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dreamling.ca has 27 Reviews

Below are the reviews left by other members on dreamling.ca. Jump to review form?

inadream gave it on 19th Jan 2009 and said:
FIRST IMPRESSION
I am not a huge fan of your layout, but it is definitely need and clean as it should be. Thank you for making the notebook lines light but still visible. I have seen websites where the lines are really dark and when the text does not line up, it can be very annoying and distracting.

I really like the size of your text. I hate small text, but sometimes I find that really large text looks bad. In your case, it looks great and is very easy to read.

Overall, you have passed the first impression. If I just happened upon your site, I would definitely stay long enough to look around based on the first impression.

JOURNAL
I read a few of your posts, and they were definitely enjoyable reads. The topics you write about are interesting enough to make me come back to read more.

ABOUT
I like the variety of pictures you include on this page. It's nice to see the funny pictures that I KNOW everyone takes of themselves. I'm not quite brave enough yet to put some of my silly ones up!

>Film Study
I love the organization of this section. The only thing I didn't like is that the text got smaller on this page, so it doesn't really match the rest of your site, but the content is definitely good.

>Likes and Dislikes
I'm not a big fan of these types of pages because the lists are so long that I usually just skip over them. I think it would be awesome, but not neccessary, if you would list a few of your favorite things and write a little about them. It's definitely just a suggestion, but I think it would make the page more reader-friendly.

>My World
Just a quick question before I dive in deeper - Did you realize that you describe both Edmonton and Calgary to be your hometown? It just struck me as a little odd, so I thought I'd mention it. Anyway, I think this is a nice section of all the places you have lived in and/or love. It actually made me want to visit a few of the towns! I like that you give a description of each place and don't just list them.

>Random Facts
Cool! We wear the same shoe size! I am also near-sided and can barely see a thing without my glasses or contacts. Enough about me - I really like this section. I think the more random facts, the better! I like that you actually write unique random facts and describe them a little. I love this page, but also think it would not hurt or scare the reader away if you expanded it a little further.

>Social Trent Central
This page took a little while to load on my super-fast dsl. Nothing loaded after the flickr heading. Your footer did load, so I'm guessing you just didn't add anything after the heading which is a little confusing. Did you mean to put a link to your flickr? This page is useful and not really worth my reviewing because it does what it was made to do. I would just check over the whole flickr thing, though.

>What's In A Name
Normally I hate these pages, but since your name is so unique, I'm actually interested to read a little about it. Thanks for keeping the page short, though, because although your name is interesting, I don't think a person's name really says that much about them. I would rather spend more time reading about what you have to say about yourself, not what your name says about you, you know?

Overall, I like your about section but I still would like to see a couple more pages or maybe just some of the pages expanded (like your random facts).

SITE
I'm just going to review this whole section of your website as opposed to going through each page.

I can't believe how much you remember about your online history! I can't remember the names of the first sites I made. You added a lot of detail about it, which is really nice and made me jealous that I can't remember that much about my own history!

Wow, congrats on being listed at so many sites and magazines! I can definitely see why!

I like that you have a little mascot for your site! I wish I was that creative, but since I'm not, I spend time appreciating others' creativity!

Overall, I like your site section. It is clear and concise, but also interesting at the same time. Good job!

MEDIA
>Art and Photo
I love seeing people's artwork, so I definitely love this section. I really like your photography, especially the landscapes.

>Articles
I love the email from 2107 -- very creative! I really like your description of showering in the dark. It's not something I've ever done. I don't know if I would live through it! Oh my gosh your psd's are so funny! I have never come across someone with psd's of themself. What a great and comical idea! I would love to see someone use them!

I really like this section because if further expands your 'About' section. I feel like I know more about you now.

>Film
What a great idea to put your videos on your site! I really enjoyed them!

>Recipes
I absolutely LOVE cooking and love eating even more, so I'm going to devour this page. You have a great collection of recipes here for everyone to enjoy. Thank you!

>Techie Stuff
I like that you've included the fonts and the M. Monster font is really funny!

FINAL IMPRESSION
Now that I've scoured over every page, I'm really happy with what I've seen! I think you have a great website and I will definitely be checking back regularly. I think you have a perfect amount of content, but I would not be sad if you added even just a little bit more to your About section. Other than that, I love your website. Thanks for taking the time to be original!

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Aisling's Response:
Thank you very much for your review!

In the My World section I actually don't say that Edmonton and Calgary are both my hometown, but rather that Edmonton has a rivalry with the city I consider to be my hometown (which is Calgary, although I was born in Vancouver, so my birth certificate says my hometown is Vancouver, get it?).

I know, the Film Study page is a plug-in, and I need to tweak the CSS. I may axe it altogether with the next design, because I rarely update it. Eep.

Thank you for your compliments on the rest of my content. I hope to see you around. :D
Greykitty gave it on 10th Jan 2009 and said:
Layout
I love the little monster creature at the top of the page. He's cute. I like the whole journal type layout idea. The background is nice. I like that it's not just flat black and has a slight pattern to it. I don't know if I really like the yellow box for searching. It kind of just takes up space where you don't need it and almost looks like an advertisement block if you just glance at the page quickly. It looks like you were going for a sticky note type affect with it, I think it would a little cooler if you slanted it a bit and maybe had a corner of it curled up.

I think I'd suggest making an imap for your navigation or at least using some images for them so they kind of match your sites title. I think that would look kind of neat and it would go along with the whole pencil paper theme.
I do like how your footer is laid out though, and that paper clipped note with link of the week is pretty spiffy.
Not much color in the whole design but I like it how it is. It's organized, the text is a good size and the colors you do use are nice and don't blind.

Content
Before I forget I must say, Wow! Ten years of blogging! Congrats on that, that's a pretty big milestone for a blog.
Your about section is great, plenty of info and whatnot. I am glad to know how to pronounce your name now though. XD Was kinda neat to hear the history on it too.
I really have nothing more to say on your about section. It's very complete and well written.

On to the media! Tally ho!
You have a really nice gallery and lovely scenery photos. I love mountains so much. ^^
I love it when people put articles on their site. You have quite a few too.
"so ugly, e would shower in the dark" there's a typo in that line in "Showers in the Dark" article.
Great articles overall, I enjoyed looking through them.
Recipes! That's pretty unique, I have yet to find another blog site that posts those.
Nice work on the fonts too.
Links... those are pretty standard so I don't have much to say about them.

Overall
I think you have a great site. The content is most excellent and all I have to say on that is keep adding to! The layout looks nice and I only had the couple small suggestions to that with the graphic part. Keep up the great work!

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Aisling's Response:
Sorry for taking so long to get back to you!

Thank you very much for your review. I agree that the navigation needs spicing up, but I despise image maps. They're awful for accessibility. At this point, as well, I am working on a new design, so I doubt I will be making any changes to this one. However, I will, of course, try to make amazing navigation in my next design!! :D
Lene gave it on 6th Jan 2009 and said:
Hi Aisling! You are always leaving meaningful reviews on Rev.iew.me, including a review you did on my website, so I'm going to be reviewing Dreamling.ca today.

First Impression:

Okay, who am I kidding? You know this is not the first time I look at your website, so I can't say I'm having a "first impression" right now. That's precisely one of the reasons I have a hard time reviewing websites that I am familiar with, in addition to the fact that I already like you and your site, so I apologize in advance if this review turns out to be not-so-helpful.

Anyway, I do recall the first time I visited your website (Aisling-b.net) months ago, and I admit that back then, I wasn't really impressed with what I saw. It looked like a blog, plain and simple. I liked that it looked neat and organized, and I am a huge fan of neatness and organization, but there wasn't anything particularly impressing about it.
I remember you used to change your site's layout pretty often. Every time the color schemes were lovely, everything looked neat and I started to see a trend in your designs. I'm not quite sure what it was, but your layouts always looked, well: yours. Now, with this layout at Dreamling.ca, you stepped away a little from the usual theme of your layouts, but what I love is that it still has that something that makes it looks like it's your site, like it's Aisling's site. Really, what I mean is that is says "Aisling!" all over the place (and not just literally). Plus now, I can look at your layout and say that it does have that something special. It has a certain spark to it, it has a personality, it causes an impression. A good impression. I think the only thing worse than causing a bad impression (for a website!) is if it doesn't cause an impression at all! So yeah, even though I've been to your site before and I've seen some of your older layouts too, I recognize that your site is one of those that people tend to remember. There's something that makes it stand out.

Layout:
Honestly speaking, I've never been a fan of layouts that resemble notebooks, messy desktops, computer desktops, etc. So yeah, I won't say "OMG I love the notebook thingie!", or the pen, etc. I know that's just personal preference and has nothing to do with your ability to put together a perfectly decent layout. One thing that always confused me about notebook-like layouts is the lines of the notebook and the lines of what you type. If they aren't aligned, they look ugly. If they happened to be carefully aligned, they don't look ugly, but they still look awkward. I don't remember those stars being there the first time I saw this layout. I think they are cute, but I'm not sure they fit with the rest of your notebook theme. Sure, they look like scribbles, but why are the scribbles outside of the paper? It's nice that the dark background is not bare, but I'd expect the notebook and pen to be on top of some sort of desk, or any other surface where you place these kinds of things on - but now it looks like the notebook is floating in space, or placed against some starry wallpaper.

Your header is adorable, I like that it looks like it's been scribbled on the notebook and M. Monstre looks as cute as always. The navigation is neat and easy to find, but it's a bit too plain. Your yellow sidebar - something tells me it's supposed to be a post-it note? Well, I think I read somewhere that it was a post-it, but I don't think I would have guessed it. It is colored like a post-it, but that's it? To make it look more like a post-it, maybe it would help to put a little more shadow below it so it doesn't look like it's entirely glued to the notebook, you could make one of its corners a little folded in, or you could make it, I don't know, square? But, hmm... if it wasn't supposed to be a post-it note, never mind what I just said.

I like the font of your content area: it's big, clean, and readable. I don't like, however, how you don't do anything to style the rest of the text on your website. Sometimes you just don't need to spend a lot of time styling your text, because the simplicity of the layout doesn't require it. But this particular layout of yours is quite busy. For example, the date of your blog entries looks just like the text from the entry itself. For the entry title you used a larger, underlined serif font. I wouldn't have used a serif font in this layout, but at least it makes it different from the rest of your text.

Another example, look at the h4 headings in the sidebar, they are incredibly plain! There's so much you can do to make them stand out, yet they are there, just underlined. Now, we know that too much emphasizing every bit of text around is not recommended, but it's good to make headings different from the rest of the text, not just underlining them with a plain black line. Also, if you keep a theme, you can style all your headings similarly, so that when your readers see a heading anywhere on your site, it's obvious that it is a heading and not a link, or plain text. I see your links have a red border at the bottom, and that's nice, but I'd like them more if there was something else to them. Maybe being bold? using some other color? (I see they are slightly darker, than regular text, but the difference is so small that it doesn't really count like another color to me :P). The theme thing can be applied to the links too. Except for the navigation, I think it's a good idea to keep all your links looking similar. The links on your sidebar have a dotted underline, and for a moment I thought: why do these links look different? Are they external links? Do they have special instructions if I hover them? Hm... no. They're just links. I do believe it is appropriate to change the look of links in the sidebar if the sidebar is so different from the content area that keeping the same styling would make the links unreadable. But your sidebar is quite neutral, so I think keeping a similar theme with your all your links would work better.

While we are at the sidebar: I think it is unnecessarily long. The intro paragraph is okay, but I find the "how to navigate" part a tad redundant. The same goes with the three-link list you have there. Your qbee quilt is the only thing I see linked there that isn't linked elsewhere in your site. And it's not like those links need to be in the main page, I think the Flickr link is just fine at the links page, and your social trend central page is just fine linked from the about-you section.

