Kelly‘s blog is very aptly titled, as the author is very fond of doing just that- spilling the beans on just about anything. And it’s great to read words of wisdom from someone who is writing about just what she’s experiencing, in the multiple roles she plays in life. Kelly is a mother, a fiance, a photographer, a wanker, and most anything else, as she states so herself. Wait- a wanker? Let’s just leave that to our imaginations, shall we?
The blog seems a bit on the new side, and has been moved to different servers in a span of a few weeks. In its current incarnation, notable among the posts are stories and musings on parenthood, coffee, and women’s physiological issues.
Visual Aesthetics – 9
What can we say? It’s great! Kelly‘s blog uses CSS (cascading style sheets) tricks to let the reader change the color scheme and layout with a single click. It’s a good option, especially to readers who prefer a certain look and feel when reading a blog. Each layout selection looks attractive and readable, and has a distinct style of its own. We would’ve given a 10, but some images didn’t blend in too well with other elements in some selectable layouts- something difficult to control with this kind of setup.
User Friendliness – 8
Kelly‘s blog is readable enough, and with adequate visual cues as to the elements, such as headings and links. The fact that the blog has a fast loading time is a plus- something achieved by the heavy use of CSS to define the styles of each element (rather than repeatedly defining the properties for each element). The navigation system is above-average, as the site is simple enough to browse across the archives by time or category. However, it would have been easier to browse through if the article titles served as permalinks, and the header image served as the “home” link.
Reading Enjoyment – 7
You can find interesting articles on Kelly‘s blog, be it about parenthood, coffee, or life in general (especially life being a woman). But it’s still a new blog and we can only enjoy reading as much as there are articles to read. So even if we’d like to give a higher score, we would rather reserve these for blogs with an already-established content and readership (as per the feedback).
Useful Info – 8
It’s evident from the quality and number of comments ensuing from the articles that people find Kelly‘s writing useful and interesting. We particularly find the info bits on coffee useful, along with Kelly‘s opinions on being a new mother. Spilling The Beans also has good links to external sites and blogs, with useful themes and information.
Overall Experience – 8
Spilling The Beans is definitely an interesting read, even at this early stage. The site looks promising, as it is- we feel that Kelly will keep on writing interesting material on what she does and knows best: parenting, coffee, and just about anything in life. Spilling The Beans may not exactly be ripe for the picking at the moment, but has potential to be Bloggy Award material in the near future- perhaps with a bit of build-up in content and following.
[tags]beans,coffee,kelly,wanker,CSS,mother[/tags]
