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Dei-Gratia.net has 15 Reviews

Below are the reviews left by other members on Dei-Gratia.net. Jump to review form?

unexisted gave it on 31st Jan 2009 and said:
Hi, I'm stilla and I'm going to review your site today. :)

- First impression -
I love the simple design and the colors are very gentle and pretty. I also liked the lilies on the navigation, it fits with the feeling your site has.

- Header -
It looks gorgeous. Not much to say about the header other than that. xD

- Footer -
Everything looks organized. You repeatedly used h1 inside the footer which is not correct. h1 should only be used once per page, so you should change it to h2 or h3. (Preferrably h3 as its at the bottom of the page.)

- Colors -
The clean white background is good, but it makes the site a little blank and empty, maybe you can add light-gray somewhere.

- Navigation -
Its good you used the list tag on the navigation, also the bread crumb and the "to the bottom" link made the site alot more easy to navigate. Good going. =)

- Overall -
All in all, I love your site. Your design is proffesionally done, and the contents is very original.
Great work!

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inadream gave it on 27th Jan 2009 and said:
FIRST IMPRESSION:
I like the simplicity of your layout, but it has sort of a whimsical and old feeling to it which I simply adore. The navigation is easy to find and the font used for the links in the navigation is perfect. I almost think your layout is too simple because I did not really even notice that the Welcome description wasn't part of the blog, but I totally understand why it is the way it is.

The sidebar seems a little bare. I don't really know what to suggest because mine always look like crap and are usually filled with meaningless links and pictures that I just added to make it look a little more "homey." I don't judge yours for being bare, but I think it would look great if you kind find something meaningful and functional to do with it.

Overall: I love your layout and it definitely makes me want to see more!

BLOG:
I like your riddles, they are informative and entertaining. I don't really understand the purpose of these without any updates or regular posts, but I'm sure I'll figure out the function of your blog as I peruse the rest of your site.

AUTHOR:
In the first self-written paragraph, it should say "biasED" instead of "bias." Also in the last paragraph, it should say "if there is a book in this house THAT I have not yet read..." instead of "than."

I think this is a pretty complete suggestion, although I would always love to know more. You paint a pretty good picture of yourself and have written this section well. I would love if you would add to this section, but what you have right now will suffice.

WRITTEN:
I really love your poetry. I especially liked Eyes of Clearest Blue. I wish there was more for me to read, but as a writer myself, I know inspiration is hard to come by and even when it does hit, you can't always translate it the way you want into something equally great.

I really like your riddles as well, although I don't have the patience or persistence to actually figure them out.

Your opinions are very thoughtful and organized. Although I didn't read them word for word, I could see you provided lots of evidence and supporting materials to support your claims. Very nice!

Your misc. section was equally as good as all the others. I am so pleased with this section. You have put a lot of work into it and it is definitely something that makes your site stand out among the rest. I really love how you put descriptions at the top of all the pages so we know what is on the page. Well done with this section!

DOMAIN:
Loved the note to reviewers. I really love how you came up with your site name. I wish my name meant something cool like that. I would have to have "princess.net" or something like that which is totally not me.

Oh wow, sorry to interrupt this review, but I just now realized that your sidebar includes links to other sections within your pages. Either I'm dumb for not having realized that, or it is not obvious enough. Maybe write that somewhere to make it more obvious, because I have been looking at your website for a really long time now and I didn't even notice it!

I will now say that I think you have a great amount of information in your Author section. I would rewrite this review, but I think the fact that I got this far before realizing what the sidebar was used for is shown best if I just leave the rest of the review the way it was because it shows what people would see if they didn't realize the sidebar held additional links.

Okay so anyway, I think the Domain section is through and well-organized.

FINAL IMPRESSION:
I think you have an amazing website. I love your writing and all the information about yourself. I love the layout and the reasons why you made such a simple layout. I love almost everything. The only things I don't love are the lack of updates on your main page and the sidebar issue. I really would love if you used that as an actual blog of some sort because it would give me a reason to come back. Right now I have read everything and now if there isn't anything that is regularly update, I will have no reason to come back. About the sidebar, if you just mention something about that on each section's main page, that would be very helpful because I completely missed it.

I love this site and will check back regularly. I hope I get to see some sort of update from time to time!

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Muse gave it on 24th Nov 2008 and said:
I'm a Muse and this is a writing site. Therefore, I demand you sit up and pay attention. ;D

Good? Onward, then! Your site header is lovely, lovely, lovely in the idea, but lacks slightly in execution. For one thing, I think the blue rectangle ought not to have rounded corners, because otherwise it looks a bit odd. The text inside, too, seems to not be quite centred (it's a bit near the top side), and I'm not too fond of the colour.

