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Lyrical.nu has 4 Reviews

Below are the reviews left by other members on Lyrical.nu. Jump to review form?

1. 

   Aisling gave it on 8th Dec 2008 and said:

   Your layout is very clean, but not entirely interesting or attention-grabbing. The big sort of grungy blob in the header 1) blends in too much 2) isn't very attractive. The title is also very bland, and looks a bit fuzzy. Your navigation is fine in that it is functional, but once again, doesn't interest me. If you've been trying to achieve a design that really just focuses on the content of your blog, then, you've achieved it, because the first thing my eyes move to is the title of your latest entry, which stands out considerably more than the rest of the design, really. I *have* enjoyed the majority of your other designs though. This one just isn't doing it for me, this time.

   Your sidebar is nicely fleshed out, although a little bit more padding may help it "breathe." Surprisingly, I really enjoy your footer (I say "surprisingly," because I rarely enjoy cramped things, but I think it looks alright here. More info-packed than cramped, really), especially the search box. It's very nice and crisp.

   Moving on to the textual bits of the site, I do read your blog on occasion, and you generally have interesting topics covered. You have an engaging tone.

   Your About page is well written and incredibly fleshed out, and interesting to read. A few problems with repetition, though, ex: "I design almost everything I can get my hands on... As you can tell, I attempt to design anything." Is a repeated thought. The other pages in this section are nice supplementary bits of information, and achieve their goal of getting to know about you.

   Your About Lyrical section continues in the same vein, providing an interesting, albeit standard, view into the way Lyrical is run.

   Your Writings section is very nice, and I would love to see it expanded, especially since you claim to love writing so much. As I said before, you have an engaging tone, which I look forward to see develop over time. Your Photography is a nice touch. :) It would be cool to see you combine the two, i.e. take a random picture and then just... write about it?

   I love the addition of Social Networking links on the sidebar of your Contact page. Very very cute, and useful.

   And your links page is INTENSE, which I love. Links pages are often one of the first places I visit in a site, haha. I'm just so desperate to find new things to read!

   Overall, you have a pretty nice site building up here. Your content is all pretty well organized. Just, bring one of those pretty, interesting layouts I'm used to seeing, to spruce up the visual appeal. You seem to be very creative, and your design should reflect that, because, regardless of anything, people DO judge books by their covers.

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2. 

   Hannah gave it on 1st Dec 2008 and said:

   First Impression
   I see you've opted for a grayscale color scheme with just a hint of color. You've pulled it off without making it boring, as so many fail to do when working with gray.

   Layout
   I like the font you've chosen for your site title. However, while I'm on the subject of fonts, I must say that one of the first things I noticed about your layout is that the sidebar and main section have two different fonts. I'd stick with the Helvetica throughout. The sidebar also has less line-height, and paired with the smaller text, it looks a little cramped.
   I also don't like the fact that headings aren't capitalized in the sidebar. Links aren't defined like they are in the main section. If I hadn't been following the words with my mouse, I wouldn't have known that "Brian" was a link in your introductory paragraph.
   Back up to the top of the page; next I'll focus on the navigation. It's small. Navigation should be, for lack of a better word... obvious. I played around with the CSS and, personally, I would increase the font size to at least 14px, maybe 15px. Shame on you for not using relative sizing, though!
   Speaking of CSS, I love how you've organized! I need to do this with my CSS; I can never find anything when I need to tweak! Anyway, I noticed you've repeated styling for ul#nav li a in ul#nav li a:hover (like the color, display, float, text-align, etc.). For styles that are the same under both, you can get rid of them in :hover since they're already defined under just "a". The redefined styles are only taking up extra space!
   Anyway, I'm moving on to the main section. The blog headings stand out nicely, and the font change isn't a bad one here. I probably wouldn't keep the all caps, though. All that unnecessary shouting!
   Under the heading you have the post "meta"- date, time, categories and comments; technically this is a subheading. I would style it without the indent, at regular font size and bolded.
   After entries you have a nice dividing line, but I would give it a bit more space on top and bottom.
   As for the footer, I probably would use the top border color as a background, instead, and increase the line height. To use a background color, though, you would have to put something like <div class="clear"></div> and apply the clear:both styling to the .clear instead. The second line could probably be at the end of the first line instead of being a new line. It looks like you've tried to float the search form to the right, but it's not working for me. Try putting the "p" element that you're floating outside of the form tags.
   Ah, now that I've gotten through that, I can move onto content!