There's too much blank space between that link list and the "Looking for something" heading. Now, your search box. It's too plain. I know you are capable of spicing things up, and an overall look at your layout proves so. You need to give some of that spice to your search box, pronto. Make it of some other color, maybe of some other shade of yellow. Or you could make it the same color of the post-it note and use a background image for it that has an underline drawn with a pen (or that looks like it was done with a pen). Or you could draw a little magnifier glass and use a bold font for the stuff you type in... There are lots of possibilities!

Now, on to the footer. I think it looks lovely. It's one of those things that make the layout look like you, but maybe I'm saying that because, duh, it has your face. On second thought, it's not a maybe... It's precisely because your face is there! I like the blue post-it note held with the paperclip and all. I'm seeing differently styled links here too; these look more like the links in the navigation, but no quite the same. Stick with a style for your links! Thinking about it, your footer is quite useless. Really, it could not be there and it wouldn't make a difference in terms of usability, but still, I think it's a nice touch in terms of aesthetic. Funny how it says "First impression" but it is at the bottom of the page... not quite the first thing you see.

Journal:

About your entry dates: I believe you are formatting them like this: l, F j, Y. May I suggest l, F jS, Y? The capital S (I'm 90% sure it should be capitalized, too lazy to check) adds a nice suffix to the day's number, so it says 1st instead of 1, 2nd instead of 2, 3rd instead of 3, and so forth.
I like that on your main page you display one full entry and excerpts from the two previous entries. It's quite practical, considering that I don't see a link to your blog archives or even other recent entries anywhere in the main page. For those two entries that you are not displaying completely, how about using "Read more" instead of just "more"? In fact, after the excerpt, I'd put "[...] read more?" (With or without the question mark).

The last entry I'm seeing on your blog has an image (of a very messy room, may I add). The presentation of this image can be improved. How about using CSS to center it, give it a border, and maybe some padding and a background color? I think it would look ten times better and it would call up attention more than it does now.

I like that the link to your comments is right-aligned; the layout a balanced look. I find it redundant that it says "Posted under Journal", because "Journal" sounds like a very broad category where everything you could put anything that you write about. I think the point of categories is to categorize. Why categorize something under such a broad category that doesn't really categorize the post? :P I don't like the vertical dotted border to the right of the category/comments link area. I think it would look better as a solid line.

The comments are "okay" styled. They aren't too boring but they aren't exactly outstanding. The comment form is a tad boring, but I won't complain so much here except for that dotted border around the commenting textarea. It looks out of place because it is the only box with a dotted outline. I would rather see them all with solid line instead of dotted lines, though. The submit button needs some styling.
I see you link your archives from the single entry page. It is okay, but I'd rather see that link somewhere else in the main page too. Your archives page has an empty yellow post-it now sitting there looking awkward, by the way.

AisLing:

Trivial, trivial name! Even now that I know why you named it like that, I don't get why you did. It's basically an "About" section, so why not just name it "About"? I know, it's boring. Well, this is one of those things that it is best to keep doing it the rational boring way, because it works.

Everyone knows what an About page is, and if anyone wants to know about you or your site, they'll look for a page called About, or something similar. Not everyone who comes to your site knows that your name is Aisling. As it is, people would have to put their mouse of the link and wait to see the description, or click the link to see what it is all about.
I like the section about you. I'm one of those people who read the About Me page of almost every personal site I visit, and having reading a lot of those - I can say that yours is pretty good. I hate when people start saying "I'm so bad at this, writing about myself", so I'm glad to see that you just started talking (typing?) about yourself and your life. It's short and sweet, just how I like it.

The contact section is okay, the form is not styled so it looks awfully plain, though. The film study section looks neat but for some reason the style of the review area looks too different from the rest of your layout, so it's awkward. I'm not a fan of likes and dislikes pages, but there it is and I don't really mind. The My World section is pretty interesting and original in my opinion; it's nice that you care enough to talk to your visitors about the places that are important to you. I don't know if you do this, but maybe it would be nice to link to this page from entries that mention of these places. The Random Facts page is rather standard; there is nothing incredibly interesting in this list, except the thing about the Dollarama clock. LOL. The Social Trend Central page is a good idea, having all those there instead of scattered around your site. I don't see anything under the Flickr heading though. The What's In A Name page is quite interesting in your case, because your name is quite unusual, methinks. Not like I would want to read this kind of things if the name of the person were Sarah or something that common.

In the Site section, the information is pretty standard. Nothing wrong about that, though. E-history! I loved writing about my e-history in my personal site years ago, but I was never really sure about how people felt about reading other people's e-history. I don't really read people's e-history, I don't know if you do. It's always interesting (and yeah, sometimes very funny) to see how people got their starts, especially if it was a long time ago when 800x600 was a big resolution and a requirement to enter a website (or so said the splash pages). But I'm not dying to read the "long story". That's why it's nice that you have two versions of the story, one short and one long. The Listed At... section is a nice gesture, because you link back to places that link to you (and even some that do so as nice recognitions!). I love M. Monstre and that you have made a whole page dedicated to him. Even though you have M. Monstre in your layout already, I think it would be nice to have a little picture of him on his page! I like the Past Themes section, and I like that I remember most of them! XD I think it's nice to keep screenshots of your past layouts. After a while you can see how you improved over time, what has changed, and what remains the same :) The Plug-ins Used page is a nice thought; it credits the plugin creators, plus it tells your visitors where to get them if they are interested.

Media:

The Art and Photo section has a lot of stuff in it. I think it would be a good idea to use this section to show your best work, there are a couple of pictures here that are rather boring. I'd upload this kind of pictures to my Flickr, like the one with the Pepsi can or the one with the juice box, and leave on this section the ones that you're really proud of. The ones you've been taking lately (and I believe they are mostly under the gallery called "Things") are much better and that's the kind of shots I'd expect to see. I don't know what kind of system you're using to manage these galleries (perhaps it's Wordpress' built-in gallery feature, I wouldn't know because I don't use it) - but the thing is that, it would be nice to have pictures open in some sort of lightbox thingie (or greybox, thickbox, whatever), instead of having them linked directly leading to the pictures outside of the gallery page.

I thought the Articles section would lead to articles you had written outside of your blog, but it links instead to some blog entries. I'm not complaining about it, I actually do that for two articles of mine. I remember reading some of those before, and I find the "Solution to celebrity photo copyright situation" one very amusing, even thought I remember seeing it over a year ago. I think it's a good idea to have this articles singled out because they are different from the rest of your entries, and they deserve to be read even if they were published a long time ago.

I didn't know what to expect from the section named "Film", but I was quite pleased to see they were your own videos! It's not something you in every personal website these days, and they were fun too! I LOL'ed with the Jem video, I wonder why I had never seen it before! The Recipes section is nice, I have seen them in other sites but I never really pay attention to them because I don't cook. Or bake. At all. Whatever I try to make turns out too ugly (although not too bad tasting) to eat. It's like your eyes beg you not to eat such an ugly meal. Anyway, I'm looking at the recipes you have here and they look just delicious! Peanut butter cookies? I'm in. If some day I decide to make peanut butter cookies, I might remember that I saw a recipe on your site before searching on Google for one. When I'm viewing a recipe, the yellow post-it note appears blank. It looks kind of awkward. When I browse the recipes menu page there is a little subnavigation in the post-it note. Can you make this navigation appear in the post-it note when one is viewing a single recipes? That would be better than an tiny empty sidebar.

Links:
Nobody ever talks a lot about the links section, and I don't think I'm going to do it either. You link to some profile pages, although you already do in another page (Social Trend... Central, was it?) and then there's a nice list of links to websites you enjoy. And I'm on your list, thanks! Maybe I should name my site Aaron so that people put it at the top of their link lists all the time.

Last thoughts:
Your coding looks pretty neat, your website validates both XHTML and CSS. I wish I had some other last thoughts about your website, but I don't! I've squeezed out the last thought I had (and even some thoughts I had to come up with along the way)! Since you "requested" this review I tried to be as helpful as possible, scrutinizing every single tiny detail and let me tell you - I'm exhausted! But still, I like you, Aisling. And I like reading your blog and your site overall. I hope you find this review somewhat useful. I gave your site four stars, and considering that the highest rating I have given before today is three and a half, four is pretty good. Well, now, I'm going to sleep. Good night ;)

UPDATED 06 Jan 09:
I know what you mean about making a new layout after this one getting so much praise! :) That was one of the reasons that old brown layout was on my site for so long. I didn't think I could do any better than that =P

I like what you've done to your sidebar, it looks more like a post-it note now that it's square-shaped.

By the way, I think your "footer" (or extension of the index page) is very pretty, and I like that it only appears on the page, because that's where I find it to be more relevant (mostly because of the intro about you). Just clarifying, by saying that it was useless, I didn't mean I didn't like it and that you should get rid of it or anything.

I like how your images look now, and that you added the page navigation. I had noticed it appeared in certain parts of your site (like when browsing a category) but not in the index page, but I totally forgot to point it out.

About the "About" page, when I wrote in the review "[...] it is best to keep doing it the rational boring way, because it works.", I don't know what the hell I was thinking, that sounds so wrong, I meant "the traditional boring way", but probably spelled it wrong and MS Word changed it to "rational". Anyway, I think it'll be easier for people now to find things around your site (especially if they have never been to your site).

Also, I know you've only had your (awesome) Canon Rebel for a week and a bit (I read about it on your blog, and how everyone in your family also got one! D:), and I'm looking forward to seeing what you shoot with it (although Point-and-shoot cameras can take pretty good pictures too!).

I suggest you give lightbox a try again, because I think that error was fixed? It was giving me problems too, a while ago, but now it doesn't invalidate my CSS.

I'm glad you found my review useful, and I'm a little surprised because I wasn't really expecting you to change your site a lot even though I did suggest quite a couple things... and I do agree you're making great improvements, keep it up.

I was rereading the review and I kinda felt bad because I sound somewhat mean, and if you met me in real life, that's kinda how I treat people without noticing most of the time; so I'm sorry if I let my usual meanness slip too much into this, ily, really.

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Aisling's Response:
Okay, so, I've been slowly trying out new things based on your MASSIVE review, as you may see if you go visit my site now.

I'm glad to find that I've created my own "style." Although you have no idea how freaked out I am to think of the time when I will need to design something new. I got far too much positive feedback on this one. I CAN'T LIVE UP TO THE HYPE!!!!!1!!1

I know, notebook layouts are SO overdone. But, if you saw the amount of notebooks I carry with me, and how I live my life IN my notebooks, you'd understand why I HAD to do one. ;)

Post-it note sidebar is now more square throughout. And I may work on a foldy bit, or just increase the contrast on the shadow that is already present. I'll have a play around. I've unified the links, on pages, and axed the main links on the sidebar, completely.

OMG THE "FOOTER" IS COMPLETELY USELESS, THANK YOU! No, seriously, I stuck it there because... well, I wanted an intro paragraph, and I was too lazy to write out a snippet to make 5 rotating links from my Blogroll. So, I stuck that stuff down there (only on the main index, though, which technically makes it NOT a footer, really), and then... everyone started writing articles about it. D: Seriously, my "footer" is featured everywhere, and I am like "WTF?!"

Ooh, date suffix. Added. :P Also, the images have now had a border added, and are all set to be centred. Yay! I just noticed that my pagination deely had disappeared, so now it is back, and you can scroll through pages of entries again. :D I have removed the majority of the meta data from the main index page (kept it on the single posts) and I plan to re-categorize my (nearly 400) entries very soon.

Navigation has been changed around to include "About," and changed general ordering.

Art and Photo needs to be re-done, but I've only had my new camera for... a week and a bit. So, I will need to work on that. My new photos were taken with my fancy Canon Rebel XS, whereas the others were snapped with a Nikon Coolpix point and shoot type thingy. The pictures USED to use lightbox, but then something with the plug-in was changed and it unvalidated my CSS. D: So, I will need to work on that again.

