Charlie asks Do You Have an Idea Garden?

Traffikd writes about 16 Critical Tips for Building a Blog Part-Time.

Write to Done gives us Branding 101: How to Promote Your Blog Like the Big Guys Do.

Copyblogger asks Why Should Anyone Read Your Blog?

Traffikd posts about Social Media Marketing and the Need for Focus.

Daily Blog Tips has a great post about 10 Ways to Brand Your Blog or Website Efficiently.

Below I show their review of my blog as quotes and then give my comments. As you can see I have changed my theme in many ways due to the review.

A small black and white symbol hung outside the white, discreet building that was so pale, it was almost invisible.

That small black sign was the Kanji character for Ki (Qi) but is now gone.

Quiet is how the site comes off. It’s so pale and white that it lacks enough impact to hold visitor interest at a first glance, and a first glance is just about all a person has to grab readers online. The blue is too quiet and gets eaten up by all the white.

In the old layout the only blue was the light blue in the navigation bar under the header. I agree that the site looked far too pale.

The banner is wasted space and should have a more representational image than the kanji. You can still go with that white minimalist look, but it would be a good idea to add some color and spice with exotic flowers or smooth river stones on a white background.

I consider selecting a suitable image for the header, for now I have changed the white background to blue. That gives more punch than before.

Also, the title of the site seems unclear and relevant as well. Are you forty-two years old? Why 42? What does 42 have to do with personal development and blogging? And why does the tagline tell us this is a blog? As visitors, we want to know what we’ll take away from this site, not what type of site it is. Create a tagline that tells us what we’ll get if we stay to read. There has to be some benefit in this for us.

The site name comes from The Answer to The Ultimate Question Of Life, the Universe and Everything, 40 + 2 = 42. The name Forty Plus Two as such does not have much to do with either personal development or blogging but in personal development we are searching for answers about life. The tagline has been changed, hopefully for the better.

“Well, what’s that mean?” This time James pointed to the small signs leading visitors around. “Last 25? 25 what?”

Last 25 lists the last 25 posts, that page is now moved in under Archives.

The navigation titles really aren’t clear, so we suggest adding some description there.

I will see how I can make the titles in the navigation bar easier to understand.

The font of the navigation also looks a little odd as a serif selection. The rest of the site (minus the title) is sans serif. Try to always be consistent with fonts and pick one to use throughout the site.

I have changed so that the same font is used everywhere except in the header where I want something else.

Reorganize the title tags as well. Put them in a logical order for readers. Tips would be first, then Books, then Categories then About, then Contact and have Archives tucked in there last.

I prefer to place Categories second, after the Home button, and will rearrange the others but have not yet decided in which order.

You also need Home in your navigation. While traveling around your site, we couldn’t get back to the main page easily and had to keep using our back button of our browser.

I have added a Home button. The blog title in the header was (and still is) clickable for home.

Indeed. In fact, there is so much text on the site that it all ends up blending together. The sidebar links resemble newspaper columns, and the overall font is tiny and hard to read. There are no images to make the experience more interesting.

The overall font is now larger. I usually have one image in each post, I agree that it improves looks as well as make it more interesting.

We also noticed that while the sidebar links look jammed like a newspaper, the content area for the main posts look oddly spaced out.

Sidebars are changed, more distinct headers, and the spacing in the content area is corrected.

Another issue we noticed is that the options at the bottom of each post (such as Leave a Comment) are terribly jammed together, again making it difficult to read what’s there.

I have adjusted that area, more space between lines which makes it easier to read.

Your About text gets completely lost in the sea of words, so make that stand out more and also punch up the text itself. It’s incredibly boring to read and while functional, it’s not benefit rich. Put some impact in that text. Get people excited, not snoozing!

I am working on a new About text and will style it so that it stands out more.

We suggest changing your RSS icon to one that is more appealing and move it down into the sidebar. It’s not in a bad location where it is, but moving it down gives you a chance to put something nice into your banner to add some visual impact. Also, it would replace that link to your RSS in the sidebar (though you should keep a link for “get updates via email instead”).

I like the icon with the man on the bench so I keep it for now. I picked a smaller version and moved the subscribe part from the header to the top of the sidebar.

Recent Posts, Recent Comments and Random Posts are all good choices. With some more space and hopefully a better choice of colors (pale blue on white is really tough to read), that area will look better and more inviting.

Colors are changed, a darker blue for links makes reading easier.

Find More in the Archives is just going overboard, though. Archives is in the navigation and people can find it. You have links already in the sidebar, and this extra feature becomes redundant. Take it out.

Done, that part is removed.

My Favorites is a nice touch, but there are too many links there. Keep lists of links down to 3, 5, or 7 to prevent option paralysis in readers. Also, put that My Favorites above the Random Posts, because people are more attracted to what someone else likes a lot versus something random pulled from anything.

