Umbrella

Umbrella

***-- (Rated by 6 people, viewed by 161 people)

Umbrella is a personal portfolio with graphic resources and some tutorials. The webmiss is working hard to add more content onto this site and making it more well-known to others.

Added by Floatii in Graphics

Umbrella has 6 Reviews

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

  1. [img: avatar]
    qing gave it ****- on 22nd Feb 2009 and said:

    All righty! I'm Qing, and I'll be reviewing your website. I'm using Safari on Mac, by the way :)

    (Design)

    Aesthetics
    I'm glad that this isn't some "ooh i l0ve p1nk && i wannn4 puttt it on mahhhh lay0ut" sort of website. I adore your layout. :D The notebook has calming colours for the eyes (thank you - says my eyes).

    Improvements (pt. 1)
    You may want to add a background colour or texture. Maybe a woody brown. But it looks fineish with the white.
    By the way, is the sitename meant to be on the bottom?
    You may want to change "spam" into "tagboard" or something similar. When I saw "spam" on the header I was like, "Err, why would someone want to have spam in their website"? Just my personal opinions, they can be left the way they are.

    Graphical Ability
    I'm not very sure if you took the photo of the notebook yourself or you took it... we will see... ;)

    (pages and content)

    (About Section)
    Wow, you have a lot of content about yourself! :D Maybe you may want to change "teensy facts" to something more... un-teensy. Heehee.

    Portfolio
    Yay! Portfolio! And it's organized! :D Between "blends" and "collages" you have a space (checking the code - err - maybe I can't. Talking about this later.) about 5-10 pixels height. Why don't you do that for the rest of the categories as a separator?

    Site
    Great, great, nothing to criticize on. :)

    Links
    All right, no baddies about that either. Just a point: do you think this goes under the "about" section? (Well, it doesn't go into any other category in your site either. Never mind.)

    Credits
    Great to see you've credited your resources. Yay, notebook wasn't stolen!

    Contact
    All right, it's in fixing state. Nothing to say (literally!).
    (/About section)

    (Learn section)
    Tutorials
    One tutorial. *checks* Oh, when I clicked on it, it showed many other tutorials. Cool, but maybe you may want to organize the page like this, instead of loads of subpages.

    <ul>
    (tab here)<li><a href="(url here)">Text on a Path</a></li>
    (tab here)<li><a href="(url here)">Blah tutorial</a></li>
    (tab here)<li><a href="(url here)">Another one</a></li>
    (tab here)<li><a href="(url here)">And so on</a></li>
    </ul>

    Where I say (tab here), I mean the tab button on your keyboard. On Mac, it's on the left side of the keyboard, says "tab". On Windows, it says "tab" with two arrows pointing opposite directions. This helps to keep your code clean and readable (explanation later)

    (/Learn section)

    (Extra section)
    Yay! Goodies, goodies, goodies! Where you say "and please credit", people may think: How do you credit?, so you may want to add "by linking back".

    As I mentioned before, you may want to use <ul> tags to organize your lists. Ul stands for unordered list.

    All right, everything is good, good, good :)

    (/Extra section)

    (Spam section)

    I explained this earlier on that you should use tagboard instead of spam :P

    (/Spam section)

    (Miscellaneous)

    Improvements (pt. 2)
    You are using Cutenews as your CMS. Hmm, maybe it might be alright with you, but Cutenews is a very insecure script, click here for more details. You might want to have a "big conversion and cleanup" of your site, removing unwanted things and ... cleaning up your code.

    CODE!! &laquo; important

    HTML/XHTML

    Viewing the source, I see that everything is in a large chunk. @_@

    This might be the reason why you think that coding is a pain in the butt.

    Everything is untidy and confusing. I'd get confused if I was the webdesigner :S

    As I said before, use the TAB key to organize, organize, organize! :D

    So, say, if I wanted to, hmm, make a list, paragraph, and show a bunch of images, I would make the source code a little like this:


    <h1>My Header</h1>
    (tab here)<p>My description, blah blah, lalala hello my name is Qing, I can be called Qingy blah blah</p>
    (line break, not <br>, but just "Enter")
    (tab here)<img src="(image url here)" alt="My Awesome Picture!" /><br />
    (tab here)<img src="blah.jpg" alt="" />
    (line break, not <br>, but just "Enter")
    (tab here)<p>Some kind of description for the images</p>
    (line break, not <br>, but just "Enter")
    (tab here)<ul>
    (tab here)(tab here)<li>My first item for the list! Yippee!!</li>
    (tab here)(tab here)<li>This is getting tedious</li>
    (tab here)</ul>

    You are using <br><br> a lot. "<p> My content here </p>" is equivalent to "My content here <br><br>". Which one do you think is easier to type?

