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Surreal. has 10 Reviews

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lexi gave it on 10th Jan 2009 and said:
LILLZ. I can call you that right? Yeah your opinion doesn't really matter so nevermind.

I don't know if it's just my computer or if the font in your blog is a tad too big...try make it like a pixel or two smaller.

Your coding looks okay, I only see one problem:

Should paer be part?

I would suggest changing the line height for the affilate links. They look stretched out. I also recommend trying to find a different rotation script. This one works well:

It will make your sidebar look pretty. ;D

I would switch from cutenews to another blogging system ASAP. It's only a matter of minutes until you'll be hit with hundreds of spam comments. If you don't want to do a lot of coding, I suggest fanupdate.

Yeah I got nothing else. Nice blog though. Kinda wish I had some parts of your life.

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Baohan gave it on 2nd Jan 2009 and said:
Hello, I'm Baohan and I'm going to review your site. :)

First Impression/ Design: I see big layout. It's colourful and I like colourful website (hence mine) but I think it's too much of a splash. The picture is well cut but there are some zig zag line (I don't know how to put it) leftover which does make it looks sloppy. Your navigation is a little small and can easily be ignored.

Your sidebar needs a bit of padding since it's looking like it's being stuck up to the top. Also, your website doesn't really look right on IE7 (there is huge white block where your header is) and this throws everything off since about half of your visitors are probably using IE.

Back to your sidebar, I think that the serif font doesn't really look good, unless it's a mis-coding thing, of course. I suggest looking at Lene's article about styling your text properly . I also suggest a padding here.

Your commenting form is also a little off. Serif font with medium size is never my cup of tea (or coffee). Besides it, there are also a chunky grey block between every comment which just made it looks sloppy. I would recommend the link to the comment's author and the bit where you said the sexy... said to be the same font size as it will look so much neater.

The emoticons that you provided us with is pretty yet I cannot see some of them because they blends it to the background. Also, the input field for your comments is a little too close to each other, again, some padding or margin will do the trick.

Okay, to your footer, it looks nice but I have no idea what is the html button doing here. Your HTML isn't validated. What's the point? I mean, since it's not validated...

Lillie: Okay, so it's a detailed piece but I keep wanting to take my eyes off it because of the font. It's quite annoying. I'd have to say that serif fonts are more suitable for big headers, not a lot of writing (unless it's some super formal piece but with a big line-height). You have made some mistakes along the line but since I'm no grammar expert (and might get them wrong) I'm not going to crucify you about it. :P

But still, you can use of paragraphing?

Contact at the end of the page, for the visitors to reach you, nice.

Visitors: Alright, but I suggest you use the list-style like you did on your site bar. It will look much neater as well add some padding. (I know, I like spacy website)

- Brushes: Okay brushes. I don't always use brushes but these looks kind of cute.

- Colour Schemes: Okay-ish colour schemes but I'm afraid to say that I see little effort in these. Anybody can add random colour with each other and make them look pretty right? For a colour community site, I recommend ColourLovers as it is very useful.

- GET REVIEWED: I don't review reviews because I don't see the point. :)

- Newspaper/Magazine Scans: I wouldn't use your scans because it's not very interesting. But others might, I don't know. I think you'll need some credit here because it's not you who wrote the article that you used, or is it?

- Paper Stock: Okay, I love paper stock but usually I just look at them because they are so pretty. :)

- Textures: I like the older textures more than the recent ones. I think that rusted steel/ oxidized metals makes amazing textures.

- Tutorials: I'm going to review this section later as I saw a link on top to it. You can delete this link since there are already another link to it. (and more visible too)

- Backgrounds: I don't really like it, I think that you can put more effort in here. Also, you can increase the quantity of it as well. After all, they are looking for a variety, right?

- Icons: I like the ones in which no celebrities' images are involve. There is this thing called copy right infringement and you might want to have a look.

- MySpace Default Layout: I have no idea about MySpace and how it works so I don't really know what to say, really.

- NeoPets: Once again, I know nothing about Neopets so I'm excusing off here. :)

Tutorial: The same type of layout as the Visitor page. Let's see what's inside!

- Coding a Website Layout: Erm, I spot big mistake in the this tutorial. And tutorials are suppose to guide your visitors to the right path, not confuse them. Again, a peek at TutorialTastic would do the trick. I mean you couldn't possibly give out a page coding with out the html tag, the head tag, and the body tag? It's also using absolute position. C'on, they just sounds wrong.