Thanks again for your review, I found it really very useful, and I have made some great improvements (I hope you agree!)

UPDATED 06 Jan 09:
Haha, I didn't think you sounded mean! And.. useless is the perfect way to describe the bottom part of the main page, it's the same word Rachaely and I used to describe it several days ago. :P
Chien gave it on 1st Jan 2009 and said:
Took me quite a while to realize that I've a review request lol, but I'm going to review your site anyways (I thought I reviewed it when you first submitted it, but I guess not) Anyways like usual, my specs are Firefox, Vista and a 1280x800 resolution.

First Impression & Design
Not exactly a first, since I've been lurking your site for so long but anyways, I'm still in favour of M. Monstre. I also like the styling of your footer.

Honestly speaking though, although I love big fonts, the font size for some of your texts are kinda big. I'm also not too favorable about the various fonts that are presented before my eyes - there's just too many.

The background doesn't really seem to fit. When I see a notebook style layout, I honestly expect at least a wood texture behind it, especially since you've got your pen there too!

Coding-wise, without a doubt you've passed the validation tests. Aisling ftw! :)

Content
AisLing:
Maybe you can make the Last Updated fonts a bit smaller, the sidebar is kinda wide, but then again in other longer pages it fits nicely.

Aisling (and the subpages underneath) are clearly written and I've absolutely no problem understanding it. In your pages "Social Trend Central" nothing shows up for me under the Flickr heading. Maybe you didn't include something? Not sure about that though.

Media:
My favourite part is your recipes. It isn't everyday that you'd suddenly stumble to a personal site with recipes XD I also adore your articles, it gives me a good read.

Links:
Nothing much to say about it. The links are clearly presented in an orderly manner and *gleams* I see my link! :P

Overall
I felt like reading everything in your site, but then I'm really sleepy right now and if I read anymore I'd probably stay awake for a much longer time, which means, your writing is interesting and doesn't bore me easily :D Not to mention that your design skills have notably improved since the last theme ;)

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Aisling's Response:
Thank you very much for your review!

I'm still not too keen on sticking a wooden background in there, for the following reasons:

1) everyone uses them
2) it looks awkward with mine (because I've tried)
3) everyone says that wood will make it say "desk!" Well, my desk was, up until recently, lime green. Now, it is white. The only thing that will say "desk" to me are those two colours, and if I used them, people would kill me. xP

Of course, I can keep trying to find a suitable fit, but by the time I do I might have a new design up, lol!

Gah @ Flickr heading. I will try and figure that out. Although, I am favouring hosting my photos on my own server these days. I do like to maintain full ownership. :)

Thanks again for your review. :D
Vera gave it on 28th Dec 2008 and said:
I really try not to review friends, because then I'm tempted to be quite a bit subjective. Nevertheless, since you asked, I'll give it a go. Oh yeah, I have a very good reason for not doing this sooner (it just doesn't occur to me right now :P ).

= First Impression =
---------------------------------------
It's quite large and full of... stuff. Given that your layout is cross-resolution compatible, this is not necessarily a bad thing. More like personal preference that I like more discrete graphical elements.

= Presentation =
---------------------------------
I've been a fan of M. Monstre ever since you first used him (did that sound kinky enough? I certainly hope so). I wouldn't mind if you had made him somewhat larger. The background is a bit too childish for me. I'm assuming you were going to further develop the "scribbly feel" of the design. In any case, I'm glad you didn't go the "lets make some scratches all over" way. But I feel that for the main background, something less obtrusive is needed. Especially the light gray star attracts a lot of (my) attention. Mostly because of the blurry effect which makes it hard to focus on it.

I love the notebook look, especially the spirals on the left. The pen on the right seems as if it had been scratched a bit. Is that intentional? I admit I tend to nibble on mine quite a bit :P

I really don't have much to say about it. For the most part I enjoy looking at different aspects of your design. I do remember having spent quite a bit on looking at it when you first put it up. On the other hand, I'm of the opinion that the content is more important... and in your case, you design might take away a bit of the attention.

The only thing that irks me a bit are the post-its. Mine tend to be rather small, and the "curl" at the end, seeing as the sticky part is only a thin line at the top. Yours, seem more like long thin rectangles. Until I read an answer to one of the reviews I didn't notice that's what they were supposed to be.

The footer post-it is very nicely made, but on the left, on the same line where the clip ends, the blue background is moved to the right a few pixels. Might want to fix that (because you know everyone has such eagle-eyes :P).

Strangely enough I miss the markers (that was it, right) from the left, however given my liking for simpler layouts I definitely see this improving the overall feel of the layout.

Well... there goes my completely useless suggestion for the design. You've had a lot of reviews already so they most probably told you something more... useful. Ah one more thing: I love how you wrote "AisLing" in your navigation. Now I'm tempted to pronounce it "Ice-ling" XD

= Content =
----------------------------

- Journal -
For the most part, you don't exactly write about anything unusual or very interesting... but I love your writing style. Quite often I find myself reading a few of your past posts, just because you amuse me so much. So... um... keep up the good work.

- AisLing -
One of these days I WILL start calling you "Ice-Ling" -.-; Now I see the reason behind the "unusual" spelling.
Hehe, I love the starting paragraph of your bio, accusing your readers right from the start :D

Your side links in the contact section seem to be missing the one to the About page (i.e Aisling). Seeing as this page doesn't seem to be linked from the main navigation, I don't think it's a good idea to remove it. Same goes for all the sub pages.

For the film study page, I'd suggest a contrasting background for the stars (a stripe of vibrant yellow for example). I nearly missed them and was about to suggest you add them. I like how you made them vertical instead of the usual horizontal. Alternately, you could have larger stars and maybe make them have a bright(er) border.

I've never really seen the use of a "likes/dislikes" page, unless you started to explain in great detail WHY you like/dislike something. I'm sure you're aware of this so... put this in the about page, elaborate a bit on why you like/dislike these things.

My World - if this keeps up I'm going to have to stop reading. Now I really want to visit Canada... and right now that's not possible :

Your site section is also quite entertaining. I especially loved the description for M Monstre XD Greatly appreciate the past layouts page - I love looking at those.

- Media -
For the most part, I'm really snobby when it comes to art. Nevertheless, I like your drawings a lot. They're cute and funny and have some sort of witty message. I particularly love the drawing of you and Rachael. Her smirk is priceless... not that I'd envision her smirking like that :P

Your articles are either extremely thoughtful. making me ponder about ... stuff... or highly funny (like the showering in the dark). Normally I have quite a bit of things to say and criticize about these things... but you obviously hung around us for enough to know what's good (for you)... or you learned to please us all very efficiently.

I didn't know that you made films: I loved all of them. Although some of the texts in Drop a Jem on 'em went by too fast. I'm not THAT good -.-;
Can't wait to see more movies from you.

I'm not going to read your recipes, because I'm trying to eat less, but whenever I'll need to bake something I'll be sure to look at them for inspirational purposes :P

- Links -
Greatly appreciate the link to my site... even though it's currently pitifully lacking updates and in need of a serious face-lift.

All in all your content's amazing. I loved most of it. The only thing I'm not entirely fond of it how the last updated it there on every page. IMO it's make sense on the home page, but not really on the rest of the pages. You could perhaps put a "last updated" for only the pages in the section I'm browsing. *ducks* No need to throw rotten tomatoes kthnks. :P

= Coding =
--------------------------
Gosh, I should just give you those 5 stars already... I'm seriously wondering what I'm doing here rambling about... nothing.

Everything's fine, semantically coded so nothing to object. Although I think I noticed a bolded text in a paragraph masquerading as title... instead of being enclosed in between heading tags... but eh. I'm sure you just missed those.

Score: 5/5

I love your site, I love your design... I love you... need I go on?
Now you're probably annoyed you ever asked for a review. Sorry, I'm only funny/useful when I dislike something.

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Aisling's Response:
Thank you very much for your review!

The background has always been an issue for me. Before, it was hot pink pinstripes on dark grey, which made NO sense at all. Next step was scribbles because... well, they make a degree more of sense. I just didn't like the look of a wooden background because EVERYONE does them. People tell me it makes it look like more of a desk? But, well, up until 2 weeks ago, my desk was lime green. If I made my background lime green, everyone would go crazy, but I would see i as "desk." :P

The film study page is actually a plug-in, that I really haven't edited at all. I'll need to work on that, or I may just axe the page altogether, since I hardly use it. Or I may start over and do actual, in-depth reviews. I haven't decided, yet. ;)

I really need to make more films. I have about 6 half-finished ones on my external harddrive, but I am so lazy. I know the Jem video goes fast, because it was a joke. :P After I made a movie about myself, Jem teased me, and I said I had no other subject, so she suggested herself. Drop A Jem On 'Em was created in about an hour. :P

Thanks again for your review! Regardless of how useless YOU think you are, I found it quite useful. :)
paintedskies gave it on 22nd Dec 2008 and said:
I absolutely love this layout... it's really professional and pretty. The colours look lovely together. That little monster thingy in the top right hand corner is so cute... especially the santa hat it wears when you hover over it! Amazing. I also like how big your logo/title is - it really stands out (takes tips for my logo!). I like the font size you have used because I can read it perfectly without having to wear my contacts. There is one thing I don't like, though. That's the font you've used on your nav at the top. I think it looks a little out of place, so maybe change it to normal Arial. I think it looks a lot better. Oh, and another thing I'm not to keen on is the background. I don't think it really goes with the whole style of your layout, but that's my opinion.

Your blogs are very well written and you can tell you have put time into writing them and that also goes for the pages, too. I love the dynamic sidebar you have used on each section as it makes your site a lot more organized.

Your CSS doesn't validate, but I'm sure that's easy enough to fix. However, your coding successfully validated, so well done!

This is a lousy 'review'. I'm sorry it isn't much, but I felt I had to return the favour. Also, because I love your site so much, there isn't much to criticize on it. I'm sure if you change the background and the navigation I'd give you 5/5.

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Aisling's Response:
Haha, yes, if you click M. Monstre, you get the CHRISTMAS VERSION of the site. ;)

I've tried different fonts for the navigation, but they're all so heavy that they look wrong. I'd like to try an image based navigation, with a nicer font, but my design is already so image heavy, that I will have to play with it a bit.

I've switched the background of the default (editing two layouts is a PAIIIN) layout, to just a grey, for now. I've been looking for a new background for a few weeks now, but nothing looks right. :(

Thank you for your review. :)
starlyts gave it on 26th Nov 2008 and said:
When you first open the website, you are greeted with a beautiful, professional, and original layout, with a warm colored color theme. You immediately see the name of the website (always a big plus for those who are easily lost :P ) and a small catch phrase.

The blog is very interesting and well-written. I like how the visitors can comment on the blog because this will bring more people because they can discuss what they just read.

The css was well done on the page, matching the layout very much, and all the fonts were really creative. I like how at the bottom of the blog you can see and read the older posts.

I also like how you did the credits at the bottom of the page, simple, sweet, and to the point. The small bio is also done very well, with a pretty picture, framed with a brush, and some basic info about you. I also like how if a reader is really interested, they can read more about you.

I also like how the reader is greeted by a nice welcome message, a little instruction on how to get around, and how you may search posts. It would be hard for me, I know, to look at over 375 posts to find the one I was looking for, so the search tool was a very good idea to add.

Another thing I liked is how you almost had all the text aligned with the lines on the notebook page, and the pen on the side to sum up the layout.

I also like on the last page how you lead the users, once they are done with your site, to more sites that they may also enjoy.

Overall: VERY well done!
Suggestions: Maybe add some contests or a plug board for more visitor interactivity, and to get more people to the blog (if that is what you wish) :)

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rintakase gave it on 26th Nov 2008 and said:
Reviewed with:
Opera 9.6 l Windows XP l Time taken: 1 hour

My First Impression:
'Wow this site loads very fast!' that's my first thought. I enjoy browsing at fast loading site, haha.