    Oh, and I think HTML 4.01 Transitional is a better alternative for *you* than XHTML Transitional. Reason is, XHTML is *way* stricter than HTML - and you say that coding is a pain - so, HTML might be a better starting point for you. :D

    And here it is:

    <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

    If you want to continue on XHTML (which you aren't, your pages won't validate), you can use this XHTML cheat sheet (I use it myself! :P) here.

    You mix em and i tags occasionally.

    CSS

    Oh no, you have an external stylesheet and styles in the body. It's a:link, a:visited, a:hover... so you can stuff that into your "style.css".

    In your CSS,

    times new roman

    should be

    "Times New Roman"

    . You need to specify an image url for your background image. (it's currently EMPTY).

    The validator will tell you the rest of the flaws. :)

    Conclusion
    I'm not an expert reviewer, but your site is a very nice website. The *biggest* thing you need to improve on is coding. If you can maintain a high level of coding and clean it up, your website may be even 4.5-star-standard.

    I will return as an irregular visitor. :P

    UPDATED 22 Feb 09:
    Oh yes, I've forgotten to add this in the review. Don't worry, it's a good point :P
    The layout is thin and centered, so most people can view it properly. Even if they had a miniscule computer screen, the website would show perfectly. Awesome!

    Using Safari on Mac | Report This?

    Floatii's Response:

    oh thank you so much for this review! :D
    and as for the coding i'll take in your advice to see what the heck i can do with it, because it confuses me too much. T_T
    so thanks for the little lesson about it!

  2. [img: avatar]
    farahonfire gave it ****- on 21st Feb 2009 and said:

    hello, i'm farah, and i'll be reviewing your site today. (:

    my first impression of your site isn't amazing - i like the image you've chosen, but the white background doesn't go along with it. a background that matches one of the colors in your layout - the brown at the top or the gray below that - would look nicer, i think. in addition, it would look better if the notebook was bigger! also, your site name is at the bottom, below all your content. it would look better at the top, in that empty brown space. but i do like the font for the navigation, that's very nice. (:

    clicking on the comments to your first blog post, i see that the majority of them are spam. to fix this, you could either put spam protection, or convert to wordpress or something.

    about
    moving onto your "about" page - i think that it should be soley for information about you, rather than having all your site-related pages in there. you should make a separate page for your site, and the links and credits could go on there. i think that your portfolio should be in "extras" rather than "about", and your contact page could go with either a site page or a page about you - it would work either way.

    the girl flora
    "I like many many things, such as Dong Bang Shin Ki except they're not a thing." - explain what dong bang shin ki is? i have no idea, and you really shouldn't state that you like something that most people won't have a clue about without providing a link to a page with information about it, or a short explanation. (did that make sense?)

    for some reason, you have this page organized in... blog posts? which doesn't make much sense, to be honest - you could have put it in a normal page, and separated them in paragraphs or with headers. the rest is fine, although for your "facts" you really should line break the facts instead of having them all in one block. also, don't use so many smileys.

    site
    really, there's not much to say about this page. it's well organized, although you could put both your links and credits here instead of on your about page. and as i've said before, i think you should make this a separate page in the navigation.

    links
    i think you should put the names of your affiliates rather than just their link buttons! that way, we know who we're leaving your site for.

    learn
    you only have category of tutorial under "learn", so maybe you could ditch the learn page and just put them under "extra". also, change the title from "photoshop" to "photoshop tutorials", because the way you have it now makes it seem more like one tutorial about photoshop. and i'm not going to review the tutorials, because i know nothing about photoshop, haha. (:

    extras
    as i've said before, your tutorials and portfolio could go here. your "random" page could go under the heading "miscellaneous". i won't review the things you offer, goodies and things, because that's not my thing at all, haha.
    i like your tips, they're unique and you're not gonna find another page like that anywhere! i think you should add more of these if you can - i like them a lot! (: and your random page made me laugh, although you could have had the little paragraph about it on the same page, just above it instead of making your visitors click on 987654 links to get there.

    spam
    just to reiterate what most of the reviewers have said so far - rename this page! it's really misleading; it should be titled "comments", "comment box", "tagbox", or something of the like. that way, people know what they're clicking on!

    summary!
    so to summarize, your site isn't especially original, nor is it especially generic. your layout leaves something to be desired, but the general idea of it is nice. i think you could go places with this site - you just need to fix some things. it's definitely got the potential to be better than it already is!

