(Rated by 5 people, viewed by 230 people)
Webitect has 5 Reviews
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![[img: avatar]](/avatars/zai.gif)
zai gave it
on 16th Feb 2009 and said:Layout
Your current theme gave me a good first impression. The blueness exudes a professional tone which suits your website well, but I think your header needs a few minor adjustments. I think the navigational links need to be made more prominent. The white space in the header also looks strange; perhaps extending your logo so that the green background stretches across the top would solve the problem nicely.Nice footer, and the icons are cute. Your theme is premade? I'd really recommend using a layout created by you, especially since you're offering expertise on these skills.
I'd recommend increasing the line-height of your headings; as you can see on the Web Development category archive, the text overlaps. Some of your category names are a bit vague. How would Website Creation differ from Web Development, for example? Or maybe this is just me being stupid.
Content
There's loads of useful stuff to read here, which is great. I'd recommend somehow displaying a list of related posts next to individual blog entries to make browsing the site easier. I find your articles are well-written and interesting.To sum up, this is a great site and has the potential to be a wonderful resource for people in the field of web development, etc. But you should definitely use your own theme and display your own abilities to avoid losing credibility. Keep up the good work!
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![[img: avatar]](/avatars/_cy.png)
_cy gave it
on 12th Feb 2009 and said:/PRESENTATION & FORMATTING
1. JS Box makes the most gorgeous wordpress themes, don't they? You credit it, so I'm not going to go into too much detail about the design. However, on the little customization you did do--your site name--you chose the wrong color. There is no green in the rest of the layout. Why did you choose such a random color for the heading? Personally, I say you could gain a lot in ethos if you used your own design instead.2. You choose not to show the full text of the post on your front page. This is unfortunate, because a lot of lazy people do not like clicking to go to another page to read a post unless it is screaming at them because it was what they were looking for. You've probably lost a couple potential readers this way. So yes, while it causes a lot of scrolling, full posts on the front page are good for blogs.
3. The footer is nice, though I'm curious as to why the inside lists don't fill up all the space available. As it stands, it leaves an unfinished feeling to the bottom.
/CONTENT
1. You have some good articles, but again I emphasize the ethos/authority aspect you lose through the pre-made design. I especially like the Tips & Tricks sections and the links you provide on your articles for those who want to go more in depth. Good organization. :)2. Your about page could do with a lot of polishing. The purpose of your site is to instruct and give advice - as a result, professionalism is important. Unfortunately, this page detracts greatly from that, and throws your site backwards into the "personal site" category. You may be bad about writing about yourself (this isn't necessarily an "autobiography," by the way), but you don't have to state it right there. How about using third person? That's always fun to do, and may distance yourself enough for you to feel more comfortable.
Also, you reference the "we" pronoun in the very beginning, but then switch over to the "I" exclusive. Perhaps expand on the "we" or toss it out altogether.
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![[img: avatar]](/avatars/Shadow.jpg)
Shadow gave it
on 9th Feb 2009 and said:First Impression
I've seen that layout several places before in different colors, and I never liked it. There is a lot of white space and it's just bland. I know you don't need a fancy theme for what the site is mostly about, but I think that a better theme could have been used.
There's a horizonal bar in Opera. I don't know why; it's really not serving any purpose since it's just the horizontal bar and not the scrollbar (read: it's not scrolling, but it's just...there). It's annoying the heck out of me.
Blog and Sidebar
Text is big enough, there's enough padding and line height. Good. Now the sidebar. When I hover over your blogroll, the whole thing turns green. I'm sure that that's not supposed to happen. But otherwise, everything here looks fine. If you're not going to have an advertisment where it says "advertise here", then remove it. I don't think it'd kill the layout is you didn't.
Footer
The best part of the layout here--because it's really neat.
The other pages
About: You don't need the dates and categories for the Pages, by the way. I like how you got the name. You need to get a new contact form plugin since you say that it doesn't work half the time. I don't know which one you use, but I use Dagon Design's Secure Form Mailer Plugin and it works very well. There are a few more, so you can look for it.
Advertising: Just a bunch of advertisment mumbo jumbo. Nothing is out of the ordinary. Personally, until you get more people buying advertisment, I would lower the price to about $2-$3. It's just an idea.
Exits: Just a couple of links, nothing serious.
Your main focus is on the blog and you have some useful stuff in there. Very bookmark worthy.
Coding
Since this is a premade theme, and it looks like there really isn't much editing done to it, I'm assuming that it is all valid. But I'm checking in case. 11 errors, and I saw the problem immediately. In your Twitter image, you're missing a beginning quote for the title.
All in all...
Nevermind that the design is bland. Your focus is on the actual written content, which is indeed great. So my rating is based mostly on that. If you design things, it'd be cool to see some of your graphics in there as well. Great job so far and good luck!
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![[img: avatar]](/avatars/Mimi.jpg)
Mimi gave it
on 8th Feb 2009 and said:Reviewed with:
Mozilla Firefox 3.0.6 | 1440 x 900 Resolution| Windows Vista
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------First of all, horrah that you put your site up! I think I met you from you commenting on my blog and when I went to your site I was very impressed. There seems to be a fancy new layout so this shall be exciting! :D
Coding:
There were a few minor errors with validation which are probably just a little accident from the most recent blog post, I do that all the time. I usually forget alt tags in my images. Anyway, the only thing causing the 11 errors is that your Twitter image's alt tag is missing the first quotation mark. It has the end one so it was probably just a typo.
