Data-Drop.com - Technology Reviews, How-To’s, and More!
October 28, 2007
Recently I have learned about about a cool site called Data-Drop.com. The about page reveals that the author, Michael, is a full time network administrator who uses technology everyday. He writes tech reviews and how-to documents, and you know you can trust what he has to say. The author of Data-Drop.com is also very open-minded and loves to hear your ideas. He likes learning more than one way to do something and welcomes your own opinions with open arms - as long as you return that favor. This is the perfect way to run a blog! Make it your own, but also make your readers feel very included.
The Design
Upon visiting Data-Drop.com the first thing I noticed was the clean, three-column design. The theme is mostly red and black with the page’s background being white. An organized-looking layout is always a must. Visiting a site and having it please the eye is what I like.
One thing I think could be improved about the blog’s general look, however, is the amount of items in the sidebars. While the sidebars look great and are very organized, there are a few extras that could be done without. I think Data-Drop.com would look better if the archives, calendar, BlogRush widget, and the buttons at the bottom of the right sidebar were removed. There are also an amount of banners, Adsense, etc. which could later on be replaced with direct advertising (directly selling text link ads, banners, etc.) once the blog gains more popularity.
The Content
More importantly though, Data-Drop.com is a place where you can find some great content. It isn’t one of those blogs where the author reads information on other sites and just rewrites it - this guy really knows what he is talking about. He has experience on what he writes about and is very hands-on. What he writes can be very helpful to you. These are some of the articles that have stood out to me:
1. What to do with a dreaded disk failure
2. Free Antivirus for everyone
3. Adding Video to your Wordpress Blog
5. PC Maintenane the good, the bad, the ugly
Suggested Improvements
While Data-Drop.com offers some great technology how-to’s and reviews, I’ve also found some errors within and throughout these articles. When there are spelling and grammar errors, the impact of the post is greatly reduced. Looking through the site I have found several post titles with mispelled words, which automatically causes a bad first impression. Another thing about the titles I have noticed is that they are often not capitalized proplerly. The first, last, and all words of importance in a title should be capitalized. In order to have a great post, you need to take the time to reread it at least TWICE before publishing so you can catch the little mistakes - when I was a new blogger, I never proofread and that was my biggest daily mistake.
Some of the posts are also one huge chunk of text, and that is a strain to read. In fact, most people might skip over that. It is always very important to divide up an article into readable paragraphs.
Another thing I noticed is Data-Drop.com’s permalink system. In the individual post URL, each one ends in something like p=13, which is the default system for Wordpress. All this tells us is the number of the post. A better permalink system would have included the post’s title and, if the author wanted, the date (see the URL for this post as an example). A post URL that includes the article’s title is better for SEO reasons especially and also for the readers. If the author wanted to change the permalinks, he would need to use a redirect plugin in order to not lose any search engine results or backlinks he might already have for those articles.
Summing It Up
All in all, Data-Drop.com is a great site with helpful, unique content. The blog’s theme is a nice one and the author also does a good job at promoting his StumbleUpon and feed subscriptions at the top of the sidebar, which is a great place for that to be. You’ll find many great technology reads at Data-Drop.com that you won’t find anywhere else!
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Comments
8 Responses to “Data-Drop.com - Technology Reviews, How-To’s, and More!”
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Thank you for the wonderful review. I will start tomorrow to work on these changes to make the site better. You truly have inspired me on more than one occasion. Thanks again.
Michael, you’re very welcome - you deserved it! Your blog is great and I’m glad you liked the review. I look forward to seeing your site progress. :D
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Good review, but, ironically, you need to follow your own advice as you gave it in the first paragraph under “Suggested Improvements.”
@Jeffrey - Thank you. However, I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean. My advice in that paragraph was to proofread and avoid mistakes. That is something I always do. I reread each of my posts at least twice and I always check to make sure there are no errors in spelling or grammar. What makes you think I am not doing that? I’d like to know so I can fix it.