    Using Safari on Mac | Report This?

  3. flamingfox gave it ****- on 7th Feb 2009 and said:

    Hiya, I'm Sarah! ^^ I'll be writing a review for your site, viewing it in Google Chrome at 1024x768px on Windows XP. :) I hope you see my review as a bunch of suggestions, not a bunch of mean criticisms. :)

    Site Name/URL:
    I've never heard of a site named Umbrella before; really unique. :)
    Good job, shortening "Umbrella" in the URL to just a U. Makes it easier to type and/or find. ^^

    Layout:
    What's your site name? Oh, Umbrella. I can only see that by scrolling down and looking at the footer. Maybe you can include it on the header.
    I like the notepad idea. :) Very creative.
    The colors are kind of drab, and the layout is maybe a bit too skinny. I feel as if my eyes were limited to a certain area. And the background -- maybe you could create a little background and have it repeated. :)

    Content:
    You have such pretty, thoughtful pictures. Calming. :)
    A lot of tutorials -- excellent. People will try to copy your graphics. :D But I only see tutorials for Photoshop -- some people don't have Photoshop, or they might like other subjects, like shortcuts, HTML, CSS, etc.
    You have a lot of content on your site. Great! However, I see those things everywhere -- textures, icons, etc. A little creativity and uniqueness wouldn't hurt here. ;)
    Good, you have a small place for comments. Add some rules maybe -- some visitors can be very freaky.

    Organization and Creativity:
    Great organization -- I can easily find my way around. Very original, like that Random note you wrote. XD You could use a bit more creativity though. Especially on your layout. :D

    All in all, I think your site doesn't need any major improvements. It just needs a little more of your own light to shine through it. Keep up the awesome work! ;D It was a pleasure reviewing your site!

    Using Safari on Windows | Report This?

  4. shockwave gave it ***** on 26th Jan 2009 and said:

    Hey, I'm Allie! I'll be reviewing your site in Firefox. :D

    First Impressions.
    I see a little skinny notepad thingmabob. XD At first I'm not really sure what the site name is; There is no sign of the word "Umbrella" on the top of your layout. Then I scroll down and it's on the footer, I see.

    Site Name and URL.
    Umbrella isn't really a unique site name, but it's short and simple to remember. I'm fine with the URL; if you used umbrella in your URL, it would have been too long. Kudos for you! :D

    Coding.
    Uh oh. I can't check your HTML coding because of some symbol in your coding. Click here to see what I mean. Awesome! You only have 2 errors in your CSS. That's great. To view your CSS, click here.

    Layout.
    The colors are a bit dull, and the layout is a bit plain and too skinny for my likings. You should include your site name on the top where the visitors can see it clearly. But I like the notepad style theme; it's pretty cute. :)

    Content.
    You have a tagboard; great for visitors to leave a comment. Maybe you should add some rules so the visitors know what they should and should NOT do.
    You have a nice portfolio; I love all the pictures.
    You seem to have several tutorials. However, they are all for Photoshop. Maybe you should add tutorials for other subjects?
    You have a variety of content for your visitors; that's great! :D But most of the content is pretty generic; I see them everywhere! Be more unique. Be creative!

    Organization and Creativity.
    Your site is well organized, nice job on that. You have some original stuff, like the Random article. It really was random. XD You could use a bit more creativity though. Especially on your layout. :D

    Overall Comment.
    All in all, you have done an awesome job with your site. Just needs a bit more "oomph." XD Keep up the great work! :D

    Using Firefox on Windows | Report This?

  5. [img: avatar]
    Greykitty gave it **--- on 24th Jan 2009 and said:

    Layout

    I'm not too keen on the colors you have chosen. I don't mind brown but that grey doesn't really look nice with it. I don't really like how your layout just chops off, you have the whole spiral notebook thing going on but it just stops, no edge is shown on your note pad. I think it would look really nice if you showed a rough paper edge or something on it and ditch the grey or make the whole background the same color. Right now it looks as if it's not displaying properly or that you just didn't finish the layout.

    It would also be nice to see your site's name somewhere on the layout header rather than the bottom of the page. It would be nice to see it in a dark font like the rest of your text too. The white looks out of place. I would also suggest adding a nice image footer, like the rough edges of paper, like I suggest on the edges and drop the gaps where the main background shows through. Right now I just find the whole layout really disconnected and unfinished looking.

    Your navigation is simple and organised, nothing really to say about that, and I'm ecstatic to see your font is readable! Bravo to you for that. I find your little smiley dudes amusing as well.

