There are thousands of blogs on the Internet today, and a vast majority of them are under the category of personal. For personal blogs, the authors write about the events that happen in their lives.
Many people enjoy reading these types of blogs since they may read about someone sharing the same experiences. This week I review a personal blog about a single mother who enjoys writing in her blog on more than a daily basis.
Web Site: Angelika
Description: Personal blog by a single mother living in the southern Unites States suffering from Multiple Sclerosis, Insomnia & a Hugh Laurie addiction.
Design 
Personal blogs usually have one thing in common: they usually contain many widgets about anything and everything. Angelika is definitely in that category. This blog contains two navigational sidebars one each on the left and the right side, and with the content in the middle.
Both sidebars contain many different widgets, links, and images (if you are a House fan, there are images of Hugh Laurie on the left). Unfortunately, it makes the two sidebars look unorganized, which makes it hard to find anything. I would rather see the blog’s navigational links at the top of one sidebar, and then all the other secondary links, and images below.
The colours chosen by the author are different than I have seen on a blog before. There are three different colours chosen for the background, with each having a textured look to them. The author has chosen textures that don’t distract from the blog and provide easy reading of the content.
The font and font sizes used on the blog are easy to read. The light background and dark font colour add enough contrast so you don’t have trouble reading the content.
Overall, the design was simple and not distracting, however, reorganizing the two sidebars will go along way to improving the design of the blog.
Focus 
It is always difficult to rate the focus of a personal blog, mainly because there really isn’t one. A personal blog is about the life of the author, which isn’t limited to a single focus.
In this case I will rate the focus of the blog on what the author has provided in the description, which the author in this case has done.
Content
There is no lack of content in this blog. The author updates on more than a regular basis. Looking at the archives (at the bottom on the left) indicates that the blog is even updated more than once a day, and since 2006. This is a good sign of a dedicated blogger.
As I was reading the posts, I was having trouble following some of the story. Since I was reading the blog for the first time, I became very much confused as to the names of the people she was mentioning. After reading a few posts, however, some became more clear to me.
The author does tend to have long run-on sentences at times, which does impact readability. I had to reread a few sentences to understand what the author was trying to say. She does write in a manner more like a diary then your typical blog.
Many of the posts also include at least one image that is appropriate for the subject of the post.
Overall, the content is good with the exception of those run-on sentences and few grammatical and spelling mistakes.
Spelling and Grammar
As mentioned in the Content section, there are a few spelling and grammatical sentences that do take away from the readability of the blog. At times the author as purposely (or it seems to appear) misspelled words. This is probably the author’s humour so I didn’t include those words in my assessment.
Overall
It is apparent that the author enjoys writing in her blog, as it is evident in the number of posts. The content is one of the strong points to this blog. The design, however, is the weakest part as the unorganized sidebars make it difficult to navigate around the blog.
If you do enjoy ready personal blogs, especially those written more like a diary, then you should check out Angelika.