Coding:
Hurray, your site passed for XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS validation at W3 Validator. Congratulations!

Layout:
The first thing that caught my sight is the huge font you are using. It's rare for me to see a website with large font. Your site is the first one. It's very easy for me to read and the blog is alright too. Ohh! I just saw a cute monster peeping out on the top right part. It's cute. Hmm.. for me, the text 'A splash of Ash! dreamling' should be shifted up and to the left by a little bit more. It might give out an effect that you're just scribbling on your 'notepad'. Maybe it will look more realistic? The navigation is perfect - huge and 'noticeable'.

The 'sidebar'.. I think something is missing there.. The text decoration for the heading - underline is ok for me. How about increasing the font size? Also, 'Or You Can..' seem to have too much spacing below it and the links - 'Stalk Me', 'View My Photos' and 'Check Out My Q*Bee Quilt' are taking away too much space compared to the others. You should decrease the padding or margin and you can also add bullets for them to give them a look of as if they are 'sticked up'. The last thing about the 'sidebar' is the search tool under 'Looking for Something?'. You should add a space between the heading and the search tool.

The footer looks ok to me. Nice picture (: Oh, you should add line-height to your 'Enjoys'. The sentences are 'sticking' together.

Content - AisLing:
At first, I was confused with the heading but after a few seconds, then I realised that Aisling is your name and ling is.. well your site name.. Well, the content area is not 'long' enough so your footer 'runs' up. Perhaps you can increase the descriptions?

Aisling:
Again for the 'sidebar', I think the spacing for the links are taking up too much space :S

Aisling - Contact Me, Film Study, Likes and Dislikes, My World, Random Facts and What's In A Name?:
Nothing much to say but I'm interested about the Film study you have there (: Everything is neat and readable here.
-No errors found-

Aisling - Social Trend Central:
Is there suppose to be 'something' under Flickr? There isn't anything there for me. Perhaps you have made a mistake or forgotten to add something there?

Content - Site:
Opps! An error is detected:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function GeneralStatsComplete() in /home/dream/public_html/wp-content/plugins/runPHP/runPHP.php(410) : eval()'d code on line 1

Site - Listed At, M.Monstre, Past Themes and Plug-ins Used:
I have a question xP Did you update your plug-ins used page recently? I'm just curious that if you are using so many plug-ins right now (31), how do you speed up your site's loading?

Site - E-history:
The heading, 'e-' is on top while 'History' is below. Perhaps you have made a mistake?

Content - Media - Art and Photo, Articles and Film:
No comments.
-No errors found-

Media - Recipes:
Just curious that did you write those recipes yourself? (No offense). Also, in each recipes, there is nothing on the 'yellow notepad'. Perhaps you can add descriptions there?

Content - Links:
Nice but for me, the italic names have made it look a little bit 'unorganised'. Maybe it's just me?

Overall Comment:
Nice design. I enjoy looking at your journal. Everything is neat and nice. I will give your site 4 stars because there are some minor mistakes.

p/s: Sorry for taking such a long time to return a review. My apology.

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worldangel gave it on 23rd Nov 2008 and said:
You reviewed my site a while back so here I am! :D I have not read the other reviews for your site so my apologies in advance if I repeat any of the suggestions that had been made before, because I normally do not have the habit of reading the other reviews before I proceed for the fear of having my judgment influenced by the others. I will touch on several areas which are first impression, layout, navigation/links, content and overall in my review but I am going to leave out coding cos I admit I am not well-versed in that as I have never really coded my own site on my own before.

First impression:
Strangely, first thing that caught my attention was the monster at the top right of your site. Since it is upside down, I took quite sometime to figure out what it was lol. Though after I had it figured out, I thought: What a lovely idea! It is indeed a very striking addition to the notepad, otherwise the layout would be quite bland. The notepad theme gave the site a clean but a more serious outlook, which was balanced nicely by the appearance of M. Monstre (I believe that's what you call him?)

Layout:
I like the design of your site name, particularly the maple leaf attached behind and also the red star, because the red color contrasted nicely with the plain background. The whole site looks very organized and structured, with just a simple side bar which is not cluttered, unlike many I have seen before. I love that you include the search function for your visitors, it will make it easier for them to look for a particular entry of yours, if need be.

Needless to say, the most attractive feature of the whole site is the footer. I like how you incorporated your photo and little bits of your biography into the footer, just enough to intrigue them to read more, with the "Learn More" link conveniently available to them. I also think it is great that you have the link of the week followed by the hyperlink to your Link page. Everything is positioned so strategically :) By now, you should have guessed that I am a big fan of convenience haha.

If there is only one gripe I have about the layout, it is the color scheme. The gray background for last updated section is a bit dull and the background for the text, unless you hover your mouse over it, is not really noticeable.

I also noticed that the font for the text in Film Study tend to be a bit smaller than the rest of the text in the entire site. It is quite hard to read, I can still read if I am wearing my glasses but if I am not, I would have to squint.

Navigation/Links:
Like what I have mentioned before, the navigation in your site flows fluidly with all the links being positioned in the right place. Your visitors definitely will not have trouble finding a certain page because just by hovering over the links in your main page, they can roughly know what are inside each section and minimize the chance of them going to the wrong one. I like the idea how every link is underlined with a red line or dotted line. The last updated section is also very handy as it will let your visitors know which part you have just added info to. There are even links to a contact form, which is definitely a plus for your readers when they need certain assistance or clarification :)

Content:
I love the content in your site, probably the reason I have been coming back to your site pretty often lately :) Your Journal pages are well-written and interesting, it somehow motivates your readers to return for your next entry. I realize it is because you always try to involve your readers in a way or another, for example by asking them question, etc? I could learn a tip or two from you here :)

Moving on to other pages, I like AisLing where you explain more about yourself. I love the part about your name, and yea, I did butcher your name the first time I saw it. In case you are interested to know, I had in mind that it would be pronounced as "Ice-Ling". Lol.

The page where you reviewed the film, besides making the font a bit bigger, you can also include the poster for the movies. I am bad with movie titles and can never remember one unless I see the poster. That could just be me though. Another thing is, since the other links are mostly underlined in red or dotted line, maybe you can also underline the links here? They are not that visible and I was not aware that they are linked to imdb.com until I hovered my mouse over them.

I also love the Recipe page, though I think it will be more attractive if you post some pictures of how the dishes look like when they turn out? :P

One of the most impressive features here is the page where you showed the previous layouts you have used and how visitors can see how the current content would look like if you were still using those old ones. I had to say I browsed through all of them but I still like this current one the most :D

I admit I got to know some of the most interesting blogs (which are now linked in my site) from your blog first. You have a list of very interesting links here and again, like the rest of your site, they are properly organized, hence making it easier for me to spot the blogs that I am looking for.

Overall:
I know I have just spent around 800+ words gushing about how near-perfect this site is, but there are not many flaws that I can think about. So what I can say here are only things I think that should be retained because they are appealing and interesting, should you decide to change the look of your site one day. I know I would continue to come back to visit your site because there is enough there to keep me captivated :)

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RetroBlast gave it on 22nd Nov 2008 and said:
Erm, yeah, I am going to review you back... returning the favor. Alright, I'm ready for this. (:

Starting OFF...
My first impression was "ah, nice". I'm not really a big fan of notebook layouts but the footer, it's pretty rad - that's all I like about it. I like the paper clips and all the desk accessories that you put onto it. However, it looks like any other desktop layout I have seen. Nothing new.

The font you chose for your current layout is okay. It seems to be too big in size to blend in with the desktop. Your choice, though. The yellow box on the left of your layout does not look right on a notebook layout. It just does not... a total no-no. I'd suggest you use a different type of background for that. Okay, time to navigate!

Hm, I'm on your "about" page, I'm sure. Ooh, Ashleen.... I see. Haha, you have a sense of humor (ass-ling). You have a lot of things about yourself on there - good thing! People won't be bored but I don't feel like I want to be bothered reading your information because to be honest, reading the first few sentences bored me.

Your art and photos section is nice. Some photos do not look too "pro-ish" but I do not know if that was what you were aiming for so I won't put out the pros and cons for that. Oooh! Recipes! I'll be sure to use one of these someday... the chocolate one... did you come up with this yourself? Looks interesting. Why don't you add some images of them? It makes a person more attracted to wanting to make a recipe. I don't know... just a suggestion.

Anywho, I do not really feel like navigating around anymore... eh, your site bores me for some apparent reason. Oh well, I guess it's just one of those sites.

Overall, I'll give you a three. I think this site is more for adults-adults. The audience of your site must be around grown, grown ages. Eh, just keep them coming (:

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Aisling's Response:
Thank you for your review! I absolutely love to get reviews from people outside of my target audience. Perhaps I can clear a few things up?

Yes, I understand the layout is bland. I agree. But, it works for my blog, doesn't distract from the content, and is made 100% by myself. The font is big to reflect the size of my own writing. The yellow box is a post-it, do you not use those? :P

I shall definitely be incorporating photos for my recipes, I just haven't had time to actually sit down and bake, what with work and all.

The site is definitely targeted for the crowd that are more my age, (17+) and have moved away from trivial things such as celebrities and gossip. You must remember that, with my unusual name, I am easy to find, and at my age it is not appropriate for my site to be slathered with pointless things that appeal to the masses. I often have potential employers, current employers and family members on my site, and celeb blendz~ would definitely not help portray me as the mature, intelligent 20 year old that I am. ;)

Thanks again, and I'm sorry that my site bored you. Perhaps you should flip through my blog, since that is the REAL purpose of the site. The other bits are really just filler until I can build up my proper portfolio. ;)
Naco gave it on 22nd Nov 2008 and said:
First Impression:
I love your layout! And your domain name is adorable. Very easy on the eyes, loaded quickly, etc.

Layout/Coding
As I said, I love the layout. I have always been a fan of the notebook style layouts, and your take on it is unique and creative. I love the little monster (?) thing in the upper corner, I think he (err or she?) would look cute with a little color as well. I am not one to be able to review coding, but it seems valid and I can not see any problems with it ... so woo.

Content:
> Aisling <
"My name is Aisling and there is about a 90% chance that you just butchered my name in your head! " ... yeah I did :3 I like that you include how to pronounce it, otherwise I'd continue to refer to you as "As-ling". I like that your about me section is broken up, that way it's not one big section of paragraphs. Makes it much easier to navigate and follow a long :) Like your film review area, we seem to have the same taste in movies.

> Media <
I love the recipes, I will definitely have to make something (especially the broccoli cheese casserole!). The art and photo section is nice, I love the digital drawing of the banana rocking out :P The food section only made me more hungry and the landscape photos are beautiful. Articles are nice too, I love the ever so popular one about using celebrity images. Your take on it had me actually LOLing. And I will definitely have to make a layout with the lovely psd you provided. Your articles are short and straight to the point, and I agree with a lot of what you say. Nicely done. The flim section is nice, I remember you posting the one about Jem before ... made me laugh then and it does now too.

I also like that you have the recently updated section in the sidebar, makes it easier to find out what you last did.

> Links <
Lots of links, some blogs I have never read before but I may check them out now/

In Conclusion:
Love the layout, love the content, love the blog. Your site is very interesting and definitely keeps me coming back to read your next update =D There really isn't anything bad I can say about it, I would like to see some more recipes though ;)

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Aisling's Response:
Monsieur Monstre is a he, yes. ;) He used to be blue. Maybe I could make him slightly blue again. Hmmm..

Thank you very much for your review!! :D
Mimi gave it on 17th Nov 2008 and said:
Reviewed with:
Mozilla Firefox | 1440 x 900 Resolution| Windows Vista
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

First Impression:

HAHA, my first impression was that I was being told my first impression... Since it literally says first impression and tells me your information. Oh god that made no sense did it? It was supposed to be a joke. -.-

My real first impression was that it did in fact look like a notebook to me and that is really cool.

