Disclosure: This is a paid review. Saying that, all our reviews are honest. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise.

What is it?

Max Web Design Blog is a blog encompassing web design, marketing and programming. In the words of the blog’s founder, Robert G:

I created this blog to write as much as I can about my projects, my websites, marketing and search engine optimization tips. Also I will describe different softwares I use, websites and other stuff.

So, a large range of content. We’ll see how that works out later when we come back to it. Firstly, let’s delve into the design…

Design/Code

The site runs on Wordpress and the design is powered by the Magazine News theme.

My initial thoughts are that the design looks clean, welcoming and well structured. Content is organised in a logical manner whilst also injecting some individuality with the placement of the featured article followed by the latest article and finally followed by a ‘river of excerpts.’ However, the featured article does look very similar to the one used on NorthxEast - a little originality wouldn’t go amiss.

The theme appears to be unmodified and I would suggest that if a theme is necessary, consider making it your own. I would suggest changing the colours to suit your personality or perhaps use the theme as a base and add your logo or swap some elements around to promote certain features.

The coding behind the theme is sound. Code is concise and semantic, although validation errors are present. Most of these errors are avoidable with a little editing. Coding is well thought through and commented appropriately -I feel like I could edit the design without any problems. That’s always a testament to the designer.

Usability/Accessibility

The theme behaves how a blog is expected to behave, with the exception of the featured article always being present. Navigating posts, pages, categories etc is intuitive as it’s set up like most Wordpress themes. I had no trouble drilling down to content in various ways. The only confusing thing for me usability wise is that there are two search boxes.

The website functions and appears correct across major browsers (IE7, IE6, Firefox, Safari, Opera) so I can’t fault it there. Text resizes without destroying the layout so that’s another plus point.

Content

What’s a blog without its content?

Robert covers a wide range of content. This can be make or break for a blog. We cover a lot of material here, but I wouldn’t dream of writing about all the subjects covered. After reading most posts on Robert’s website it appears that Robert really knows his stuff, especially where SEO (example) and the web industry (example) is concerned. I get the impression (I may of course be wrong) that his passion lies partly in coding and partly in marketing/SEO. Posts on these subjects are informative, well thought through and they kept my interest. Posts on other subjects seem to lack his passion.

So my advice with the content would be either to concentrate on core subjects instead of diluting content or perhaps get more people on-board to cover all the bases.

Summary

Likes:

• Easy to get to the juicy content, whichever way you choose to drill down to it.
• Robert’s posts on SEO are top notch.

Dislikes:

• If posting about web design, why not have a unique (or at least modded) theme?
• Content range is a bit wide, all for one person. Go niche?

I wish Robert the best of luck in growing the Max Web Design Blog. I hope to (and can’t see why I won’t) be competing with him within 6 months!

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