Mrs. Mecomber’s Scrapbook

The first thing I notice when I look at Life With Kim is the spectacular header picture. Those emerald green colors are stunning with the deep gray blog template. I am not a fan of dark backgrounds and light font, I will admit. They are very difficult to read. Blogs should be generally breezy and easy to read. Kim’s blog is luscious with colors– very sophisticated– but very down-home and easy-going with her writing.

The “Life with Kim” page is terribly sparse. I happened to click the link for “Kim” and was at a totally new page– a semi-profile page. This was purely an accident that I clicked on it, and I doubt most readers would discover it. Perhaps put this page in a more prominent area, rather than as a link accompanying the name.

I would love to see more photos, or longer posts. I would also love to see more about Kim herself, since this blog is about her life. I checked out the “Homemade Crafts for Sale” but was disappointed to find a few quick sentences and a link to another website (although it was a “personal” page there). I’d love to see a few examples of the crafts before I start clicking away from the blog.

I also found an oddity while browsing the archives. When I accessed the archives, the full posts were not available; I had to click “read more” after the first few sentences. (The main page had all the full posts). I don’t know if this is a Wordpress theme option, but I highly discourage bloggers from making readers click to “read more.” It is an extra step. I rarely, rarely ever click on “read more.” Honestly, I think I’ve only done it one or two times, ever.

I like the little buttons at the bottom of each post (StumbleUpon, etc). They are organized and look like a million bucks. Good job on the clean, easy design style! There is almost no clutter, which can be a plus and a minus. On the plus side, your blog loads very fast and looks good. However, there can be such a thing as too little clutter.

I feel that on a blog, there should be a variety of interesting things to look at, read, and perhaps do. I appreciated Kim’s post and her sidebar button about Entrecard. I’m going to check it out, so thanks, Kim! But there was little else to catch my eye or my interest. A few photos, more sidebar content, and especially more human interest stories would help to give the blog that personal touch. Kim has the basic structure established to make this a great blog that will attract regular readers, but it needs to be fleshed out a little.

One last thing I noticed, as I took a last look at the blog. In the footer (the very bottom of the home page) are all these little links (Free Signatures, MySpace Friend Adder, etc). I wonder if these are spammy links set there by the Wordpress theme creator, or by Kim? They seem out of place on the blog. I checked, and the links are nofollow, which means they are leaking juice to the link’s websites. Might want to fix that unless those links are there by and for Kim.

The blog is new, so it seems Kim is still building it. She’s off to a great start. I look forward to watching this blog develop.