- Button Rotation Script: It's okay, but it's from TutorialTastic. However, I think that you should go more in depth with all of your tutorials. They are a bit brief.

- Blue Backlight: Okay-ish, I guess. These type of tutorials are all over the webz.

- Green Flash: Same as above. I mean, any person who used photoshop would know how to do it. It's fairly basic.

- Abstract Lines: Well, apparently, I love this tutorial. It's not something that I see everyday. However, you can still go further with the tutorial! You can explain more to the visitor about the effect because not everybody get the idea at a first glance.

- City Catwalk: This just reminds me of a tutorial from Swimchick , somehow. But hey, I like it. (except from the copy righted side of this layout)

L.sh.org: Well, a little history, some links, affies. I would recommend having a link to the video on Youtube instead of the video itself. Somehow, the font on this page is different to the other pages and I like it more this way.

Overall, I like your website and it's idea but I don't think that you did a well enough job. I think that you should check your website's screen shots cross browsers and this page will probably helps. You have good potential but you need to be more careful with your contents and your website's look.

I hope I helped and please don't think that it's offensive. I'm trying to help. :)

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Nadine gave it on 27th Nov 2008 and said:
Frontpage/first impression: I'm in love with the layout! Gorgeous coulors that match the background. The navigation is nice, but it would be better if it weren't on the layout. I don't really like the scrollbar. It's pretty neat and organized, but you should get some place to have your affies on.

Site/me: At Lillie I saw that the text is really hard to read. Have a larger line distance. Nice and organized. Site is nice too, but the link to your host has a coulor that don't match the rest. And it would be easyer for people to just press on your credits, so make them as links.

Content: I see that you don't have very much. The brushes is nice, make some more. All the content is very nice.

Tutorials: They are really god I think. Good that you have lots of pictures, they can help pretty much.

Graphics: I don't see so much of your work, but I really like what I see.

Over-all: You have a really pretty site, it's organized. But there is not much content. But I guess that will come over time.

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lillie's Response:
thnks (:< i just made the site so there isn't much there. thnks for the review!
Maison gave it on 26th Nov 2008 and said:
Hey Lillie.

The first thing that hits me when I go to your website is the colors. I don't really like the color scheme. I like the background, though. I think I know what you were going for with the layout and everything, but it just looks too complicated, like theres a lot of patterns and brushes and whatnot everywhere. I think the navigation links are kind of mismatched, like they don't really belong with this layout. The glow effect looks kind of cheesy sometimes, but it would look nicer if you had it with a layout that matched more...you know?

Lillie
That's a lot of writing. Don't you think it'd be easier to have just a page for this under site instead of a whole section for it? It looks like you've got a bit of some useless information in your biography. You can't really see your face in that picture of you, and its quite bright. The green text took a while to read.

Site
Looks like your site button in the nav isn't working on some pages. It'd be more courteous to link to the people in your credits. Not sure why you use question marks on all of your headings on that page, but it looks a little weird to me.

Content
You spelled color palettes wrong. Your brushes are a bit on the myspacey side. Well, actually they are a lot on the myspacey side. You've got a lot of bright colors on your color palettes. I don't really see the need to provide these on your website, but it's a good thing to offer when you're starting out, I guess. I used to offer them but I figured I'd stop. I'd be careful about the Magazine/Newspaper scans. Be sure not to infringe on someone else's copyright. Your stocks are alright. Your backgrounds look like they have seams, which probably wouldn't be all that attractive if actually repeated. And your icons... do you own these images? You probably don't, and I'm guilty of it too, when I first started my website. I freed my site from anything celebrity a while ago, and I'm glad I did. It's illegal to take someone else's photography like that. Some of your icons are stretched, and most of them are hard to make sense of by the way they were resized, I'm guessing. Default Myspace Layouts...again with the copyrighted images. The Blue BackLight tutorial makes that image look pretty intense and sharp, but not in an attractive way. It's not a very nice cropping job, either. Green Flash is a pretty nice color effect, although it took me a while to find out what it was in the icon. I like the coloring, though. City Catwalk has some interesting color combos. The brushes and collage images and stuff like that make it look really myspace-like.

It looks like you're off to a pretty nice start for have just starting earlier this month. Good luck with it all, and kudos to you for having the balls to put up your new site for review. I could have never done that when I first started out.

