[pithing [pith′ing] Etymology: AS, pitha: the destruction of the central nervous system of an experimental animal in preparation for physiologic research]
Not medically speaking, I did not mean to destruct the blog’s credibility in any sense; this is solely me and my not-so-deep scrutiny.
WHAT I PERCEIVE? [Criteria: Content Design Relevance]
As usual, everything lies clear on a white background. It has a blue-black general color scheme. Blue colors the headlines, article titles, and the navigation elements. Black colors the rest of the content.
It has a two-level navigation menu, that which is, separated. On the topmost is the first level menu dedicated to the main blog navigation. Just below it is the brand header, where the second level navigation menu is under. The second level is for news content navigation categorized in tabs.
I would say that there’s no widget overload on the sidebar area. There’s only one dedicated area for sponsors. It’s a dynamic sidebar since contents’ arrangement changes as you navigate through the other pages in the places. Atleast, in my observation they’re all the same small-sized ads in motion. The colors of the ads are visually accenting the color scheme of the blog.
The rest of the space in the sidebar is mostly comprised of the tabbed contents. The areas are dedicated to content-related widgets such as recent posts, popular posts, and the archives in a monthly chronological order. They are neatly tucked in the side.
I noted a specific dedicated area for advertisement. But, as of the moment, there’s no ad posted yet. It’s just: “Advertise here.”
On the upper right corner, the multimedia platform below the second-level navigation is the space’s main spectacle . It displays in a slideshow the news pictures of different featured articles with captions below it. Beside it are two small pictures. These integrated pictures are, of course, linked to the articles.
I like it that there’s much space dedicated for the news content. Simplicity is beauty. It’s not a busy site at all. For each navigation category, including the homepage itself, are 10 headlines only. It’s shown in a very organized way whereas in one featured headline, beside it is the small picture of the writer, the news picture, and an unfinished excerpt of the article that serves as an overview with the “Read More..” button below it. Along with this are the comment buttons. Voting buttons are placed in the side occupying a little vertical space.
And of course, I won’t fail to mention the pages behind the 1st level navigation links. It’s a good thing that the details in the About page don’t mix with the ones in the Contact Us page. The sitemap is just what I have expected it to be.
Later, I find out an interesting idea behind the overall ‘un-busyness ‘as I would put it. There’s not much ad as it may seem to be, but as you check out each article, there it features one advertisement just below the title.
It’s a one ad per article. Very nice. That figures the neat organization.
All the more, the site doesn’t fail to recognize their contributors. As you would see, there’s a little area dedicated to the writer at the bottom of each article.
As I would thank Kevin Muldoon for his helpful critique checklist, I would quote him with his one important note: ‘Most common mistake ever – "©Copyright" which equals saying copyright twice. One must die.’
Funny that at the bottom of the page, it states ‘Copyright © 2011 Latest News. All rights
reserved’.
HOW’s THE TRAFFIC? [Criteria: Discoverability Community Social]
With social media integration, the blog draws more traffic into it. Unlike websites, blogs make use of voting buttons evidently. In this blog, it’s always beside each post. There’s a google +1 button and the facebook ‘like’ button.
It also has a comment area, in which it will direct you to two ways of leaving your comments. It could be through a facebook comment post. Or a comment directed to the blog itself.
There are three dedicated widgets in the sidebar area supporting the criteria mentioned above.
First is the Receive Free Updates portion. Facebook and Twitter are notably featured. Second is the Connect on Facebook section indicating how many ‘likes’ does the site currently have. Lastly, the ‘Stats’ is shown. It features the current community that visits it every day and its ranking showing its level of discoverability so far.
No site is perfect. But to me, the makes of this news blog is noteworthy. I like it as it is –clean and simplified.
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