Stellachu

Stellachu

**--- (Rated by 12 people, viewed by 316 people)

Stellachu.net is a personal and portfolio site owned by Salma which holds a place for her thoughts which is found in her blogs, a portfolio which displays some of her old and new works and contains a collection of icons for it's visitors.

Added by astraldrops in Portfolio

Stellachu has 12 Reviews

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

  1. rockcandy gave it ***-- on 27th Dec 2008 and said:

    First Impression/layout:
    I like your layout a lot, very creative!
    I think that it would look better if you put your navigation on the top instead of the sidebar, especially since you have a nice big font for them.

    Your sidebar also seems huge. You might want to shorten some of the stuff, or cut some sections out. Your 'about me' on your sidebar should also be shorter, since you already have a whole page about you.

    I also think that you shouldn't make the link CSS match with the headers. It just doesn't look right for some reason.
    So basically, lay off the italicized georgia font. It's in your headers, your links, and your commenting system for your blog. I think it' just a bit too much.

    Content:
    Nice icons. I need to do the same, but many people have told me this-lay off of celebrity images.

    Your portfolio is really nice. I love your layouts! I also like the script you used, but it's loading slow for me.
    Since it's a portfolio site, keep adding more pieces. I'd love to see your future works!

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    astraldrops's Response:

    Thanks for your review, I tried adding the navigation at the top and it doesn't look flattering at all.

    Although, I don't agree with the rest, but I will take your opinion/views into consideration.

  2. [img: avatar]
    Mimi gave it **--- on 27th Nov 2008 and said:

    Reviewed with:
    Mozilla Firefox 3.0.4 | 1440 x 900 Resolution| Windows Vista
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    First Impression:

    I thought the top half of the layout looked kind of cute, but the bottom looked a little sloppy. I like the header image, but I'm fairly sure with as many reviews as you have gotten that people have been telling you that celebrity images are illegal so I'm not going to nag about it.

    The background image seems to be a hot topic on here as well, but it did make me think the site looked a bit more sloppy because of it. It's something that can be easily fixed, though. I wasn't too very impressed because it isn't very original, but I don't think it's horrible at all. Just in need of a few adjustments.

    Coding:

    I see that you used a template, which I will count off for but not too much. Not to worry, I use templates, too. I am not trying to be mean or anything, but I really like the way the template had the layout set up originally much more than how you edited it... It seems to have more balance in it's original form. I am very happy to see that you credit the template maker, a lot of people think they can be "sneaky" and get away with this. It shows me that you are honest to this extent. :)

    Argh, I keep rambling. Let's get on to coding shall we?

    Oh my goodness gracious... If the CSS looked like this when you downloaded the theme, you should consider never using her coding again. It's an awful mess!! There are 19 errors and 110 warnings. I have never seen so many warnings before! :o :o

    Let's erm, address some of these problems...

    There are seven places in your CSS where you have this written:

    font-weight: none;

    That's not correct and it is one of your errors. 'none' is not an actual command, so if you were trying to un-bold something, you will need to use:

    font-weight: normal;

    I haven't even looked to see if it's even necessary yet, but if you haven't even noticed that it doesn't work, obviously you don't need to put that in your CSS.

    In your '.menu' section, you have an empty text-transform, which is causing an error. So you can just remove this:

    text-transform:;

    For some reason, you have this in your CSS:

    font-color: #silver;

    You can't have a # sign in front of a color name, but I recommend that you just use a hex code instead of a word anyway. The word colors aren't always recognized by all browsers. That would be under your Navigation link setup in your CSS.

    In your 'a.nav.hover' section, for your background color you have:

    background-color:# 80a08f;

    .. which is almost correct, but you can't have a space between the # and the hex code, so it is causing an error there. Easy to fix, that one.
    Directly underneath that, you have:

    border-bottom:none;

    .. which is again an error. If you are removing the bottom border like that, you need it to say:

    border-bottom: 0px;

    In your '.side-content' section, you again have something that was left empty. You need to make sure you aren't leaving empty little things in your CSS, it causes errors. So remove this from that section:

    font-style: ;

    Oh and directly underneath it, you did it again. :( Remove:

    text-transform: ;

    The name '.footer strong, b' is causing an error. You will want it to say:

    .footer b

    This ENTIRE section makes me cringe, it is just awful. So I am just going to fix it for you because... ahh...

