My Site: Chaos Laboratory

[miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG 0]

Hey guys,

I'd been indenting to set-up a proper personal site for a long while, but got around to doing so only last month. My site, Chaos Laboratory is primarily oriented as a technology blog (with software reviews, articles, tutorials, free goodies from the net etc.)

 

I am not much concerned about the layout & graphics - as long as it's clearly readable....for my site's not there for sporting fancy graphics, but some serious content.

 

Do take a look and provide me with any feedbacks/suggestions for improvement...

 

Cheers,

m^e

[turbopowerdmaxsteel 0]

Simple and proffessional is the way to go. Its a bit messy on non firefox browsers, but it is bearable. I think you should get rid of the alert about the "Enhanced functionality of the site....", you've put in contrary to the aim of content over style. From the user's point of view, I wouldn't really care about the detailed rendering of a page on my browser. Besides, I also feel you should shorten the welcome note of :-

Those of you, who are using a browser other than Firefox, I'm extremely sorry about the messy rendering of my page(s) owing to the current theme I'm using. A new theme - that'll work uniformly on all browsers - is under development and I'll upgrade to that as soon as possible. Till then, sorry for the inconvenience.

To something like Note for non firefox users

Content wise, the site's very good and the articles are growing in number quite rapidly. I would also like to see the site develop into something more than just another tech blog. Its a lab, right? Gotta have some miraculous products that go with the bomblastic name.

[miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG 0]

Thanks for the review Yup - it's a lab too and hence I intend to churn out a bunch of good products... just that time is being such a b**** Someday..soon

[turbopowerdmaxsteel 0]

Who are you hosted on, Asta? Care to elaborate on the products you have in mind?

[miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG 0]

Nope.. am on the paid Xisto - Web Hosting servers.... am out of ideas for products now !! Hoping/Wishing hard that lightning would strike me soon in that respect Meanwhile if you see that light called EUREKA blinking in ur head somewhere, fill me in

[turbopowerdmaxsteel 0]

It might sound a little weird, but tell me how does the 'ATIT Airlines straight from the chaos-labs' sound?

 

Don't get confused, its not another Boeing-747; its the Across the Internet Transferer Airlines, a downloader/uploader that would support all publicly available TCP/IP protocols, P2P protocols and what not!!!

 

Sope, what do you say? I know being the CSA at Microsys doesn't leave much time for these thingys, but you could atleast guide me in developing it for the Chaos-Laboratory...

[miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG 0]

Anybody else with some positive / negative feedback ??

[dhanesh1405241511 0]

Anybody else with some positive / negative feedback ??

LOL ... Here i come finally .. hehe. Well m not that good at reviewing sites, but i can be shure that most of the "digg it" would go from me (when i am free from my study/world related issues), i am goin negative on my credits too, but thought that reviewing for m^e is top priority.
Newayz, i wouldent say its a personal site, rather if maintained and link-shared the right way, could prove a daily tech newspaper to some like me. For instance look at neowin, facy site and all, but thats the first site i open to get my hands on tech news first thing when i wake up.

You could keep a few editors/writers/contibutors and kinda start a side forum. Nothing too facy but for the start just to discuss certain news issues and the pros and cons of it. I'd suggest a first step of writer base to increase the posting on the site and to bring tech news from around the world.

Now since tech news is the subject, you could decide on a particular field, like software / hardware / underground / scripting / modding etc .. hope you get my point. I am not too good of an explainer, but i could elaborate if you want me too. Over all i think this could make a good "rss" feed for my daily reading .

Regards
Dhanesh.

[pyost 0]

Hey, Dhanesh, glad to see you are still posting

 

Anyhow, we come to my review of the site. I'll start with the design, since it is the first thing someone will see when visiting Chaos Laboratory. It is simple, and a typical blog design. The titles are big enough, and so are the texts - some people like to use smaller fonts, which then makes it hard to read

 

Unfortunately, there are (always) things that aren't quite right. For example, the huge Google ad at the top is really a fish out of the sea. I'm ok with ads, because bloggers have to make money too, but try using a smaller size and adding it somewhere else instead. Next, I remember you had a great and relaxing header image, but I can't seem to access it right now. Without it, the blog is messed up a bit. And the last thing is the favicon - some people might find it disturbing. I have no problems with it, but I don't think a nuclear explosion is a appropriate image to use

 

Let's move on to organization. Your site is easy to navigate, because all the links are clearly marked. However, I am not quite sure if there is any use in putting DIGG links on static pages (About, Downloads, Stats). And now that I've mentioned those pages, I think you should include the sidebar there, too - I don't feel like going to the home page again Oh, and I am always glad to see a blog that is regularly updated, unlike my blogs Anyway, I am aware that you haven't created this template, but with a few customizations, it could turn out really well.

 

And finally, the content! This is by far the best aspect of your web site. All the posts are professionally written, you aren't all over the place when it comes to topics, and people can really be informed by reading your site every now and then.

 

To sum up:

Design - 7.8

Organization - 8.6

Content - 9.7 (nothing is perfect )

 

Which gives us 8.7/10 Keep up the good work

[miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG 0]

Whoa.. how come I missed these reviews !!! Thanks guys - those were awesome ones and wud definitely set me along the right path Twitch was working on a good wide template for me that goes easy on colours and makes text totally readable - coz that's what the whole thing is about.

 

Cheers !!

 

Question:

Do the Ads on my site make it load slow for you?? How about the page-load time apart from the ads? For me, with a decent connection everything looks fine. What was your experience ?

[turbopowerdmaxsteel 0]

Loading speed is quite good on my 128 kbps connection. However, the CSS isn't rendering properly in Internet Explorer 7 and Opera. No such problems on Firefox though.

[sujith 0]

I see no ads, may be because I am running Ad blockers like Ad muncher

Question:Do the Ads on my site make it load slow for you?? How about the page-load time apart from the ads? For me, with a decent connection everything looks fine. What was your experience ?

[miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG 0]

Yup AdBlockers will surely chop the ads out...

 

I took up Pyost's recommendation and changed the favicon. As for the Digg submission icon on the static pages, I'll have to figure out how to get rid of it, coz it's automatically embedded by a WP plug-in.

 

As for the large rectangular Google Ads - I've figured out a way to spice them up... as I've shown in my post Create designer ads with AdSense Decorator and increase your CTR. It doesn't look half as stark and out of place now and blends in better. And trust me when I say that my CTR improved a hell lot because of that... I'm getting far more regular clicks now.

 

Any more suggestions ??

[pyost 0]

As for the Digg submission icon on the static pages, I'll have to figure out how to get rid of it, coz it's automatically embedded by a WP plug-in.

 

I haven't really worked with WordPress plugins, but I have an idea how they work. If I am right, you are able to use template tags within plugin files. The good thing about these template tags is that you can at any time determine at which blog page (URL) you are. Therefore, you can easily check whether you are on a static page by using is_page(). So, this is what I would do:

 

if (!is_page()) {// ICON DISPLAY CODE}

This way you can also remove the Digg icon (or some other element) from any page. Check this list of Conditional Tags for more information.