   Content
   - About
   You've provided a lot of information here without droning on and on; the occasional sarcastic tones add needed humor. You can't have an about page without humor!
   - Writings
   It would be wrong of me to go through and review your writings; I'm in no way a writer. I will however say that you have provided a nice variety of reads here. If someone doesn't like poetry, for example, they could always read the articles, and vice versa. I've commented on this in the past but your “LGBT Wrongdoing” article really speaks from the heart. You can tell that the topic is very important to you, and I must say I agree with your points. I am so sick of hearing the words “gay” and “fag” being thrown around like there's nothing wrong with it. I also love the “Fight for Freedom” article- another article straight from the heart. Your writing style put me in your shoes, watching through your eyes as immature, ignorant people jeered at me for who I am, even though I am a straight girl.
   Your “A Host's Con Job” article is very helpful, and I'll definitely use it for reference in the future for those looking for a new host. You touched on a subject so many people don't understand: unlimited doesn't exist.
   I'm skipping the essays and lyrics/poetry, since, like I said earlier, I am no writer and it doesn't feel right to review them.
   Your hosting reviews are likely very useful to website owners looking for a new host. I see you've been with seven hosts and have only reviewed two. I'd like to see those other five!
   - Photography
   Nothing really to review here, but a great idea!
   - Contact
   Nothing to review.
   - Links
   I like the organization here; you've utilized the space well using two columns.

   Conclusion
   Well, Brian, I'd say you deserve four and a half stars! I can't give you five, since sites always have room for improvement, but I don't have any reason to give you a low rating. I love your website and found myself missing it when it was gone for a while recently. Keep on writing- this seems to be the section of your site with the most potential to grow, excluding the blog.

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3. Mari gave it on 30th Nov 2008 and said:

   First Impressions: It's clean, simple, and easy to read. I like that it's centered, too. This is a good first impression; even if I wasn't reviewing you I'd still want to stick around.
   Layout:
   I like it, for the most part. There aren't any celebrity images or iFrames. The colors don't clash or blind me. I can read everything without trouble.
   However, there's nothing that really makes me say "Wow!". It's very simple, and the structure isn't exactly unique. That's not a big deal, though. Not everyone can be a great designer/artist (because I definitely am not), and even though I wouldn't put your layout up for a "Best Design Award", it's still a nice enough theme. Having said that, I still think there are places for you to improve.
   -Colors. I think the colors you are using are very drab. Neutrals, like black and gray, go well with other colors and are good for parts of layouts, but an entire layout of black, gray, and white screams "Boring!", not "Listen Up!". Looking through your past layouts, I see that a few of them have been a little bit too bright. This layout is an improvement over those, so don't go adding too much bright color. What you can do is add little splashes or bits of colors. It's good that you've used that red color for the headings, but can you bring red into the theme a little more? Or perhaps add another color? You don't have to make big statements with the colors, just fit them into the theme so that it's not so blah.
   -I think the navigation tabs are too small. You want your navigation to be very noticeable and easy to find, so increase the size. You've got lots of space between the navigation tabs and the site title that you're not using.
   -I don't like the footer. It looks like the words are hovering in midair below the content, and it just seems disorganized. If you give the footer a background color, it won't look as strange.
   -I think the first paragraph on the sidebar is a little too close to the top of the layout. Add a bit of padding.
   Content
   About
   This is really good. You are a good writer and you describe yourself and your website's history well. I would only suggest a few things:
   -The picture on the main about page is really big and since it's planted right in the middle of the page, it sort of breaks up the flow of the narrative. How about making the picture smaller and moving it over to the left so that there will be text next to it?
   -Maybe you could write something about why you chose the name Lyrical? People might be interested in what significance it has to you.
   Writings: I love written content, and I enjoyed reading yours, which were very well-written. You've organized some of them into categories "Essays" and "Articles", but what's the exact difference between the two categories? I feel like a lot of the pieces could work in either category. In the paragraphs at the top of the essays, you refer to the essays as articles, so that's kind of confusing.
   I especially like the hosting reviews. They are helpful and well-done.
   Photography I liked looking at your photography but was sad to see you only have five photos. Could you add some more?
   Contact You've linked to this page twice, from the main navigation and from the About page. I don't think that's really necessary, plus it could confuse people. Choose one place to link it from!
   Links Your links are organized well.
   Coding Your coding looks pretty good. There are two errors in your XHTML, but they are just little things like an extra end tag. Your CSS is valid.
   Overall I really liked visiting your website. You are a really good writer and I also enjoyed your photography. Besides small things here and there, the only things I would really work on are the colors for your layout.
   I hope this review was helpful! I tried not to sugarcoat, but in many places it was hard not to.