    I would also suggest having all your layout images on your server just in case your image host goes down, at least your layout won't be in shambles. I'm checking out your coding and I see you have used a lot of style tags. First off if you are going to use an external style sheet you should seperate ALL style from content. Makes for much easier editing and faster loading. Second if you do put any styling in your site's code it should be in the header if it starts off with &#60;style&#62;. But as I said before it's better to just keep it all in your external style sheet.

    I tried running your site through the W3C validator and it could not even check it. So you need to really really look into fixing your code. I would highly recommend stopping by this site and checking out her CSS and xhtml tutorials. They are VERY well written and easy to understand.

    Content

    About

    *The little blip about your personality is ok, gives a little insight into how you are, but as I move on I just have to say holy crap. The next paragraph made my brain hurt. I don't understand a single thing you have there. Not only is it baffling beyond belief but it's really an uneeded paragraph. If you really feel the need to post something about a lover then sure go ahead but what's all this stuff about being married, the dating chicks and .... ah I couldn't keep track. The last paragraph was pretty good though. Again gives a nice image of who you are.

    Mooooooving on...

    *Portfolio looks pretty nice, bigger thumbnails would be lovely but not needed. At least you use them. :P Most look good, you have a nice grasp of photomanipulation so far.

    *Site section is pretty complete. Nothing more to say on that.

    *Links are pretty standard so no comments there or on the credits page. The contact page it would be nice if it stayed with your layout them rather than going to a seperate page.

    Learn

    *Your tutorials are organised pretty nicely. I like that you have a little about text for each one. I would really suggest putting images into your tutorials rather than just links.

    Extras

    *Most of these looked really really nice. I don't know if they are celebs or not but try to avoid any copyrighted images. The tips thing is a neat section and so are your polls. Again would be nice if they didn't take you away from the site to another seperate page but it's a neat idea.

    Spam

    *Nothing much to say on that, other than I think the name of the section is amusing and very fitting. XD

    Overall

    I think your site is ok. You have some pretty decent content, but what brings it down for me is the layout and coding. If you really really hate coding I would suggest trying to find a nice premade layout and just use it, also using something like Wordpress would be a huge plus too. It's very easy to use and make pages. Takes a little time to get used to it but you can install really nice themes in it etc.

    Using Firefox on Windows | Report This?

    Floatii's Response:

    thank you very much for the review! :D

    i see you dislike my layout, but that's okay, i'm not going to hold anything against you cause i do agree with you that it's quite boringg. x_x
    and as for the coding thing, i did try to run it through the validator but it doesn't work! maybe there are too many errors. I'm working on trying to sharpen up my coding skills because as you can see, I'm very confused about almost everything associated with it. The suggestion about using a template I have thought about, but I would like my own layout, so yea.

    Darrnnn, everybody's confused about my love life. Well, maybe I should just cast that off at the random page instead of in my profile.

    I'm with you on the contact page, I'll fix it ASAP!

    Oh yea, me and my little friends spam a lot don't we? x_x
    Thanks for this review! :D

  6. [img: avatar]
    stepherz gave it ***-- on 24th Jan 2009 and said:

    Hi Flora! I'm stepherz and will be reviewing your website today! :)

    Layout
    I've seen a lot of people trying to pull off the notepad look like you have going on and it can be difficult to execute effectively. While I like the color scheme that you have chosen and appreciate that your text is legible (nice sizing and color!) your layout seems to be a little boring. I think you might be able to spice it up by adding maybe a photo, some doodles, or a quote, to give it more of that notepad feel. I also think you should add something that says your site name on top, instead of just having it in your footer. i also think that instead of the dots on your footer, a cute little doodle umbrella would look cute!

    Consider ditching cutenews. It's a very insecure script. (http://www.jemjabella.co.uk/articles/unsafe-php-scripts or http://www.crestfallen.nu/written/articles/common-fatal-errors/4/)

