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another-perfect-world.org has 20 Reviews

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Tiffany gave it on 24th Dec 2008 and said:
Layout
The first thing I noticed was the purple, it's a fabulous shade. I also noticed how the main content is incorporated (the arrow + box). It's very refreshing to see. But this brings up the main flaw, the sidebar.

Sidebar
- site title too small
-- navigation larger then title

- headings + links appear awkward connected to the main content box
-- the navigation was flowy, not boxed in.
-- the headings are. :/

Footer
- I don't know whether or not if it looks better not connected to the edges?

Organization
The color scheme makes everything really easy to look at. :D

Styling
- I wish the blockquotes were styled differently. They look plain next to everything else.

- The line (division) below the meta-data looks misplaced.
-- Different font color (slightly lighter)?

- Odd styling for the "add comment" button.
-- Space the image a little farther from the words?
-- Thinner border?

Content
I see that your about page is more about your site rather then yourself. I suggest a balance + division between the two? I like how Kaylee does hers. :D

I was expecting a grand amount of goodies (considering you have a whole section for it). Perhaps you could add some styling or CSS magic to the link. Brent and Melissa has a really nice content page.

Wallpapers + Variety of Dimensions = Happy Visitors

Summary
Big layout, small site. :)

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Vasili's Response:
When I was designing my current layout, I wanted to have the blog/content be the main attention rather than the layout. I still want to have it "flow" (hence the arrow and open sidebar). I would have loved to make the site title bigger, but that would have made the layout 1000+ pixels wide. ;)

As for the about page and goodies section, those are under construction. I wanted to get my blog up and running. I already have more things to add to the goodies section (like my PHP scripts), I just don't have the time. And the about page is going to be super awesome, just wait. :D

P.S. I don't get what you mean by CSS magic? o_o
Enzo gave it on 30th Nov 2008 and said:
I like this layout. The colors go very well together and I like the way you pulled it off. The diagonal stripe with that curved one is quite a risk and it worked. I also like how you incorporated a very basic RSS icon into your layout and make it look as if it belonged.

I'm not so sure about your navigation though. The links are positioned in quite an odd manner, and the text that appears when you hover on the links look quite out of place. Perhpas making them smaller would fix it. I'm not so sure about that though.

The date on your blog posts are so light! Make it darker! I didn't even realize you had a date until I looked into your coding and saw that.

I do not like the hover color your links have. From dark gray to blue and from some shade of orange to dark gray? That's not very cohesive.

Your about page is very basic; nothing really special in there...

A couple of reviewers have mentioned this before, but I'll say it again: DO NOT PUT EMPTY/UNDER CONSTRUCTION PAGES ON YOUR SITE. That's all. :)

Overall, I could see a lot of potential in you, design-wise. However, I do not see your personality reflected on your pages and posts. :(

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Vasili's Response:
If I wasn't working on a new layout, I would change all the stuff you pointed out (date, links, navigation links). I know, I know! I really shouldn't have put the content section up until I actually had some. *hits self*

Thanks for this review!
Heartoholic gave it on 29th Nov 2008 and said:
First Impression
Hm, The layout took a while to load. After it loaded, I was pretty disappointed on what I saw. The brushes aren't very good resolution on my computer. It's cool how you hover on the navigation and it tells you what the page is, but the links are just scattered on the layout. If you wanted to do that, I suggest having a background a different color from the layout. I think it would look much better like that. I like how you didn't put the wordpress info (recent posts, etc) on the top, but you still put it there. To be honest, I really don't see a need for it, it may be cool, but it takes up space. Anyone can see your recent post. Anyone can click the comments link on your blog to see the last commenter.

Blog
The HUGE images are pretty annoying. I suggest making them WAYYY smaller. If you still want them that big, just use a text link, or make the image smaller as a thumbnail, and make it clickable to the larger image. The blogs are pretty interesting though.

Content
Nothing there. I can't really say anything bad about having a page that says "under construction" because I have pages on my site like that as well.

About
You give one sentence about yourself, and the rest is about the site. I would like to hear about you. Okay, well you might be one of those people who won't give any information about themselves out, but you don't need to to write about yourself. Just write about your dreams (about what your going to do in the future), what you like to do for fun, things you hate, etc. But I did like how you provided a ton of information about how you got started.

Scripts
Whoa! I'm really impressed! You make your own scipts?! I think this would be my favorite page on your site even if you did have content. I didn't download any of the scripts to see if they work, but from what I'm reading about them, it sounds like they would work, and it sounds reliable. I'm glad you included instructions on how to install them, that are easy to follow also. I think you should explain what CHMOD means though, no everyone knows how to do it or what it even means.

Conclusion
In the beginning I doubted the site from looking at the blog. But I guess you can't judge a book by it's cover right? You explain yourself well, and have a great site. I'm sure when you add the content it will be even better. You get 3 1/2 stars. Congrats.

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nickolena gave it on 29th Nov 2008 and said:
So I am a stickler when it comes to aesthetics. I love your layout though!! The header is simple and great. When it comes to good simplicity, i just fall in love with it. Your RSS placement is wonderful. I love it!

Now to your navigation. I am not a big fan of the random placement of them. I think just going horizontal or vertical would be better. The hover effect on them is great. The rounded effect is awesome. The sentence that pops up underneath the nav depending on what you hover over is great. I always love it when that happens.

On to your content. Oh dear! Their is nothing there! I'll move on to your scripts. Oh good! They are flat file. Those are always so much simpler then the scripts that require MySQL databases.

I hattttte it when a script has a horrible layout. Your ask and answer scripts design is not awful though. Its very simple and to the point. Good work.

I am a user of Cutenews. I have heard the rumors of it being an unsafe script but have never had a problem with it. I will definitly look back at your site, though, to see if your BlogBox script is ready yet. Hopefully the set up and design is much nicer then CuteNews.

I am not going pay much attention to iGraphics. I think it would be a good script for you to expand on though. First finish that BlogSpot script!

Overall your layout is definitely one of my favorites that I have ever seen. Your blogging style is interesting, but not something I would come back to read. I am going to be checking back to see if that BlogBox script is ready!

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tormentosa gave it on 17th Nov 2008 and said:
Layout

First of all, I love the color scheme. I would have loved to have it for myself, but it'd be stupid to "steal" it. I think the colors work very well, together and I'm actually envious!

Header: Well, I am not a fan of the curvy stripe together with the diagonal one. I would have chosen one style and stuck to it, but it somehow works. I like specially the hidden RSS icon.

Now about the navigation, I find it odd. I don't like that the links are in different positions, perhaps because not many of us are used to it. I would have done it either horizontally or vertically, but I think the latter would have worked better, since there isn't that much space to the right.

I would have also changed the navigation names to something more general: like about, domain or site, links, downloads/goodies, etc.. I personally dislike when people have a "content" link within their site. What about about me/links/domain etc. Is that not content?

