Please join me at my other blogs!

My business site Key Coaching – Your Key To A Better Life is where topics like coach, mentor, business and networking happens. There is also some about personal developemnt.

My personal site Bengt’s Notes – Discover Your Self is about personal development from a body-mind-spirit perspective as well as about presenting and presentations, blogging, music and some fun.

I have created two new index pages here, using the AZIndex plugin. You now find an Index by Tag and an Index Alpha (on post titles) in the header navigation.

Over time I will reshuffle older posts, especially those from side topics, in order to make my core topics more visible.

Refocus = put again into focus or focus more sharply.

The side topics at Forty Plus Two will be covered in my new blog, Bengt’s Notes, which will help me get a clearer focus here. It will be back to the core topics which are coaching and personal development.

This is how it will work with my blogs from now on:

• Key Coaching, my coaching business with a blog in Swedish.
• Forty Plus Two, my blog about coaching and personal development.
• Zen and more, my personal blog about self-discovery.
• Bengt’s Notes has quotes, links and notes – on various topics that interests me.
• doodling, a blog for fun stuff.
• CoachGuiden.se, a Swedish site about coaching.
• Bengt Wendel is my hub which connects my sites, blogs and projects.

This means it will be easier for me (and my readers) to know what each blog is about. Bengt’s Notes sounds as “miscellaneous” but apart from quotes it will mostly be about blogging (WordPress), software, Twitter, tips and tools.

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.

I felt like I had been hit by a truck, my entire body was aching. My brain felt slow, like starting over and slowly getting up to speed. I realised that I lay on the sidewalk but could not remember why. Then I remembered a man pointing a gun at me saying “You want peace, buddy? I’ll bring you peace”. After that everything went dark.

After that darkness I had been somewhere bright and nice, now I was back in my old body. Somehow I had imagined reincarnation as starting fresh with a new body. A well, better a second chance in this one than not being back at all.

I got halfways up, sitting on the sidewalk, and looked around. My place looks a mess, whoever visited it had a fun day at the shooting range. I managed to get up and walked inside. Lots of bullet holes, shattered glass and dust. I walked around, those visitors seemed to have been all over the place. This was not an ordinary shoot and run, somehow there was a strategy behind it.

I noticed something shiny on the floor. I bent down and picked it up, it was a beautiful pen. The pen was not mine and it had not been there before, the hitmen must have dropped it. My brain was coming back to normal, there was something familar with men, pens and drive-by-shootings.

I walked slowly across the room, avoiding the shattered glass. The visitors had not bothered about my office at the back of the house, the door was pale like everything else and they probably had not seen it. I opened and went in, sat down in the chair and started my laptop. Google is a good thing, it turned out that those pen men kept a record of their hits. I browsed down the list and found Drive-by-Shooting Sunday: Forty Plus Two.

The mess they had created meant I had to clean up, fix the holes, paint and make it a nice place. I could restore it just as it had been or take the opportunity to make it a better and more attractive place. I noticed that the pen men, James and Harry, had made a lot of comments in their notes. Well, maybe – just maybe – I should read it a couple of times and see if there were some ideas I can use.

Image credit: Bird Eye.

Update.
Some of the easy changes are done.
• Added Home tab. Blog name in header was (and still is) clickable for home.
• Removed archive links in side menu.
• Last 25 (posts) moved in under Archives.

See also: What I learned from Men with Pens

If you are new here, take a look around in order to find something interesting. Use our side menus or top menu to browse around. You can also drop by Zen and more, my other blog.

In November 2007 I got a Simplicity review by Skellie. Back then I used another theme but I have kept the idea of being as clutter-free as possible. Since I have created the Zen Sandbox theme myself I am curious about how the Drive-by-Shooting will turn out.

I have signed up for a Drive-By-Shooting of this blog, it will be done on September 28 according to current plans. In order to “be the best I can be” I will make some changes in look and feel. I have some ideas on my drawing board, now I will make them before end of September.

StatPress is out, it logs too much to the database.

A mobile plugin is in, so is WordPress Database Backup.

If you are reading this blog using a mobile, please let me know how it works.