Coding:

Well, of course you passed the handy W3C validators. I had no doubts about that. Your code is lean and the CSS is shorthanded. :( I feel kind of useless in this section so maybe I shall move on to the design?

Design:

The background kind of bugs me. I see it like this: Your whole layout is a theme, a notebook theme. So you have it set up where it looks like it's written in a notebook and you even have the pen off to the side. Then, the background, just looks so random to me. I know it is a bit cliche and also a huge trend right now, but I think it would look so cool with a wood background, to make it look like your notebook was sitting on a desk. You wouldn't be putting random wood texture in the layout because you thought you were some cool teenybopper, you'd be doing it because most people will logically think of a notebook on a desk. School desk, home desk, work desk... :D

Something about the pen moving with the layout bugs me as well. I don't know if it's just me relying on my practical sense again, in the fact that if a pen were sitting on a table next to a notebook it would be sitting near the bottom and not moving. It's also a bit fuzzy, the pen is.

Apparently you used to have the yellow look more like a post-it note? I wish I had seen that. I have been to Dreamling before but I didn't really stop to look at how detailed it was before. I think I would rather it be like that than just a box, since it's on your "notebook"!

This is a random idea/suggestion that can be easily discarded, but I am having so much fun with the idea of a notebook layout that these things are kind of bubbling from me. I think that the post title permalink looks too close to the other page links, and I was trying to think of a cool suggestion to differentiate between them. What if your links had a yellow, highlighter background? That way, it would look like the links were highlighted because they were "important" to your research (or whatever it is you were doing in your notebook, heh!) and people would be naturally drawn to click them still. Then, the underlined post title would stand out in it's own way instead of looking so matchy-matchy.

Oh, I realized that the highlighter idea would probably only work for the main area since the post-it is yellow and then of course it would not work on that area. -.- I'm a little sluggish tonight, forgive me.

I also believe that the navigation links blend in too much, being dark blue. What about a brighter color, to make them stand out from all the black text? Might I suggest a mid-darkish blue, to match the 'Link of the Week' title, that way it draws the whole thing together instead of having the link of the week area sort of alienated because it's a completely different color?

By the way, I don't think M. Monstre is cheesy. I think he's incredibly cute and it looks like a notebook doodle, which fits in the notebook theme. I always drew like, hearts and crap all over my notebook pages. Sometimes boobies. Haha, only kidding!

Another color suggestion (yes, I am beyond obsessed with color.) would be for the content pages (OH I HAD to say it, bwuahahaha) under the 'Last Updated' section. The blue that the links have as the background color seems to work fine (maybe a little less red in the blue hue? Not a huge-o deal) but the hover over might be a bit dark.

I think I am done with design, that's always my favorite part. :P Onto the.. content... teehee!

Content:

Your journal is so witty, I have now subscribed to your feed. Expect continual harassment from me for all eternity. :P Ahem, moving along.

I am also glad that you wrote about being called "Ass-ling" because that question was burning in my mind last night when I learned how to properly pronounce your name. I wondered if anyone was that crude, silly nuts!

I enjoy your 'Film Study', if I watched enough movies I might like to do something along these lines, too. The new colors introduced here on this page, though, were a little different. Here I go with my "central color theme" ravings again... -.-

I was wondering why your Last.fm list was all "High School Musical 3 Cast â€“ A Night To Remember 2008/11/10" ? I don't know anything about Last.fm, I might look into it sometime though.

I love how you have such a unique name. My birth name is Emily. Do you realize how many retarded people I share that name with? Far too many. I always go by Mimi because they called me that in my childhood and really, it's just so true. I should be spelling it "MeMe", (ME ME ME ME ME MEEEE). *cough*

Oh mai gawd, a filler page! Art and photos, loll. Oh, I just like to tease you. I am now also stalking you on Twitter, DA and Flickr.

Oh god, I just watched "Aisling in Action" and I think I am like, in uber love with you now. Aisling fan-girl time. Also I watched the Jem video, it literally made me laugh out loud but I had to pause and back up a few times coz it was so very fast. What's the deal with Jem anyway?! Ha ha ha

Final Thoughts:

Ok, I have to stop because I literally have been browsing your site for an hour now and I am kind of confused as to where I was going with this by now. I am going to be coming back to go through all the articles because at a glance, they seemed quite in-depth. I am interested to see your view on things.

I give you 4/5 just because I totally want to see some wood in that layout. God I love sexual innuendos!

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Aisling's Response:
Sorry for taking so long to reply to this amazing review.

I added a drop shadow to the posti-it, to make it more of a posti-it while still being less of a post-it than it once was.

My strong attributes are highlighted like a highlighter, the way you described. But, it made things look sloppy with too much yellow everywhere, so I toned it down a bit.

And, yes, I am trying to figure some way to make the Latest Updates look a bit more interesting, without distracting from the actual content at hand.

Thanks again for your review! As with all reviews that I receive, I will be taking things into account as I continue to improve dreamling.ca!
abbilicious gave it on 16th Nov 2008 and said:
first impressions: i think the theme is a little boring. the header is ok. tHE logo is kind of cheesy-- if you know what i mean. At first i like your CSS, the colors go well. The top nave links are OK. then when i hover over your blog title text, the pink bar turns RED!!!!!! eek! nono! red and pink do NOT go well together. The layout is really big, I can only see it normally when i switch my screen to the smallest size. You should consider making your layouts look the same in ALL browsers and ALL screen sizes.

Ais-Ling: it is kind of wierd how you made the about your site and about you on the same page. Maybe you should make 2 seperate categories.

media: hmm... i think all this would fall under an "about me" section. art &photo-not finished
articles-haha these are funny and cute. keep up the good work!
film-these are good.
recipes-wow, these could be really useful. The fact that you have some of these recipes actually shows alot about you. Am i to sapppy? muha :P

Links: nothing wrong here.

Overall, your site is pretty good. I think you are a good writer, and that this is the perfect type of site for your abilities.

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Aisling's Response:
That's bizarre that you think M. Monstre is cheesy, everyone else loves him, which is why he's making his fourth appearance. Also, the link underline is *the exact same colour* only thicker, so maybe you need to make an optometrist appointment?

My layout should render nicely in anything above 800x600 and since only .3% of my many visitors use that resolution, I hardly cater to it, but thank you for checking it in the smallest size anyway, it's nice to know it's still usable in 1999. :)

The Ais-Ling section was 2 categories, but why have 2 about categories when most site sections are substandard anyway?

And, none of the Media section would fall under "About Me." There is a difference between rambling about my life and displaying work I've done. o_O

Thank you for your input, anyway. It's nice to get perspective from different audiences.
Enzo gave it on 14th Nov 2008 and said:
I love, love the theme! There may be a ton of notebook themes out there nowadays, but yours has an air of uniqueness in it which I enjoy. The monster is adorable, though I remember seeing him (or is it a her?) in one of your old layouts back in aisling-b.net. I also love reading your site slogan - "A Splash of Ash". I love the rhyme! :D

I think that the pink in your navigation hover is a bit too bright. Perhaps lessen in it a bit by a couple of tones?

I love the way you used big fonts and also the little size difference (is there even one?) in between the main body text and the title. It really adds up to the notebook theme you have. The same goes for the red line under the titles and links.

I think that there's too much top and bottom padding on the list under "Or You Can..." on your sidebar. The opposite goes for the search bar since the title, the textbox and the button seem to squashed up for me. Add up to it, please.

There's nothing much I have to say about the content since I enjoyed navigating through each and everyone of them.

Nice job, Aisling! ;)

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sheerperfume gave it on 14th Nov 2008 and said:
Hi Aisling, I really enjoyed browsing your website. First, what caught my attention is the layout. I would say it is pretty original. It is really nice to see a layout that doesn't look like one I've seen before. The little doodle and font on the layout are really cute! I am defiantly going to have show my little sister this because she loves layouts that have drawings on them. The colors are quite soothing. They are not too bright or too dark. I don't see any coding errors that could make your layout odd in my layout.

There is one thing I don't like too much about the layout though. First, the pen/sticky paper on the right, bottom corner is a bit distracting for me. I understand the layout is "a notebook theme", but the pen/sticky paper is saying, "look at me melissa"! Maybe it would look better in a different spot. Maybe not. I guess I get distracted easily. But I feel like it takes away from the rest of your beautiful layout :)

As for content, I enjoyed the media section. I don't see content like that on all the personal blogs I have been too. Your films were interesting! I have always wanted to do something similar.
I am also going to have to try some of your recipes, especially the whole wheat bread one. I have yet to master my whole wheat baking skills. I also felt like there is a good amount of content, but it wouldn't hurt to see more.

All I can say now is keep up the great work :-) - I will try to come back to read more blogs. Also, I apologize if my review is short, but I hate to ramble on for unnecessary stuff!

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Diana gave it on 13th Nov 2008 and said:
Lovelovelove this layout, especially the monster. When I first visited this site, I thought the yellow was too much, so I am glad to see you have toned it down. Nothing more to say about the layout. It is fabulous, although I remember being confused the first time I visited because of the AisLing link in the top navigation. I was like what? because I didn't know your name, so I do think you should call this "About" or something more obvious.

The sidebar is original. I like that it does not take up a whole...side, but it just kind of sticks there for some quick information on the page I am viewing...yknow, like a Post-it should :P

I clicked on your Journal link expecting to go somewhere else, but I didn't :( Since you already have a link to the index page in your header, may I suggest removing the Journal link? If you need to take up space, you could always split up the AisLing content into Girl/About and Site.

Whoa, the text on the grey sidebar (last updated information) is way too small. The background color on hover on the purple links is too dark to see with black text.

Ooh, nice information about yourself ^^ "Ass-ling," LOL. There's even more pages!

Film Study's colors change drastically from the rest of the site's colors, I find. I like reading film reviews, so thanks for these.

You know what I would love in your Likes/Dislikes page? Each item as a list item, and text explaining why you like/dislike each item. It's fine now, though. The rest of the pages are just great, I have nothing else to say about them!

:( Nothing else to say about any of the site sections either, they are perfect.

THE MEDIA SECTION LOOKS SO INTERESTING. I can't wait till you find a way you like to integrate your art and photo section! The articles are awesome, but I'm not going to review them one by one. Just know that they are awesome. Your film section has a big gap between the text and video links, and a refresh did not fix this, unfortunately.

Links: pretty standard. I would like more information on Katimavik besides just a "check these out!" :P

All-in-all, your site is just amazing. I really like your footer. I just had to stick that in there, and what place would be more perfect than the end of the review? Good job!

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Clem gave it on 12th Nov 2008 and said:
Hellooooo, Aisling! I've been planning to write this review for awhile now, and today is the perfect day to do it! I had an early dismissal, which means more time to write your review. I have a feeling it will be pretty long, because I'm in the reviewing mood today.

So, first, I want to start with the name. Mostly because I just want to tell you how much I love it. I think it's cute, and it definitely has a lot of you in it, and I love love love the .ca extension. The only thing I'm wondering - do you say it like "dreamleen" since the ling in your name is pronounced as "leen"? Random question, I know, but I've been wondering for awhile.

Also, the page title bugs me a bit because you haven't converted the "--" to a proper em dash. (Just use & mdash; without the space and you should be good to go!)

Moving onto your design. You've changed it up a bit, and I do think it looks better, although I will still be pointing out a few things.

Firstly, as I've mentioned elsewhere I'm not a *huge* fan of the whole notebook layout thing, but I think yours is really cute. You've done it differently than most people, and, um, M. MONSTRE!

I'm going to start with the colour choice. I really like the yellow, and I never thought I would be saying that! But it fits in with the layout so well; obviously it's meant to be a highlighter, or maybe I'm just hallucinating. The navy blue is supposed to be reminiscent of pens, or at least in my mind, and I think the hot pink is supposed to be like a pink highlighter? I'm not sure, actually, but it still looks nice.

