Archived Review
- Reviewer: Peta
- Review date: 1st Mar 2009
Hey there, my name is Peta. I’m going to review your website with Windows, FF3 and 1440x900 resolution. If I’m harsh, please don’t take it to heart. I’m just trying to find ways you can improve your website. And I’m not going to give you the lecture on celebrity graphics because I can’t be bothered XD
First Impressions
Nice colours, very calming. Your layout very strongly reminds me of another website up for review here - Aesthetic Intoxication. I find the colours on your layout nicer, but their use of header space better. I feel there is too much empty spacing at the top and bottom of your header. There is also something off about your navigation. I think perhaps it’s the font? Maybe a Serif font (like the one in your headers) would look better? And I think you need a little more spacing, or a divider, in between each link. Your font is very small, bump it up a size or two so people can read it without Ctrl+ing. Do the same for your line height and add some padding after the headers in your sidebar. I like the icons you use in you blog posts, they’re very cute. Not sure if mood or music makes a real contribution to the blog post unless you’re talking about your mood or a song in particular. Your cursor annoys the bajeebus out of me. It’s too small and makes me think everything is a link.
Tutorials – I don’t know the majority of these programs so I’m going to take a look at your coding and arts and crafts tutorials.
Coding – First thing I see are deprecated codes. You do realise they’re deprecated don’t you? If you must tell people how to make their code bold or italic (and really, that’s fairly simple) you should at least teach them the right codes. I think you should re-order some of them too. Maybe do Links, Images then tell people they can combine the two to make a Linked Image. I don’t know about the code for your banner rotation but I do know that it’s better to avoid using Javascript where possible. You should post a PHP rotation instead. I don’t really have much to say about the textarea one. Yeah it’s pretty simple, but at least you’ve posted an example of how you can style it.
Arts and Crafts – I think a step by step series of photos of how you did your loops would be better than what you currently have now. I know when I tried following a text only tutorial on it my loops did not turn out well, but when I viewed some pictures (and a video on YouTube) I was able to make them so much better. Also, are you using round nose pliers? I find them so much easier to use :) But overall, nice tutorial, simple tutorial.
Content – I’m not going to review the Myspace stuff because to me, Myspace is the devil.
Your stuff seems to be kind of mixed up. I would consider website layouts, stocks, hiatus signs to be Graphics. I guess they are resources, but then you could also argue the fact that graphics are also resourcs. Confusing. I think your tips on site running should go under articles.
Also, I don’t agree with you at all about saving things as .JPGS. Yes, .PNG does have better file quality, but it can also have massive file sizes and you need to be considerate to the poor guys that are still running on dialup. Saving things as a high enough .JPG can still give you great quality images without the file size. Anyway, mini-rant over.
I’ve never seen pregnancy graphics before so I guess that’s something unique. Although I never really understood the point of using someone elses signs, but I guess since you are catering to the Myspace crowd a fair amount they could get used. I think your articles need a bit of a re-write and some proof reading. You have quite a few run on sentences and they seem to become more of a bitch fest than an actual article.
Your rainbow graphics are really cute. I don’t really see the point of most of your graphics since they’re generally signs, but I get they’re geared to MySpace. I think you should make some more graphics that are geared towards actual sites, instead of just MySpace. The one website layout you have is nice enough, don’t forget about the rest of your visitors.
Owner – I really think this should be the first link in your list of navigation.
I think a few descriptive paragraphs about yourself would be better than the lists you’ve got currently. And maybe just list your top five favourite artists and then explain why you like them? I never read through huge lists like that.
Extras – You have an extra link to Owner under here. Remove one or the other (preferably this one).
I think your SOTM should go under your content area. Maybe under games where you’ve got other similar things? I know it’s not technically a game, but then I don’t consider the two polls you have there to be games either. Maybe you could rename that section to contests or something.
Oh, there’s also an extra link to Articles. You’re doing Project 365? Awesome. I think a link to this page on your sidebar could be really cool, or maybe have your newest picture display there? That way people can easily see you’re actively taking part in it :) I really like your cupcake photo too by the way :P
Hosting
Ah, you’re one of those hosts that says something silly, like ‘Enough space’, instead of actually posting how much space you’re willing to give someone. I’m a huge advocate of contact forms, and I think this page could benefit from one instead of forcing people to open their email software.
Site
Pretty standard fare, although I’ve never seen someone link a custom toolbar before. That’s kind of nifty. It would be good if you explained to people why downloading your toolbar would benefit them though. Why do you have a separate page with your comment box on it? It’s already on your sidebar so one of them is pretty redundant. I like that you’re using screen shots and have short descriptions of past layouts. In your credits section I think you need to credit the users from DeviantArt and not just the actual website. It’s like crediting Google for finding you images, ie, stupid. You have nice link back buttons. If you’d prefer people to use the first one maybe supply them with part of the code for it? That way the lazier visitors will just take that code instead of going to the effort of making up their own. Aha! A contact form on your contact page. Excellent work.
Validation
Your CSS doesn’t validate, it’s showing 14 errors. Some of these are because you’re trying to use CSS3 properties when you’re using CSS2. This could be your blogging system, I’m having the same problem with WordPress.
You have 23 errors and 35 warnings in your HTML. That’s quite a lot. I took a lot at your coding and wow, your code is all over the place. Your title tags go in between the head tags, not at the top of the page. Your Doctype should be the first thing in your document. At the moment you’ve kind of confused the validator. I’m not really sure why you’ve got an internal stylesheet as well as an external one. Move everything to your external one to clean it up a bit, then move the external stylesheet link up to between your head tags.
Oh, you’ve got another bit of an external stylesheet down in your body. You’re also using a fair amount of deprecated tags, which would not be helping your validation. I’m going to recommend you read up on CSS and HTML. Your code needs a lot of work. I’ll do as everyone does and recommend tutorialtastic.co.uk, but you should also consider Googling a lot of your errors. That’s how I figure out mine.
Uh, you’ve ended your body and html tags and then you have div for your fan update? No offence, but how long have you been doing this?
Conclusionp
Your site needs a bit of work, and your coding needs a lot of it. I really, really recommend you read up on some stuff, basic HTML layout in particular. I find a lot of your content to pretty standard, but I realise that since your main visitors probably come from MySpace then a lot of it is relevant and not just filler (as I commonly think of signs). A few design tweaks and I think your website could be looking a lot better, simple tweaks like larger font and removing empty header space. I think you’ve got a very promising website, once you get over the few little bumps.