Even in the IIT post, put some gap between lines.. Would make much better reading!

 

Devan Harikumar
Devan Harikumar
from Ernakulam
12 years ago

Dear Vinay('Vinay' is one of the characters in my blog :D ),

 I am really grateful for your comments. Your valuable suggestions are always welcome. From now on I will try to improvise on those levels you have asked me to. Thanks, really. :)

Asif
Asif
from Chennai
12 years ago

Devan,

Visited your blog. Read a couple of posts.

1. Your narration, flow and language is very good. Probably the best so far of the blogs that I have read on Indiblogger.

2. The design of the blog is clutter free.

3. One thing to change probably is the fonts for the sidebars, the blue on dark green is barely visible. Atleast to my eyes :)

4. I am not a big fan of the live traffic feed widget personally. As a reader I am more interested in the content. You could always use google analytics to get more details of the visitors and they a REAL-TIME number of visitors in BETA as well.

Regards

Asif

Devan Harikumar
Devan Harikumar
from Ernakulam
12 years ago

Dear Asif, Thank you so much for the review :)

I am considering your point 3 and changing the theme. By the way that live feed thing is just a gimmic to attract traffic. You are right. We can always know the traffic from google stats, but that could be an advertisement as well.

Thanks for saying that mine was the best you read so far, but it clearly means you haven't come across so many :)

Keep visiting :)

Devan Harikumar
Devan Harikumar
from Ernakulam
12 years ago

Dear Leo (Vinay) and Asif,     I have made a couple of changes in the appearance alogether as you guys have asked for. 4 popular posts, 5 feedjit feeds, background colour, about me, etc etc.

Kindly visit and tell me anything more to be done.

Vishal Kataria
Vishal Kataria
from Thane
12 years ago

Great writing skills, Devan. Awesome narration; quite gripping.

 

Keep it going. Laughing

Devan Harikumar
Devan Harikumar
from Ernakulam
12 years ago

Oh thank you Vishal....

Thanks for going through my blog and the review :)

somesh mahanty
somesh mahanty
from durgapur
12 years ago

man! ur content is incredible! i am just a newbie and i dont think u need my input. still, i wud like u to change the layout. The layout sud match the incredible content :-)

Devan Harikumar
Devan Harikumar
from Ernakulam
12 years ago

Dear Somesh,

 I am flattered! :)Will surely look into what's to be done with the layout Somesh. Keep visiting :)

And yeah, you too keep up the good work. :)

Kanmani
Kanmani
from Sivakasi
12 years ago

I feel that the layout could be better! :) Started learning words from you! :) 

Devan Harikumar
Devan Harikumar
from Ernakulam
12 years ago

I am sorry to be replying late here. Thanks for the review kanmani. I am experimenting stuff in my blog regarding the design :)

Will surely look into your suggestion, once I am done with the experiment

Anju
Anju
from Kerala
12 years ago

Devan,

I wish I could write a detailed review like you. But I'm just a day old at this. So haven't quite gotten into the flow of it.

I liked your blog. I actually liked the ones under the tag "funny" the best. Could very well relate to a few of those posts, especially the culinary screw-up one. There is an easy feel to your writings, which i like. The layout is pretty boyish, which I guess makes sense, since you're a boy. I do wish all the fonts were a bit more uniform though. It changes in every post. 

Also, does the capital EKA signify something? I was a bit hesitant to ask in case it meant something really obvious and only I don't see it. But I noticed that your FB page is EUReka, so I figured it probably doesn't. Still just asking.

And also, you use ...! a lot. And I know for a fact that thats wrong usage. You either use ! or ... . Its present in most of your post titles.

But overall I think your blog is pretty cool. Its quite mature in places but sweet and enduring too. Keep writing! :) 

Anju

Devan Harikumar
Devan Harikumar
from Ernakulam
12 years ago

Why thank you Anju :)

1. eurEKA is so just for the hell of it. A friend of mine suggested the name back in 2010. Back then, I didn't know too much about blogging and hence so many things changed since. That name and ...! are few that haven't changed.

2. Really thankful that you liked my posts. SInce you are new, you might not be aware of the fact that if you change the name or url of the blog at a later stage, then it will go way below in indexing. So whatever you do, do it fast.

3. Thanks really for the time, I would try to do something about it. [Sorry, I can not change the title for the reason I already mentioned.]

Anju
Anju
from Kerala
12 years ago

oh I wasn't asking you to change it! I was just wondering why it is so... thats all. No issues.

somesh mahanty
somesh mahanty
from durgapur
12 years ago

whoa man! I couldnt believe my eyes! u asking for a re-review!??!  I used to think that was for newbies only! Anyway, pardon my ignorance. I got just one suggesion for u

Maintain a recognisable difference of font size between the post content and the "about me" sidebar content. I mean the difference sud be a little bigger, otherwise the sidebar content seems distracting.

 

SS Kuruganti
SS Kuruganti
from Gurgaon
11 years ago

Just a few suggestions, since you asked: Perhaps you could limit your profile to just a few lines and leave the rest for your profile page? The right sidebar is pretty difficult to read when there's a lot of text because it's so narrow. I had a similar problem with your popular posts widget. Perhaps you could add it to your footer?

I agree that the Feedjit is unnecessary, I don't think anyone really cares where your readers come from!

Just my two cents. =)

Your writing is very readable, I liked a lot of your posts. Should be returning in the coming days.

Hope you'd return the favour (and review), I'm working on a set of short stories based on Indian mythology, and would love to hear your thoughts/constructive criticism/comments. I'm looking to improve my writing. Thanks! =)