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lillie's Response:
you calling me a man? o_O loL!

UPDATED 28 Nov 08:
Copyrighted images are from flickr.com... they are used with permission from the owners.
exclusive gave it on 25th Nov 2008 and said:
Ok, first impression when I get onto this site is, it looks a little unprofessional. It's not too bad though, I know I strugle with being "professional" too.

LAYOUT:
I'm not too fond of the way you have your header image to the side, and everything else to the left of it. But, if your going to do that, try and make your text larger, and the box wider. That way, there's not a huge space towards my right. I like your backround, but it's a little distracting. That's OK though, because I love that pattern. ;) Your header image... could use some work. It's not bad, but if you'd practice a little more, and read some tutorials, I'm sure you would improve a ton! I'm also not very fond of the rollovers on your navigation links. They're OK, but you might want to increase the size of the brush you used, so that they don't look as pixely. Oh, and also, there's this ="0" leftmargin="250px" rightmargin="0"> randomly behind your content box, under your header image.

CONTENT:
First of all, everything on your site is content. So, you should name that section 'visitor' or 'goodies' or anything along that line. Also, when I clicked on Content, it took a while for the page to load. It might just be my computer, but usually my computer's pretty fast...
brushes: Your brushes are pretty good, I would suggest adding a little more though, to give your viewers more variety. Did you make those? If not I suggest taking them off, or asking the person who made them, permission to redistribute. Most sites don't allow that, and you can get into big trouble from them if you do. ;)
color pallettes: These are good, once again, I suggest you add more, and put the hex code to each color. Even if PSP and photoshop have a color picker, so they can figure it out, it's still helpful to have it, in case they aren't planning on using it on PSP or photoshop, and are instead using for a myspace layout or whatever.
paper stocks: Um, I don't really get the point of having these, although they're nice. I was a little confused when I first come onto that page, because I couldn't really tell the difference from the first paper stock, from the context box backround. It took me a little while to figure it out.
tutorials: Your tutorials are average, nothing out of the ordinary, add more advanced ones, if you could. (:
backrounds: There's only two, so there's not much that I can say... Nothing too impressive.
Icons: Nice icons, although some are celebrity images, so that's copyright infringement, unless you took the pictures or have permission from the photographer to use them.
Myspace Codes: A lot of these are basics, nothing that's going to make the visitors want to come to your site. There's better sites out there that offer more and better codes. I suggest just taking this section off, since it's not really necessary.
Myspace Default Layouts: You have...one. The screen shot is too small to see anything, and from the screen shot it looks like a low level layout.

Your 'About Me' Page: Overall, it's nice. I found it interesting. Your site looks more like a personal site, so I suggest adding more information. There are many grammar errors, that I suggest fixing. (:

OVERALL: Overall, I think you have a lot of work to do, but I see potential. Just keep on doing what you do, study some tutorials, and have fun. (:
One site that helps me alot is this site. I suggest going on it, and learn some stuff. It'll help A LOT.

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lillie's Response:
lol (: i just spent 2 hours fixing alot of things :] also i already took out the myspace codes and such. the myspace layouts are gonna be fixed soon. but considering that the site's less then 2 weeks old, i think i spent too much time on it (:

UPDATED 25 Nov 08:
&& those brushes are mine ^-^ lol. they look similar to many..
Moskva gave it on 24th Nov 2008 and said:
I personally dislike sites that are pushed all the way to the left or right. It makes reading very difficult for some reason.

The striped headers are a little hard to read with the white text. Maybe try black text?

The links are okay, but the scribble things when you hover are a little irritating. The heart over the blog one is pretty cute...but the scribbles make no sense.

The graphic on the right was well done, but the placement is rather odd. It would look better (to me) if the edge of it was "under" the table.

The icon tutorials are a little played out and really dont change the icon that much. It seems like all/a lot of the content on your site has bright, clashing colors - which some people like, but not everyone. You should try changing up your content a little so more people will use your stuff.

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Mandarks gave it on 24th Nov 2008 and said:
For a content/blog site your formating is a little cluttered. Especially its current layout. You format your content pretty neatly, with easy to navigate links and fast loading previews. But the layout used to hold it all really hurts the site.
I really like the top navigation and the rollovers are pretty simple and nothing too flashy where it looks bad.
the sidebar is really small and the text aligned at justify doesn't look very good when its soo spaced out.
The content section (left side) decent size, but the text formatting isn't very pleasing, its small and too close together.
verdana at 9pt and a line spacing of 1.3em would look a lot better and much easier on the eyes.
As for the header, seems you got a pretty good color scheme going on although i have to agree that the background isn't your very best choice. the brushes used in the image are really really rough, and pixeled. Theres tons of brushes out there that can be used instead of those. its always good to go for the best brushes.

