Before I get started with this review - I’d like to make it clear that despite the fact this is a Christian blog I will review it the same as all other blogs - by giving my opinion on how to make it better and pointing out any obvious problems I see. If you’re wondering, I’m Agnostic - and because of that I tend to be fairly neutral on topics such as the existence of deities.
To be honest when I first visited The Bible Thumper’s Soapbox I was a bit scared off by four things - the sidebar is quite chaotic and doesn’t seem to have much organization, there are way too many little widgets and buttons and such (around 20?), and the feed subscription info was fairly impossible to find. The last thing is when I did a quick test of the RSS feed in my feed reader it looks as if 12 or so long posts were posted on the same day:
If they were really short one paragraph things it’d be fine - but they are all several paragraphs long. Either there’s a bit of information overload going on, or something got messed up on blogger.
I guess my point is there doesn’t seem to be much organization of the blog outside of the categories/labels. The homepage could probably also use a few less posts… since they are a bit long maybe 3-5 per page would be a bit more reasonable?
Rating
My overall rating for The Bible Thumper’s Soapbox is:
Content: 7/10 - The posts are fairly well written - but the posting schedule seems a bit erratic.
Design: 5/10 - The organization of the sidebar and footer seem a bit chaotic. However - a simple removal of some of the buttons and widgets and such would clean it right up.
Uniqueness: 8/10 - While there are quite a few religious blogs out there, this one has a personal touch.
Overall: 6/10 - All the widgets and such really bring down the overall rating.
You can visit The Bible Thumper’s Soapbox here, and subscribe to it here.
Please subscribe, or else I will cry. Do you really want to make a programmer cry?
November 18th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Thank you for your review. I appreciate your input and suggestions. I must admit that I am a widget junkie
. That is a weakness of mine - always looking for more but I can see how that would be chaotic. 
But there is a method to my madness…the icons on the left are largely for new Christians because the articles are geared towards Christians who have been in Christ for awhile. Maybe I’m wearing myself too thin but I wanted to include the broader range of Christians. Perhaps I should have created another blog just for “new” Christians - that might alleviate some of the icon clutter maybe? Perhaps? (I’m seriously considering doing this)
My posts are long because the subject matter is serious. It takes more than a paragraph when discussing self-examination, motives, deception, Satan’s tactics, etc. But I might take your advice and shorten the number of posts per page from 7 to maybe 3 or 4 because they are so long.
As far as my posts being erratic - I think there was a problem with blogger because I never post more than 3 posts in one sitting. I also have problems with the incorrect date and time displayed. But I have no control over that
Thanks again for taking the time to look over my blog and give your opinion. I will be making some adjustments soon.
November 18th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Good to see you got your comment posted alright finally
Yeah, blogger is a bit weird sometimes with dates not being set correctly. That is one reason I’m trying to use Google services a bit less - they just seem to be a bit too buggy.
Good luck with your blog