Archived Review

First Impression: Since I visit your site a lot, I was hoping to be able to review the other layout you just had up yesterday.

When you page first loads, I think of the older sites when much couldn't be done to the design do to the lack of browser capabilities and coding knowledge. For me, it's far too simple on my taste. It's just text (image, underlined) in the center of a page. Perhaps you could do a little more with the heading? Maybe a drop shadow, something. I just like a little more 'in your face' designs.

As a plus your simplicity won me over, nothing was hard to find and every was nicely organized and neat. Good job on that part. Seeing as that you write fairly short blogs, you should maybe show at least one per page. With blogs that short, some may read them, and move on. Only because everything was so brief.

Blog: For some reason, I hate the date of the post being as large, or larger than the title of the post itself. I mean, it's good to know when it was posted, but much more emphasis should be placed on the title. I recommend that you use a sub header for the date, maybe you can put it down there where you put the category and the comment link.

You blog every single day (or mostly) which I find amazing! That means you're dedicated and obviously have a lot to talk about. If that may be the case, why not share a little more. Sometimes, you posts don't have much in them, so that may reduce commenting. Reading some of your previous posts sometimes readers may be like "WHAT CAN I SAY?" when you don't give much to comment on. If blogging every day causes you to 'come up with something' to talk about, then just wait more so you can have a decent, fair blog. One thing I sort of dislike is when a blog is like "Today I'm doing this, the end". Okay? Just be a bit more elaborative.

PAGES

//Laura - This page is very informative and gives me an idea about you which was the purpose of the whole page, so good job! You give enough information, and not too much which is good because reading your life story would be somewhat boring. So making list and the 3 paragraphs were a good idea. The only suggestion I have is that you add padding to your images so that everything isn't so crammed. When you do this, words near the images will be much easier to read.

// Stuff - Ah, the title of this page annoys me just a little. Well, not really it's just sounds like "This is the page I care very little about" if that makes sense. You should put 'FOR YOU' or 'EXTRA' or something like that. Weird thing is, when the page loads, in the address bar the directory is labeled as content. The title of the page, and directory it's placed in should be somewhat related, and this particular page isn't. Maybe a more suitable name for the directory, the page or both would make all the more reason for what is actually provided on this page.

Never should you have to say "This page is a work in progress. There is not much here yet, but I am slowly working on new content for this page." Visitors would know that you've either just created the page or more would be added later. Such messages I find a little pointless. As for you not wanting credit, you should! Any little thing that you make is YOURS and when someone else redistributes is theres, that makes all your hard work mean nothing. The least you could say is "NO REDISTRIBUTING, UNLESS CREDIT IS GIVEN." That would be a bit more appropriate in my opinion.

Personally, I don't know if I totally agree with the articles about CAPTCHA. I know you encouraged other ways of spam prevention, but telling people they shouldn't use it because you have trouble seeing it yourself is a bit odd. Even more so, very large sites that get a lot of comments have spam protection. When sites receive a lot of comments, that makes CAPTCHA all the more necessary. And when you said it slows down commenting, thats for those who didn't comment to worry about. If readers truly want to comment, they would take the time to fill out the CAPTCHA code. Besides, you can always refresh a page to see a CAPTCHA more clearly.

Your blank buttons are pretty basic, but I guess they're useful all the same. Nothing bad about this page...

Your icon textures are really really nice and I think you should add a whole lot more. You're good at making them, so that could be a page you fill up pretty fast ;)

//Films - You watch a lot of movies! I like this page because it gives reviews on movies I might have wanted to see and it also recommends some movies in an indirect way. I would love to have had reviews on all of the movies in the list, but I can understand how time consuming that would be ;) As for the Films have a page all by it self, I actually disagree with it being set apart from the articles and/or stuffs page. But, it's no BIG deal I guess.

//About - This page is pretty basic, and informative. Nothing too big to say about here but it's nice to know to know where you've been and to how you got to where you are today. I enjoyed reading it and Vicky was very nice to give you a domain. How sweet!

//Ask - This page should be very helpful, and I'm glad you have one. Some webmasters take forever to reply to e-mails so this is a quick way to find out something, and even scan older questions before someone else ask theres so it's very useful. Never get rid of this page (lol)!

OVERALL
Your site is pretty simple and basic, which is okay. It is indeed PERSONAL which is what most 'personal sites' fail to do. I would definitely come back again, only because there was nothing that I hated, and really there was no reason not to come back. Just make sure you add a little more to keep attracting the visitors and paying attention to minor details.

Some minor pet peeves include the search box at the bottom of your blog. It just sitting there just annoys me a little. There is no need for the main and archive link since you have it on your sidebar already. No need to be redundant. Also, if you have a link to ALL archives, that's fine just by itself. When visitors view that page they will see the other months there. Also you CSS is valid, but there are 16 warnings. I read what they were. They were very minor and all you have to do is copy the CSS that w3c fixes for you.

Great site!

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