About the footer font color: I think the links are a bit too dark. Why not making them a little bit lighter so they're easier to read?

I think placing the "view all" links right below the other links would be better than to have them right-aligned as they're now. It looks a bit odd and out of place. Besides, I don't know if those links belong to "categories" or "favorite links".

In my personal opinion, I think it'd look better if you had set up a minimal-height declaration for the content area in the CSS file cause right now the footer is way far away from the bottom of the page in those pages where you have no content. Otherwise, you could have rounded corners for your bottom as well.

The diagonal stripe at the right bottom looks kind of out of place. Why not having a smaller horizontal stripe under the footer instead? Just a suggestion.

Content

About me: I thought this page was about YOU, but it's not. I think almost everything on this page could also be moved a domain section. I didn't learn a thing about you besides that you're fourteen and dream of code. I would have loved learning about the person behind the site, because I really don't care about anyone's internet/blogging history. I mentioning this specially cause the page is called "about me", not only "about" like many other websites nowadays have where both information about the site and the owner are put together.

Content: Like I said before, what's the point of having an empty page? I'd take it out if I were you, and replace it with a links or domain section that you're lacking right now (actually an about section) until you are finished with those goodies.

Scripts: Pretty straight forward, but then again, I don't see the need of linking a script you haven't up already.

I think it'd look better if you placed these scripts under goodies/downloads/the section you called content.

When it comes about organization, I think you should have a links section in the navigation, besides only placing them on the footer, but that's my way of thinking only. I also think credits should go in the domain/site section.

In the same links page, where it says "other pages", although it's quite obvious, not all of us are so brilliant, so I'd rename that heading with "network/memberships, find me elsewhere, etc.", because...what's "other pages"? What kind of pages, etc. etc. You know what I mean!

Coding

Nothing to mention here except that both XHTML and CSS are valid which is great.

All in all, I think your layout is nice and it has that autumn-ish look to it. I think the site's structure and navigation need a little bit more work though.

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Vasili's Response:
I also hate seeing empty pages and yet I'm doing that! The minimum height idea is great (like I told Jenny). I also have a perfect idea to make my about page even better. :)
Swetlana gave it on 16th Nov 2008 and said:
Hey Vasili!
Layout/Coding/Colors
I like your layout, it's very simple and the colors are cool to! I also like the way you set up the navigation on your header image! What I just noticed is that you have this small informations if I click on one of the links on your header image, really cool, I like that! I also really like the colors you are using on the layout, they are just perfect! The red/brown combination is just amazing! The only thing I don't like about your layout is the thing at the bottom of it. I think it takes alot of space and I don't think it is really usefull. I would maybe thinking about removing it or maybe delete it.
About me
On your about me page there aren't much informations about you personally it's more abouthow you came to web-design and stuff like that. But I like to read such informations. It's good to know from where the owners started and how they have improved, if you have known the owners previous sites. You should maybe add some more informations about you and not only about your web-design history.
Content
Yeah, there isn't much to review on your content section as there is noting.. but as you are saying that

Like many of the other pages of my site, this section is under construction.

there will be some content very soon.
Scripts
You are offering 2 scripts right now and one will be coming soon. Hm.. that's really not much, but I don't know how much it takes to create a script so I won't judge on them!
Overall
I think your site is a good site so far and if you put more time and work into it, like you are doing right now, I think it will be very popular! The only think I could suggest you would add more personal informations about your self and work on more content! Thats all.

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Sewwy gave it on 9th Nov 2008 and said:
First things first, your layout is ridiculously cool. You see a lot of generic wordpress layouts these days, and there's something about your layout that stands out. The colours work well together, overall not being too distracting. I quite like the roll over text which appears when hovering over links.

I quite like the splitting of the content section with your comments, recent posts and links separated underneath it. It avoids clutter and looks very effective. The white background of the main content area also makes it quite easy to focus on that area specifically.

I enjoyed reading through your blog entries, and found your About Me page insightful. It would have been nice to see a little more scripts on your script page, but I understand that takes time. That being said, it's lovely that you provide some scripts to your visitors, I'm sure they'd find them useful.

I would review your coding, but I am VERY rusty. So I'll leave that to the experts.

Overall, I liked your site. :) I'll have to bookmark it and return at some stage. ;)

Kudos!

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Vasili's Response:
(testing reply in IE7)
Jenny gave it on 9th Nov 2008 and said:
There are three things that stand out to me when first viewing your website:

1) Aww, the RSS buttons look cute.

2) Is this layout finished?

3) What is the significance of "Ã¸" to separate the category (list) from the comments?

Your design is clean, and the colour combination is nice. I quite like the shadows you added; it's a nice touch. Firstly, I must, however, comment on the ratio of the header to the content (main) box to the footer. I suppose this is mainly due to the fact that, at the moment, your update is only so small. It doesn't look that nice. How about increasing the number of entries? Like Aisling said, you need enough entries to be displayed to balance at the footer. Similarly, I, too, find myself skipping towards the footer which, is honestly of no interest to me; the updates, on the other hand, as a visitor, are. Secondly, I'm not sure on the stripe at the bottom right hand corner. It might make sense if it was somehow visibly shown attached to the stripes at the top, but it isn't. It looks misplaced, and detracts the main focus on the main column. (Also, what is it supposed to be or represent? The stripes that is.) Thirdly, "Open source marketing tools" at the bottom, aye? What's that? It just throws your design (/website) off for me instantly. I'm not a fan of "pay to post" schemes, and this reminds me of it ...

The navigation blocks are nice! I wish there was more contrast when you hover over them, though. The "Content" button is a little misleading. Like Aisling said previous to me, everything is content; what is content? And clicking on it pretty much leads me nowhere. However, the one-liner sentence did leave me with a suggestion: how about a fixed height for the actual content section? You could do it with min-height as a starting block. Likewise, it's with the ratio. It doesn't look ... nice.

When I disable images (which can be frequent when browsing on my mobile), it's sad to note that I can't see anything of significance that tells me that this is your website -- no title, no text link list. Nothing. Also, there are much more efficient ways of doing CSS rollover navigation (i.e. CSS sprites). :) Quick Google searches can show this, but I'll take a look at your CSS in-depth later.

The link colours in the footer are way too dark and dull to properly stand out. I find it difficult to what they say. I'd also prefer more contrast betwen the blocks. The "View All" links that are aligned to the right seem too to the right. It looks like its floating on its own with no home of its own! I know this is a little nit-pick, but I do feel it looks like you lacked the creativity to properly do up this part your design, which is a shame, really! To sum up briefly, I'd recommend a lighter colour, and something to block off each block on its own. The background color on hover is, to me, the wrong sort of reddy brown to adequatly fit the rest of the layout. I'd try for something more mellow.

Insert #1: The information under "Recent Comments" doesn't necessarily reflect the heading! "Recent Commentors" would be more appropriate. Otherwise, I'd recommend adding a bit of the comment to properly make it relevant.