I do like the general theme you have going on, though, which seems to be spare of unnecessary frills, but with all these little details tastefully added in. The navigation links in the sidebar, on hover, are gorgeous, although a little more space in between the icon and text would be nice. I like the colour scheme of white, black, greys, and that lovely sophisticated wintry blue. ^^

Nice job on the rules for commenting (I've always thought more blogs needed these), but I'd elaborate on what constitutes a threatening or vulgar statement. Perhaps append "such as comments that make implicit insinuations about a deficit of a 'life'". =P

Domain is fairly typical information. I'm not sure why these pages are so popular to include—for the voyeuristic or your obsessive stalker, perhaps? I love the quick jump—so much better than making me click through three pages. ^^ Oh! And you have an accessibility statement and a note to reviewers.

You are made of win. Thank you for the 'return to top' links in the note to reviewers. You really make the lives of your visitors so much easier with this stuff. Your terms of use are probably a little more exhaustive than is needed, but I'm not complaining. It's quite interesting to see you have an off-site link policy (clearly marking them to show they take you to a different site).

Your resources page—you list everything under the heading 'General Resources', leading me to wonder, "Where are the specific resources?" I'm not sure that header is necessary.

I was fairly surprised to click into 'Opinions' and be greeted with an in-depth, thoughtfully written piece on No Child Left Behind. Cheers. ^^ But in your markup you've simply wrapped your various section headings in strong tags instead of doing it properly and using h3 or something similar.

Your riddles are lovely. I spent quite some time puzzling over the first, but I wish you'd given them names or some sort of designation other than 01, 02, 03, etc.

Much of your writing is actually genuinely interesting, even your rant on sticky fingers. I've heard most of it before, but you take the time to present your argument convincingly, with an example from your own life, and it's got a great opening, too. ^^

I'm not quite sure how to review your site, because it's much different from many personal sites I see. In a good way; I almost hate to apply the word 'content' here, because it gets flung around so much when talking about subpar brushes, textures, and icons. What you've put up is refreshingly different.

I really have no choice but to give you a five out of five (and I really thought I wouldn't, because I hate giving perfect scores). But I didn't find myself going through and thinking , "I've seen this sort of thing before". So. It's quite deserved, I think. ^^

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Anna_Kirstin's Response:
Thank you for your review.
I noticed the header being off center, I've just been lazy in fixing it. I'll do that tonight.

I'll go back and re-mark-up the opinions section. It's been on my to-do list for the site. It's time I actually did it. :)

Thanks again for the review. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Naco gave it on 23rd Nov 2008 and said:
You requested so here it goes, hope I don't disappoint ;)

First Impression:
The design is rather simple, but I've always been a fan of simple. The colors go well together (even if there are not that many). A site about your writings, sounds interesting.

Layout/Coding
Valid coding (good for you) as I said I love the layout. Has easy-on-eyes color and the decoration behind the site title is nice. As someone said, it is very elegant looking. I love the footer and like the fact that you have a "jump to" option at the top (I dislike it when people do not do that). The layout goes well with a site dedicated to your writings.

Content
> Author <
Well written, not too wordy, gives the basics. I loved your intro on yourself, kept me interested.

> Written <
Your poems are very well written, and I like that you have a description with each one. Gives the reader even more of a chance to relate to it and see where you are coming from. Also, by including older and more recent poems you can tell that you grow as a writter.

I love the riddles as well, took me a while to guess on some of them and I had to cheat and highlight the answer ;) Opinons: I always liked reading people's opinions and "hot topics", yours are very concise and again not very wordy but get straight to the point. You clearly state why you feel this way or that way, which is always nice. We seem to have a lot of the same feelings on the subject matters you discuss, so that helped a lot with relating to what you were saying. Misc: Ah, the ever so popular "sticky hands". That always seems to be a sore spot with certain people (mainly those that use celeb images and the like :P)

> Domain <
I've always liked reading how domain owners come up with their domain names, and yours is nice. That's neat that it's a play on your name, and it is a pretty domain name as well :) Easy to say and easy to remember. I like that you have the jump to thing for each section, makes it easier to get to what the visitor wants to know.

> Contact <
Basic contact page, not much to comment on there.

Conclusion:
I really like your site. The layout, the content, everything comes together. It's nice to see something out there than the typical blog. I like your writing and your style, I will definitely have to bookmark your site and visit it more often :)

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Anna_Kirstin's Response:
Thank you, Naco for your review.
I'm glad you enjoyed the site. :)
Shadow gave it on 20th Nov 2008 and said:
First Impression

*Rubs hands together* A blog with solely original writing pieces. Right up my alley. Let's start with the design. Very simple, but pretty nonetheless. It serves its purpose.

