Bricks and bats for my personal blog

Aare babua ek saal paidal chalne k baad rah pooch rahi ho... ab bhaTak bhi jao to kaise lautogi? [deeply thoughtful wala smile]

Hello Pankti!

I went through your blog today. Like completely went through it. 

Needless to say that I love it, therefore I am here writing a review for it. 

Let me cover your blog, post by post, tab by tab. :P

All right, so the overall look of your blog is just amazing. I loved the template, the simplicity of it, the way you have put on the tabs and the side panel as well. The tabs are surely an easy-to-navigate feature of your blog. I liked the concept of "iniblogeshwaris" as well! ;)

I clicked on each tab to get an actual feel of what you blog about. So much talent, I was amused by the musings of this confused girl!

Short Stories: You have a nack for writing short stories it seems? Or may be you are good story teller. Your stories are quite visual and engrossing. It seems as seem someone is actually narrating the story. Way to go!

Poems: Very well expressed. Enough said!

Reviews: Pretty helpful and way too candid. I have a neautral reaction towards this section of your blog.

Musings : The only thing I could gather down is that you are really creative and you are well equipped to put that through words. 

For you : As I already mentioned, I love you as a story teller. So this series kept me busy for good twenty minutes. And I liked it. I liked the concept.

Photography: Yes, I discovered the total thematic photography in this section. When I read "photography", I expected some sort of   random photographs. But I liked it.

Travel:The best part of your blog, undoubtedly. I would love to read more travelogues. Travel more lady!

And finally, a review in your style:

Rating: 8/10

Grammar and Punctuation: Couldn't have been better. 2 on 2.

Flow of story: Though each and every post is kept as simple as it could be, the flow is good. It can keep one engrossed for a good time. 1.5 on 2

Concept: The content of this blog clearly justify it's name. Musings of a confused world. It touches almost everything around you, expressing beautifully. That is what you expect from a confused person, talkin about everything. Right?

Reaction: One would surely want to visit this blog once and be a regular visitor afterwards.

Well done! Hope to see you more of you!

Much love,

Sushmita

Awwww Sushmita!!!!!  Thanks, thanks and thanks!!!!!!  And loved the ratings! And about traveling, I wish I could update it more!

Very nice looking blog. I got impressed by the first look of the blog and it is very easy to go through the blog. You have provided option to like your page at the right side which will definitely bring regular readers to your blog.

Variety of topics - The most interesting thing which I find with your blog is that you write about various topics which are book reviews, poems, photography, travel etc. As you write about so many topics you will be able to get many readers who may be interested in any of such activities. 

Interaction - I went through some of the posts and I saw get you get good number of comments which means that you are having good interaction with your readers.

Interesting Posts - I really liked reading the post in which you have written about the Dove meet experience..It must have been definitely very exciting experience for you as you were treated as a VIP guest by Indiblogger team. I wish that I will be also treated as a VIP guest for any of the upcoming meets by Indiblogger team :P . I also love to attend Indiblogger meets as it has given me chance to interact with other bloggers and I have made lot of friends because of these meets.

You write very precise and there are no grammatical mistakes. I think you can continue your blog in the same way without any massive changes. You are doing fantastic job by sharing your thoughts and experiences through your blog.

Thanks Mohit

Though, I don't like indulging in blogs having literary works, as I do not consider my self capable enough to judge people's literary works and understanding. However, your's is a different case, so, I can give myself the liberty to put up a review for your blog.

Overall, a great blog. Going by your literary capacity, I can expect the quality continuing. What I liked the most are some of your fictional stories (fairy tale kind of stuff). I have to admit, almost all of your fictional stories create an urge to read them as soon as I open them. This kind of thing happened with a few blog posts on Animesh's blog, and a few on TF's. I thoroughly like the stories, and the way you narrate them. It's simply mindblowing. Additionally, the fact that you manage to keep all your blogposts free from any typographical/grammatical errors, makes it a charm to read on. Otherwise, blog posts with typographical/grammatical errors turn off any reader's enthusiasm, and I'm no exception.

Your's is almost a perfect template design, nothing, I could find out to point out improvements with. Still, I'll  try finding something, worth reading this review to be worked upon. Will try going by the points, though, I can't say how much can I continue with it.

BLOG TEMPLATE

A proper blog template with a good looking background-that suits your blog niche, well laid out menu tabs, almost all considered-to-be-necessary stuff for a blog, like Facebook, G+, Google Friend Connect apps. However for some reason, I couldn't find the twitter app. I would suggest you to please try and add it. You are not using a header or any fancy slideshows, and that's okay, because it's afterall your preference, and also that since your's is not a blog, where you click a lot of pictures and post/share it, I wouldn't recommend a header slideshow either. Though, I would like recommending you to consider adding a header image for your blog. Adding a blog description too, which is displayed under your blog's name, would be another recommendation. I would also like suggesting you to think about increasing the width of your blog's content area, thus eliminating/reducing the blank spaces on both the sides. This would let you fit in more content in the visible area on a regular 1366x768 resolution screen, which is mostly a norm now a days for most LCD screens. The real estate on the the web is as important as it is on the land, and, this explains, why most of the sites are increasingly eliminating scrollable designs. If it ain't on the home page, visible to the visitor, it doesn't exist. So, try reducing the number of posts you allow on the home page. For a visitor, it's quite a cumbersome activity scrolling down so much.