    Here is what you have:

    .news-box-post img {
    border-width: 6px;
    border-style: solid;
    border-color: #d1d1d1;
    padding-left: 2px;
    padding-top: 2px;
    padding-right: 2px;
    padding-bottom: 2px;
    margin-bottom: 10px;
    background-color: #dcdcdc;
    background-image: none;
    background-repeat: repeat;
    background-attachment: scroll;
    background-x-position: 0%;
    background-y-position: 0%;
    }

    Here is what you should have:

    .news-box-post img {
    border: 6px solid #d1d1d1;
    padding: 2px;
    margin-bottom: 10px;
    background-color: #dcdcdc;
    }

    There was all that crap about a background (which, btw, background-x-position and background-y-position don't even exist.) but there wasn't even a background THERE to tell all that stuff to! I am baffled at how your site even works! :o

    The very last error is just weird. Did you not notice at the very end of your CSS document there is a random word there? That word is 'yore'. Take that out and fix everything I said above and your CSS will validate. However, it's still reallyyyyy horrible, even if it is validated. I would like to address a few issues you seem to be having problems with. Mostly, you have an incredible amount of useless instructions in your CSS. Also, there is absolutely no use of CSS shorthand and that makes for horridly long coding.

    In that news box section I fixed above, you can see how I shortened it dramatically by using CSS shorthand. For example, typing this:

    padding-top: 2px;
    padding-right: 2px;
    padding-bottom: 2px;
    padding-left: 2px;

    ... is just redundant. All you have to do is write:

    padding: 2px;

    and it will be the same, exact thing. It would be much easier for me or other people to help you improve your CSS if you would use CSS shorthand. It's SO SO easy to learn, trust me. :) Jem, the owner of this site, has a neat little page that tells you all about it. Please read (and use!!) Jem's CSS Shorthand Tutorial. I hope you don't hate me for being so forth-right about that, but it's seriously a mess. I honestly want to know if her coding was like that when you downloaded it? If so, please don't use her as an example. You can do so much better, I just know it!

    As for the 110 warnings in your CSS, it's simply because you are repeating the colors when you don't need to.

    Let me make an example for you, but this is not necessarily something in your coding. I am just making it up so you can see what I mean.

    Let's say you have this in your code:

    body {
    background-color: #000000;
    color: #FFFFFF;
    }

    Which is basically saying, background color is black and the text in the body of my page is going to be white.

    Then you want to customize the side bar or something. So then you write:

    .sidebar {
    background-color: #EEEEEE;
    color: #FFFFFF;
    }

    This is saying I want my sidebar's background to be gray and the text to be white. Doesn't seem wrong, does it?

    Well the fact that you have already said at the beginning that you want the text to be white means that you do NOT have to say it over and over for each section in the CSS. By putting it in your sidebar there (well, just my example, teehee) you are just telling it to do something it is already doing. This confuses your poor little site and produces all of those errors. This exact thing is what is causing 105 of your 110 errors!!!

    The other 5 errors? Very simple to fix, not something that most people even do. You should do it, though, so let me tell you how to fix it! When you are using a font that has white space in the name (In layman's terms, a font name that has more than one word, thus there is a space between each word) you need to put that font name in quotes. So if you have this (which you do!):

    font-family:Trebuchet MS;

    You should change it to:

    font-family: "Trebuchet MS";

    There are five times that you tell it to use a font that has a space in the name, so if you find all five of those and put quotes around the font name, it will get rid of those 5 errors.

    Back to CSS shorthand, let me do a little bit of your code for you so you can see it in action if the tutorial is confusing you. Let's take the very first section, 'body', and I will re-write it so it is correct. I will then tell you what I removed and why, if need be. Here is what you have:

    body {
    margin-left: 0px;
    margin-top: 0px;
    margin-right: 0px;
    margin-bottom: 0px;
    background-color:#ffffff;
    background-repeat: repeat;
    background-image: url(/image/backg.jpg);
    font-family:verdana;
    font-size:11px;
    font-style:normal;
    font-weight:normal;
    letter-spacing:normal;
    color: #7f9f93;
    }

    ... and here is what it should look like:

    body {
    margin: 0px;
    background: #ffffff url(/image/backg.jpg) repeat;
    font: 11px verdana;
    color: #7f9f93;
    }

    ... WOW, huh?? I took all of that writing and made it half it's size and it will still work exactly the same!