After looking at your website with CSS disabled, I can't say I'm immensely impressed. I browse with no CSS to see what the mark-up of a website looks like, and, sometimes involuntarily (for example, on my phone or because a website is disgustingly heinous with CSS enabled :P), which is even more unfortunate because I lack choice. Thankfully, I have the choice to view with CSS en/disabled; your site isn't that great with CSS disabled and it's something I feel you can work on as an aspiring webmaster. The first thing is that you have no title. This is should be utmost vital thing on your website; it's all nice and dandy to have a fancy image as your header, but for screenreaders and such? You need a title. Even if you don't want to manipulate it, maybe if you want to just hide it, it's such an immensely simple thing that goes a long way. To hide, you'd just simply use display: none; in your CSS; that's pretty much it!

Insert #2: Also, I keep clicking on "another-perfect-world.org" to go home, but it isn't clickable. :'( I know the home link is served with the "home" button, and it must be odd to image map the title, but something to consider in future designs. /nit-pick.

I'm not too fond of the lack of spacing between the entry title and the entry date. Also, why have you separated the date with full stops? It doesn't look that good. The only possible, non-aesthetic, reason I can think of is that maybe you didn't want to have spaces between the parameters, but I'm pretty sure you could suffice (internally) with  . Other than that, it's all good, from what I can see! As an additional tip, that might be considered bloat-y, how about adding hrs to differentiate between header, content, and footer? Obviously, they'd have to be hidden, but it's just an extra tool for the mobile users. When I look into your coding, however, things get a little sketchy:

(i) <div id="top"></div> -- isn't that just a tad superfluous? It's empty. I can only forgive empty divs that clear things! :( I realise this is so you can direct people back up to the top (yay, go you!), but you do realise you could just as well use #page? That's the first div defined, of course, and it's at the top, too. :)

(ii) Why are you using classes for your navigation links? (li.home, li.about et cetera.) Surely they should be IDs, because it only appears (or should) once on a page? While this won't necessarily reflect on the exterior, it's a semantics aspect -- IDs for single use, classes for multiple uses (like posts). This will, I'm pretty sure (!), be a quick fix.

(iii) <h1>[...]<span>[...]</span><em></em></h1> -- What is the em's purpose? In addition, spacing between title and entry date would be lovely, and perhaps, in future designs and structures, you might omit the date from the heading that displays your title, and put it in its own heading. :P

(iii.ii) I can see that you use title in links with ease on the standard given template, but you dont utilise it enough for your actual post (the bit where you have to do it yourself each time ;)). I do heartily recommending practising to an extent where it just comes naturally. It's nice. And helpful. Mmhm. Also, the alt/title for the emoticons seem quite redundant. It currently displays, what I'm guessing, the text which gets replaced with the emote itself, but it doesn't really serve much purpose? For example, to someone just looking at it, the unnecessary question of: "eh? colons?" would probably arise.

(iv) I'm sure you could combine the classes needed for each individual box in the footer with the univerals: .categories, .recentposts, .recentcomments, .favouritelinks removing the lack of need for class="fav-links", por ejemplo (yeah, I got bored with "for example"), in the h3s:

<div class="box footersection1"> <h3>footersection1</h3> <ul> <li></li> </ul> </div>

While this may not seem too efficient for the footer example, if you utilise the combining of classes to remove the need to having to separately classify just about everything (...!), it is so much more adequate! And you'll notice the differences in coding and the lack of bloat in your CSS. Just something to throw in there. :)

(v) Also, I should mention the whole doo-da with h#s. I'll just quote what I wrote in Nellie's review, I'm sure she won't mind. :P

(ii) The post title and date styling goes from h1 to h3. Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm honestly just commenting on anything I can find that stands out to me; that doesn't alwaaaysss (heh) mean I'm right, and, uh, confirmation for me is good also ;_;), but with headings you're supposed to go down the order. For example, h1, h2, THEN h3. Even so, it feels semantically incorrect to give your site title h1, and give a post title the same "importance". Personally, I use h1 for site titles, h2 for slogans, and h3 for page/post entry titles.

While it won't make much sense for your design at this very moment, the headers should go down in order; did I miss a h2? This is why I like to go:

<h1>Site Name</h1> <h2>Entry Title</h2> <h3>Footer Headings</h3>

... for example, on my own templates. :)

(And, ah, I figured out why the "Open source marketing tools" appeared for me at the bottom. I'm browsing with JavaScript disabled.)

(vi) This isn't specifically-coding orientated, but it should be mentioned that you should probably stick a link to your RSS. You know, so the browser automatically thinks: "Hey, this site has an RSS feed!" It's also groovy for browsers like Firefox which gives you a little button in the address bar, which, in turn, gives you options to add it to RSS readers and such. Cool, no?

In true, anally retentive reviewer style, I'll also mention that your RSS feed isn't validated; there are three things you need to change which can be seen at the w3 RSS validator website. :P

Through the "web page speed report" every reviewer is fond of, I should comment that it complains about these things, and gives your site cautions or warnings for the following: total objects (twenty-eight as opposed to the reasonable standard set at twenty), total images (you have twenty-one; it recommends CSS sprites (like I suggested! yay) and optimising parallel downloads), total size of the page is 377157 bytes which will, according to this, take 80.77 seconds to load in a 56Kbps mode; it suggests reducing the page size to less than 100k -- now, I'm not sure on your site statistics, but that, again, is something to look at for future designs; total scripts is a caution because the external script files adds up to four. :O -- it suggests combining, refactoring and minifying JavaScript files (so while it's pretty, it's not recommended if you really, truly don't need it/it's simply for funky purposes); the images size is over 100k, and it considers using CSS subsititutes/switching or optimising graphic formats; script size is over the suggested 20k, and the CSS size is a caution because it be above 8K. It considers optimising your CSS and eliminating features to reduce it. Yay, CSS. :D

You have good knowledge with CSS. I'm glad to note that it's structured well, and you seem to have CSS shorthand pretty well. However, it can still be improved:

(i) By removing white-space. (Which removes bloat, and generally makes it look a whole lot neater.)

(ii) By combining selectors. (Which removes bloat, and generally makes it look a whole lot neater.)

(iii) By "using" a reset.css, to further maximise efficiency and accuracy for lots of browsers and the general kafuffle with the box models in those silly browsers.

(iv) By using CSS sprites to de-bloat your #header ul li. I honestly cringe at what you have now, because it could be done so. much. easier. (And with less! :D)

And other points to make:

(v) font: 11px/1.6 use relative font sizes. Not sure where there's no unit appended to the line-height, too. Does it carry over from font size or something?

(vi) padding: .5em 3em; add 0 in front of the point (0.5em). This does have an effect with browsers ... I.E. is the first that comes into my head.