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lillie's Response:
ty for the font idea! but i'll keep the brushes. it's just the inner glow that made it a little blurry ! :]
lawlzz gave it on 24th Nov 2008 and said:
Okay, so the first thing I notice when the site loads is that it's all squished up on the left. Then, in the middle of the page is a big, red, grungeyish swirly brush thing. And a weird picture of someone sitting on a bench.
The pattern background is really random, since that light blue is doesn't really fit in the whole color scheme you've got going on.
The text on the image doesn't really make a lot of sense to me..."such a surreal place see." What is that supposed to mean?

The CSS reminds me of my days way back on Neopets. There's a microscopic sidebar, and in my opinion, it doesn't even need to be there. The information on it could probably all be moved somewhere else. The text is rather small, and I think you should make the line height a little larger. Small text honestly doesn't bother me that much, but I still think you should change the line height. ;)

Okay. Now. The image rollovers are bothering me a bit. They are really sloppy-looking and it would be a lot better if it was just a regular link instead of rollovers.

The "Lillie" section is what's next. I'm feeling very nostalgic again. The whole "no-sentence-mysterious-autobio" thing is just not working here. I would suggest re-doing this whole section and writing a proper autobiography that is a little more informative. It doesn't even say your gender (you're obviously a female, but still)!

On to the content. The brushes aren't really anything to brag about, but they aren't horrible either. I've seen a lot worse.
The color palettes...I've never really seen the purpose of these. It really isn't that hard to pick a few colors for a layout.
Your paper stock is really nice; you should add a bunch more of those!
The tutorials are pretty blah. =/ Not much to talk about there.
You don't have many icons or backgrounds. The ones you have are of decent quality. You should either add more or just get rid of those sections.
Myspace is just...Myspace. It's the slut of the Internet. I know a lot of people use it and whatever, but still. It's a slut.
The "reads" (or whatever they're supposed to be) really need to be removed. Fast. The first one about rejection is just weird, to be honest. The second one about "emo" has been said a million times in a million different ways, so it could definitely stand to be taken down. And they're both from Myspace...so...you know my opinion on that.

Now the Site section. You have what I assume to be your old site name and definition crossed out, when you could have just removed them. You have a list of credits, but I think you should also state what you used from the sites. Not specifically, but just say if you got brushes, or textures, or whatever from what site.

Well, that concludes my review! I think there are quite a few things you could improve on, but you just need to look at other successful sites instead of wherever you're getting the Neopets-ish inspiration from. =)
I hope that wasn't too harsh. I really mean well, I promise.

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lillie's Response:
oh its ok really! i love harsh comments o_o; if it was a disease, i HAVE it :]
Shadow gave it on 24th Nov 2008 and said:
First Impression

I come to this site and I see three things wrong right away.

-That sidebar is ridiculously small.
-The text is ridiculously small.
-The layout is smushed on its side.

No one should use Times New Roman or Georgia for anything other than titles.

But I will give you props, because the header isn't bad looking at all.

Blog and Sidebar

That sidebar is ridiculously small. 100px? Seriously? No, that's too small. A sidebar should be at least 250px wide.

The entire site has Times New Roman. I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, but it is way too small. I did a test to see if I can read it without my glasses. It looked like dots to me. Can you imagine someone else who has worse eyesight than I do trying to read it? They couldn't, and they'll leave and never come back. You wouldn't want that, now would you? Like I said, no full site should be in Times New Roman or Georgia. Choose a sans-serif font, such as Arial, Tahoma or Verdana. Bump the font size up to about 12px. Padding and line height is important. You need both of those.

The other pages

Lillie: A list, or at least that's what it looks like. You don't have to go deep into it, but this is a personal site, and we're expecting to see more than what you have. Or at least what you have now, in detailed paragraph form. It's very hard to read as it is.

Content: Number one rule--"content" encompasses everything in your site, not just visitor resources.

Your brush previews need to be spaced out more. A simple <br /> can fix that problem. They're not the best brushes either. They're not special.

