Next up in our EntreCard site review series is a blog called Jesus Encounter, written by 19 year old Jeremy Newton.
Now, in all fairness, Jeremy states on his blog that he recently updated the design of his site (since purchasing the review with EC credits) so I’m not sure what the original site looked like. I’m going by today’s view.
On first glance, it was quite obvious to me that the design for the site was a free, unaltered theme. Now, I’m not here to bash free themes by any means. But I can’t stress enough that if you want your website or blog to stand apart from the crowd, you need to at the VERY LEAST do some customizations to it to make it your own. Again, since Jeremy recently installed this new theme, he has said that he’s going to do some custom work to it. I sure hope he does that!
- I do love the tabbed sections in the sidebar. I use them here on this site, and I really like the way they keep things organized and listed out without taking up too much space or creating a long sidebar. I especially hate when the sidebar goes for “pages” below the main content… major pet peeve! Fortunately, that doesn’t happen too often with this blog, though I wish the background was solid for the whole thing to “even out” the bottoms of the three columns (that they went all the way to the footer in a way). The archives pages, for example, could stand to show more than 2 posts/excerpts per page.
- The color seems a little bland to me. Grey. Washed out. Dull. Now, I know that this happens to be a spiritual blog, but isn’t spirituality about filling our souls with light and love? Finding our happiness through our faith? I don’t feel happy when I see this site, the lack of color seriously weighs me down.
- There are less than 100 “pages” listed in Yahoo and Google - and only 7 listed in MSN. All this tells me right now is that the site is fairly new, and needs that daily attention to get more picked up. Time and more writing will get it more attention.
- One thing that’s very easy to take note of is Jeremy’s passion in his writing. His style isn’t “preachy” nor is it frightening in any way. He’s writing from his heart, and it’s quite obvious. That’s such a good, refreshing thing to see, as sometimes I think especially newer blogs try to conform to some “attitude” they think they’re supposed to have. This isn’t true whatsoever. Of course, in return, you’re going to find that your audience is full of a combination of people who “get it” and people who simply don’t. A blogger can’t let this be discouraging, or altering. I’m very pleased that he’s decided to be honest and write in his own voice.
In all honesty, aside from the colorless design, and a few tweaks to the layout, there’s not much I’d have to say that’s “bad” or unappealing about this site. I do question the ad blocks a little, because they’re really NOT related, and it’s very very difficult to monetize a religious website. I mean, it’s honestly near impossible to make any money this way. My suggestion would be for Jeremy to come up with some sort of tool people can use to work on their own spirituality. Be it a spreadsheet or a journal page, or something like that. If it’s small, give it away. If it’s really concise and detailed, charge a few bucks for a download (like an ebook). Otherwise, you’re just not going to get ads that are targeted to your readers, which means you’re less likely to get your readers clicking on them, so they’re a waste of space. Just be careful, because you’re also giving high importance to something unrelated to your blog, so you might find yourself penalized in Google for something like that if you’re not cautious enough about who you allow to advertise (or who you choose to promote).
Popularity: 69% [?]