(vii) border-left: 1px solid #ddd; border-bottom: 1px solid #ddd; border-right: 1px solid #ddd; How about border: 1px solid #ddd; border-width: 0 1px 1px 1px;? Just reduction.

Taking a big jump from CSS and to some other design aspects ... When I'm viewing a category archive, it might be a lot nicer (in general) to increase the synopsis of each entry. It looks a little messy with the grey bar for every entry with only a little amount of text offering as a "seperator". Also, we already know it's filed in whatever category it's filed under! Redundant. :P

(i) "For a full list of categories please check [-] the category page." The "on" is also redundant.

And moving onto general content-ness:

Free PHP Scripts - "All of the scripts on this page are free as long as you keep the credit on them. At no time can you remove it without my permission." You can improve these two expressions a lot. At the moment, they both seem very novice, and can be interpreted to mean lots of different ways that you probably don't want! I'd recommend rewriting it to sound more sophisticated (and no, I'm not suggesting anything :P), and I'd also add a liscence somewhere to drive the point home.

- "All of the scripts require PHP, so make sure you have it on your server." Improve expression.
- "Most free hosts, such as Freewebs and Geo[c]it[ i]es don't[-] offer it." Improve expression. (Also corrected the spelling of Geocities and removed the unneeded comma.)
- "You can check if you have PHP enabled on your computer" -- Server.

You could probably make this page a lot more extensive, too, by including a longer summary of what the script is and does, and why it's different to the countless of other similar scripts out there. You should also mention somewhere on this page the level of which these scripts are aimed at. Por ejemplo, the scripts use flat files to store things as opposed to databases, and I'm guessing they aren't aimed at the average PHP ninja! The text you have now indicates that the person "shouldn't" know that they have PHP enabled (hopefully that makes sense). There are lots of things you can do to this page to meat it up. :)

I'd also recommend having another heading titled "In Development" and sticking a non-link of "BlogBox" there, and then putting the information in BlogBox's page on there. It gets kind of futile having to click things with lack of substantial information.

I'll avoid reviewing the actual scripts and their individual pages, because, you know, I don't really know what I'd review. :P

All riiiight, on to your about page! I read that you have an idea for your about page that you haven't got round to writing yet, but I'm just wondering what will happen to the information in the about page now? I do feel that your about page does need refining, but, nonetheless, lemme semi-Gestapo this ([-] means removed ...):

---

Hello there! My name is Vasilios (Vasili)[,] and [I'm] a not-so-average fourteen year old American boy. I really don't like about me pages, but here it goes[:]

[Insert things about Vasili's life here!]

[And personality things.]

[Hobbies off computer, mebbeh?]

I've been web designing for two years now. My first time stepping into the coding world[-] was in 2007 at Freewebs. I opened a site titled[:] "Homework Helper"[-] which ~~helped~~ gave away my math homework answers. Once I saw what [forty] lines of complex (at that time) coding could do, I was mesmorized. All I could do for the next month or so was read HTML and CSS tutorials.

I began to notice that my layouts were bland... they needed graphics! Luckily, one of my friends[-] had a graphic program. When I became familiar with it, I opened up another-perfect-world at Freewebs. It became quite popular[-] and I was offered hosting by someone[;] I accepted.

[Later/One day/?] I found this very fun and functional pr[o]gramming language [called] PHP. I was more obsessed with it than HTML and CSS. It took me two failed attempts at Codegrrl's Build a Blog tutorial to absolut[e]ly fall in love with PHP.

I realized that I needed my own domain if I really was going to find my spot on the [ I]nternet. I purchased another-perfect-world.org from Tehlove on September 23th, 2007. Tehlove shut down the following January, forcing me to [e]migrate to Holdfire Network. I'm glad I did, the prices are amazing and [the] support is great[!] (Jordan needs more lovin'.)

After the excit[e]ment of cPanel and all of its features wore off, I threw myself [back?] into PHP. All I could think about was coding. In my dreams I would see lines of coding[;] I would have nightmares of syntax errors (well not really). This wasn't the best of ideas, seeing as how I was getting headaches everyday from this. I calmed my studies down and wrote my first script[:] iGraphics. [My custom CMS written from scratch has had my back when it came to blogging.] Eh?

I create my websites (You only have one at the moment, right?) in Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Programmer's Notepad 2. HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL and JavaScript are the major programming languages you'll see me using.

---

I've only touched on the surface here, but I figured it would be a futile exercise for me to nit pick on every single little thing (and suggest things, apart from what I've already done!).

I'd also recommending bolding the "Total Entries", "Total Comments" and "Total Commentors" under statistics. :) You could also put some other statistics there, too; how about top commentor? Most viewed post?

All right, I think I've pretty much reviewed what I can ... so I guess it's time to explain the rating I gave you? You lost stars for the lack of content (APW is, honestly, under construction and bare bones), and the design and coding issues mentioned above. You "lost" another star because I think you can do so much more! You've shown a range of capabilities, and I have only seen a small selection. I know you have the ability to do a lot more. I realise my two rating seems quite "bad" in terms of how other people rate websites, but in relation to the other reviews I've written (explained a 'tad in my profile page), the two rating is good. I push ye to work more. :P

Likewise with all my reviews, if you don't understand anything (I tend to ramble), please just let me know. :)

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Vasili's Response:
I. LOVE. THIS. REVIEW. I truly do appreciate the amount of time and effort you put into it. I don't mind that I got a two because you didn't just bash and bash, you explained why I got it (and in great detail!).

The minimum height idea is a great one! I wish I thought of it sooner because I also ind myself skipping to the footer at times. When I have a layout that looks like that or acts like this, I'll be sure to add one of those in. :)

I'll be sure to use the different headers when appropriate and to also use image sprites when needed. I've already started to use image sprites for a couple layout ideas; but, those failed.
Aisling gave it on 9th Nov 2008 and said:
Hey there! Today I am going to review another-perfect-world.org, in my great attempt to avoid cleaning! So, here goes...

My first impression is "gym class in 1976." Yeah. I'm not sure how to explain that either. I think it's a retro theme, and that part comes across nicely, but something just reminds me of gym shorts. I don't know.

The brown is a nice, non-poopy brown, so good job with that. I don't really like the stripes in the bottom corner. Perhaps it's because everything else is in line with this sort of boxy container you've created, and it is just... off, in the corner, doing its thing, but not really doing anything at all.

I would suggest displaying more entries per page. Your current entry is super short, and followed by an enormous footer. I think you need enough entries displayed to balance the footer. Because honestly, the blog is the important part, and currently I find myself skipping past it and going straight to the footer.

I don't like the link hover colour in the footer. I think it should be more subtle. Like, one or two shades above the footer colour. This brown doesn't appear anywhere else on the layout, and doesn't have enough red in it to tie it in with the other reds.