Blog

Nice sized font with lots of line height. That's excellent. I couldn't tell how much padding you had, but either way, it's readable. Not smushed at all! (I love that word--smushed. Teehee!)

The other pages

About: A very well-written page, as expected. I got a big laugh at the sewing machine incident, because that sounds like something I'd do. By the way, you are not boring. I found myself reading all of those pages. Oh, I hate complete silence too.

Written: *Rubs hands together again* I'm going to look through this more when I get the time, but the ones I have read so far are very good.

Domain: Once again, well-written. As standard as a site info page. I was curious to see what Dei Gratia meant. Yay for wordplay!

Contact: I'm thinking that the e-mail address and the contact form is a bit redundant. If the contact form directs mail to that same address, then you don't need that e-mail address line there.

All in All...
(I skipped over coding since it validates perfectly in XHTML and CSS.)

I enjoyed my stay here. You're my latest feed subscribe. I really couldn't find anything wrong, and you're very talented. Great job and continued success!

UPDATED 20 Nov 08:
Ah, that makes sense. I never thought of it that way. Hm.

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Anna_Kirstin's Response:
Thank you very much for your review. :)

UPDATED 19 Nov 08:
Gah! I completely forgot to mention it. The e-mail address is a bit redundant but a while back my server switched servers and my functional form stopped working (no idea why.) I added the email address in case it ever happens again someone can contact me and yell at me about it. :)
Susanna gave it on 20th Nov 2008 and said:
Hello!

I'm a first time visitor to your site, so I'll be finding out about it as we go along here!

Immediately, I adore your layout. It's so simple, but the brushes you use are absolutely gorgeous (and it's symmetrical! *pedantic squee*). There are only two things that i dislike about the page as far as I can see and these are:

1. The fact that you have a "home" link which is black (understandably) when the layout links to the homepage. To be honest I find the black quite distracting and I personaly think it would look nicer if there were only four links. As they say, less is more.

2. Unlike others, the

"Now Viewing: Home: Dei-Gratia.net"

I find very... unneeded? I think by highlighting the page you are currently on by having the link at the top black this section serves not much purpose, and particularly on the first page, well, obviously we're viewing the homepage, right?

I don't have an awful lot to say about the rest of your site. I really liked everything on it, and it was clearly well thought out and constructed. I particularly enjoyed finding out what you domain name meant! I think that using a play on your name was a fantastic idea!

i absolutely adored the riddles, and I spent agaes thinking over most of them! Your writing is absolutely fantastic, you're very skilled! I'll definitely be visiting again!

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Anna_Kirstin's Response:
Thank you for your review, Susanna!

The bread-crumb on the home page was just basically there to provide some consistency with the rest of the site. If I removed it someone would notice and point it out as well. :)

Thanks again!
Mimi gave it on 19th Nov 2008 and said:
Reviewed with:
Mozilla Firefox | 1440 x 900 Resolution| Windows Vista
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ok, AK. I'm done pouting. :( Alas, there will be no poem this time. Maybe I can just make you one some other time! :D

First Impression:

My first impression was that the layout was a little too simplistic for my liking. I miss the sheep! Even though it's very simplistic, though, it's actually put together quite well. You know how I am though, I love color and craziness!

Coding:

Well you are validated via W3C schools for CSS and XHTML but I expected that from you! I know you have a secret desire to be the best coder you can be! Er, ok maybe it's not a "secret".. teehee! I was wondering why you kept using:

background-color : transparent;

... on things that normally are transparent in your CSS? I'm not a super-great coder so I thought maybe it was a trick I didn't know? I thought I would point it out and ask, though, just in case!

All in all your coding is tidy so really there isn't much to say here. :)

Design:

In my previous review I had had an epiphany about some color usage so it's not going to sound this exciting this time but I just wanted you to know that it was uber-sounding last time! Hahaha

Anyway, I thought that perhaps adding just one more color would be helpful since it's pretty much just white, black and blue. I thought perhaps a very pale pink would be nice somewhere because with the hue of blue you chose and the shapes used in your layout, I think that a pale pink would make the theme look sort of vintage. Of course I don't know how it would look at all but in my head it sounds good!

I also had another grand realization that I thought if you use maybe a pink or a lighter blue than the one you use in your header and footer on the background area of your bread crumb navigation area, it might look nice. Simply because it's all pretty much black and white in this area and I think the color-divider of sorts would liven it up!

