Presentation

One of the reasons I was interested in writing this review is that Sephyroth recently made the move from the free blogger platform to Wordpress and it’s a move that many Blogger users contemplate as their blogging experience grows. (Useful links at the foot of this post for anyone thinking of doing the same).

The theme Sephyroth has chosen is clean and uncluttered and easy to navigate. It looks pretty good on my laptop although there are a few issues in certain browsers. Opera doesn’t like the left sidebar and makes it almost unreadable in places. For some reason it doesn’t place the links in scrollable boxes as displayed in Firefox and in IE7 it fails to show anything in the sidebar at all. With Wordpress themes it really is important to make sure that you check these things out. You can use Browsershots.org or BrowserCam to see how your site looks in various browsers and their versions. This is not a criticism of the blogger, just a common hassle that we all face with browser compatibility, and we all know that IE sucks.

The header contains a neat rotating image set up which Sephy explains in his "about me" section so I won’t give anything away - I was greeted with a camel on my first visit!

Aside from the browser issues, the template provides a good looking blog. The RSS subscription options are well placed and clear, there is an "about me" and "contact" field, something that a lot of bloggers overlook. (including me!) There are nicely integrated social blogging widgets from the three main blogging community sites where Sephy is quite active. If it were my blog I might consider placing nofollow on some of the links on the main page to reduce page rank leakage but that is a purely personal opinion and I hate talking about page rank!!

Content

This is not a blog about making money or SEO or all that nonsense, the posts are eclectic and represent blogging in its originally intended form. He writes about everyday things, walking, driving, photography, food, happenings in his life and mixes in a fair bit about blogging with links to useful programs and services encountered in his blogging journey. There is information about internet scams, something Sephy has been involved in trying to prevent and educate folks about, and there are posts about food. Like I say, it’s a real mixture. There are some nice photographs to break up the writing which is of a good standard and very readable.

Sephy has been blogging for a fair while so it’s impossible for me to go into every detail. Suffice to say, there is a lot of useful and interesting original content for visitors to explore. He is a very active blogger too and many will be familiar with his avatar appearing on their own pages as he cruises the blogosphere.

All in all, worth a read and even a place in your feed reader for those who want to keep up with his busy posting schedule, so why not pay him a visit?

Helpful Links For Other Blogger Users Contemplating The Move To Wordpress

Moving From Blogger To Wordpress

Lucia’s Series of Articles - Upgrading From Blogger To Wordpress Chapter1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

If you can’t decide on hosting, please explore the hosting directory and feel free to contact me.