I see you are using some fancy scripty magic to display your navigation. Which lead me to wonder what your navigation was made of. I turned off all images, and oh dear! I'm stuck! I can no longer navigate your site! That is a pity, because I often use my phone to browse sites while I am waiting for public transit to get home, and if the site is too image heavy, it disables images automatically!

Okay, so, content! The About Me page is what I shall click first, although my instinct is to click Content since it is on the top line. However, I know that Content is an empty void. This is certainly a problem, because it does have a lot of attention to it being on the first line. It could very well be the first bit of your site someone clicks on. And it delivers nothing, because nothing is there. Could make for a bad first impression.

Anyway, About Me: First thing I notice is that only the first line of this page is about you. And it really doesn't tell me anything about you. Yup, you're 14, and do you have any interests? Well, your site is your main interest, clearly, but you're not defined by one activity you've only done for the last year! I want to know more! I don't see a problem with also keeping site information on this site, but if you do, you should rename the page to "About," and have two headings: one for "About Me," and one for "About A-P-W.org." Trust me, people are interested in both! I often read the About pages before I view anything else on a site. Your website is an extension of yourself, not the other way around. ;)

And, finally, Scripts. One, I think you should explain what will display. Obviously you could be catering to a beginner audience, especially if they have no clue if PHP is supported on their server! Give them an idea of what they will see if PHP is supported, and what they will see if it isn't.

Now is the bit where I say that I can't actually review your scripts on account of me not being a master in this area. I don't really see the point of listing BlogBox, since it doesn't exist. If anything you could list it in a separate "Works in Progress," section. If I'm looking for a script, I want the script NOW, I can't wait for it to be developed, so I don't care. However, your visitors are interested in the development, a progress log in a separate section could be cool for them.

Also, isn't Scripts technically Content? Content is kind of an awful name for a subsection of a site, because EVERYTHING is content. Technically, your blog is content, your links list is content, everything is content. Rethink that one. ;)

UPDATED 09 Nov 08:
Pfft, "One, I think you should explain what will display." lost the bit of code. "php phpinfo();" Should be in there somewhere. ;)

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Peter gave it on 9th Nov 2008 and said:
I saw your blog post, so I thought I'd give your site a review!

First Impression:

A nice clean look with clever navigation and soothing colors.

Design:

It looks nice overall. The RSS icon is cool, but it is in an odd sort of place. It is near the navigation I guess, but you wouldn't think to look there if it wasn't bright orange.

The shadow at the top of the content box is a a nice touch, but it stops abruptly at each end, maybe you could have it curve down towards the corners and disappear behind?

The date to the left of the entry title is a little bit to light, when I tilt my screen forward it fades out. Maybe you could make it a little bit darker.

The "NEXT" link below the entry is a bit misleading, because it doesn't lead to the next entry, it leads to the previous entry. You may or my not want to change that, since it isn't a very big deal.

The "View All" links in the footer confused me at first, they looked like they were in a seperate column, and I didn't know what they were for. Maybe you should align them to the left and put a border over them or something.

The design is nice and clean, with clear, readable text (except for the date), a nice header image/logo, and a simple, yet clever navigation.

Content:

The blog entries are well written and far from boring. My only wish is that you would update more often and that some of the entries would be longer, but I understand how hard it is to do that.

Since the "Content" page is coming soon, I'll update my review later with my thoughts about it.

The "About" page is well written, although there are a few typos and some sentences you could word differently to make more sense (to me, at least :P). You might want to cut the top posts down to 5 posts, especially since you only have 18 posts at the moment and you don't seem to update more than once a week.

The "Scripts" page is pretty straight forward. At one place it says "To check if PHP is enabled on your computer..." but it really is checking on the server, and I'm sure you know that.

The scripts you offer are good (I can't really check whether they are secure, since I'm only as experienced in PHP as you are), but they seemed fine for the little while I messed around with them. The A&A script's admin panel is very nice and clean, and I like that it is flat-file. iGraphics is a bit awkward since each letter is a different image, it would be better if it wrote all the letters into one image (depending on how it is used).

Overall the content is well written and very clear with the exception of a few sentences and typos.

Conclusion:

This website is good looking with good content. With a few changes this could easily earn 5 stars. Very good job! =D

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Vasili's Response:
Wow, I just noticed those page links; they do seem confusing don't they? I'll change it to "Older Posts" and "Newer Posts", how about that? I wish I could write more entries too! It's just so hard with school. :(

I'm thinking about attempting to make the image one image for iGraphics. I'll look into doing that; it'll finally teach me how to use the image gallery functions in PHP. :) I hope you'll review my site again when I add my content and finish my layout!
Clem gave it on 9th Nov 2008 and said:
Hey, Vasili! I wasn't planning on doing this review but I was browsing your website and decided I wanted to point out some flaws because I'm feeling exceptionally generous today!

I think you've done quite a nice job with your design. The colours work well together, I adore the retro-y feel (retro anything is amazing in my books), and the texture of the stripes is a really nice touch - it keeps it from being too boring, I think. I also love the RSS button placement, although I hadn't noticed it until now. This could just be due to the fact that I'm, er, not very observant at all, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. I like your navigation and the hover effect, although the spacing is kind of strange. I understand you don't want them aligned, but why not make it more random? Right now it's kind of in two diagonal lines, which looks bizarre and creates empty space that doesn't look very nice.

I think that you should have more than one entry on each page; your entries tend to be quite short, and the footer is often as big as or bigger than the content area, which definitely looks bizarre.

Speaking of the footer, I'm not a huge fan of big footers, but yours is nicely-organised so I can't really complain. The only thing I really don't like is the hover colour. The brown of the footer is really nice and chocolatey, and the hover colour is pretty ugly and completely out of place. I would recommend taking the colour of the footer and going a shade or two lighter.

My final issue is that the date on the entries is too light. It's hard to see. In fact, I didn't even know it was there until I started reviewing, which is when I put my nitpick goggles on!

ABOUT ME
The title is extraordinarily misleading. This page isn't about you at all; it's about the website. You've added a few sentences about yourself, which I don't like. I would love to know MORE about you. This is a personal site, is it not? I want to learn more about the person behind the blog.