Another thing I noticed was that when one scrolls down enough of the page but doesn't quite reach the footer, the content area just looks like black text on a white page. There is nothing really there to anchor it, it looks like it's floating in space kinda. ^^* Anywho, I had had an idea for that, too! I thought perhaps if you used the dotted divider line you use on the side of the navigation and extended to the length of the content that it would help. That and/or change the background color of the content area to a very slight gray color, barely visible, but to where you could sort of see where the content area holds its place in the layout.

I would like to point out that I think your footer looks fantastic as-is. I also really, really like the header image. It's not over done at all but looks smashing!

I think I shall move on to the content section of the review. :) Man, this review is SO not as fun. I apologize! I m copy and pasting it every couple of minutes to a text document AND saving that text document on my computer just in case. *shifty eyes*

Content:

Your 'About Me' section is quite adorable. I have never seen a 'Learned the hard way' section ever in my life and I had to laugh, despite myself. I apologize but the last one with the snakes bit? Oh man, that did it. I LOLed.

You know that I am a big fan of your riddles, I remember reading them in the first review I gave you! You have so much to read, if I started going through it all during this review, it would be an hour or two later and I really want to get you this review!! So I will go ahead and read stuff later, that is the stuff that I haven't already read. I did want to say that it is so sad anymore that you have to have Terms of Use for your poetry because people anymore just go around and use whatever they find on the internet like it's a freaking handout. Argh, sorry. I just know how it is with my graphics and all, especially the pixels.

Oh I just spotted a tiny error... On your poetry page, I clicked on "Terms of Use" to go to that page and it gives me a 404 error. The link is directed to: http://www.dei-gratia.net/policies/#content but I see that's a different URL from the actual TOU. I am a tad bit jealous of your TOU page, it's so very official. I might just write me up one of dem thar pages! ;)

Oh yeah, and I am from southern Missouri so half of my family is a bunch of beer drinking, deer hunting rednecks. I feel your pain. T_T

Just browsing through the domain section, I was wondering how many people will actually take the time to read the 'Policies' section? It's a great idea, I'm just doubtful that any teenyboppers that come your way take the time to read it. I did read your note to reviewers, teehee! OMGAWSH AK WHERE R URRR COLORED SCROLLBARZ?! Oh I couldn't help it, forgive me!! (LOLing over here!)

Final Thoughts:

All in all your site has plenty to read, but I will be 100% honest with you when I say that if you were not my friend, I wouldn't take the time to read everything. The only reason is that I get fidgety easily and I much prefer books to internet reading. I don't many any offense, of course! Then you always have lots of people who thoroughly enjoy reading all sorts of stuff on web pages. I am more of a graphics kind of girl, not entirely sure why.

However, your poetry is great. I enjoy it. I love the riddles and I love the accessibility that you have integrated into the site. It's very impressive. I realize that you are aiming your site towards optimum accessibility so I understand if you take or leave some of my design suggestions. After all, they're just simple ideas. :)

I also want to apologize if you think this is sort of a "lack-luster" review. It's really hard to review sites that need so little improving!

I give you 4/5 stars simply because I love colors and design over all other things and would love to see some more flare introduced to the site. Just my personal opinion. ;)

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Anna_Kirstin's Response:
The simplicity of the layout bothers me too. It's like it's missing something and I can't think of what it is.

That section between the header and the footer has been bothering me like crazy. I agree with you completely. Expanding the dotted border would be a great idea for it.

I've fixed the error on the poetry page.

Not many people read the policies to be honest. They're there because when someone does use my work (and it has happened) I can point them to that section and/or go to their hosting company with my complaints because it clearly says that it can't be used. :)

UPDATED 19 Nov 08:
Oh and the transparent background was because the validator once kept giving me warnings that I had not specified a background-color attribute. Now it's just habit. ^^;
afscom gave it on 18th Nov 2008 and said:
Yay, a simple clutter-less theme. I'm in love already.

Such an unusual name, I have no idea what it means or what language it is but it sounds beautiful.

I also notice that this isn't a blog of the usual kind, but instead a housing for your writing - it's a great idea and makes for interesting reading. I especially like the riddles.

Your 'author' page is possibly one of the best written 'about me' page that I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Seriously, it's fantastic. Your pets are very cute and it's adorable that you have little profiles of them on your website too, I thought I was one of the only ones who did this!

The more that I read of your 'Author' pages the more I find myself likening myself to you. I too dyed my hair black and tried to bleach it out. Oooh, bad idea!

Ahh, your site name is a play on the meaning of your name. That's very clever, I like it.

Your notes to reviewers are excellent. You seem to have picked up on every little thing that a reviewer will penalise you for and explain exactly why you don't do it on your site. It's a fantastic page, again very well written and I've never seen such a page before.

