10 things: The Path to the Pegasus Letter
10. Dec, 2008 
13 Comments
I did some queue-bumping again, as I was actually offered payment for a review. This is a first, and I’d love it if the trend continued. 
Want to be bumped to the top of the queue? Make me an offer!
Don’t think that just because you’re paying me, I’m going to go easy, however. My generosity only goes so far and I’m sorry to say that my first paying customer does have 10 things I hate. Enough of the preamble, let’s just jump right in. The Path to the Pegasus Letter, here are 10 things I hate about your site:
- Your blog layout is not considerate of others.
- Horizontal scrolling is only acceptable when it’s intentional.
- Where does the first article start, and the sponsors end?
- Is this just one, long, never ending post?
- Color, color, everywhere.
- Font consistency.
- Where are all of the winged horse articles?
- Why do you have two of your three pages going somewhere else?
- This blog is a validation nightmare.
- I want candy! Eye candy, that is.
Details
- Your blog layout is not considerate of others. I have viewed your blog on three different computers, in six different browsers, and it’s rendered different every time. Check out the links below:
What does this mean? It means check your blog in more than one browser, using more than one resolution setting. Each screenshot above was taken at a high resolution (over 1024 pixels wide) and your columns still bleed into each other, or your right sidebar gets pushed to the bottom. Can you imagine the poor reader who is trying to visit your blog but they only have a 15″ monitor? Yikes! Serious updating of the the CSS is probably the only way to fix this issue.
- Horizontal scrolling is only acceptable when it’s intentional. This ties in to the problems outlined in #1. In Firefox, the browser is displaying your columns next to each other, but this is resulting in horizontal scrolling. Even on my big-arse monitor.
What does this mean? See #1.
- Where does the first article start, and the sponsors end? The way you have your blog set up currently, it seems that the row of pictures at the top of the page belong to the first article. It’s only when I read the text ‘Sponsors’ do I realize these are advertisements.
What does this mean? There needs to be some separation between your sponsor ads and the start of your article. Personally, I’d move the sponsors to a sidebar (after I fixed the layout problems). As it is right now you’re encouraging your readers to click somewhere else and they haven’t even gotten to your first article yet. At the very least you need to provide some spacing between your ads and your first post title.
- Is this just one, long, never ending post? There are many reasons why I’m asking this question (and we’ll get to more of them below). The first reason is that there is no seperation between your posts. They literally blend from one post to another. Sure, at the end of your posts you have label tags, but this is not a good way to indicate the end of a post.
What does this mean? There sould be some design element, even if it’s a simple horizontal rule, that separates one post from another.
- Color, color, everywhere. You have too much color. Seriously. Let’s take a look:
- bold, orange, italicized text;
- really big, bold, orange, italizized text;
- bold, dark gray (body color) text;
- bold, green, italicized text;
- really big, bold, green, italized text;
- bold, blue, italicized text;
- bold, red, italicized text;
and that’s just on the first page! (I did not include post titles or links.)
What does this mean? Lose some of the formatting. Is it really necessary to have every other paragraph formatted a different style? What you are saying to your readers is that you don’t think they are capable of understanding what you are writing. It feels like you are holding my hand and talking to me like I’m five. Trust your readers. They’ll get it.
- Font consistency. This goes hand-in-hand with #5. Not only do you have too many colors, you have too many font sizes, and you don’t use them consistently. (Refer to the color list above.) In addition, your post titles don’t stand out enough since you have body text that competes with them.
What does this mean? You need to incorporate some formatting consistency. Pick a size and color for each element you feel you need to highlight. (Post titles, links, blocks of text you just have to make stand out more, etc.). Fight the urge to use more than 3-4 colors, or 3-4 font sizes.
- Where are all of the winged horse articles? I had to rely on Entrecard and your archives to determine what your blog was about. Especially since your blog title doesn’t scream “finance and investing.” I’m guessing this happens to a lot of first-time visitors.
What does this mean? Include an ‘About’ page, or at least some text with your disclaimer to let people know what your blog is about.
- Why do you have two of your three pages going somewhere else? Since this is a financial blog, I’m wondering why your pages go to “blogging” blogs? Usually blog pages go to other areas of that particular blog (like an ‘About’ page). Even if these are blogs you own, their placement here is confusing.
What does this mean? I would recommend keeping your blog’s pages within your blog. If these two links are your projects, find somewhere in your sidebar to showcase them. If they are not, add them to your blogroll, or again somewhere in your sidebar. They just don’t make sense where they are.
- This blog is a validation nightmare. I don’t care what you use to validate this site—you are going to get back a gazillion errors. I use the HTML Validator extension for Firefox and it came up with 200 errors and 13 warnings. That’s a lot.