I'm definitely not a fan of the font you've used for "A Splash of Ash". I see that exact font on the covers of crappy teen romance novels, and it just looks icky to me. It's not a huge aspect of the design, so it doesn't have to be top priority, but it looks a little bit tacky to me.

At first I didn't love the font you'd used for the "dream" part of "dreamling", but I realised that it's meant to be like your tattoo, so I've changed my mind. I think the hot pink star dotting the i is really cute, and the maple leaf is also a very nice touch! (And, like I said, I am so happy to see M. Monstre!)

Onto your navigation... I liked it better when it had the background on hover. Not a huge detail; the navigation itself is fine. It stands out, looks nice enough, etc. etc.

I think you could make the date on your posts a bit more prominent and pretty. I mean, right now it's just sort of... sitting there, off on its own. Style it, or move it with the post meta data so it reads "Posted under Journal by Aisling on November 11, 2008". It looks kind of sad off in its own with no attention having been paid to it whatsoever!

I don't like the gradient on your sidebar. Since when did you ever see gradients in notebooks? Also, it barely looks like a gradient on my monitor - it's more like dark yellow, then light yellow and less like dark yellow fading into light yellow. Also, the sidebar headings are H4, but they look like the rest of the text! Make them a different colour, give them an underline, bolden them, make them a bit larger, do anything to make them stand out a bit more! Oh, and there's no padding between the "Looking for something?" text and the searchbar, and it looks kind of cramped.

The hover on your links is barely noticeable. I don't know why, but I get VERY irked when links don't really change on hover. I actually don't like the pink underline on the links; I generally dislike underlines on links, so that's probably just my bias seeping through!

Your footer is really cute, and that's saying something since I have a general dislike for big footers. I love the swirl behind your picture, and the fact that picture itself is on the angle. Your quick-facts section gives the basics, and somehow your personality shines through in these few words. The only thing I don't like is that the quick facts text doesn't line up with "First Impression", but that's just me being incredibly picky! I think that the paper clip on "Link of the Week" has been resized so it's a bit too thin... and compared to the pen, it looks really fake. Could you possibly move the paper clip so that's underneath the link? There's all this empty space next to the paper clip, which looks not so nice. I do love the texture of the background, though. I love paper like that, haha. Your copyright information is a bit too small, and it isn't perfectly centered. I also feel like there should be a bit more padding underneath it. I adore padding.

Your home page is valid, woot! Your CSS, however, isn't. There are two minor errors. (Also, your coding isn't pefectly semantic since the sidebar comes before the actual content.)

AIS-LING
Aww, I like how the sidebar was set up before a lot better! It was cool how it moved to the other side, and the recently updated pages section certainly looked a lot better before. Maybe you could give it the same background that you've used on the "Link of the Week" section of the sidebar? (Also, the text for the date under the recently updated page section is miniscule, virtually impossible to read!)

SITE
Meh, this first page is nothing special. Some stats, your host, a bit about the design. Fine, but basic.

-e-History
This is fine. Your e-History is nothing particularly special, but it was a fun read nonetheless. This made me laugh: "after a bit of a slip up (i.e. I deleted everything)". You've kept this page fairly concise, which is good!

-Listed At...
Oh, you! Showing off all your accomplishments, are you? :P

-M. Monstre
Adorable. Seriously. M. Monstre ftw.

-Past Themes
I love, love, love how it's possible to actually preview each design! Anyway, overall an organised page.

-Plug-ins Used
This is an automatically generated list, so I can't really review it, haha.

AISLING
I like this page. It's very short, but your personality DEFINITELY shows! It made me smile in a few different places. Normally I would suggest that you add more about your hobbies and presonality, but hopefully you will have this information in some of your subpages!

- Contact Me
Personally, I would list this page last, but that's just me. Anyway, you've actually written a funny little message here, which shows how much care you put into maintaining your website. Wow. For once I have something to say about a Contact page!

- Film Study
I love how the star ratings go down the side! Thanks for actually writing mini-reviews, very nice. This might fit better under the Media section, though?

- Likes and Dislikes
I've said it before and I'll say it again: not too interesting unless you can write a bit about *why* you like/dislike each of these things.

- My World
An important page, not often found on personal sites. All of the places you went to for Katimavik sound so amazing. (Speaking of Katimavik, I told my mom about it and I'm tentatively planning on applying after I graduate high school. Yay!)

- Random Facts
Not too many, which increases the chances of people actually reading them! And, luckily, these facts are interesting. You are adorable, just so you know. "Which is the most amazing alarm clock Iâ€™ve ever come across." Yeah.

- Social Trend Central
Yeah. You know. Not much to comment on. I like that you've been creative with the name, though!

- What's In a Name?
I think I've mentioned this before, but I think that this page can be combined with your main About page, since they're both fairly short.

MEDIA
Nice little intro page for all of the other sections.

- Art and Photo
I won't review the external links, but I'd really love to see this page up soon!

- Articles
I won't comment on each individual entry, but I've read each of them (um, you may have noticed in your stats that I basically went through your archives and read all of your posts, haha). There's a good variety of articles here - some whimsical, like the Aisling PSD (so totally amazing, btw) and the email from the future, and some serious, like the one about bilingualism (totally agree, btw - working towards bilingualism myself!) or "You Can't Deny It".

- Film
Add more! I've watched all of these and enjoyed them, and I'd love to see more!

- Recipes
Mmm, thank you for these! Lots of sugary things, which of course sound amazing, but I also LOVE alfredo sauce. Who knows, maybe I'll cook for my family sometime soon!

LINKS
O hai, it's a links page! Nothing much to comment on.

Okay, so. Overall I think that dreamling.ca is a really great website. I enjoy reading your blog, I think you have very good content, and of course I think you're an awesome person. There were a few issues that I pointed out, but they're all nitpicky. And I really only get nitpicky in reviews when there are no major errors. So, overall I really love your website, but I do think you could improve in a few areas. Good luck with getting your Art and Photo section up and running and just tweaking the other things I pointed out (if you even want to tweak them, haha). (And wow at the length of this review. My longest one so far!)

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Aisling's Response:
I definitely have plans (I made a to-do list in my notebook while I was on the bus home today) to pick through my little coding errors and fix them! The CSS error is actually from the WP Pages plug-in, and therefore, not my fault. ;)

I can't believe nobody gets the "gradient," on the yellow sidebar! It's not a gradient at all, it's actually like... go find a post-it. And then stick it. The part with the glue is darker! That's what it is. :P Obviously, it's not getting across *grumbles*.. I guess I'll change it.

Thanks for the in-depth review! I actually plan, with the Recent Updates, to place them in a footer, to mirror my index page's footer and provide more consistency. Don't worry, plenty of tweaking is in the works!

I will be referring to this review as I continue to improve dreamling.ca over the next few weeks!! Thanks again, Clem!
Anna_Kirstin gave it on 12th Nov 2008 and said:
First Impression: Wow. Notebook theme. I have seen them done a dozen times, but yours seems to bring something different. It is very well done.

You might want to be sure that visitors know the View My Photos link on the front page takes them to flickr. I clicked on it expecting to go to another page on your site and was taken off-site. I was not expecting to be taken to flickr (though I probably should have been.)

Ais-Ling: The updated dates in your last updated column are extremely small. If you are going to have the dates that they were lasted updated then you may want to consider increasing the text size of those dates to a more visible font size.

If I had not clicked on social trend central, I would not have had any clue what it was about. Normally I don't click on any type of page that could possibly be a generic filler information type of page (you know the type of useless info that sites have to boost their pages). This section while having a cute title might be better off with a more descriptive title (easier to comprehend) so that it is not passed over by anyone who skips generic information.

You have some characters that are not transferring into proper coding on your article Cruelty is Not the Best Policy. They are reading as capital A's with little lines over their heads. This occurs in the fifth and sixth paragraphs.

Coding: Your CSS has two errors found. #wp_page_numbers li a:hover has a margin and padding value of none that needs to be changed. 0px would work.

Overall: I think you have done an excellent job of making a notebook theme work and look original. You took a theme which could be redundant and boring and managed to make it interesting with your own spin on it.

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Aisling's Response:
Thank you very much for your review! The CSS error is due to a plug-in, so hopefully I'll be able to dig through those files and fix it! :D
Julie gave it on 11th Nov 2008 and said:
Hi Ling!

First off, did I ever take the time to comment on your site's name? Anyway, I like it. It's short and it doesn't fall into either one of two very annoying cliches (pink fluffly princess with fairy wings or deep dark dead vampire who drinks bat blood).

On to your layout. I'm glad to see you brought back the monstre! (spelt in French on purpose ;)).

Do you have two backgrounds? The way I see it, you have one background for the "pages" of the notebook, and one for the binding thingies. What's a bit annoying is the fact that one scrolls and the other doesn't, which makes me feel like I'm hallucinating.

I prefer main text to be a tad bit smaller, but I guess it's up to each person. Besides, I can resize it as I please. *plays with font size*

Your footer is interesting, not overloaded or anything, but I tend to forget to look at the footer, as people usually put things that don't interest me down there (such as "Powered by Wordpress" or "Take that, you c*nts!").

I suck at reviewing layouts...lack of practice, I guess. So let's move to the content (OMG you no has a "content" areaz. Kidding. I agree with you on people who have a section called "content").

AisLing leads, naturally, to an about page. On the side is a list of last updated pages, a nice touch for stalkers...er, I mean regular visitors. I'd personally put a bit more space between each as it looks weird right now, with the alternating big and small text (no problem with the text size in itself, just with the spacing).

On the page about yourself, you have this little intro text on the left: "To the left you will find the things you need. Below are links to other pages with more cool information to get to know her better!" Isn't that sort of repetitive? I'm already looking on the left, so no need to tell me about both left AND below.

I see you sorted subpages in alphabetical order. I assume you're using some sort of Wordpress snippet so it would be a bit complicated to change? Because in the current order, it looks a bit odd. For example, it is little likely that I would be looking for the contact page first.

Oh, brief movie reviews!

Not much to say about your Likes / Dislikes. Just the average likes/dislikes page: short and brief. :P I'd like to see some expanding, like more info on certain aspects.

You love Quebec City, 'nuff said. Here are 5 stars for ya. :D Or maybe not because of a certain restaurant you mentioned.

Your site, now.

You also earned 20 Cool Internet History points for having been hosted on Expage, and for having once had a site called "Kiwi Kissez".

On the Listed At page, you have a link that says "dreamling.ca's page" (for your rev.iew.me page), but it links to a thumbnail of your site?

In your article entitled "I just showered in the dark", you wrote the following:

said he was so ugly, e would shower in the dark.

You forgot the "h" of the second he. That said, the text was a fun read.

Overall, your Media section was good, lots of creative content.

Coding.

You have [meta name="generator" content="WordPress 2.6.3"] (with the proper greater/lesser than symbols, duh) twice.

You also have "[p/]" (again, replace the brackets) just before your navigation. I'm not sure this is acceptable, you should use [p][/p]. Then again I believe you are using this for spacing, in which case you might as well simply add some margin to the the list that follows. I see you use it in at least one other place.

I think you could also use a bit more divs and still get what you want. For example, you have the "footer" div, which contains only the "copy" div.

I know Verdana is a pretty common font, but you should still specify a generic font family ("sans serif" in this case).

I just noticed you have skipped h1 altogether. Might want to correct that. You can always make it invisible. Likewise, on some pages, like Links, you use strong where h3 would be more semantically appropriate.

Other coding elements that I dislike are due to plug-ins, so I'll skip them.

In brief, I'm just looking at your coding with a microscope to try finding errors, when really whatever I find is rather minor.

Overall, to say it plainly, I like your site and should visit more often. I think you show your creativity well. One thing I particularly like is that, when one browses your pages, you don't get a feeling of "Boohoo, I'm dark and emo and I hate you". You feel welcome and entertained.