    Let's go over what I did. First, I already told you about the margin thing, only the example I used was with padding. It works with padding and with margin. Then, I used CSS shorthand for the background and made it all one line instead of three, also using shorthand to shorten up the font size and family.

    Now, you have font-style, font-weight and letter-spacing all set at normal. Why? In the body tag, it's all already going to be normal because it's at the very beginning and you haven't told it to be bold or to have extra spacing yet. It's useless information in your CSS file.

    As if your brain wasn't going to explode from all of my typing (haha, sorry... I get SO wordy with my reviews!!) I have one more suggestion for you. You are using px for your font size. This is not wrong, so don't think that! I do want to tell you that I suggest you use em instead of px. Why? When you tell the font to be 10px, it will remain 10px no matter what, forever and ever. There are lots of people in the world that have bad eyesight and they have to make the text size bigger in their web browsers so they can see websites. If yours is set at 10px, that poor person cannot make it larger at all! If you use em, it will let them make the font bigger if they need to. :(

    Don't think it will make your text all big and ugly all the time, though! It will still be as big as you set it at first, unless someone manually goes in their own browser and changes it. So, now you probably are thinking "How the heck do I even change it??" since 10px and 10em are WAYYY different (10 em would be literally 10 times bigger than 10px... LOL!). Well I have found a realllly handy thing on the internet! All you do is enter the number of pxs you have your font set at (in your body tag for example, it's 11px) and it will automatically show you what the em should be! So 11px translates to 0.69em. Which is.. wayy too small in my opinion, even for people with good eyesight! LOL I will get to that in the design section, later. So, here is The Px to Em Calculator.

    Alright, let's move on to the XHTML coding part. I know for a fact that Wordpress automatically has proper XHTML to begin with, until someone messes with it. So I know that the first step is having this in your header:

    Yours, however, is missing this DOCTYPE declaration which is the first of many, many errors in coding you have. This tells me that you manually went in and removed that from your header! Why on earth would you do that?! So in order to have good coding, let's put that back in your header file. It should be the absolute first thing on your page, even before the tag. Then, change the tag to this, please:

    There. This will start you on the road to proper coding! After you put those BACK into the headers, you can go here and it will tell you how many errors your coding has, what they are and how to fix them: W3C Markup Validation Service. Just enter your URL in the box and click 'Validate'. It will detect all the important stuff for you if you changed your header like I showed you up above. :)

    There are a ton of HTML errors, too, but I really feel like I have exhausted my coding lecture for the day. I had better stop before I overload you. ^^* I always offer this to people who need help and I want you to know that if you need some help after working on what I gave you already, do not hesitate to PM me, e-mail me or whatever. I absolutely LOVE helping people validate their coding. I won't name any names, but several people have taken me up on that offer and it's helped their site out so much... It also makes more people want to visit you.. so they can see the awesome changes! ;) So please, feel free to contact me if you want some more help! I will leave coding like that, let's move on to design.

    Design:

    Instead of writing paragraphs like I did with the coding, I am going to just make quick little lists of things I think could be improved because this is the absolute longest review I have ever written! Poor you!! XD So basically, don't think I am being a biatch and just nagging, I'm just trying to make it shorter for you! :(

    - The background image seems to be a topic. In your screen cap, it looks like it faded into a white background. I think this would be better, although I wouldn't make it fade into white particularly. I would probably make it fade into a greenish/grayish color that is close to the colors in that background image. Changing this background-seam problem will help a lot.

    - I think the header image is nice, like I said, but it's too small! You should make it at least as wide as the content and navigation!

    - When you hover over the navigation, the font color should change instantly instead of changing only when the mouse is over the actual word. So when I put my mouse over an empty part of that box, it should also change the font color.

