Blog Review: Nature Delight

Nature/Environmentalist blogs were the most common blog submitted for a review - so it was a bit difficult to figure out which one to review (I tried to stick to one blog per topic… at least for this batch). In the end I chose to review Nature Delight, a blog about everything plants, animals, and nature in general. Most of the posts have extremely detailed writeups - but occasionally a post is put up for something called Wordless Wednesday and it is pretty much just a cool image with a quick writeup. I actually never heard of Wordless Wednesday before visiting Nature Delight - it’s proof that you learn something new every day.

The first thing I noticed is there are a lot of widgets and adsense blocks - way too many. I also noticed the feed subscription stuff was pretty hard to find (it’s kinda stuffed in the middle of the sidebar). While the content and pictures are laid out very well - the sidebar and header areas seem a bit too busy. Try separating the Adsense out as well - having them stuffed together doesn’t increase the CTR at all (if anything it hurts it). As with the other blogs I’ve reviewed - the feed for the auto-discovery code doesn’t point to the FeedBurner feed you’ve set up.

As far as the content goes - I’m not really into plants and animals that much - but I do love the pictures. The picture of that strange jellyfish is pretty amazing - is it real or fake? And is it just me, or does it look like Giraffes could be knocked over by a slight gust of wind? I mean look at the things… big body… small head… and skinny legs. Looks like a slight breeze would make it stumble around.

Anyway, back on topic, the biggest issue I could see is there are too many widgets - and the subscription info was fairly impossible to find. Probably the second biggest issue is that the posts with long writeups don’t seem to have much personality. When I read it I can’t really tell much about the blogger other than they love nature and know a lot about plants and animals.

Other than that is is laid out extremely well, and the images really make the posts looks unique. The content is well written and extremely detailed, and this is a blog I’ll probably revisit in the future.

Rating

My overall rating for Nature Delight is:

Content: 8/10 - Well written and very detailed - but it needs a bit of personality to spice things up.
Design: 6/10 - Lots of widgets and adsense, and the feed stuff was hard to find. Good job formatting the posts though.
Uniqueness: 8/10 - I haven’t seen other blogs like this - but I think it could still use a bit of personality to spice it up a bit.
Overall: 8/10 - For being only a month old it is definitely on the right track. Keep up the good work.

You can visit Nature Delight here, and you can subscribe to it here.

Please subscribe, or else I will cry. Do you really want to make a programmer cry?