I have been meaning to write this post for a long time now. Kept postponing it from time to time. What I wonder is where the taste goes to when you become a techie or nerd, whichever suits you. Kenyan blogging scene is still a young one, but not as young, we have very influential bloggers. These range from market influencers who can convince a whole lot of folks to change important decisions in varios aspects of their life. This team cannot be ignored by product managers, government implementers and the general society.
That aside, we have some of the most ugly looking blogs south of the Sahara, am not being self-righteous, you are free to point out that mine is ugly too, feel free.
I will start with the two ugliest among them, the rest I will list in no particular order.
Kachwanya.com
See for yourself, this guy is a web developer, has done many sites for satisfied clients, he is the chairman of BAKE(Blogger’s Association of Kenya). But he has the ugliest blog I know.
Comproblems.blogspot.com
This blog is by Morris, a php web developer, a web hosting service provider and also writes on this blog, but his personal blog looks so awesome it gives Wikipedia competition.
SavvyKenya
This one is the mother of blogging, she used to blog even before you stopped suckling, lol even though she is in her early twenties. A former JKUAT Computer Science student and an MSC Student at Strathmore University, develops mobile applications. She has been through many escapades with this blog, from meeting a president to getting a lost phone replaced by Bob Collymore. Pimping her blog is the least she could do for it.
Bens Blog
Ben is one of the first guys I know to use the Dabr opensource code to create their branded twitter client, before the hailstorm of many others came in. He currently works at Capital fm digital division developing microsites for Capital FM, save for a peculiar image at the top somewhere, this blog is sooo plain unlike some of the work I have seen him do. He also writes on this blog, well….wrote one post. 🙂
Wanau.me
These are the wanaumes of twitter, the ma-twinyos, they advice us best how to act. I like the articles, most of them straight to the point. I have a problem though ingesting the financial stuff, (Most guys in IT have a problem with maths and accounting, no pun). But the blog design, you guys ought to do something.
mbuguanjihia.com
Mbugua Njihia is a web and mobile apps developer. He is part of the teams at both Symbiotic and Med-Africa, both very potent IT firms, and the best he can do for his blog is this. 🙁 This blog also falls in the category of Ben’s blog. Very well designed header, but goes as far as that. The rest of the interface looks boring. See the newsletter signup form.
Startupkenya
I dont know if Harry Karanja fits in the tech category, but for the mere fact that this is the guy who will tell you to start your own company, he is open to my criticism. No, I wont even talk much about it.
Wamathai
This guy hangs out with the techies, so by default gets classified among them. This blog is not really ugly as such, but boss, please resize your sidebars!
Iddsalim.com
With this one I just hate the colour, thats just me. Started long time ago when I felt that the black was making the eyes ache. You know, Idd Salim writes some very great and also long posts, and by the time am done reading my eyes are aching I cant see where the comment box is. I guess this is the only .Ke white on dark blog I know. I know you feel the coder, but do you have to make me feel like I am in an Ms-Dos environment?
Bake
This one is ours all. Its our feed, but untill recently(Actually since 24th December last year-guess its still in christmas mood) has not been refreshing the feeds. Its one of the most plain-looking sites around, and to say it represents Kenyan bloggers is well, eeeerr not visually satisfying.
And we have a Bonus:
Coldtusker
@coldtusker nini hii? Were you trying to draw a horizontal picket fence? I know you are not a techie, but you had to close the page. Do something boss!
kachwanya.com, iddsalim.com should not be on that listWTF coldtusker!Yours? Meh!
Tell me about mine, I want to hear. Which ones do you think would have best replaced the blogs you named?
wow
Kwanza wewe if you still had the previous theme you would be on this list, you saved yourself earlier.
hehe, yeah, it wasn’t a good one
heheheh what about http://www.volumejuice.com? still think its amazing but wat about u
I don’t know what criteria you were using to judge beauty? Is it font size, amount of content, distribution of content, or just your fancy? Look at sites like techcrunch and technocrati? I’m sure you’ll label them very ugly. It’s good to have various designs and as long as someone can read what’s on the site without complaining, I have no problem.
That being said, you need a better header 🙂
Just so you know, I did not discredit the content, infact i envy the way some of these blogs are able to present very good articles, and its not how its presented. This is about the visual impression. We both know there is a front and backend developer….then there is the content. Most of these blogs are on either wordpress or blogger, so systems are fine. But the visual impression needs alot of work. And as I said, this is not a full fledged research but my opinion.
He he he he…I will like to hear what nasty stuff you can say about mine..
http://mungauwamaseghe.wordpress.com/
What I noted about your blog is that it has so much complicated jargon for the average reader, secondly, the endless scrolling down, Eish! Do you use two mice to do that normally. For such long articles, I would suggest the read more feature for the homepage. Then you can continue sharing the valuable info you are giving.
Thanks chief..I will endevour to do the same.
haha. Martin, crazy post that is. You have touched on a topic that least expected. I somewhat agree with savvykenya in some aspects coz at the end of the day content is King. As a developer though, i see where u coming from. Enyewe simple aesthetics like resizing stuff here and there matter too. Better pimp mine before i put it out there.
Lets see the best you can do, bearing in mind that we are watching. I agree a millionth time, what matters most is the content you are giving, and the readerbility. Just thought, blogs are the most visible, and they speak alot about Kenyans’ output on front-end development, lets see good quality.
And is it still negative, when two of these blogs have also confirmed they are gonna redesign?
Waaah! I like the way you put it: ‘This is list is based on my opinion…’ Well it is good to voice one’s opinions. This is what is needed in certain cases to make other bloggers realize that there is room for improvement.
Anyway, beauty lies in the beholders eyes. We should only remember to treat people who come to our blogs right. And that involves asking them questions on what they’d want tweaked on a blog. This can be done through a poll, blog post, Facebook, Twitter or by sending mail to e-mail subscribers.
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what about this playboy-zz.blogspot.com
That one looks awesome, nice graphics!
I am an upcoming blogger but not really mainstream, where do you guys hang out? I wanna learn one or two things since I am neither a Strath, JKUAT nor Ihub and what do you think of tech101kenya.blogspot.com
I like your articles, but your blog is rather very plain. This article was strictly my opinion on the aesthetics on the blogs, and in no way a judgement on the value of the blogs.
this is so funny…am a techie myself but i have never botherd to design my blog, i just go with whatever theme…odd.
do a review of the coolest ones, want to see them too
[…] conversations. Don’t be fooled by the bad design of the blog, believe me, it’s an improvement from the ugliest blog by a techie. Kachwanya is usually too busy to get site design done right, I recommend you pay someone to […]
[…] not design, but presentation also goes a long way. The blog Kachwanya also showed up at the top as one of the ugliest blog in a list that had only tech blogs. Apparently the nerds don’t care about design and anything […]
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