Again, I really like that you have an Accessibility statement on your site; I really wish that more bloggers / site owners would take these points into consideration and implement them on their websites. Not only is a great thing to do but having an accessible website almost always makes for a fantastic theme / layout!

All in all, I really enjoyed my visit to your website. There's nothing I would change - every single part of it is you all over; from the domain name to the reasons why you're site isn't like every other blog out there. Congrats for sticking out from the crowd for good reasons.

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Anna_Kirstin's Response:
Thank you for your review.
I'm glad that you enjoyed visiting. :)
worldangel gave it on 17th Nov 2008 and said:
First impression was that your site is definitely free of clutter, very organized with a lot of space for it to breathe. Many of the websites I have seen tend to load as many information as they can into one page, yours is neatly divided into subsections which are all easily accessible. This is a good first impression for me cos I like things to be organized and neat, messy sites tend to throw me off a little >.<

I also like the header image you use to present the name of your site: it looks unique, creative and elegant, which I believe are what your site is trying to portray, since it is one to display your personal writings.

As for the text, no problem there. It is neither too big nor too small, just comfortable for me to read even when I
was not wearing my glasses! :D The color of the text contrast with the white background so I have no complaint haha.

The navigation and links are pretty cool, I like how the navigation tabs change when the mouse hovers over it. I
also like the small icon that appears next to the tab. It is great that you provide the "Return to Top" and "Skip to
Bottom" links for the convenience of your visitors.

I think despite the clean-cut and lovely design of this website, the life of it still pretty much depends on the
content. And I think you have excelled there because I have taken a look at your poetry pieces as well as the other
writing you have done and I love reading them. Especially the riddles :D I also love the Domain page because it provides information about the meaning of the website name. I have been wondering about what it means since the first time I visited. Very creative play of name..I love it! :)

Actually, I am feeling a little bad because I know you would like some constructive criticism on how to improve your site but I can't seem to find anything negative to comment on >.< Only thing I can think of is that the RSS Feed button can be brought somewhere else which is more noticeable? It doesn't seem to fit together with the About Me section in the footer.

That's all..keep up the great work :) Personally I love your writing pieces so I will be adding you to my faves ^_^

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Anna_Kirstin's Response:
Thanks for the review, worldangel.
That's exactly the look I was going for neat, organized, and accessible.
I agree about the RSS feed. I need to do something with the entire footer to be honest. I'll work on it. :)
Aisling gave it on 9th Nov 2008 and said:
I go to your site and am greeted with a lovely grey layout, which is simple, but also interesting looking. And I'm already wondering what dei-gratia means, but I'm sure we'll get to that! My first question is, why the burgundy for your links? There's no other burgundy, that's why I ask. I personally would have probably gone with a blue to match everything else. A blue would probably look more crisp, as well. Small quantities of burgundy don't really stand out. I get how the colours go together, but I'm just wondering why burgundy? ... Okay, I think I've said burgundy enough now. :P

I love how there is lots of space in your main bodies of text. Cramped text is my main pet peeve. I think your little blurb in the sidebar is getting a little bit lost though. It doesn't stand out, it just floats there. If you're not going to draw even a little attention to it, why have it there?

Your footer is lovely, contains useful information and is nicely spaced and uncluttered. Overall, your layout is the calm sort of design you would expect on a literature blog. :)

Just by reading the opening paragraph of your About page, you can tell that you're a lover of fine literature. It's a very nice start to a very informative section. :) Your poetry section is set up nicely, and is well organized. This trend continues in Riddles (a very clever bit of the site), Opinions (which are also very eloquently written), and Misc (the Bloodtypes... article was quite cool!).

FINALLY! I get to know what the name of the site means! Ooh, cool, it's a play on your own name! I never would have guessed that! I was kind of afraid that it would be just some random latin word that sounded cool. ... not that names like that are a bad thing, but I do enjoy domains with some sort of attachment to the owner!

I'm on the links page now, and I must say, with all of these links together, I am really not a fan of the boldness of the font. They're too clunky for what is really a more delicate layout. I think you should keep the colour (although I am still asking, why burgundy?), and ditch the bold. One emphasis is often enough!

I think you have a great site and that you present yourself very well! Your Policies page is a teensy bit intimidating! :P It's nice to see a literature blog, after so many personal sites! Literature IS a really personal thing, so it is still a very personal site, but I do appreciate the different way of communicating this, very much! :D

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Anna_Kirstin's Response:
Thanks for the review, Aisling! I chose burgundy for accessibility reasons. Every time I got a blue color dark enough to meet the contrast requirements for the background color, it blended too much with the text color. :( I don't have that problem with the burgundy color. It's hard to miss it as a link. Since it's a literature blog, accessibility just out-weighed color coordinated links. That's the only reason it's burgundy. :)

I'm going to implement your suggestion with the links section. Thank you.
Vera gave it on 8th Nov 2008 and said:
FF 3, 1280x1024px
= First Impression =
---------------------------
Simple, monochrome and professional looking. This is definitely a site that makes want to browse around more... well it certainly looks like one, at any rate.