I have reduced the number of My Favorites to seven and Random Posts are below.

This reorganization also means that, basically, you don’t need a three-column theme, and a two column theme would have been a better choice. You have no ad space, no funky widgets, no nothing but links, so you don’t need to capitalize on your above the fold real estate as much. Having a two column theme would be better and give you more space to add images to the posts instead.

I like three-column themes better that two column themes so I stick to three columns. There will be some ads later, for affilate links like Zen To Done.

The review made me see my theme in a different way and the changes I have done has – in my opinion – improved the look and feel of my blog.

Do you want your blog shot down?
Contact Men with Pens for a private drive-by via email. It’s only $30, and you’ll get your shoot-out within a week.

What if I told you that there’s a way to make money as a result of your blog where you don’t need to have a single ad on your blog, where you don’t have to run any affiliate programs and where you don’t have to write any paid reviews?

FindableBlogs writes about 3 Easy Ways To Get More Mileage From Your Blog Posts.

Blog Herald writes about WTF Blog Clutter: The Death of the CAPTCHA. WTF Blog Clutter is a great series of post. This one is about using images etc for comment spam protection. In short, it does not work.

Problogger writes about 7 Strategies to Invite More People Into Your Audience. Another intreresting post is 16 Important but Potentially Distracting Blogging Tasks.

FindableBlogs has a post about 3 Easy Ways To Get More Mileage From Your Blog Posts.

DailyBlogTips suggests that you Add an Email Subscription Form Below Your Posts.

Traffikd gives 7 Reasons StumbleUpon is a New Blogger’s Best Friend.

It is a great and long post that deals with
• Key Differences
• Why Are More Blogs Moving to Magazine Themes?
• Pros and Cons
• Considerations for Choosing a Style of Theme
• Tutorials for Designing a Magazine Theme
• Resources for Grid-Based Design
• Free Magazine-Style Themes for WordPress
• Premium Magazine-Style Themes for WordPress

It is an impressive starting point if you are curious about magazine style, it includes lots of examples of sites and themes.

I have created my own blog theme, Zen Sandbox theme, based on Sandbox. Creating my own magazine style or grid-based design based on Sandbox would be a challenge.

Shilpan Patel of Success Soul has a guest post at Write To Done about 7 Certain Ways to Crucify Your Content.

Skellie writes about How to Develop an Efficient Post Frequency and Six Lessons I Could Only Learn by Letting My Blog Go.

Justin Tadlock has Tips on using and developing for WordPress happily. The post includes a link to a turotial about installing Xampp and WordPress on your own computer, running local which makes testing things a lot easier.

Blogging is an activity done by people for other people. Blogging is a form of communication. From now on, I will blog for humans, not for search engines or social media websites. This may or may not result in any type of monetary compensation, but money will never be my primary motivation in blogging. I will market my blog by communicating with people who may share my interests.

That is a mission statement that works for me too. Being authentic is important, in blogging as well as in other parts of life.

Maria calls her blog Never the Same River Twice, a great name.

WriteToDone has Darren Rowse in Conversation: Top Tips for Writers. The interview has many greet tips.

WordPrezzie has some great WordPress Security Tips.

David Airey has redesigned his blog, Orange anyone? The new look is fresh and simplistic.

ProBlogger gives us 24 Things to do When Stuck for a Topic to Blog About.

DailyBlogTips has a great post about The Art of Writing Catchy Articles: 11 Simple Tips.

Freelance Folders has 7 Unmissable Tips For Writing Great Content For The Web.

Copyblogger has The Deceptively Simple Steps to Persuasive Writing That Works, The Zig-Zag Method for Catching Attention and Building Credibility and The Mr. Spock Guide to Effective Blogging.

ProBlogger has a guest post by Steven Snell about A Blogger’s Guide to Branding with Social Media.

The post by Steven Snell at ProBlogger led me to his site Traffikd and A Small Blogger’s Guide to Social Media Marketing.

Pro Blog Design writes about 7 Elements to Make Your Blog Look Great.

Blog Herald posts about Blogging Jobs: How Much Are Bloggers Paid to Blog? and Blogging Jobs: How Much is Blogging Worth?.

Daily Writing Tips gives us Five Reasons Why Blogging Improves Your Writing.

Skellie has another twist, Bloggers: Watch and Learn. She writes that a crucial aspect of learning any skill effectively is to study those who are already highly accomplished in the skill you’re trying to learn. In other words, read great blogs in order to improve your own skills.

Copyblogger brings up Five Ways That Strategic Bullet Points Make You a Stronger Blogger.

DailyWritingTips has the The KISS Guide To Writing Keyword Rich Articles.

Copyblogger has a great post about How to Be Interesting.

Get this and other articles from the source at fortyplustwo.