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4. 

   Joe gave it on 28th Nov 2008 and said:

   First impression when opening your site is that is feels very clean and professional. The layout is very simple and minimalistic, and the soft greys work well. I feel the rather unorthodox positioning of the search bar works really well as well.

   Your sidebar has just the right amount of content in it. It doesn't look empty, but it doesn't feel cluttered either. And dynamic content based on the page you're on is a nice touch. You're blogs are also pretty well written and interesting to read. :)

   About: Wow, you've written a lot about yourself here. Plenty of information, and is very much interesting enough to keep me reading all the way through to the end. I like how you've planed a little about the site itself at the bottom of the page, rather than place it into its own, which would be silly for a short paragraph.

   Looking through the About ME subpages, I don't have much to comment on; fairly standard stuff, but still interesting nonetheless.

   Past Layouts: They're all pretty similar in style and layout, but that's not a bad thing, because it works. The colours on Detox and Sunshine are incredibly bright, but obviously being past layouts, that isn't a problem. Out of the four, Poses is my favourite.

   Internet History: Ahh, Piczo and Freewebs, we've all been there. :P The page is interesting, as is the style of writing, rather than just plain old "I started off at X, then moved to Y, now I'm hosted at Z!".

   Credits and Resources: Wow, a lot of links here. I'm going to have to come back later and plough through them. Very well organised. :)

   Writings: I don't have much to say about these, except to say that they are very well written. Your hosting reviews are very informative and detailed, and would certainly help some people when they are looking for a host.

   Photography: Ah, my first real complaint about your site: You're simply resizing the full sized images to use as thumbnails. Not a good idea, as it causes them to load a lot slower than if you were to use thumbnail images. They fact you've saved than as PNG rather than JPEG is also causing them to have massive file sizes. Your lawnmower image is 553x415 pixels in size, but is almost 500KB in size! That is a ridiculously large size for an image of that dimension, and the same applies to your other: Your smallest is just short of 300KB. I seriously recommend you use JPEGs for your photos, and use thumbnail images: You'll save a lot of bandwidth, and your users are less likely to become annoyed while waiting for all of your massive thumbnails to load.

   Technical criticism aside, you're photos are great. :)

   Contact: Fairly standard. I like the layout of the contact form though. :)

   Links: Much like your credits and resources page, your links are very well organised. :)

   Also, looking at your coding on your homepage, you have a couple of errors. They're only a couple of </p> tags that haven't been initially opened though, so easily sorted. Apart from that small hiccup, your code is pretty sound.

   Overall, very nice. The only criticism I have is the thing with your photos. Apart from that, your site is a very stellar effort and I can only hope (and expect you will) just keep it up. :)

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   bbenevolent's Response:

   Thank you so much for your review, Joe. I love speaking with you on Struck MB, so I was curious to see what you thought of my website.

   I guess I can just focus on my photography, since that seems to be the only thing you were critical of. Basically, I've been wanting to change the images over to .jpg, but I haven't had the time to yet. Also, I'm in the process of creating thumbnails. The fact of the mater is: I'm a lazy person. :P

   Again, thank you for your review. I'm very pleased with the results.

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