This page is strewn with typos, which creates the impression that you haven't taken two minutes to give this page a once-over, i.e. don't care. "My name is Vasilios (Vasili) and a not-so-average fourteen year old American boy." Spot the error! (Hint: it has to do with sentence structure.) "I really don't like about me pages, but here it goes!" This sounds awkward. Get rid of it. "My first time stepping into the coding world, was in 2007 at Freewebs. I opened a site titled, "Homework Helper", which" Get rid of all the commas there. "I was mesmorized." Change that to "mesmerized". "Luckily, one of my friends, had" Again, remove the commas. "It became quite populary and I was offered hosting by someone, I accepted." You have a spelling error (quite obvious), and "I was offered hosting by someone, I accepted" is NOT a sentence. Add "which" before "I accepted" and it will be. "porgramming language" - um, yeah. This is why it's a good idea to proofread before you hit the publish button. "I'm glad I did, the prices are amazing and support is great." Again, this is not a sentence. Either change the comma to semi-colon or add "because" after the comma and it will be grammatically correct. Yes, I realise I'm being nitpicky here, but that's my job! I love language and I love grammar, and I'm just doing my civic duty to protect English! "I threw myself into PHP." This is a strange phrase. It throws off the flow of the paragraph, because it has people (or me at least) going "wtf does that mean?" Why not change that to something more along the lines of "I dedicated the majority of my time to learning PHP" or something like that? It sounds better and it isn't some random, awkward-sounding phrase. "In my dreams I would see lines of coding, I would have nightmares of syntax errors (well not really)." NOT. A. SENTENCE. Please to be learning about proper sentence structure so that I don't spontaneously combust from the sadness of this abomination? Srsly, I would truly appreciate it if you stopped joining sentences together with a comma instead of a semi-colon (or leaving out conjunctions; either way it's just terrible). Also, the "well not really" needs a comma after the word "well". "seeing as how" - totally redundant. Get rid of "how", please. "My custom CMS written from scratch has had my back when it came to blogging." Another weird phrase. "has had my back"? You're associating human traits to something inanimate, and it sounds like you're trying too hard. Something like "has worked perfectly for my needs" would be much better!

So, in all, I really didn't like this page. It's called "About Me" yet contains virtually no information about you, and more about your website's history, which, to be honest, isn't very interesting. You could do a bit to spice it up, and, of course, add some actual information about YOU.

CONTENT
It's coming soon. Um, great? I fail to understand why you would bother including the link in the navigation to a page that's coming soon.

SCRIPTS
This might sound a little mean, but I don't see any point in having an Ask and Answer script that's available to the public. Jem's BellaBuzz and Amelie's PHPAskIt are far more well-known than VAA probably ever will be. I get that you probably created it to further your knowledge in PHP, but do you really think people will download it what with the availability of far more popular scripts that do the exact same thing?

Blogbox is a bit more promising, but its page makes me sad. Two lines of text, woo. Your footer looks massive in comparison to this sad little page; why not add text about its stage of development, potential features, etc?

I don't really see any point in iGraphics, but there you go.

So, Vasili, in all I'd say that your site is just okay. You've paid attention to details when it comes to design, but it seems like you've completely ignored the rest of your website. You have no visitor content even though there's a link to it on the menu, your scripts section is okay at best, and there is no personal information (and what you do have is strewn with errors). If you added some information about yourself and worked to clean up the rest of the website, it would be a lot better. But for now, it just doesn't stand out.

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ko0ty gave it on 8th Nov 2008 and said:
DESIGN:
First of all, I have to say I LOVE your layout and design! I like the subtle retro look of your header image with the curvy lines and the texture and the placement of the RSS icon is definitely cute and unique! I'm in love with the shades of browns and reds which have contrast with the white. Very autumn-ish, perfect for the season. I would remove the drop-shadow from the text though or at least stick it in a layer beneath the curvy stripe because the visible shadow looks weird on top of it.

The menu mouseovers are a nice touch.. I'm not sure if it's a script but I like how it looks like it's fading in rather than just appearing in just like that. As for the placement, I would move the "Home" and "About Me" over to the right a little ... but that's just an opinion from a picky designer. =P

I love your footer, it's well organized and I like the double red stripes separating the footer from the content.

CONTENT:
I'm not a huge fan of blogs with only one entry per page because I'd rather view as much as I can minimal clicking but that's just me! The concept works well with your design though because it keeps your whole site looking clean and compact.

As for the empty content page, maybe you should remove it until you actually have content up so avoid misleading users.

Overall, I gave you 4 stars because of those little minor things and the missing content but I applaud you on the design!

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Vasili's Response:
Thanks for loving me layout so much. :P In my new layout, I don't have a content section because I don't have anything to put up. When I first added the content section, I thought I would be able to put something up quick and then build it up, but that didn't work.

The navigation fading in and out is some jQuery effects, you can check out the effect on that page.
Ann gave it on 7th Nov 2008 and said:
I really like all the colours you've used in this layout, and the way you've used all of the colours... everywhere really! However, I've noticed that you have the link to comment right under the title, at the top of your blog post. Personally I find it much easier if the link to comment is at the bottom of the post so I can click through straight away - another small thing is that if I come across an older post which says "0 comments", it's kind of saying "nobody was interested don't bother reading", although of course that is usually not the case.
Another thing is that you only have one post per page, and as you have no sidebar, the space your blog fills is quite wide, and therefore not that long - noticeably very short if you don't post very much like in your most recent one. Have you considered putting 2 or 3 posts per page?
OK, last thing on the layout is the fact that your blog has a rounded container/ heading and yet the footer isn't rounded off and just extends straight down to the bottom. Symmetry and keeping the style is always good, so I would suggest perhaps rounding off the footer, or something...
I've also just noticed that you've projected a shadow from the top onto your stripes/ background and haven't done so in your footer, making it flat. Once you've noticed it it sticks out like a sore thumb, so I'd suggest fixing that.
Moving on (and I love the javascript thing you've added, I turned NoScript off for it), your About page is well written and informative. No comments.
Content: ARRRGGGGGGHHH, I hate it when I click a link and things say "coming soon" or "under construction". If it's not done, don't tease people by giving them a link.
Scripts: I fail to see what you could put in the Content section other than your Scripts. Please don't tell me you're thinking of crappy tutorials or free backgrounds or something...
Meh, no real comments on this section apart from "BlogBox" - see what I said for "Content".
Overall, I really like your site, it's neat and well set out, with only a few issues with the layout. The huge turn off for me was the non-links, so I'm taking off a star for that. Anyway, keep it up and have fun fixing the above stuff :)

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afscom gave it on 7th Nov 2008 and said:
[Reviewed with Firefox 3 with a 1280x800 resolution]

First Impressions
I love the retro feel to your design and the fact that (on my monitor at least) the stripes look almost 3D, the texturing looks so real. The simplicity works amazingly well, with my eye drawn to your blog entry straight away since there's not much else to distract my eyes away from it.

The navigation is fantastic and it's great to see something that's a little bit different on a site these days. It's stylish too, and the font fits well with the retro feel.

The only point I would make is that I was squinting to read your blog on the longer entries because the font size seems a little small - but that maybe just because I don't have my glasses on!

About Me
Oh my god, you're 14? You write amazingly well for somebody so young (apologies, I'm 8 years older than you and that makes me feel old!).

You don't really have as much information on your 'about me' page as a lot of other blog / personal websites do but the information that you've given is just right. It's interesting to read how anybody came about to start designing their on sites and how people grow from freehosts to their own domains. The only criticism that I have about your 'about me' page is that you've included statistics for your website at the bottom of the page (the top posts/total posts etc) and that's not information about you but your website. I know I'm really nit-picking here but that's the only thing that I could find.