When I checked the CSS for validation, there were a whopping 6 errors and 492 warnings! Woah! Technically one error can be eliminated because when I checked for validation it automatically checks for CSS lvl 2.1 but the command passes in CSS 3.0. Three of the other errors are not even your fault, WP Polls is using a naughty Firefox only value which can easily be removed from it's CSS file (I did it when I used the plugin) and the last two remaining errors are just that the statement cursor: col-resize; in your rollingarchives.css file does not exist. Col-resize is not a valid cursor attribute.
The massive 492 warnings are all dealing with the colors and should quite easily be fixed if it concerns you. Some webmasters do not care to fix warnings but I always do because I like to be very thorough.
The coding is a bit bloated but I think it's just because there is SO MUCH going on that it cannot be helped.
I notice in a few instances that CSS Shorthand could be implemented, most of those instances I saw were with the font element, but overall it's not bad. Also using Px for your font sizes and line heights is generally not a good idea, but I found a neat Px to Em Calculator that you can use to instantly switch to a better measurement!
Really there are no huge red flags for me here in the coding section, I'm not a professional or anything. :)
Design:
I love the new design so the comments I have will just be nit-picky things in a list fashion.
- The top part bothers me a bit. I like the general idea but it's weird to me because you have your site logo, then navigation, then a bunch of blank space. Then underneath you have the whole category space which stands out far more than the site name and navigation which seems backwards to me. It spans the width of the layout and makes the part above it look even more lonely and empty. Also the main navigation is pale in comparison to the category navigation. I understand if you are wanting visitors to focus on the goods so that they get interested quickly but I stand firm in the belief that the site logo and main navigation should stand out more. Perhaps you could integrate the site logo and replace the categories image and then add your main navigation to a column in the blue box? I don't really know, I'm just trying to help. :)
- The white font that you are using on your logo and the category image seems a little stiff. It looks as though the alias has been removed, maybe make them a bit softer?
- In your category section when one hovers over a link it turns white, which I like, but then a random black and white diagonal pattern appears the to left. That pattern is very out of place since the rest of your design looks so Web 2.0. I think it would look best with simply a white background, but that is just my opinion.
- I think if you moved the category and comment part right underneath the site title it would look muchhh better than underneath all of that promotion stuffs.
- The whole hover over the blogroll thing I think is a bit extreme.. I can see the links themselves changing colors or the background but this big box just pops up out of nowhere and looks very alienated from the rest of the mellow layout. Oh wait, I just realized that it shows up on the poll as well. Eep!
- I like the black bar at the very top, I like the black bar at the very bottom but the black background for your big boxed footer looks much to dramatic. Instead why not use the same gray you used in your site logo (where you wrote "Resources for web developers")? I think that would tone it down and look fantastic!
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Your site takes a bit to load, even on my extremely fast connection, and I believe it is due to massive amounts of just STUFF in your coding. Try running your CSS through the CSS Cleaner to help out a little bit.. Maybe just get rid of some of the stuff you just really don't need. I checked your load times using a web page speed report from Website Optimization.com and these were your loading times on different connections:
14.4K: 285.15 seconds
28.8K: 149.78 seconds
33.6K: 130.44 seconds
56K: 84.02 seconds
ISDN 128K: 35.72 seconds
T1 1.44Mbps: 16.25 secondsThose should be cut in half to be at a good level. Every time I click on a link to view another page it lags and takes more time to load. Also, have you considered using a dynamic sidebar? Since the information never changes on the sidebar it's a bit silly to keep making it load over and over again every time you click on a link.
Anyway all in all your design is fabulous! I adore it, although I liked your old layout equally as much. :)
Content:
You have some amazing articles and I admit that I have spent a couple of hours just going through and reading them a few times. I am so very surprised that you do not get more hits/comments than you do! I have been a big fan since I ventured onto your site, like I said, so I really hope more people will take notice of your articles.
The only nag I would possibly have with them would be that sometimes your articles will be getting in the meaty part of the discussion, I am all pumped up and then it just ends. I feel sort of left without closure. It's not on all of them, just some, but conclusions are very important!
Final Thoughts
Yeah what can I say, I love the site. I think you have MASSIVE potential and I love to read your articles. I was sad when you disappeared for a bit there recently but glad you are back! I hope I helped a bit! ;)
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![[img: avatar]](/avatars/Greykitty.gif)
Greykitty gave it
on 8th Feb 2009 and said:Layout
It's very professional looking but at the same time it's uber bland. There is a large white gap to the right of your navigation and I find that an immediate turn off for wanting to look through the rest of your site. Add a banner logo or image or anything really to fill that up. That is the only major drawback I see at the moment to your site.
Even just small light grey images or something to sit there would look better than a big blank spot. Or a slightly faded photo of I dunno nature or something...I find your navigation text to be too small and I would suggest enlarging it a few points and maybe bolding it or changing the font face so it stands out more. I can barely see the hover over color change in the top most navigation. I would suggest making that stand out more.
I'm not too keen on the bright green roll over color for your blog roll and poll. I would suggest a light color that isn't so blindingly bright or do away with it entirely.
Content
I found your blog entries to be interesting and helpful, especially that recent one about a logo design.
Your about page is pretty thorough, and gave me enough info about the site. You already know the contact form is broken so I won't harp on that. XD
All the other pages you have up there are pretty standard and I haven't got much to say about them.I really cannot say much more about your content cause I have found all of it pretty good. Maybe offer some brushes or graphics that are freebies?
Overall
I liked your site, the layout is a big blah, but that can be fixed easily. Your content is grand though and very helpful. Keep up the great work! You have a good idea in starting this site. :) I will be bookmarking your site for sure.
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