This blog review is being done due to Veliaf posting about my Crafting Spreadsheet last week, where anyone who did so got a free blog review this week.

So Veliaf’s blog is der Hexenmeister, and it is a really fantastic blog.

Before we get started it is important to note that der Hexenmeister is NOT primarily about gold making. It is his own personal journey, blogging about things that cross his path or interest him in WoW.

That’s not to say that his blog is ‘just another random WoW blog‘ – not by a long shot.

His blog has great insight into many different aspects of the game, as well as things that help take the edge off all the playing.

For example each week Veliaf posts a puzzle, which you have a week to try and solve before he posts the answers. People in the comments try to solve these puzzles, so it’s best to avoid reading them before you think you’ve figured it out! I do this by reading in my Google Reader, as it just doesn’t show the comments.

In addition because Veliaf plays a warlock, der Hexenmeister has some great guides on them. From some awesome beginner friendly video guides on how to play a warlock – perfect for showing the girl friend to get her started playing! ;) – or on each spec at 80, as well as a decent rundown of each ability and its uses. These are split in to level brackets, like 21-30, which allows a leveling warlock to quickly see not only what they might have, or are getting soon, but also some tips and help with integrating them in to their current playing.

There are also numerous high quality content blogposts on his site, most recently about account and computer security. These talk about things like using the Blizzard Authenticator and using Firewalls. Some of you might think these have nothing to do with a WoW blog but if you look at just how many people get hacked – and how easily – then you can’t deny that the WoW playerbase needs educating in these matters, and Veliaf is really doing that!

He has actually been blogging for quite a few months, and has an extensive archive of posts, recently hitting his 100pth post a couple of weeks back. While the majority of his early posts focused almost exclusively on warlock related matters, there are some amazing posts lurking among them, like his series covering Blizzcon – parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6!

Now on to my favourite part of reviewing a blog – the design, structure and overall feel it has

It has to be said, that the theme isn’t a favourite of mine. It is too ‘involved’ to be a simple theme, yet is too ‘lacking’ to be an advanced theme…

What I mean by it being too involved is that it has a rather garish and colourful header which is a blue to red gradient. Within that is a salmon pink tab which is essentially useless in a practical sense, and sticks out like a sore thumb from a design perspective – No where else is this pink used.

This isn’t to say the scheme itself is flawed. It just needs to be taken advantage of!

The colours actually make a warm and cool split in the blog, with an overarching  triad colour scheme.

The triad of colours come from the deep blue to red gradient which interacts with the yellow of Veliaf’s ambigram avatar to create his triadic scheme. The problem is, it doesn’t look remotely intentional! The yellow is not used enough to truly bring out the effect, and neither is the red apart from in the header.

The warm and cool split really does work however. The pale blue sidebars really contrast against the deeper reds and blues used, while complementing nicely with the dark on light text.

The sidebars themselves however are rather cluttered. The calendar on the left is rather useless when used in addition to the Archived posts. Also the site search is tucked away in the bottom of the left sidebar, when it should be displayed right at the top or not at all – nobody is going to use it down there!

Next, there are no sidebar links to subscribing to the blog, either by email or RSS. These are really handy features, and remind less experienced web users that they can actually do these things.

The posts themselves are fairly basic style wise, which in my books is a good thing – Veliaf makes good use of markup, such as bold, italics, lists and so on which help keep the blogposts looking interesting even if it’s paragraphs of text (like this blogpost is!)

Personally I think that Veliaf would be better off taking his site ‘back to basics‘ and getting rid of the bright header and avatar and replacing them with something slightly more subdued.

However if he were to go the other way, then he needs to build upon the triad of Blue primary, Red secondary and Yellow tertiary he has in place. The blue could be done by making the links a blue which matches the header. The red by making permalinks and postmeta the same as the header red. As for the yellow, this can be difficult. The problem with a triad like this is that it too easy to make it feel cartoony, like your website is a super hero costume or something. Too little on the other hand and it just doesn’t work! Use the yellow sparingly like an ‘accent’ and be careful to not over use it.

As for the structure…it’s pretty good!

Above the sidebars at the top right of the header we have buttons for About and Contact. These are too hidden and need to be given more screen space. Some quick client side editing later and it seems they would ideally be of a 24px font, twice the current size – just so they can be noticed.

It is great that Veliaf added them though, as in my opinion they are necessary for any blog. Yet so many blogs don’t have them! An About page lets a new visitor catch a glimpse in to what your blog is about in a single page, and he has done that perfectly.

As for the contact page, it’s easy to use and just right in what it gives the user. Trying to get in contact with a blogger, and not being able to find their email address is a nightmare – you may not want to leave a comment to do so! Veliaf has given everyone the abilitiy to get in contact with him in seconds, and that is exactly what you want.

All in all his content is top notch and can’t be faulted. There is not too much ‘heavy reading’, yet he doesn’t just post single sentence posts about stuff nobody cares about. It is all exciting and interesting stuff that is worth a read.

He even has a competition going at the moment, where you can win great prizes AND support a fantastic charity. So make sure you check that out.

All in all, I think the theme needs a lot of work done to it. But in reality that isn’t that pivotal – what is important is that he has a blog with great foundations, and a whole load of pillar content which will help his blog to continue to flourish.

Go ahead, check out Veliaf’s der Hexenmeister and leave him some comments!