What does this mean? That depends on if you care about validation or not. A lot of bloggers don’t. I do. (And yes, unfortunately my blog currently throws a few errors itself—67 to be exact.
) If you do care and use Firefox, check out the extension. It will provide you with a list of the errors, most of which are easy enough to fix. If you prefer to not install an extension or you are not using Firefox, check out the W3C Markup Validation Service (although they’re listing almost 400 errors for the XHTML doctype you are declaring—ouch).If you’re up to it, you should check your CSS too. W3C CSS Validation Service
- I want candy! Eye candy, that is. Let’s face it. Finance is not the most enticing subject, the past six months excluded. Give your readers something to excite them. Even if your finance blog reads like Harry Potter, A long, scrolling page of text is not the best design method. Even J.K. Rowling has an illustration at the beginning of every chapter.
What does this mean? Add some eye candy. Simple finance graphics in your posts would go a long way. A fancy dollar sign, or an image of Wall Street. Something, anything, to break up the long scrolling page of text.
The End
At the end of the day, you have good content. Unfortunately, even good content needs a good wrapper. I do like your general color scheme (except the orange). Also, you have a lot of content to read and you’ve chosen a good width for your center column and a good font size for reading. Some quick CSS fixes and some attention to your blog’s layout and you’ll be in a whole new league. 
Those are my 10 things. Talk amongst yourselves…
I have to be honest, I gave this article a miss. This same blog is scheduled for review on my site next week. I do not want to see what you have written as I will then have pre-conceived ideas going into my review. I promise I will be back when I have finished my review, it will be interesting to see where we differ and where we agree.
Lyndis last blog post..WordPress Pagination
May have been good that you waited.
The new theme is 100% improvement over what was originally in place. Some of the items you mention, such as the lack of categories, would have made my list, however, since I stop myself at 10 things, I have to draw the line somewhere, LOL!
It will be interesting to see what you come up with. Now that I’m an email subscriber, I’ll know when your review is complete.
I look forward to it, and fully expect you to come back and read mine.
As promised, I’m back. Completed my review but surprise, surprise there was a different theme than the one you reviewed. This blog seems to be going through some changes right now and maybe it was not a good time for a review.
The owner of this site is definitely re-acting to your advice given here. It is rather nice if your advice is taken to heart, isn’t it?
I still have one further non-WP blog in my review queue. When that is finished I will be doing only WP reviews.
Lyndis last blog post..The Path to the Pegasus Letter
The new Pegasus looks great, and after some tweaking I think he’ll be all set (I’m assuming this is a blog by a ‘he’).
It is always nice when someone heeds my advice–I take a lot of time when doing my reviews.
Hi Melissa,
thank you for your review. I knew the design and layout was not good but I had no idea that it was that bad. Well, there have been major changes since you have done your review and I am glad you did it.
Lyndi did a review on my new blog and pointed out even more things that could be changed to improve the blog.
I am glad that the reviews were honest as it will definitely help to improve the blog.
Thanks again and I am sorry that the blog was that bad when you did the review.
Apollos last blog post..More unemployment for a handful of dollars
Hi Apollo,
Thank you 1) for actually “paying” for my services
and 2) for taking all the advice to make your blog better. I think it’s looking great!
As a daily reader of the Path, I am so glad you reviewed his site and that review subsequently prompted him to change the template. This is much nicer, although there are still tweaks that could be done here and there to make it better even.
I’m off to Nice2all to read her review and see if she noticed the same things I did
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Margarets last blog post..It’s a Matter of Ethics
Thanks for stopping by Margaret!
Hi Melissa,
yes The Path to the Pegasus Letter is written by he…:). Thanks again for taking the time to review a badly designed blog and I am glad that you like the new design.
I feel like the majority of the work is out the way and now there are tweaks here and there in order to improve it.
I want to thank Margaret as well for her valuable input and Lyndi’s review gave me additional ‘food for thought’.
I really appreciate the time everyone took to help me move the blog forward to a new level.
I hope that over the next few weeks I will manage to fine-tune the blog at least a little.
Take care.
Apollos last blog post..More unemployment for a handful of dollars
Alas, a blog is never completely done. They’re like children.
I’m glad you found my input helpful. Don’t be a stranger!
Hi. I was trying to find a way to contact you to see if I could add my blog to your list of reviews, but I guess I’m tired tonight and can’t find anything. Please let me know how I can be added. Thanks.
Lisette
Lisettes last blog post..Do you like my new background and heading?
Hi Lisette,
You point out an oversight I definitely need to correct. I didn’t realize some things didn’t come over when I made changes to my theme. I’ll get that fixed.
In the meantime, you’re in the queue!