= Layout and Organization =
----------------------------------------
For the most part, I like it a lot. Simple, clean, large spacing, uncluttered for the most part. The header image is really fetching.

You have a tabbed navigation, nice: I adore this kind. Nevertheless, yours needs a bit of tweaking. From an artistic point of view, I'd add some shadows to the top, so that it gives the tabs a more fleshed out look (i.e. 3D ). Monochrome is fine, but too much of it can become rather dull.

Secondly, well actually this should come first, but my logic's twisted now. From an accessibility and ease of navigational point of view, you need to cut down on the number of the tabs. A maximum of 5 if more than enough. Plus that way, you can make them larger and add some space to them.

Poetry, Riddles, Opinions and Misc can all go under one tab of articles/writing or well... maybe you can find something wittier.

Policies should go in the same section as domain. The copyright, after all, is domain related information. I'm a firm believer in taking as many security measures as possible, but let's not exaggerate. You can place a link to it, in the footer though. Oh, I see that you DO have such a section in there, namely "Of Importance".

Speaking of the footer I love it! Large, with sub-links. Just like my own. Though I see that the entirety of the information there repeats itself. I'd try to make at least part of it dynamic (per section). For example, the recent entries are relevant in the blog section, however once I browse away to the about section, I'd like to see recently updated pages pertaining to your ... ugh... self description, or something similar.

I see you have a "skip to footer" link, which is very useful in its purpose, though the naming might be a bit confusing to some. I mean, why skip there? And in your case, it seems rather redundant. Why exactly should someone jump to the bottom of a page to read the description of your site. Shouldn't the description be at the top of a (relevant) page?

The wings on either side of the layout are a nice touch, they're not visible enough. I'd suggest you make use of a fixed background, with a bit of a pattern that slowly fades into a full color, instead. The wings should make a nice pattern, plus they don't stand out, thus not attracting needless attention.

All in all, I like the layout, despite my numerous nitpicking, however you need to offer less things at a first glance. We visitors do not have a very big attention span. ;-)

Your now viewing is somewhat redundant as it is now, seeing that most section are highlighted by means of the currently "emphasized" tab.

= Content =
------------------
-- Recent --
I only just noticed that you have a welcome message. Why exactly is it squished into the right corner of the content area? Have it as the first paragraph instead. If you DO have one, it should be the top of the page.

Oh I see that this is not a blog in the traditional sense that I'm used to... see why it is good to have a description on the top of the page? Saves me (well you) from saying "now you tell me". Your last update is a poem, which... OK so I don't have the patience to read poems. On top of that, I'm dead tired right now... but from a rather superficial first look, it seems interesting. I might take a look tomorrow when I'm more awake :P

-- Author --
I love the quote on the top of the page. Makes me want to go and ... DO something constructive. Almost, I'm going to finish this review, seeing as I started it. I positively adored reading your self description. It's very well phrased, easy to read, and just plain interesting. Being an "outsider" so-to-speak, I never really hear of all these stereotypes. As such I'm very glad you don't like hunting. I'm appalled just by the mere idea of this being a possibility. :P And you're not studying literature? If I hadn't read the welcome message, I would have been sure you were.

Oh someone who doesn't talk about her human family. I try not to, but something always tend to slip by. Apart should be "a part" (last word second paragraph first line ... I suppose I could try to measure the distance from the top as well :P ), seeing as you want to show us that you do consider your familiars members of your family, and not put them in a separate category. Gotta love ongoing sentences, eh? Wow, you certainly have a lot of animals. I'm almost tempted to say I envy you... if only I could have a German shepherd... *coughs and moves* Incidentally, I demand a picture of the cat. It's the only one missing, so now you've made me curious.

The quote at the top of your education page is hilarious. I'm most definitely saving it. It's interesting, though I love reading witty quotes, I never really thought about relating any to me. I like the way you have one at the top of these pages. Home schooled? Never would have thought... then again, I've only "met" two people who were (well one of them not so much either).
The following sentence is missing something (bold my own addition):
"It's probably for this reason that I spent almost every morning at a local ceramics department whenever it was open, with a group of really nice old ladies painting useless pieces of ceramic."
Sometimes I really envy you people who can change your majors that easily. Here it's much too hard... or rather I'm much too cowardly to do it, probably. I admire you for having had the courage to start over so many times.