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Aisling's Response:
There is only one background, actually. Do you think it would look better fixed? I may give that a go! I will definitely work on the spacing of the Recent Updates box on my pages! The reason the sidebar says "to the left," is because the sidebar used to be on the right. xP I will change that!

Gah, coding. To be honest, I don't pay attention to my coding. Like, at all. Anything that is correct is really just because I know how to write code. :P I never check to see if I've made errors. I really should, though, and I will!

Thank-you for your review!
Kaylee gave it on 11th Nov 2008 and said:
I was thinking of reviewing your website a few days ago to point out a few things that were bugging me, and now that I've come back to it today, I notice that you've fixed most of them! You must have read my mind.

(In case you were wondering, the two main things were the spacing on your Links page and the right (mis)alignment of the sidebar boxes.)

One change I'm sad to see is the removal of the pencil crayons. I thought they added a nice colourful pop to your design; even though it's already busy, it worked with your style. I would have preferred that you got rid of the pen, if anything.

And now, some minor things I think you could change in the order that I notice them:

- First Impression: saying "Click Here" in that link bothers me; I know what to do when I see a link and it just makes it sound so unsophisticated :P

- Link of the Week: there could be a bit of spacing between the two links, one of them is so big that it makes hovering over the smaller one "uncomfortable" (for lack of a better word).

- The blog pagination bar: when I hover over a page number, the hover border makes the whole thing twitch D:

- Yellow sidebar: I like how less-bright it is now, but I don't like the small gradient background at the top. Also, on the main page, there's just a lot of text in that box. I think the little headings (Welcome! To Navigate, etc.) could use some style differentiation to break it up a bit.

- Grey box in sidebar: I don't like the huge amount of spacing between this box and the yellow one; I'd like to see this box moved up a bit. Also, the date/time for the update is TINY. Yes, it should be smaller, but as long as it's there, it needs to be legible!

- Footer: on all your non-main pages, it's pretty lacking. How about putting the "margins are just suggestions" thing there? I kind of liked that... xD

- Blog entry footer: on a blog with a single author, does it really have to say "by Aisling"?

Overall, I truly love your site and enjoy visiting it. You've certainly come a long way since I first saw I've Been Awake All Week on Blogger!

In closing, you have a really distinct header with the site title, little slogan, and M. Monstre design (and all those elements work so well together!); I would like to see something from that carry over into the footer.

P.S. I'm not very good at pointing out positive things, so if I didn't mention something at all in this review, you can assume I liked it :)

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Aisling's Response:
Haha, yeah, I'm pretty quick to make changes to my site and the two things you mentioned have been mentioned before. The pencil crayons, I found, just really didn't make sense, and were too much clutter for the page. I mean, really, there is no part of the site where it *looks* like pencil crayon has been used, and the rainbow of colour was a little distracting.

I will definitely be taking your other suggestions into account as I further the improvements on my site. :)
Catherine gave it on 10th Nov 2008 and said:
First Impression: I have to admit that when I first saw this theme I didn't like it, but now it has definitely grown on me. :)

Design: I think the initial problem I had with this layout was the text. As well as the many different fonts used in the header, I found the font used in the entries was just too huge! Given the size of your header, your font and everything else, I can only see 87 words out of your latest entry. Drop that down to 100% as opposed to 115% and I can see 153 words before I have to scroll.

Text aside, I love that you have once again included M. Monstre - it's something that makes your layout identifiably you, and I hope that you keep him on future layouts as a way of "grounding" the rest of them, keeping something the same even as the rest of it changes. The detail on the notebook is wonderful, and I do like the pencils, pen and post it note at the bottom.

Another few notes on various things: I don't like the way your "sidebar"/"info box" thing keeps jumping from one side to the other. It's just another thing competing for my eyes' attention. Also, as another person pointed out, you have many different types of link styles all over your site - I can't see any reason for them to have been changed (say, the background colour rendered it invisible) and in this case uniformity is a good thing.

AisLing and Media: Both of these sections were interesting and detailed, although I did have a lot of trouble looking along your navigation for a direct link to site. I eventually found out where it was, though. It's also nice to see some things are a little different beyond the usual category of "content" (I know, I know, that is something that irks you about a site) - your recipes are such a refreshing change from the same cut-and-paste tutorials out there.

Coding: As I pointed out after the Mallory debacle, Dreamling.ca has valid XHTML and CSS.

Overall: I really like the site, and the love you have for it shows in the amount of attention and care have put into it.

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Aisling's Response:
Thank you very much for your review! I have decreased the font size, and I do hope it is better now! Yeah, it looks like M. Monstre is going to be a more permanent fixture on dreamling.ca!

The sidebar has been switched over to make everything more uniform. :)

Thanks again!
Bruce gave it on 10th Nov 2008 and said:
Disclaimer: I'm using Mozilla Firefox 3 with a 1680x1050 resolution. All of the following is just my own (unprofessional) *opinion* and I'd like the least amount of grief and drama about it as possible.

Layout
It's a very... busy layout. And I don't mean that necessarily in a bad way, but everything is competing for attention. The huge yellow sidebar is really distracting and every time I try to read the main content, my eyes keep wandering over to the yellow sidebar. It seems kind of unnecessary, since it's immediately obvious it's a blog. I think it would look better if you cut down on the wordiness of the sidebar, made the "link of the week" smaller, and put the sidebar information in the footer.
The text is a bit big for my liking. Kudos to you for not giving in and making it teeny-tiny like most "trendy" websites but this is basically going the opposite direction with no moderation. This might be because I have a huge monitor, but the average letter height is the width of my pinky, which is uncomfortable for me to read. I don't know how it looks on your monitor, but I'm not used to seeing text this big. When I resized it, it looked a hell of a lot better to me, so I'm going to continue on reviewing with that size.
I'm also failing to see a color theme throughout. I'm guessing it's yellow, pink, black, and blue, but that seems like a lot of colors-- it probably doesn't help that we're having the rainbow thrown at us from the corner.
The bottom seemed a bit superfluous to me-- at least the link of the week part. Also, "first impression" seems a bit big and unnecessary.
One thing that I really do like that's probably looked over is the whole page navigation. It is a simple and easy way to make your way through any of the pages. It's really clean and neat.
I think you did pull off the notebook look fairly well actually.

Content
It seems like you have your content split into a million pages. Not a fan of that approach, but here we go. Only going to mention things that I think are mentionable- if I didn't put it here then you can assume it's all good with me.

Content: AisLing -> About
And here I was, pronouncing it "ice-ling", haha. I was left wondering what the heck you did for fun before I realized there's a menu on the side-- yes, I honestly didn't realize it before I went looking for it.

Content: AisLing -> Fashion
The only critique I have here is PLEASE put line breaks in between the descriptions of the bags! It feels like a huge hunk of text and it's really difficult to read. An ordered list would be even better, in fact.

Content: AisLing -> Film Study
I really like the way the stars are lined up! That's awesome. I also like that you linked to the imdb for each movie. It was a good, unique read, which I always approve of.

Content: AisLing -> Likes and Dislikes
Maybe leave links to things that might not be known to the general internet public, such as "Katimavik".

Content: AisLing -> My World
I agree with the decision to put this on a separate page. This is the more auto-biographical thing I've come to expect from normal 'about me' pages, but I really lament reading them. I'm glad you put it on a separate section so I can get to know you as a person before knowing your life history. ;)

Content: AisLing -> Social Trend Central
I'm on a 6mbps connection and it took at least a minute to load. This is not a good sign. For some reason, the priority went to the applets on the page and not the background, so here I am waiting for the background to load while applets are loading. I'm pretty sure it's the calendarhub.com thing that's taking forever to load. And when it did load, it didn't even work! I would suggest taking it off all together; if I were an average viewer I would have gotten annoyed at the long loading time and just left.

Content: AisLing -> Themes
I like the fact that you can click it for a live preview. Usually people only have screenshots, so that really stands out to me. Interestingly enough, I didn't recognize the post that was being showed, I thought it was outdated... but it was just that you JUST updated while I was reviewing your site, so it changed from the "christmas" post to the "rev.iew.me" post!

Content: Media
I appreciate all the unique content. In a world of e-mail forwards and icons being passed off as "content", it was refreshing to see things like recipes.

Content: Links
"If you enjoy my blog, perhaps you would like to link me? If so, you could perhaps use this button." Seems redundant to use 'perhaps' twice, but that's probably just nitpicking.

Content: AisLing -> Site Statistics
Yes, I am a statistics nerd, so I'm extremely happy you put this in here. It seems like an easy way to add an informative page to the site and it's well implemented. It's interesting to read that you've written over 100k words!

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Aisling's Response:
Lol, see, THAT'S why the sidebar is needed! If you had paid attention to the big yellow sidebar, you would have known how to navigate the site. ;)

And, yes, I realize I need to re-do the fashion page. To be honest, I haven't touched it since August 2007, back when I was travelling and had my blog on Blogger (it was easier to maintain than a full site, when I wasn't at home). I definitely plan on going through my content in the next few days, and making sure it is all updated.

I will definitely remove the CalendarHub thing. It USED to work, but it doesn't seem like a well developed ap. I think it would be much easier if I came up with some way to display that information on my own, not that it was entirely interesting!

Thank you for the lovely review. I really really appreciate it. :D
meggan gave it on 7th Nov 2008 and said:
I'll start this off by saying I'm sort of ambivalent toward notebook layouts. Like, there's nothing inherently bad about them, I can just never tell if I like them or not.

I love the little monster at the top; he's my favorite.

My main complaint about this site has to do with the fonts - there are (roughly, haha) nine zillion of them and it gets kind of... messy? I don't necessarily think using more than three or so fonts is bad, but I feel like they could be more cohesive.

At first, I really didn't like the type treatment for the blog entries, but the more I look at it, I think it works. It wouldn't match the scale of the notebook paper if it were smaller. I think if I were you, I'd work on trying to "standardize" some of the other fonts, like maybe making the text in the "first impressions" area the same size as the postinfo ("posted in journal" etc.) text, and maybe the footer text could be that same style as well (it seems awfully large and important right now and I don't think it needs to be). Something to cut down on the sheer number of text styles you've got going on. Using fancy fonts for the titles of sections (link of the week, thoughts, first impressions) works with the whole "sketchy notebook" theme, but there's just SO MANY of them that it gets overwhelming.

I find myself wishing that the paperclip on the Link of the Week was more realistic - the pen, colored pencils, and all that stuff is realistic, so why is the paperclip all sad and plain gray? I'm not exactly sold on the orange link color in that area either; maybe play around with it, as it seems to be the only spot that orange is used, and it feels a weensy bit out of place. It's not bad (orange goes great with blue) but it just feels "off" somehow when compared to the whole layout. The main nav hover state has this problem as well - the blue isn't mismatched per se, it just feels "off" somehow. Maybe try ditching the background color and just using the red, perhaps with a dotted or solid underline?

I looove the footer - you did a great job with it. It's tasteful, the "first impression" header looks nice there, and you have helpful, personal info in that area. I'm glad you got recognition for it!

The text in the content updates box is hard to read over its background; toning it down would help legibility. The left edge seems really squinchy too - adding some padding would help a lot. It's also much more weighted visually than your yellow subnav (which I know seems weird, since it's bright yellow, but hear me out) because it's darker and has heavier, more contrasty font styles. I'm not convinced content updates are more important than your subnav, so you might play around with how much attention those grab. Perhaps the subnav needs a funky-type header?

Overall, I think you've done a great job with the notebook look. They're hard to pull off, and I think the realistic background and sketchy elements really make this layout work. As I said earlier, my main complaint is with the fonts and a weensy bit about the colors, but overall I think it's a strong layout. I also love your domain name. :)

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Aisling's Response:
Thank you very much for your review! If you visit the site now, you will probably see that I have incorporated one or two of your ideas into the changes I have made. Thank you, again! :)
afscom gave it on 7th Nov 2008 and said:
[Reviewed with Firefox 3 with a 1280x800 resolution]

My first impression of this site is 'oh groan, another notebook theme' but actually once I started looking around I got to quite like it. The only thing that I hate about it is that the big yellow sidebar is far too wide, far to in your face and distracts me from what I'm there to see - your blog and your content.

