Archived Review

Hi there! I'm going to be reviewing your site today, obviously.

Your layout is a bit too big. As a general accessibility rule, it should fit a 1000px-wide screen comfortably. Yours seems to fit for 1055px which is pretty strange. At 1000-ish px, there's quite a bit of overlapping and it looks messy.

I like the right side of the header, and the blue at the bottom of it. The excess stuff like "Summer is finally here...", the arrows and the flower seems like a bit too much clutter. If you enjoy the tagline, I would make it a touch smaller, and stick it under {ohgasp.com}. Other than that, it's colourful, the black helps anchor it nicely, and it's definitely summery!

The blog part looks pretty nice, it's spaced out evenly and organized. I'm not sure the "by Jessi" part is necessary, since it IS your site. We should be able to figure that out quickly enough.

The navigation isn't being used effectively here. For one, the... I suppose they're advertisement buttons, totally overtake your navigation. I skipped over it completely, and went straight on to the Domain part of the sidebar. You want your navigation to be like "POW!" I would suggest block navigation (this tutorial is a good one: http://www.tutorialtastic.co.uk/tutorial/semantic_css_block_navigation), and then the section for the buttons after.

The Domain bit on your sidebar seems a bit redundant. Your sidebar doesn't NEED to be stuffed. For example, we KNOW your site is called Ohgasp, and we can look in the address bar to see what your URL is. Your name is a good idea, and even when you opened, and a link to your host. A "Best Viewed" thing isn't a good idea. I mean, technically, you should be building your site so that it looks proper in the major browsers. People shouldn't need to switch to FF (although, they SHOULD. ;) ) to view your site.

Instead of a Domain heading, I would put something like "About" or "Quick Info" or something. Include your name and the info in this blurb, like "Hey, I'm Jessi! I opened ohgasp on April 15th, 2009 and am hosted by My Free Host." Or something similar. It will seem a lot more personal and provide relevant information.

Updates are a good idea. I hate advertisement sections on personal sites, but it's really none of my business. This rea, with the smaller buttons, looks a bit messy. Centering the buttons could help to make it seem a bit tidier!

There is a HUGE gap between your main content and the footer. At the most I would keep this to 100px in height. Space is nice, but big blank gaps of white are not.

Your footer looks fine, apart from the "Open Space?"s in your Affilites. That looks dumb. It makes it seem as if I can ONLY apply if my name comes before "Alisa" alphabetically, or "Summer" (also it says "Open Spot" there, instead of "Space"). It could be enough to just put a note saying that people are welcome to ask if they'd like to be affiliates.

Right then, on to the content.

On the section called "She" I would not centre the text. Centred text is more difficult to read than left-aligned text. Although it's not immediately noticeable, if you pay enough attention, you may be able to feel the slight strain when reading it.

Handing out your phone number, at age 14, to people who ask, is NOT safe. EVEN IF you know the person well. A few people online have my number, but I am 21, and slightly more able to take care of myself. As someone who is underage, it seems wrong, and I am actually afraid that you may end up in trouble.

It would look a lot better if you capitalized things that need to be capitalized (names, obviously). It just seems quite childish to not even have proper nouns capitalized! Also, every film doesn't need an exclamation after it. Reading things that way can be a bit annoying.

Perhaps you could even link to the Wikis, or something, of the people, shows and films that you like so that this isn't just a boring list-- I would actually like some information.

On to WWW. The (Jessi) after "and is taken care of by only me" is VERY redundant. We KNOW. Give your visitors some credit; we CAN comprehend what you write.

On the Link page... honestly, NONE of these buttons appeal to me. I link using text links anyway, but even so, I wouldn't like these buttons on my site. Here you have 4 mediocre buttons. Why not focus on making just one nice button? Then, you could easily keep it on the main WWW. page. You want your visitor to get information ASAP. Clicking to different pages when it's not necessary (i.e. you have a TONNE of space in your content area, before your sidebr runs out) is not fun.

Looking at your past layouts, you've definitely improved with this design. I like your current design, but I'm not a fan of your past ones at all. Once again, having this section on two different pages is too much extra clicking, and the page would still look fine with quite a few layouts on it.

Oh, you've won an award! Once again, with images, I find them to look neater if they are centered. It would be nice if this was done here.

Credits, once again, seems like a redundant page to me. I'd like to see the site section laid out more like your She section. Like, with a heading, and the appropriate info following. I think that a site should be consistent and have similar structure on most pages, if possible.

On your reviews page, I noticed you've just linked http:// for everyone. It would be much better for SEO if you linked the entire web address. It would also look more professional, since linking just the http:// is a VERY old teenybopper move from back when I started designing.

Reading a review, I notice that the big block of text is VERY close to the sidebar. Adding some padding will help this and help with the flow of the page.