I see you have a tendency to split words. Most of the times, the meaning stays the same, but you should pay more attention. Compound words do have their uses some of the time. Such as "nowhere" (as opposed to "no where" - regarding your description of nursing ... OK I just had a really perverted mental image... I'm hopeless). Oh... you had to drop out? That's very tough. Best of luck with finishing it.
How exactly can one study, whilst in a bubble bath? I'd fall asleep instantly.
Your "Contact Information" page doesn't seem to be part of any of the categories listed as main menu. Any special reason for this? Personally, I don't think you need another category on top of those.

-- Poetry --
I read the first three, well technically I looked over the third... I really don't have patience for lyrical works. The general idea behind them is sort of interesting. You also have a somewhat different style, which reminds me more of essays/musings, rather than what I tend to consider as "poems". So I didn't exactly dislike them, but I can't say I enjoyed them, either.

-- Riddles --
Trying to solve riddles when virtually dead tired, is probably not a very good idea, plus I'm not very patient, so I'll just highlight stuff. -.-;; By the way, how idiotic does it sound that I like the description... from a literary point of view? A very interesting explanation... referring to riddle 01. I'll now move on the the other sections, because I believe I already spent about an hour and a half and ... well it's totally your fault for having an engaging site.

-- Opinions --
I chose to read the Censorship titled article, seeing as this I haven't seen commented a lot. Well, not on websites at any rate. Your definition of censorship is rather circular, you should have tried to explain what the verb "to censor" means, instead. Other than this, I like the way you approached the idea. At one point I was disappointed that you didn't touch upon the possibly harmful effects, but the conclusion you gave is very interesting. Never seen/read such an approach before. I'll definitely come back to read more or your opinions when I'm more awake.

-- Misc. --
Though I love to read about sticky "e-fingers", the first title seemed much more appealing.
Nice article and so true... pity it's not as easy to apply as just agreeing to it, while reading.

-- Policies --
You crack me up "Dei-Gratia.net is not for consumption by (...) my family", and I picture you saying this in a totally deadpan voice. *high fives*

= Coding =
------------

I'm not going to validate coding, since you're perfectly capable of doing that on your own. I'll just review the semantic aspect of it.
Your main navigation is a huge collection of div tags. For a function point of view, your navigational menu is a list, as such it would make much more sense to use a list to display them. Tutorialtastic has an excellent article on how to code a horizontal menu, and you can find various code snippet on http://css.maxdesign.com.au/ for various styling ideas.

Your coding is mostly clean and well indented, however you use way too many divs. Just because you need to style a paragraph differently, you don't necessarily have to throw in another div. Paragraphs can be styled just as well. Consider this, next time you design a layout.

I'm impressed: you comment various sections of your CSS. Very clean and orderly. Not so impressed by the multiple declarations on the same line, but I guess this can be attributed to personal preference.

= Score: 4.3/5 =
I enjoyed my time reviewing your site greatly. You have a truly awesome site, just fix a few minor details.
Oh yeah, I really can't bring myself to proof read this review (yeah... I know), so I hope that I didn't ramble too much, and that I managed to get my point across.
CONCLUSION: GREAT JOB!

UPDATED 08 Nov 08:
No, I'm referring to your XHTML. You have things like:

<div class="large_left"><p class="crumb">Now Viewing: <a href="http://www.dei-gratia.net/">Home: Dei-Gratia.net</a>
&#187; Domain</p></div>

The div id superfluous, seeing as you already have all this within a container div for the whole content area.

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Anna_Kirstin's Response:
Oh, now I see. I'll try and work a way around it. Thanks Vera. I may just go back and recode everything from scratch. It would be easier, I think than making changes. Thanks Vera!

Oh, and about the cat. She's camera shy. Every time I try to get a picture of her she turns away or moves. :)
memorylast gave it on 7th Nov 2008 and said:
First Impression : Very simple look, and seems easy to navigate around.

Layout : I like how the whole thing is coded really well, the only thing I find is that it's a little dull. But other than that, the design and concept of it is good. The navigation is easy to use. Overall it's quite aesthetically pleasing. Instead of 'Recent' in the navigation, I'd suggest using 'Blog' or 'Home'. I didn't really know what that meant at first.

About : You gave a lot of information about yourself, so it gives reader/visitor more understanding about you. The text flowed quite well, and it was easy and entertaining to read.

Poetry : I read some of these, and I found them touching, and you have pretty good writing skills. I really liked how you provided information about each poem because sometimes when I read a poem I don't fully understand what it's talking about. So it's good that you included information about it.

