Blufftontoday.com

I was expecting the normal newsy site to review this week. But I was almost surprised to see that, as much as it news site this was, it really wasn't. Or so it seemed it wasn't, if that makes any sense.

Blufftontoday.com looked almost bare in comparison to the other sites reviewed. The site offered blogs (community, expert, and staff), news, local traffic, the news that was featured in the actual paper, events, audio and visual, and living in Bluffton. It had all the standard features of a web site, just like the others, however, this particular sites offered three different kinds of blogs. Community blogs are where any person can post a blog on any subject they so choose. For example, one person chose to write about the marvels of modern medicine and another person wrote another blog about the poor and how much they receive from the government each year. Then, there's the experts blogs. These are blogs posted by people, "experts" on many different subjects. And the last of the three kinds of blogs were staff blogs, and without really needing to be explained they are blogs written by the staff of Blufftontoday.com. As much as I hate the whole blogging thing, I thought this was a really good feature because it offered an array of different subjects written by an array of different people, from every day people like you and me to people who know more on certain subjects to people who write news for a living.

Another feature that I liked was that it offers the sites visitors a place to upload photos and advertise. I think this is a way this site makes living a little more easier for people, and it just shows that people have little time and little patience to actually do something so simple as to put an ad in a paper.

As for multimedia, I think the site offered a decent amount of it. Nothing more or less than all of the other sites. It offered a place for photos, audio files, videos, a place for slide shows to be viewed, maps, and even a place for visitors to upload their own videos. This is one feature that I don't think other sites have had. I can imagine that a lot of people would take this for granted because it makes it easier and everything is clicks away.

I couldn't really find where this particular site makes it's money, but my one guess would be from the site letting people post ads. Users have two options, they can either place a free ad but there are some guidelines and regulations concerning those, or they are allowed to place paid ads.

As for the content on this site, most of it, I think, is generated by the news of Bluffton, I guess. A lot of it also seemed to be blogs.

As for what this site didn't do well, I was honestly bored when reviewing this site. Most of the other sites pretty much kept my interest, except this one...there are only so many blogs a person can take in one setting you know!