Content
Coming soon... a massive pet hate of mine. I'll just skip over this bit and pretend I didn't see it in the navigation

Scripts
I'll be the first person to put my hands up and say that I'm not a big PHP person. I can get past but I'd never be able to write anything myself from scratch so kudos to you for being able to do so!

Your 'Ask and Answer' script is great, I remember when every single website under the sun had one of these on it and I never jumped on the bandwagon back then but I might just do it now. Yours is so easy to use, looks good and does exactly what it says on the tin - well done to you! I have no idea if it's coded right, or anything but it looks good and serves it purpose!

Your coding
At the bottom of your footer you have a 'Valid XHTML' link but there's a post title that's causing your code to become invalid on your 'About Me' page. You've called on of your blog posts 'New "Retro" Layout' and because you've used "s in your title it's breaking the code. Impressively that's the only error that I came across in your code.

Overall
In general, your site rocks. You have a fantastic skill at such a young age and I'm impressed. Yes, I was creating websites at 14 too but I was never as good as you until I was about 17! Your writing is great too, couldn't spot any spelling errors on the few blog entries that I flicked through.

I think that your site has a great potential to become fantastic as soon as you've started adding more content or scripts - at the moment there's not much other than your blog to keep your visitor's coming back so I'd work on that.

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conanpro gave it on 7th Nov 2008 and said:
i think your site is very nice in deed. i love the layout . i love how when you hover over a navigation link it shows a brief description of it bellow. i think it is very orginized like most sites are not. most site have trubble getting there site or-gin-ized the or is getting content gin is getting good content & ized is getting a layout its something i telllots of people.its a simple 2 step plan for a good site. for a awsome site you need the aw-some-site-yo thing aw is getting awsome content some is getting a interesting blog site is getting a awsome layout yo is making your pages more enjoyable for your visitors. i belive that awsome outstanding sites have awsome layouts lots of content pages + high quallity content on them a interesting blog & tons of viewers & hits (unique) i think that your site is not there yet but it is on the awsome site you level. now lets talk about your content: if your working on it Why do you have it linked then? I'm not a big fan of "nothing here yet, come back later" placeholders it dissapoints eople when they think there gona get somthing there not. now the scripts.. wait? do some of those link to other sites????? yes. they do my oh my, i really dont think thats smart, it just says to the visitor "i dont know how to do this but this person does cause she is cooler than me!" i think its just insulting yourself. now about the css now, i felt like it would have ben perfect if you had not plopped that brown into your header& coding it just kinda messed it up. you shoulf have made it a lighter red. (btw i was wrong about some of the scripts like igrahics is cool!) but it looks kinda like a jemjabella.co.uk script (KINDA) but anyway your site is very cool not at the best level possible & not as good as mist sites but you know alot Vasilios! good for you i read your about me lol i have one of those avatars to! lol i really dont need to lean PHP at the moment but when i need to i will. omg you know MySQL?? geez even my highly website brained sister doesent know that (well she was never atemped to learn!) but i see that you know everything from html to javascript. witch is good to know all the coding lol you used to have a site about cheating in math?? lol thats funny. mhm, i have never herd of Holdfire Network. it sounds good but i am not getting hosted anytime soon! well i can see that my review will probable 50 words or less at this moment there is 410 words. yweh, thats a mouth full! *jamie starts to breath* anywayback to what i was saying onley gifted people know HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL AND.. JavaScript its very cool that you do anyway my review will now end at 521 words!

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Lene gave it on 7th Nov 2008 and said:
My first impression when I visit your site is pretty good. I really like the colors your chose for your layout. Everything looks clean and organized. Let's move on.

Design

Like I said before, I love the color scheme. The texture used in the stripes is a nice touch. I also like the shadow used under the stripes and the website name. I'm not fond of the hyphenated website name in the title though. I see your domain name is actually hyphenated, and that you are basically using your whole address here (another-perfect-world.org), but still. This is really a personal preference of mine, but I like seeing website names in the headers, not the website's address. But there's something wrong with this header. It moves in too many directions! What I mean is, the title moves diagonally up and right along with the stripes, and then the stripes come down and give you the link to the RSS. After that, the navigation zig-zags not just up and down, but right to left too! The hovering effect is pretty neat, but when you hover a link, my eyes have to move down to see the description. It may sound like a silly little thing, but when I try to focus on your header that's what I get. Diagonally up and right, then down, then navigational zig-zag. Huh... not a good thing. It makes me dizzy. Your average visitor won't say "HEY! Your header's direction is inconsistent!!", but these are the kind of things behind a great design. Now, I'm not saying "put everything in the same boring line". You can make smooth visual transitions without having to be boring.

I like the rounded corners of your content area and the font you used for the heading. The blog-entry date however... well, I'll just tell you that after all this time I've been looking at your site, it was NOW that I noticed the date was there. The color is way too light, I mean, it's almost white! The dots after the month and the day number are kind of a setback. Why are they there? Are they decorative? Is it a date formatting style that I don't know about? I've seen dots for short dates, but it looks really out of place when you are using long-ish date (the name of the month is fully spelled out).

That gray bar between the entry title/date and the actual entry is really, really bothering me there. You singled out that information (categories and comment link) too much, centering it and giving it a whole different color. It might look better if you didn't center that block and give it a different background color. The different background color might not be so "bad" if the text in the box were aligned, erm, to either side (not the center). The font choice for the content is readable, props for that! The color of your italics is a very light shade of gray though. It's hard to read.

Your fat footer is cute and not too cluttered. The "view all" links after the category and links lists look very odd aligned to the right. Particularly in the category list, because the "view all" links is too close to the next list (recent posts). If there were some kind of visible distinction among lists (a line, more space), this wouldn't be a problem. Or you could always align the link to the left. The last line of your footer (validation links, yada yada) looks odd. It's too close to the lists above. Again, some kind of visible distinction would be nice to tell where the lists end and where the footer line begins. Uh, and there's a lost diagonal stripe down there to the right. Distracting!

Your comments section is beautifully styled, I really like it. The font color of the date the comments were posted is too light here too. The rolling down clickable smilies are nice.

Content

Your about page is organized, but I noticed it only talks about how you got involved in the web world. I know not everyone is willing to spread personal details online, but you can talk a little more about who you are without giving out any sensitive information. From your about page I learned absolutely nothing about your personality, or what you like. Except, of course, coding and making websites.

A huge pet peeve of mine: a page labeled "content". Everything that is contained in your site is content. I don't see the point of giving this name to a page. Try naming it something different, more related to what is actually in that section. Or what you hope to have one day in that section, I guess. Why make a page with absolutely nothing in it? POINTLESS. Just keep this page to yourself until you are actually ready to publish it (with something in it).