Riddles : I find it amazing how you could create these riddles yourself, I find it hard to make something that would make at least a little sense :P In the 'To Highlight' part, shouldn't you left click, not right click? I didn't really get that.

Opinions : You obviously took a lot of effort to write these, I think they're written really well.

Misc. : Same as opinions, they're written well. Some of them are pretty original.

Domain : Descriptive and quite indepth information about your site.

---------------------------------------
OVERALL
---------------------------------------
There's a lot of writing and information that I wouldn't usually read, but that's just me. I think that overall everything is very organized and I can see that you took a lot of effort with everything.

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Anna_Kirstin's Response:
lol, I'm glad someone caught about the right-click thing. I'm not sure what I was thinking. I guess I was thinking that because I'm right-handed. This just goes to show that you shouldn't update sites after 30 hours of no sleep. X)

It's called recent because it's the most recent work. Dei-Gratia isn't a blog really - it's more a personal written portfolio of sorts.

Thank you for the review. :)
Roxy gave it on 7th Nov 2008 and said:
Upon entering your site, my first thought was "Wow!". You have a very elegant looking design and I love the winged graphic you have in the header, did you create it yourself? If so, two thumbs up!

I'm not a huge fan of the large gray block showing me the page I'm currently at and I strictly mean the BLOCK itself. I think it is too big and grabs my attention too much. It's a cool feature to have, but shouldn't be so prominent on the website.

Your color scheme is perfect. Not too dark and not too light, just the right pinch of colors without being too plain, well done!

You have a wonderful writing style and its a true pleasure to read all that you have written. I love the Riddles section and fine this to be very unique for a personal website. My only suggestion for the "riddles" page would be so have an explanation on "how to" highlight to view the answer. I know, it should be common knowledge, but sometimes you have to dumb it down for people who are new to the Internet. Trust me, I've gone through it plenty of times.

Overall, I'm really impressed with your website. Very inviting and like I mentioned above, elegant. Perfect for reading. I'll be adding your site to my list of interesting websites and bookmarking too! Keep up the amazing work, I'll be sure to drop by ever so often! =)

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Anna_Kirstin's Response:
The title image was purchased and downloaded from stockxpert.com. The exact artist is listed in the credits section. He's really good.

I had not even thought about including a "how to highlight" how-to. I could see where that would run into some problems. Thank you.
jroo gave it on 6th Nov 2008 and said:
I was a first-time visitor of your site to do this review and I was quite impressed. I enjoyed your about page because it gave more than just a little bit of information on you.

I didn't read all of your opinion pieces but the ones I did read were well-written and not just thrown together. I also read the articles or what-have-you in the misc section and thought those were well-done.

I didn't have time to read your poetry but I applaud you for being brave enough to put that out there. Not everyone has that courage! I know I don't but then again, I don't or can't write poetry!

The design of your domain is likable, even if it is simple. I, like you, like simple layouts with less graphics and more everything else. I hate waiting for image heavy layouts to load unless the result is something that makes me jealous (which rarely happens).

I think I'd come back to your site. In fact, I added your site to my feed reader in hopes that I will go back and visit your site again.

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Anna_Kirstin's Response:
Thank you for your review. :)
Tracy gave it on 6th Nov 2008 and said:
First Impression: Nice layout, nice colors, big navigation

I like the "now viewing" and "jump to footer" bar, it gives the content area a nice touch. I also like that you can skip to the footer. I'd like it more if you could click on the title.gif which links to the index page, but that's not a must.

The content of the footer is nicely organized - it contains most important stuff, not more, not less. I miss the "jump to top" button though.

I like how the sidebar changes with every page, it makes navigating easier.

Author: Nice content, a lot of information, I think that's great. What I would like to see in the style though is a different color for the visited links. I like the quotes you used.

Poetry: I didn't read all of them, but I like how you write a little explanation before each poem. It makes the reader nosy.
- the same goes for the Riddle section.

Opinions: Long articles with good statements, also if I'm not too much into quotes from the bible, but that's just my personal view. It seems you took time to write those articles and they show quality.
- the same goes for the Misc section.

Oh, I also like that you put the dates of when the articles were written/updated.

Domain: Nicely organized. Oh, you're on the Qbee? Me too :) (plain but cute qbee site)

Policies: I like how you have a "Note to Reviewers". Never seen that before.

I think your site is great, I enjoyed spending my time there. Your articles are thought through and reflect your quality. Dei-Gratia.net is easy to navigate and has a lot of content and nice information about the author. Nice!

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Anna_Kirstin's Response:
Thank you for your review. I'm going to implement your suggestions about making the title image clickable and adding a "return to top" link some where in the footer. :)

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Dei-Gratia.net

Dei-Gratia.net has 15 Reviews

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