BLOG POSTS/CONTENT

As I said above, I won't indulging in your or anyone else's literary creativity, because, I myself am not too good to judge it, I'll try suggesting some things which as a reader I would have liked you integrating in your posts. You seem to be including a page break in almost all your posts, which, in my honest opinion is not good. Maybe, I'm wrong, but, this is what I felt. Personally, I won't like clicking a link to take me to a different page to read a story, then coming back to read another one. Though, the urge to read the story gets it done, but, still.

Like I said, I love your fictional stories, I too love the short stories primarily meant for children. Maybe, I'm too old to like children stories , but, still, the kid in my likes them. And as the kids' psychology goes, why not add some more attractive and colourful images to the stores, especially, in the ones meant for children? I see a number of label menus, but am missing out on one Kids Section. You have a number of stories targeted atkids, and you miss out on a separate section for that? Secondly, I like reading almost all your post, except, the contest posts. Why? Maybe, because a few contest posts (maybe from other bloggers), I read sounded to me to be like lame advertisements for the brand. I'm not suggesting that you too write the same, (because as far as I recall, I've almost skipped reading any of your contest posts), so won't comment on that. I believe you indicate on almost all your contest posts that the blog post is for a contest, and that's a great thing. One peculiar thing I saw on the images in your blog posts was the missing info of the alt tag. The alt tag is required because it serves an alternative text for an image, which is displayed whenever the user is unable to see an image for whatever reason. This alt tag also allows the search engine bots to search for keywords, helping in SEO, as using some keywords with img alt tags isn't something that search engines penalize. Beyond that, alt text also allows the visually impaired people to listen through the alt text (which most often describes the contents of the image), using screen reader software. Almost all the images on your blog are 240x320 pixels and vice versa. Why not try experimenting with a different resolution, say, 640x480? this would increase the image size, which would use uo the space on the sides, thus giving a fuller look to the blog post. The text you write is aligned to the left. Personally, I prefer text alignment set to justified, giving a cleaner, much proper look to the text.

There was something I missed. It was the Blog roll. Though, not mandatory at all, I think it lets you showcase some blogs you like reading, and this helps people share links to each other's blogs. You can try integrating one.

THE MOBILE TEMPLATE

Your blog's desktop template is great, almost flawless, sadly the same can't be said for your blog's mobile template. A mobile theme, I believe is created so as to allow the resources to load faster (by the means of reducing images and most fancy stuff), on a slower connection, and have a maximum visibility for the important content. The mobile template for your blog allows the background image from the desktop template to load, however, things get bad when someone is browsing with a smartphone with a higher resolution, or in landscape modes. The bachground image gets stretched and gives a bad impression. Apart from that, there seems to be the default theme background colour (peach colour) coming in to play once the background image's bottom part finishes. In the desktop theme, you've made the background image static, but, in the mobile theme, it is scrollable, and thus moves out of the way when one scrolls a bit down. See the image I took in my cellphone. The area marked in bloe colour is where the transition from the background image to the theme colour takes place. This can be resolved, to give a uniform look to the mobile theme too.

SOCIAL INTERACTION

I see you and your blog have quite a lot of visitors, members, friends and subscibers. That's a good thing, and shows the popularity of your blog. You also do regularly update your facebook page with new links to your blog posts. You can additionally have a twitter handle for adding more social interactivity element to your blog, as twitter, in recent times has seen a growth in popularity and a lot of that can be attributed to our recently concluded General Elections. Beyond creating accounts on the social networking sites, and updating the pages manually (which can be really a cumbersome task), you can automate the things using a number of plugins for both, twitter and facebook, which take in a feed of your blog, and automatically post a new post when you update your blog with a new post.

Done with one more essay! Feeling good now. I hope the essay was helpful and not boring enough to catch you snoring midway,  or falling from your chair.

As usual, my TM disclaimers apply - These are just suggestions from a fellow blogger. I, in no manner imply that this is what you SHOULD do. It's your blog, you can choose something you feel good enough a suggestion to work upon, or rubbish it all, without telling me, ofcourse!

LOL...Typical CK review Anyway, I'm absolutely grateful to you for the review. For Twitter, I tried to integrate it in the blog but it looked bad. Can you suggest any way to do it without looking bad? About Blog roll, this will make my right-hand side menu too full. For children's fiction tag, I'm scared that once I start doing it, I will start creating tag for various genre

For mobile, I'm still Just instruct me what to do where to make it good!

For Alt Tag, how to add Alt Tag?