Music Gates ...are wide open...because music knows no barriers.
  • Music GatesMusic Gates
    Hello and thank you for accepting me in your community.

    My blog is http://themusicgates.blogspot.com/

    Just to have an idea I copy my About section..

    "Going back in time and trying to remember my first serious relationship I don’t come up with one girl’s name .. The only memories that are still with me, are melodies...Just music...no faces .. Whatever I was feeling , however was my mood, I always turned to music. To be honest, why waste money on psychotherapy when you can listen to Music. And as Cervantes said, He who sings scares away his woes.

    This blog could be a music diary or a personal radio show.. Tunes from every music era and style. Sounds that make my day and night.

    Radio shows usually have a different theme for each day's program. I 've decided to go on as follows :
    Mondays songs will be from 40s and before.
    Tuesdays posts will concetrate in 50s era while Wednesdays posts in 60s.
    Thursdays are going to pay tribute to 70s and Fridays will take hat off to 80s decade. Two decades, 90s and 00s will be presented at Saturdays and finally on Sundays we will focus on 2010 and 2011 songs."


    You are all welcome to visit and feel free to comment..
  • zechmannzechmann
    Like the idea of breaking them up. I'll check it out :)
  • Music GatesMusic Gates
    Thanks zechmann !

    Come on guys.. Any feedback ?
  • BenMetrojoltBenMetrojolt
    If you want feedback I'd have to say, give your theme some structure. I find your blog at first glance to be confusing. I would suggest adding some images. I find pictures are a good way to chop up text. From there, your main loop is extremely long. I'd think about shortening that.

    I as all this not as in insult to your page, but you asked for feedback, and those are my thoughts. 
  • Music GatesMusic Gates
    Ben_metrojolt, I do appreciate your time and effort to check my blog and send feedback.

    Your suggestions are more than welcome and if you take a look again, you will realize that I have already made some amendments in blog's layout.

    My focus was more on the content and not on blog's "look and feel" ...

    Its obvious that I am a junior blogger !!

    Thanks again !
  • onmyradaronmyradar
    I too am a blogspot blogger (http://www.musiconmyradar.com/) and I have spent countless hours working out the little knicks and crannies to try to better streamline my blog. This is what I have learned through my experience that might also help you:

    1. I think one of the most important aspects is aesthetic appeal. A large problem with blogspot themes is that they are very dull and it takes a lot to spruce them up. This is largely due to the very limited amount of themes that blogspot offers. On the plus side, you can change your coding which some other blog sites don't allow you to do. The downfall is learning HTML coding.

    The reason why I say aesthetic appeal is one of the most important aspects of a website is because there are many other audio blogs and sometimes as the reader, aesthetics might deter some readers. Of course, aesthetics isn't content which truly matters. I'm going on the assumption that your content is spot on and by the looks of it, you seem to have a lot to say which is great.

    Finally, I don't mean to be nit picky, but your background could be a better quality image. And try to have some sort of contrast with your colour schematics. Orange background with that grey-like post background doesn't seem that appealing to me.

    2. Since you seem to have a lot to say, consider using the break button in your posts which inserts a read more section. That'll help cut down post size if you find that is an issue.

    3. Get rid of the navbar at the top. I hate that feature on blogger. It makes it so easy for people to hit next blog. Visit this link to see how: http://blogger-templates.blogspot.com/2005/01/remove-navbar.html

    4. Perhaps add the "search this blog" button closer to the top of the page. It just seems to be convention for most websites.

    5. Take advantage of plugins like "popular posts".

    6. Finally, toss in some social networking buttons somewhere. People are really into that nowadays. 

    Things that I REALLY like:

    1. I absolutely love that you have so much to say about an artist. I think the blogs who just post a link to download a song seems really disrespectful to the artist.

    2. I also like how you split up your posts into tags based on the decade. Very handy.

    3. Lastly, I like how you only allow 4 posts per page. A lot of blogs (not just music blogs) will have like 30 posts per page and it just takes forever to load. I never end up going back to those blogs.

    Also, here are some links that I found extremely useful when I was first going through the customization phase of my blog.

    To add a favicon:

    To add a featured content slider (note some sliders don't work with blogger so you have to search around):

    To add social networking buttons (only works with some templates):

    To make certain widgets only appear on certain pages (this one i used a lot):

    To make the comments box wayyyy better:

    Linkwithin (this is a widget for suggested posts within your site thatll appear at the bottom of our post, some tweaking required with this one)

    To add floating twitter button:

    Hover effects for your images (this may not work well with your theme but its just a suggestion to try out if you like):

    I don't mean to say your blog sucks because content is what truly matters and you have really good content, but an organized more streamlined blog that pretty well promotes itself would be a lot better in my opinion. Everything I mentioned above is just a suggestion, so don't be inclined to feel that my opinion is the only opinion. Make your site your own.

    I hope to god this helps. That's pretty well all of my secrets.
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