    Content
    About - I usually prefer when people have separate about me pages and site pages. I also don't understand the way that this page is organized. The first link is about the site, the second two links are about you, and then the last three are about the site again. I think that you should either create separate pages for these two, or organize it more clearly. (have the first part of the page about you and the second half about the site?)
    - Site - This page is well organized and straight forward, and shows a little bit of your humor. I like that there are quick facts at the top and than more in depth towards the bottom. Maybe add a year to the grand opening date though?
    - Flora - The girl Flora is well written and organized, though I wish it would have given an age and country. I'm always curious about these things. :) Love life was hard for me to follow, I think you should try rewriting it and making it a little more clear who's with who, what happened. A little more about me read like a blog entry but that's exactly what it is, consider rewriting it to make it more... clear?
    - Portfolio - Nicely organized, but I wonder if all of these images belong to you? Copyright violation isn't cool.
    - Links - Nicely organized. Nothing much to say.
    - Credits - Maybe organize this page so people know where you got what? Like organize it something like, brushes, stock images, tutorials. That way people don't have to guess where you got that killer brush.
    - Contact - Why do I have to click twice to get to an email form? And in a pop-up. Maybe just have this link link directly to the form? Maybe also add other ways that they can get in contact with you, such as an email or a link to your rev.iew.me account. ;)

    Learn - I've never used photoshop, so I won't review the techniques you are trying to teach but rather if these pages make sense and anything else I think would make it better. I think maybe it would be helpful to add a small picture to the descriptions that way people can see what they are going to do before having to click to go to a whole new page.
    Text on a path - I think you should include an example of what they're doing on the top, since I had no idea what they were supposed to be doing until the bottom of the page. Maybe put the fourth example on the bottom on the top? That way people will know what they are aiming for before they do it, instead of just treading along blindly. All the other tutorials also seem to be well written; I just think all of them could benefit from having an example at the top of what the effect is that they are trying to learn.

    Extra - Maybe change this to graphics instead of extra? That way people know exactly what they are clicking on.
    - Icon Textures - Nicely made. Maybe mention what format these are in? .jpg . pat .whatever?
    - Textures - These are nice. :)
    - PSDs - maybe get rid of the read more link on the first box since there's nothing more to read? Coloring PSDs. This took me a while to understand what it was. So they are basically just downloading a color?
    - Icons - These are nice, but I don't know if you actually own some of these images. Copyright violation isn't cool.
    - Headers - Nice.
    - Tips - Ah, these aren't graphics. I see why you have this as extra then.
    - Sorting Emotions - Nice read. Some good tips here. :) I enjoy punching my pillow when things get rough.
    - Lazy Anymore - Also enjoyed this read. I have to make a to do list for myself as well, or else I won't get anything done. I think maybe you should consider taking out the "I don't," from this sentence, "You need to feel good about yourselves! I don't, but I try to because if it helps me to be a better person," as it seems kind of hypocritical...
    - Polls - These polls seem to be mostly about you. Which is fine, but maybe add some different ones that ask about the visitors opinions instead?

    - Spam - Maybe change this to say tagboard, as spam is misleading and I didn't understand what it was at first. If you make a site page, this could easily go on it instead of its own page.

    Coding
    I'm not an expert coder or anything but I'll briefly look into your coding. http://validator.w3.org can't even run a validation check of your site. I'd consider validating your website as it will help it display similarly on different browsers. Why do you have style in your document when you're using external stylesheets?

    Overall
    I still really think you should lose cutenews if at all possible. I don't feel like it's a good idea to run your whole site using it since it's very holey. I also feel like your site reads more like a personal site than a graphics site (what you have it listed on rev.iew.me under). I think you have a lot of potential. You seem to be fairly good at graphics, but I don't feel like that's evident from your current layout; it seems a little bland and doesn't express your personality. I really enjoyed the two 'tips' you had written, and think that you should write more articles. I would come back to read those if you did. Overall, I did enjoy your site, and would have stayed longer if you had more for me to read.

    Using Firefox on Windows | Report This?

    Floatii's Response:

    oh thank you so much for the review!
    yes, the layout's...not like me. i think i was really desperate to get the site back up right away so yea. x_x but i'll do better for the next one, this one's so boring. haha
    i see what you mean about the "about" page, i never realized it myself that it was kinda weird. hehe, i should go fix it right away :D

    my love life is quite confusing..yes. it's for fun, but to make sure that i don't make people's head spin i might fix it up a bit.

    the contact form is blahh. i wanted it on the own page but then that site didn't provide that for me. i think i should change the form's provider then, because going to another page is troublesome. i thought it was fine, but now that you said it i think i need to go fix that.

    as for the coding, i didn't know about a validator until...today. i don't know why it can't check my site. =/
    as for the style thing, i think it's because it won't read my css? i was really confused about everything so i just went with anything that looks right to me.

    thank you so much for the review! :D

    UPDATED 24 Jan 09:
    ohh and i forgot to tell you about those pictures i used for my graphics.
    i do have credits for them in the credit section, but i guess it's not very clear. i'll update that so i won't get ran over by people who owns the picture.

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