I hate making a big deal out of the design of a weblog, because quite frankly, that’s not what I’m reviewing a site for. The design of this site, however, was the first impression that stuck with me, and it wasn’t a very good one at that. The layout appears to be just several tables slapped up next to each other in order to make everything fit snuggly. Each table has a different colored border, and within each table, you’ll typically find all sorts of different colors of text. The design is NOT something I hope sticks around for a while, but I was very much hoping the reading of the weblog could make up for the design I just couldn’t find myself liking.
The weblog at first appears to still be a fairly new one, with archives only dating back as far as February 21 that I could find. I get the feeling, however, that once the “new design”, which I believe is now the current one, rolled out perhaps there were some archives lost in the shuffle.
There were several entries in a row that ended exactly the same. The author posted everyone on the well being of the family cats, the weather, and the condition of the family Honda. For a week straight.
In more recent entries over the past couple of weeks, the posts seem to be getting a bit more in depth and cover more news than just the weather. The improvement I’ve noticed just over the few entries available to read leave me to believe that this weblog has the potential of getting better and better as times goes on.
Spelling is something I find myself being extremely picky about, whether on a review of a weblog or even when publishing to my own. It only takes a few minutes to run an a few sentences through any type of spell check, and everyone always benefits from correctly spelled words. Spell check could definitely have been utilized at Riftlands Café and it wouldn’t have hurt anything at all.
Riftlands Café has a cute little “about us” section, where not only do you get to read a brief paragraph about the main people involved with this site, but there’s also a photo of each of the family members posted there – a very nice touch for a personal weblog.
One big thing I liked about this site was how complete it is. It’s not “just a weblog”. The authors of the site take pride in it and like to make sure everything’s accounted for – the about the authors section, about the site, tons of photos in different galleries of all types. Very fun addition to the site itself, again making Riftlands Café more than “just a weblog”.
Riftlands Café – it’s a site that I probably won’t be back to visit, but it’s one that could very easily draw regular readers that may already know the folks behind the weblog. It was just a little hard for me to find myself on the edge of my seat waiting for the next entry to be made just to keep the readers posted about the condition of the cats or the weather.
Riftlands Cafe