Your color palettes are way too bright for anyone to use on their site. I would suggest that you go to COLOURlovers and check out some of the schemes there and see how the colors should complement each other.

Your tutorials aren't very special. Someone would go on another site and find those same tutorials elsewhere. You need to come up with something that isn't overdone.

Your icons aren't that bad, but they're forgettable. Everything in your usables section is forgettable.

Get rid of the reads. They're useless, and most of us gets those in our MySpace bulletins on a regular basis anyway.

Site: General stuff. You should link your credits.

Coding

Okay, I've come to the conclusion that your stylesheet isn't set up properly. The default blue links are a dead giveaway.

For starters, you don't need this in your style.css.

<style type="text/css"> <!--

You definitely need to get rid of that javascript at the bottom of your style.css. It doesn't belong.

A-ha! I found it!

h2 { font-size : 10px; font-family : century gothic; color : #000000; background-color : #ffffff; line-height : 12px; text-align : justify; border: 0px; width : 100%;

You forgot the }. Once you fix that, everything will work the way you want it, but not necessarily the way it should.

You're using tables as well. Noooo! Tables are for tabular data, not for layouts. Get rid of the tables, use DIV's and you'll be on your way.

You really need help in coding. You should go here to read up on CSS and (X)HTML. That way, you won't run into too many snags the next time you make a layout.

All in All...

At first glance, this was a site that used Times New Roman, when it shouldn't. Then I noticed the default blue links, and thought that this was no coincidence. Sure enough, your CSS is all over the place. But there's also the 100px sidebar, the TABLE used to contain your layout image in, and the forgettable visitor content. You have potential. You just need more practice. Good luck!

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lillie's Response:
gah, i knew something was wrong with my links on firefox @-@ Thank you oh so much :]
secondhand gave it on 24th Nov 2008 and said:
Helloooooo :] I'm felicia, I was bored and decided to review your site :D

My first impression on your site was "Wow this shits colorful" haha, I enjoy colorful sites, but I wish it could of been more in-depth? It wasn't a very serious layout, more like, youthful?
The image was nicely placed, but the small skinny table below it is sort of, lost? The nagvigation Is OBNOXIOUSLY big, the hovering is decent though :] The css is a bit uhh okay. The heading was a bit HUGE and the background was a bit annoying. You could of been a bit more simplier? Or just try to tone it down.

The second thing I decided to check out was, well, YOU. I didn't really like how you spoke of yourself. I barely understood anything you typed. All I know about your like, a girl, named Delilah/Lillie your from america. Everything else was a bit fuzzy other than you like myspace and AIM.

Your content? Well, It wasn't very "unique" The brushes were a bit, old sorta. Not very in-style? You could of done alot better! Their really outdated, I saw those being used years ago, no affense :]

Paper stocks and color palletes? I realized your a really colorful person :] I like that about your site, in a way. But I think you should of been more into variety. Its just bright bright bright. Nothing really blended in or darker hues or lighter hues. It was just like "pink blue orange brighter blue" You know?

Tutorials. They were nicely organized and simple to do, but the..well..effect was no better than the original. You could of done better.

Backgrounds? I don't see people use those things anymore, simple is always better. You jazzed it out and the colors are so very much no in sync.

Myspace codes, they're are hundreds of sites that people can find myspace codes from, I honestly dont think people will think to come to your site for them.

The icons? They don't seem very much edited or in much abundence either. Maybe stock up them and try actually doing something to them :]

Your spelling wasn't that much better either, in your reviews you couldn't bother to extend the words "because" instead of using "b/c." And also, your reviews seemed a bit childish. emo? myspace. Try talking about something people care about, or be at least more serious on the topics.

Overall, maybe you should think about re-arranging things. The moment I saw your site I wasn't very thrilled to using your stuff. Your layout alone intimidated me on what you stuff would be like. You site name didn't really mean anything to be either. It just seemed like you took 5 seconds into thinking of a site name. Its something people will think about the moment they want to return. Would you visit a site called fluffy unicorn? Either way, what would I know? Alot of people might like your site :] Its just for my first review, so I hope you dont take my to seriously.

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lillie's Response:
not much of a review if you ask me o_o;

UPDATED 24 Nov 08:
Ohh there's the review (:< LOL yea' i'm a colorful person (: ahalala. thnks! will do x) sorry for being a myspace *COUGH*