I find it odd the way you refer to "CSS" like the link colours and such ARE CSS. CSS is EVERY style on the website. "Failing to make the CSS your own" (paraphrased from your review of Erin) doesn't make sense, unless she DIRECTLY copied the stylesheet from someone. Nobody can copyright link and text colours. The images and such are included in the CSS. Saying something like "Your layout is very colorful, but what happened in your CSS?" (Review of Sloane) doesn't make sense because the layout is most likely a CSS-based layout, meaning the WHOLE THING is CSS. I would look up web designing terms and understand them before you start spouting advice about it.

Looking at the Portfolio section, I would make the intro box fill the whole space straight across and add padding to the box so it isn't so cramped.

LOL at your article about guys. I seriously had to send the "We need to break up" paragraph to my friends. How can anyone expect to be broken up with and to turn into a little wimp. "Oh, but baby, I love you?" Puh-leeze. Just because someone says "Fine with me" doesn't make them a jerk, it makes them aware that the relationship isn't working. "If he threatens you, you can always tell an adult." Um, yeah, telling someone when you're threatened would be a good move. Automatically saying you should "tell an adult" makes me think you're PROBABLY too young to be in a relationship.

"Want to come over later and NOT JUST STUDY?!" ... Um, what is this? An article written by a 14 year old on how to get action from their boyfriend IS NOT what a want to read.

On "How to write a decent blog" well... I'll ignore the improper use of "blog" (a blog is a collective group of entries on the web. What you are describing here is how to write a decent blog ENTRY.), and skip right to the part where you tell your visitors "Another thing that I'm starting to get into the habit of is capitalizing my words." Yet, you don't, on your She page. And sure, your site isn't perfect, blah blah. Still nice to practice what you preach.

I also found "Also, I see many people over using their bold underlined and italics functions" to be an interesting statement. For one, with your site, your bold is VERY hard to read, your underlined is practically invisible, and your italics are... okayish. Generally speaking, though, colouring ANY of your text styles is a no-no. You actually shouldn't REALLY realize that you're reading emphasized text. It should be subconscious.

Then, "Fake/Real Friends" is really... well, EVERYONE has read this one MySpace, or through forwards, etc. It's unoriginal content.

Random pictures of yourself are a weird thing to have in a portfolio... just sayin'.

There's no point in having a heading called "Stories" and then a "Coming soon." We REALLY don't care what's going to be there, until it's actually there. It looks tacky.

Then you have a drawing... of a smiley face. JUST a smiley face. Um. K?

Finally, we hve the visitor section, which looks like it is nicely organized.

In Resources, the gradients are nice, the brushes not so much. Anyone could create those brushes in about 2 seconds, and a lot of people could create BETTER ones in that time.

The premade layouts also leave a lot to be desired. You made them in an hour and IT SHOWS. They're sloppy and I'm not sure there's an audience for them, exactly.

The colour pallets are okay, but I'd visit colourlovers WAY before I'd visit your site for pallets. There's nothing particularly stunning about any of these.

The Layout images aren't cut out very well, and you don't own the celebrity images, so you shouldn't be distributing them.

Onto Tutorials, out of the javascript one, the only useful one is Add to Favourites, really. There are SO many ways to get around the No Right Click, the Make Homepage thing... well, I'm sure most people DON'T want some randomer's personal site as their homepage, and hardly ANYONE uses frames anymore.

The CSS Coding page is just... I don't even know what to say. For one, a stylesheet doesn't need to be laid out the way you do it. Styling "b" is outdated, "strong" is the proper way to do it. None of this really explains the function of CSS, why we use it, etc. Hmm.

In the Div container tutorial: "I use PHP so my page is called "style.css" ... yeah, the two have NOTHING to do with each other. Even on webs.com you can have an external stylesheet. I can use an external stylesheet with just XHTML. I assume that the way you're using PHP is to include different bits of the layout. Once again, that doesn't really have anything to do with how your site is structured, in the long run. I would REALLY study web development a bit more before you write tutorials, because reading your tutorials is just confusing, and I know how to code.

Not much to say about Contests. Not very ORIGINAL contests, but whatever.

Why is everything so focused on webs.com, anyway? There ARE other free hosts, you know.

Okay, you offer lessons as well? And they have to link back even if they move? Does that mean that, like, 10 years down the road, they still need to credit you? Personally, I don't think you know enough yet, nor have the writing style to present these courses in a way that would be beneficial for beginners.

For your hosting/adoptions, etc, once gain... things seem odd. One, I wouldn't offer installing Cutenews for anybody. It's an INSECURE script. You should switch to a different one yourself. And offering 1000MB to adoptions? I run about 5 or 6 websites on my server, and only use 500GB. I doubt someone with ONE website will need 1000MB.

And thus concludes the review. Essentially... you have a LOT to learn. The design is pretty nice, albeit a bit cluttered, but your content leaves a bit to be desired. Best of luck.

UPDATED 30 Jun 09:
Whoops. In the line "I run about 5 or 6 websites on my server, and only use 500GB." I OBVIOUSLY mean MB. I need a proofreader!

UPDATED 01 Jul 09:
This is rev.iew.me, sweetie. If you want niceness, get one of your friends to review you. ;)

Categories

Latest Reviews