Your script section confuses me. Wasn't the "content" section meant to have the free goodies in it? Your scripts section sounds like a subsection of that other incomplete "content" page. There's a reason to change the name of that "content" page, or to define better what will be in there. How is the future content of that page different from the scripts you are distributing for free? It's nice that there is actually something in the scripts page. I hope you've made sure they are safe to use.

The links page looks very...white, if anything. It's great that you are keeping the link list short (I don't like it when link lists are kilometric and confusing and cluttered). You need to make better use of white space here though. Since the three lists in that page are short, relatively narrow and manageable, I think you could get away with placing them side by side. That way there won't be that huge white vacant space to the right of the content area.

I guess that's all. Your website looks promising. You are good with colors (methinks) with a few tiny exceptions, and the general idea of your side is well developed. But that empty "content" page makes it look like your site is missing 50% of it. Get rid of that page until you have something in it and you'll leave a better impression on your visitors.

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Chien gave it on 7th Nov 2008 and said:
Design:
Your design and colour scheme is unique. Not many can pull a nice design with brown. I actually am not in complete favour of the structure of your navigation. I honestly prefer them horizontally. And like I said before, the stripes at the bottom right doesn't really seem to fit there if you ask me.

About me:
In "About Me" pages, I'd usually expect to read more on the user than the site. Most of the content in your About Me page was how the domain came to be, rather than more information about yourself.

Content:
Since it's coming soon, I'd have to wait.

Scripts:
It's amazing that you've managed to pull together code to make your own PHP scripts. Kudos to you. But I think that the scripts page should be moved into content, as your content is practcally nil at the moment.

My advice is maybe you should implement FooterStickAlt for your design. This way the stripes can stay at the bottom.

Overall it's a 4-star rating from what I've mentioned.

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urbenkeach gave it on 7th Nov 2008 and said:
Your sense of style is very unique. What I love about your layout is the texture you bring into the layout, without going overboard like so many people do, and also the unique colour scheme. Whilst brown is a very popular colour at the moment, you make it more warm and eye-catching through the use of red, burnt orange and white.

I love the hover effect on the menu (the fading in and out text), but unfortunately I feel the menu as a whole brings the design down a bit. I am not very fond of the arrangement of the menu items. Whilst I think you might have been trying to be more unique, I would have much preferred to see them all in one line like a normal menu. Another thing, is the background image on hover, it feels too rounded and chunky - not fitting in with the rest of the layout.

I love the RSS button, it isn't just placed upon the page. I feel that you have thought about where you want it to be, and tried your best to incorporate it into the rest of the design.

The main content layout is very nice. Wide enough to display content easily and not without looking cramped. I also feel it is good that you have not overdone the rounded corners as it would be very easy to e.g. for the bottom of the container etc.

Other than the design, I feel you have a very nice blog here, and offer some nice PHP scripts. Something I dislike about your content though is you have a couple of instances of 'coming soon'. In my experience, it is better to not show these things until there is content to be displayed. I just feel it is better that way, but that is just my personal opinion.

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Mimi gave it on 7th Nov 2008 and said:
Reviewed with:
Mozilla Firefox | 1440 x 900 Resolution| Windows Vista
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Design:

The colors of this design are so wonderful, they work well together. I commend this! The way it is all set out, just perfect. I am not a big fan of the texture used on your stripes, but I must agree that it is a good thing from the days of graphic design schooling, using all of the elements and such. :) I think that the links up in the right-top corner look a little too unorganized, though. I can't place my finger on it, but something about it seems off from the rest of the structured layout. I really like what happens when you hover over them, though. That is way neat! I can barely read the date on your blog, but this might have been what you were going for. Plus, I have bad eyes.

The design is one of my favorite types, the really unique ones. Nothing makes me more happy than to see a really cool, unique design. You make it seem effortless, but I know it was no '5 minute set-up' job. One other nitpick (sorry, I am bad about that... ugh) is that the links in your footer, the background color when you hover over a link seems a little dark. I think it would look very nice if it was a little bit lighter, perhaps the darkest shade on your stripes. That's really just a personal preference, though. Not a super important thing.

So in closing the design portion, I think the only thing that really stood out was the links at the top. I think they would look nice if they were lined up evenly, perhaps having the hover-over description showing up directly on top or below the links themselves.

Content:

Man, I just got to your 'About Me' page. You are only 14? I am so envious of your talent, being so young. I still can't achieve a design to match yours, and I am 8 years older than you! I remember a post Jem once made about how age has nothing to do with skills, that sure is the truth! Just think, if you do this for decades more, you are bound to be a well sought-after professional. Hell, I would request you now if I were a client!

"I would have nightmares of syntax errors..."-- Ok, that made me laugh out loud. You are witty, I like reading your stuff!

Aww, the content pages are not up. :( Sad news for Mimi! I have to count off a bit for an under construction section, I'm just too set in my ways! ;)

Your scripts are nice, not too many but it seems they are good. The iGraphics one is so neat! I love it! I'm a little confused though, are we allowed to use your iGraphics script on our sites with credits intact or is it just something for people to use on your site only? Also, is it possible to make my own images that would show up when converted? I wasn't very clear on this, but I would use this in a heartbeat if that is what we can do!

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Overall, I would say there isn't too much to do, so my stay was fairly short. You have my attention, though, with your scripts! That is a very good thing, yes yes. I skimmed through a couple of older blog posts you had made, definitely confirming my original opinion that you are very witty and fun. My first impression, being super impressed by the unique design, still holds effect. You know sometimes that sites will look great at first, but once you go through it you are left unimpressed? Well, not your site. I am still impressed. :)

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Tracy gave it on 6th Nov 2008 and said:
The design is unique, I like it. The colors fit well. I like the rounded corners and the contrast between the content and footer area.

The Footer area is nice, although the "view all" link between the categories and recent posts confused me. I didn't know where it belongs to.

Your navigation is interesting, I like how an additional sentence pops up once you hover. I'm not sure if I like that the nav is not aligned though. It's something I need to get used to, but definitely unique. I'd make the another-perfect-world.org image linkable as well and throw out the "home" link.

About me: I was expecting the about me page to be, well, about you, yet most of the information on that page is about your site. I'd like to see more info on you. And seeing you don't only write information about YOU on that page but also about APW.org, I'd change the nav button to "about". Keep it general.

Content: Not much there. Why do you have it linked then? I'm not a big fan of "nothing here yet, come back later" placeholders.

Scripts: Not much there. Maybe just add the scripts section to your content section as a sub-section? Then you'd have content!

All in all it's a nice-to-look-at-site and the design is way better than past designs I've seen from your site.
I like your navigation and the footer, I don't like the fact that there's hardly any content. The "about me" button is misleading, seeing that maybe 20% of the content on that page is about coding and the site.

Four stars from me due to the flaws noted above.

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Vasili's Response:
I'd just like to say thank you for this great review. I thought that the navigation looked pretty cool when I first coded it, but now its started to bug me about the unevenness. I'll try and do some cool things with my next layout. :D

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