I dislike the fact that your sidebar changes sides once you navigate away from your main blog, it's confusing and a bit annoying to be honest.

Firstly, on to your 'Aisling' page. The first thing that I notice when reading the information in your sidebar is that it says 'Welcome to the "Aisling," section!' when it should be 'Welcome to the "Aisling" section!'. No matter, it's just a small error.

On your fashion page, is there any reason why you haven't used a list to show the items in the photograph? You've taken a very long road to display this information, instead of using span style="font-weight:bold" each and every time to display a number I'd use an ordered list with a specific style, it's less code and would look a lot less messy (both code wise and when displayed as text on your site).

On your articles main page you have a few extra 'strong' tags lying around that are adding a yellow bar to the end of some of your links to articles - 'You can't deny it', 'I just showered in the dark', 'A Solution to the Celebrity Photo Copyright Situation' and 'Bilingualism: Go Big or Go Home'. Speaking of the yellow-ness, on your recipe page all your links have a yellow background and red underline, but on the rest of the pages under 'Media' your links just have a red underline. Personally I would stick to one or the other so as not to confuse your readers.

I absolutely loved the articles that I read, especially the email one. It's unique, fun to read and just the sort of things I like to see on personal sites. Your short movies are great too.

Overall, I like your site. It's quirky and your writing style is excellent - your entire blog seems to be excited and hyped up by the way that you write and that makes it really interesting to read. Yes, there a few little errors here and there but that's honestly all the bad things that I have to say about your site. In fact, I like it so much I've added you to my RSS reader (oh by the way, you don't have a link to allow your readers to do this that's obviously visible. Maybe you could add one to your header somewhere?)

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Aisling's Response:
Thank you for your review! I really appreciate criticism! I'm glad I was able to make a notebook theme somewhat interesting. :)

A lot of the content hasn't been overhauled yet, hence the errors. I will work on them ASAP though! Thank you for making a list for me to reference when I go about that (probably this weekend).

I will definitely be taking all of your comments in mind as I continue to improve dreamling.ca! Thank you very much! And thank you for adding me to your feed reader! :D
wildx22 gave it on 7th Nov 2008 and said:
First Impression

I'm not one for so many different fonts, especially all coming "BAM!" at me in the face. So I see in the header, 1: "A Splash of Ash!", 2: "dream", 3: "ling", 4: "navigate me", 5: navigation links, 6: "thoughts and stuff", 7: blog titles, 8: content. (Correct me if I've listed any repeat fonts, but in any case they look different and messy.)

The notebook design is nice, and I like how the text don't align to the notebook lines. I see too many such designs with the words sticking neatly within the lines (boring), and I'm glad yours is not so. I also like the big font for the content, it makes my viewing comfortable!

I think the monster in the header corner is cute, but by some gut feeling it doesn't look right there. I guess I prefer focus in some place rather than spread out on a piece of artwork.

As I scroll down to the bottom, more fonts! 9: "first impression", 10: "Link of the Week!" That's a *little* over the top to say the least.

I like the design in the footer. It's neat, a nice comfortable space for the amount of content that goes there.

Design

I do *not* like the "thoughts and stuff" header on the home page. Note that you already have an un-simple header and overall design, it's time to keep the content part clean and simple to avoid over-complication. And here I'm seeing too much clutter up in the opening of each blog post. I much prefer the simplicity on other pages. You already have a blog title, a date, you don't need another redundant header on the home page. Any visitor in their right mind would know this is a blog, and a blog implies "thoughts and stuff". Not to forget that this redundant heading is also larger and more outstanding in design than the blog title and date.

I like the coloured pencils on the side, and I like the pen, but I don't like the pen. Sounds weird, but the pen has been poorly extracted, with white edges still very clearly visible around the pen. Poor quality for a good design.

I don't think the comments boxes fit in with the rest of the design. I think that's the only blue you've used in the design? And a strange choice too.

You have to be joking me. *More* fonts? 11: "Content updates", 12: "Margins are merely suggestions".

Again I'm seeing over-complication in link hovers. Why do they all have different hover effects? 1: top navigation links, 2: yellow side bar and content links, 3: blog post title, 4: blog post footer (categories and comments), 5: link of the week, 6: "click here to learn more!", 7: footer links, 8: content updates. Don't doubt. Over-simplicity may be boring, but too much 'design' takes away the focus on your content.

There's no reason why bolded links need further highlighting. I've read a web design article (can't name it sorry) before about how bold type already gives enough emphasis itself without you adding extra emphasis on top of it. If further emphasis must be added, I generally prefer a colour change (colour relating to the theme) or a very light underline. Yellow highlight? It may look ooooohkay when there are only a few bolded words on the page, but the Site page is full blast of yellow. I don't know how you like to read *your* notes, but *I* don't like to pull yellow highlighting over my already-emphasised red words. (Oh damn and the Plug-ins Used page too)

Other pages specifically

Contact Me: I'm browsing in Safari, and the checkbox at the bottom of the contact form spans to the next line below "Send a copy to yourself?"

Fashion: "ol" and "li" tags for numbered lists please?

Film Study: the design of the list doesn't fit into the rest of the layout. I don't get why the dotted line is there and I don't understand why the font-size for this page is so significantly smaller.

Social Trend Central: Different spacing between sections? Very inconsistent there.

Articles: yellow highlighting in the space between article titles and their brief descriptions.

Recipes pages: content in the yellow sidebar has disappeared.

Links: empty gap between Ava Rae and Callistonian.

Browsing

I have this thing for having control over the links I click. If I want to open a link in a new tab, thanks, I know how to click it with my mouse's middle button or context menu on right- click. But now you're forcing me to open external pages in a new window/tab with target _blank.

Content

I like the quality of your content, and the quantity is adequate for a personal website. And I like the addition of photos in your blog posts and pages, but at a good quantity. Even if a picture doesn't *actually* speak a thousand words, it gives image to surrounding words, and makes plain text much more fun.

I didn't read things word by word, but when I do stop and read some things, I see good English, yay!

Conclusion

Main things I *don't* like:
- too many fonts (I counted 12)
- too many link hover effects (I counted 8)
- over-emphasis by bold type *and* yellow highlight
- clutter (blog heading part; white space is good, "Margins are merely suggestions" adds nothing extra to the design)
- inconsistency (e.g. you highlight the Recipes links, but don't highlight Articles links)
- spacing between sections (this also goes to inconsistency, e.g. compare the spacing on Ais-Ling vs Links)

Overall, I've enjoyed browsing your site, thanks Aisling. I can see the design is an awesome improvement from your previous ones!

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Aisling's Response:
Dude, I know! Lol. I've been fretting over the fonts/ bolding for the last few days, because they *don't* look right. Thank you very much for pointing it out, now that I know someone else agrees I can find a solution! I suppose it's like the rule of accessorizing-- put all your jewellery on, and then take two pieces off. :)

Thank you very much for your review! Hopefully I'll be able to work something out to make everything a little less jarring!
memorylast gave it on 7th Nov 2008 and said:
/*-------------------------------------------------------------*/
Browser used to Review : Mozilla Firefox
Platform : Windows Vista
Screen Resolution : 1280x1024
/*-------------------------------------------------------------*/
First Impression : The layout was colourful, everything seems to be easy to read because it's big enough and has enough space between the lines. I thought it looked like a scrapbook, everything doesn't look 'that' neat but it's your content still appears to be quite organized and easy for the visitor to navigate around. I first saw the 'bagel' which was cool. Bagels are cool, so that improved the first impression thing for me ;D lmfao. I find that your coding seems to be amazing, and it's compatible with the browser + resolution, etc. I'm using so that's good.

Layout : The layout very colourful and the concept is interesting + original. The CSS is great, it made your blog easier to read. Because of the spacing and font. And I love your header, the backgrounds and everything. Some of the graphics located at the bottom, such as the Pen wasn't that high quality because the background wasn't completely erased. And there's actually a little something that bothers me about it, but I just can't seem to put my finger on it. Don't worry, that always happens. But I mean, I still really liked the whole thing. So it's all good.

AisLing : I really love how you have so much information, you have this quirky sort of writing style that made me interested in reading it. It included quite a lot about yourself so it gave me a more indepth understanding of you. And you put the information in an organized way making it easier to locate different areas about you.

Media > Art and Photo : I don't really like going to DeviantArt of Flickr to view things. It's quite annoying to go to an off-site link, that's just me. And DeviantArt actually takes a long time to load on my computer. But I can see that you're going to, perhaps, set it up on that page. Normally I'd just make previews of each image and then link it to the full-size one. I'm not sure of what script would work the best. Coppermine, Zenphoto and stuff would be okay if you figure out how to include it to your layout. The Sean Battles and the Monster thing in your DeviantArt is epic :D

Media > Articles : Your Articles are really original, I don't think I've seen any of them on other sites. I didn't read them all. I read the 'E-mail from Year 2107', it was hilarious. I've never seen anything like it before. Also you had information on the date you posted/wrote it, which was good.

Media > Films : Wow, these are really cool (: It loads fine for me, and it was easy to click into each one. Plus there's that little preview thing for YouTube, which was awesome. That's great how you have Short Films, they're quite original as well as I've never seen anyone make these on their site. I briefly watched the 'Aisling in Action' one, and it was pretty hilarious for some reason I don't know why xD It could be more professional since you used Windows Movie Maker (I think) to make them, and to move on in a more advanced way I'd step out of that box.

Media > Recipes : THESE MADE ME HUNGRY, seriously. They all sound so yum D: I think I'm going to tell someone to make these for me, haha. The steps are descriptive enough, so I /think/ they should be readable instruction-wise. But I don't really cook or do recipes so I don't know :P I love how they all seem so home-made, like these little secret family recipes. I'd suggest perhaps including some Photos of the result. Or if you're patient/hard working enough, a picture of each step. But I think a photo of the result will be cool, you could put it at the top or the bottom so that it'll show how it'll look like. So if I made it look like a pile of crap, I'd know that it's not supposed to look like that :D Also you could add, like the difficulty or how long it takes to make it.

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OVERALL
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Overall it was good. I enjoyed visiting your site. Everything was quite organized, and the layout was easy enough to locate things around. I loved your writing style. Usually I'm not that impaled to read something on sites. I dunno why I do better reading things on paper, it just flows better for me that way. The way you wrote things, it made me interested in reading it because it seemed very funny and interesting. I found that all of your content was very original, you had very good ideas and everything you put on your site was great.

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Aisling's Response:
Thank you for your review! I actually have been meaning to change my photo/art section so it is fully integrated on the site. It used to be, but became too cluttered, so I moved it off-site for a while until I could figure something out. Obviously, I couldn't figure anything out. :P But, I will definitely look into your suggestions. Thank you!

The Aisling in Action film is definitely meant to be lulzy. I just had no other subject, and was watching "fan vids," on Youtube, and made my own fan vid. :P

I can definitely look into photos for the recipes-- I'm sure my family will be pleased to find me baking everything up! Haha!

Thank you for the compliment on my writing style! That means more to me than you would ever believe. :D
Yos gave it on 7th Nov 2008 and said:
I fell in love with Dreamling.ca the first time I saw it, I've seen tons of website with the "notebook" look but I've never seen the one like yours. The fact that it splash in front of our monitor screen is just awesome!
The navigation is easy and there are lots of creativity put into this layout, The variety of color fits together in this layout, and honestly, I don't know how you did that, all the colors just blend together!
I can also see why your footer is featured as the "Top 25 Impressive blog footers" It's just amazing and beautiful!

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Aisling's Response:
Thank you very much for your review. :) I'm glad you enjoy the site!