New Blog, Looking for opinions and contributors

[Simon Thomas]

Hello fellow building better bloggers! i've recently launched a new blog, called Blog, the magazine and I just wanted to see what everyone's opinion on it is.

It's a bit different to other blogs because the content gets published in issues, with each issue containing a few articles. I've tried to follow through the magazine analogy by having a distinct front page for every issue, with an image and headline article. I'd love to know your opinions on this approach. By taking a little longer to write and compose the articles, I'm hoping for they'll be higher quality. I've also spent quite a bit of time adding custom features to the theme, like images in the sidebar, and on the front page. Just trying to give the feeling of quality and completeness. Let me know what you think.

We discussed having a Building a Better Blog Blog a while ago, and while this isn't quite that, I'd love to get some members of this community involved with it. So if you want to get involved, let me know. I'd like to do a feature on Grass Roots Blogging, people like the members of this group basically. Covering people's motivations, techniques, lessons learnt and any wisdom they'd like to impart. If you'd like to contribute to that issue, or the blog in general, let me know.

[Christy Tucker]

First, a couple of visual & usability notes:
* The link to "The First Issue" over the header graphic is a bit hard to read, especially at the end where the graphic is lighter. It's white text on a fairly light-colored and busy background.
* The "Bringing you the best..." text over the corrugated pattern is a little hard to read, partly because of the script font. There's also a lot of open space in that block, so why not make the text larger?
* Is it possible for you to make the image for the RSS icon directly under the header image a link to the RSS? I thought it was a button at first, but it's just a static image.
* When I finished reading an article, I didn't immediately see a way to get to the other articles in the same issue. Some more prominent interlinking would be helpful, especially since you're doing multiple related articles at the same time. If I read one article, I'm probably interested in the rest of the issue. Even a link back to the main page for that issue would be good.

Next, if proofreading isn't your forte, you may want to find someone to help you at least get your home page cleared of typos and grammatical errors. I saw several: Advertisment/Advertisement, Readers Letters/Readers' Letters, Unlike other magazine/magazines, New-Stands/Newsstands, etc.

The magazine idea is an interesting one; I'll be curious to see how it turns out for you. Certainly Jakob Nielsen, the usability guru, has written about the value of high-quality articles over variable-quality blog posts.

[Simon Thomas]

Thanks for the Christy. I've never really been happy with the image I used for the first issue, future ones will be much better. In the mean time, I've tweaked the image slightly to try and make it a bit easier to read. Ironic really, given one of my first articles was on readability! I've just posted a few fixes to the theme, which included correcting some typos, making the RSS icon clickable and other minor tweaks. I'm still working on getting some useful links for articles from the same issue after each post, but it's been causing me some issues.

You're right about proof reading. I'm really not very good at it. I also struggle to resolve the difference between my English (as in the queen of) writing style and the more generic English Style I'm aiming for. Unfortunately, spell checkers don't always pick up on the differences. have you got any tips on proof reading? (would you like to contribute them to the blog ;) )

Thanks for taking a look.

[Allison]

Firstly, I looooooove the concept! I cant wait to read more!

I find the graphics and headlines to be a bit too big. It would be great if the first page was a a bit more streamlined. Maybe having the list of articles go from top to bottom instead of left to right? Also, how a bout a teaser? What's in store for the next issue?

I also wish I could navigate the website from each article's page.

[Simon Thomas]

Thanks Allison. I'm currently writing the next issue, so stay tuned! One of the posts is called "Be the Jerry Springer of Blogging". Does that pique your interest? ;)

I've added a link to the articles home page at the bottom of each post. This should help out with navigation a bit. I'm struggling to get it to work the way i want it to (Ideally, I'd have a list of articles from the same issue along with a list of related articles after each post, but it's not working the way I expect).

I've written the theme such that the front page is quite versatile. I can change aspects of the layout and appearance. So in future issues I'll change it round a bit. I was really going for the magazine style, with a big headline and front page image, with supporting articles underneath. It's a bit different, so I'll continue to tweak it until I find something that works.

Thanks.