A Review of Let’s Sermo! – Let’s Get Talking!
This is not a paid review, but a review won in my previous contest by Farrhad.
Today I would like to turn the spot light on Let’s Sermo!; a blog about technology, entertainment, humor, blogging, and life.
The Design
Let’s Sermo! uses a premium magazine style WordPress theme from WooThemes. It’s really easy on the eyes and will grab your attention the moment you set your eyes upon it. Although the same theme is used on a few other semi-popular blogs, this one has been customized to give it a special and attention grabbing look. One thing I really like about the design is the simple yet elegant logo which blends in nicely with the theme.
Another thing I like is how the categories are displayed right under the header, this is a great way to show new visitors a wider range of your content. There are also a few tabs in the sidebar that let you switch between the most popular, commented, and featured content?a must have for every website.
The only thing I would consider changing with the theme is making the post excerpts a little bit longer so that visitors won’t have to click a post just to see what it’s about. But overall, it’s an awesome design!
The Content
To be honest, I don’t really know if Let’s Sermo! is a personal blog, humor blog, entertainment blog, or life blog! Although there are some pretty awesome articles, like these:
- How To Achieve Your Goals And Maintain Them
- 20 Great Tips for Running a Successful Business
- Get Quality Backlinks in 30 Minutes!
It’s hard to know what the website is really about. (Perhaps something to do with how to Make Money on the Internet.) Maybe if a few topics were trimmed down so that the blog would focus on only one in particular, that would help show all the great articles on it! As for most of the posts I read, they were very fun to read and didn’t burn my eyes because of the different tags used.
Random Bits & Bytes
Permalinks – Something I noticed when browsing the site was that the default permalinks are still in use. (The ?p=343 ones.) Although changing them can cause lots of problems (like 404s), I think that this move should be made if it isn’t too much work and won’t cause that many problems.
Monetization – That’s a pretty smart move Farrhad has done there, putting the “Want a theme like this one?” image at the bottom of the sidebar. Many of the visitors to Let’s Sermo! will want the same theme being used at it, so that affiliate link is a pretty good idea to earn some cash. As for the private advertising, I think Farrhad should provide some more details on the Advertise page and organize it a bit more (considering the price of a paid review is $75.)
Some Constructive Criticism
The first thing I noticed when arriving at the site was how long it took to load. I know that the majority of Internet users have a fast connection, but there are tons of people out there still on dial up. And if they need to wait 3 minutes for your site to load, then you will obviously lose out on a ton of visitors. So you might want to consider optimizing some of the images or removing other stuff to speed up the loading…
Also, although I like the tagline of the blog, it doesn’t show first time visitors what the blog is about. You might want to think up another tagline that will show visitors what they’ll be getting if they stick around.
All in all, Let’s Sermo! is a great blog with a great design and awesome content. Be sure to check it out and subscribe to the feed today!
24 Responses to “A Review of Let’s Sermo! – Let’s Get Talking!”
Hey good review. The first thing that got my attention was: wow, great design. The second thing that got my attention was: “WTF is this blog about!?”. I still don’t know what it is about. This is a big problem to get sponsors because no one will actually buy ad spots if they can’t target a specific audience. Otherwise, it doesn’t look too bad!
Hi Rajaie – What a great way to showcase another blogger. It looks like a great site. I’ll check it out per your recommendation.
Great review and I agree that the author needs a more convincing tagline to begin with. Anyway, the first impression is good and eye-catching with a nice backdrop…..it’s one of the nicest tweak to the theme I’ve seen so far.
Yan
Partly agree with your take on it not being a focused blog. But I think that successful blogs sites in the future won’t be as focused as they have been in the past.
Like your columnists in magazines, (this is only my opinion) blogs will have a several writers on several subjects which all prescribe to an overall “flavour” of the blog. the content itself doesn’t need to be focused by the style and tone does.
Flicking around the sermo blog, I found that the vast majority of content there was interesting. That’s a success in my eyes.
Your defo right about the Perma links tho – that’s just lame.
And do you lose more visitors because your site is slow than you gain because it looks good. Just thought I’d throw that question into the mix!
Again nice review etc.
one think i noticed though about the site the screen shot you provided is NOT the full theme image.
It actually goes on on both sides for the same amount again.
So one thing that could be done is chop those bits off! that will help reduce load time by a lot! (NB of this is a ‘bug’ i get it in FF)
Thanks a lot for the review, Rajaie
I will improvise wherever i can, thanks everyone
Yeah. Once you scroll out more in Firefox, you can see that there is a lot of stuff that is not appearing normally. I really liked the design. It would be great if the owner tweaked the theme a bit so that the whole design appears normally. Interesting blog.
its eye catching no doubt , the theme needs to be tweaked to make it a technology related blog
Hi,
Farrhad :p you should really improve the permalinks now. Don’t be lazy and get it done.
Awesome review! It entices me to pay for one :p
I’ll chip in and offer thanks for the review too, since I occasionally put up guest posts on Lets Sermo. I would also encourage Farrhad to slowly specialize towards a particular subject rather than keeping the blog as a general discussion site.
Ben – I totally agree with you. If sponsors don’t know what a site is about, then you will have a really hard time convincing them to advertise.
Barbara – Thanks
Yan – Same here, I’ve seen that theme on siteflipu.com but the one Let’s Sermo! uses is very nicely customized.
“And do you lose more visitors because your site is slow than you gain because it looks good. Just thought I’d throw that question into the mix!”
I don’t think anyone gains visitors because his design is good.
Donace – Ya, I noticed that when viewing in Firefox, needs to be fixed to decrease loading time as well.
Farrhad – Be sure to take action now, not just wait till later
Ganesh – Yup, I zoomed out to see the whole design.
ZK – I’m interested in seeing what changes will be made
Swastik – Sure, I’d like it if you ordered a review
Forsaken – You’re welcome
The permalinks thing requires me to get the redirect plugin too, will do it in a day or two (have my TD assignments to do first :p)
Thanks Forsaken
Don’t know if this is the right attitude but, i get lost of visits from “Showcase” sites, and i think barely 2% of my visits are from dial up users.
Farrhad – I was pretty sure you got many visitors from showcase sites, and that not many of your reader use dial-up. But again, it’s the little things that matter
You have a point, Rajaie
I am going to cut the sides of the design, that should help.
Thanks again
Farrhad – Ya, definitely. No problem.
Also, any idea of a niche i should try to follow?
Farrhad – Depends what you enjoy blogging about
Probably congrats to the winner.Good Review Rajaie.The website is really superb
Harish – Glad you liked it.
Also, any idea of a niche i should try to follow?
Well, no one can answer that better than you. Do what you LOVE!
Wow I definitely approve. And that is one of the coolest templates I’ve ever seen. Thanks for sharing the site with us, I never would have found it otherwise.
Jonathan Muller
Nice Keep ‘em coming, best way to find new blogs
@Swastik
Actually i love blogging on anything, lol!
The blog design is very nice, The blog it self very useful collection of post on different topics.
The only thing is that, It takes about more than a minute to open. But I noticed that Farrhad is doing his best and improving it
Best wishes for LetsSermo for 2009
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