    - I would advise that you make the font at least one size bigger because it's so very small and make the line height bigger as well. This will take your text (that has seemingly congealed into a big block!) and spread it out more evenly, making it easier to read. I will always stay at a site twice as long if the text isn't all cramped. Most people I know will agree with me on this one. :3

    - Instead of a suggestion here, I wanted to compliment the use of padding on your theme. The words are not clinging to the side of the content areas and that looks fantastic. :D I love good use of padding.

    - The blog post title area (with the black text and reddish background) bugs me for a couple of reasons. I don't think the bottom dashed line looks good or fits in with the theme at all. Also, the padding I complimented you for above is not applying here. It needs more padding because the text is bumping the edges of the red box it's in.

    - I think it's cool how you are doing the blog every day thing, but apparently that isn't happening. You haven't blogged for almost 3 weeks now. Plus the image thing that you have linked to Oh-Vintage's site is almost as big as your header! It's very distracting to your visitors, maybe they will just click on that and leave your site forever! Oh noes! We can't have that. :(

    That's all I am really going to say about the design. :P

    Content:

    Someone (or multiple people) has already told you about how it's not a good idea to have up a portfolio that uses copyrighted images so I won't say anything else about it, just that they gave you sound advice in telling you to remove it. If you are going to make a portfolio or leave that one up, might I suggest you use Lightbox so that the images don't keep popping up in new tabs/windows? I find that rather annoying. You can find a Wordpress plugin for Lightbox here. To open an image in Lightbox, you just add:

    rel="lightbox"

    .. to the image link.

    I also wanted to point out that I think Sweetandtalented.com is a sorry arse excuse for a site. ALL of the images on there are illegal, that person could quite possibly be sued for millions of dollars if reported. By using their images you are NOT obtaining the legal rights to use the celebrity images found there. I utterly despise that website.. *grumbles* It makes unknowing people think they are doing something right that is in fact very, very wrong. I found a great FAQ on Copyright, maybe you would like to read it to help you understand better? I know it helped me! I can't sit here and pretend that I never made celebrity layouts because you know what? I sure as heck did! Oh baby, I have done all of the things I am telling you to fix here! That's why I can say it, because I have been there and wish someone would have told me back then. I had to learn myself and it sucked. T_T

    Really.. there isn't much content. I was a bit surprised by this. The site stuff is generic and the resources... Well, there is only one tutorial and it's not really much of a tutorial. You're generally supposed to take a step-by-step approach to completing a goal, explaining it along the way so someone can learn. Brushes... there are like 4? Icons are more celebrity images... Nothing very original. :(

    Final Thoughts:

    I reallllly think you need to learn some better coding tactics before expanding your site more. Although it seems you haven't even updated in almost 3 weeks? I couldn't stand neglecting my site like that. :( If you don't ever update, no one will ever come. What's the point of having a site if no one will come to it?

    You have an alright start, just study up some more. I am giving you a 1 1/2 star because of the coding and general lack of content. I give the half star because the layout isn't too very bad, but also needs help. I hope you can improve with my suggestions and don't hesitate to contact me! I really suggest you use Jem's tutorial site to help improve your coding, it helped me out a lot! It is called Tutorialtastic. :)

    UPDATED 27 Nov 08:
    I just wanted to edit and let you know that I checked out the original template, that girl is the one who coded that so horridly!!! Please don't ever use her templates again if you want to have a good site. I can't believe she is offering that crap for download! *faints* So if you go and fix up her coding, good for you!! Maybe you should message her and tell HER how to fix her own code. Ha!!

    I left her a rather not-nice comment, I don't know if she will freak out or not. BUT SERIOUSLY!!! *faints*

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  3. [img: avatar]
    Ang gave it ***-- on 22nd Nov 2008 and said:

    Addressing your background issue (the seam where it repeats), one alternative may be to fix the background so it doesn't move when a user scrolls down the page. It's large enough that I don't see the seam when I have the browser maximized on a fairly large resolution. Another alternative may be to have it not repeat, and fade it out to a solid color at the edges.

    Overall, I'm getting that you're not labeling yourself as a "web designer". I will say, I do see some graphics talent in your Portfolio. Several of your graphics are reminiscent (to me) of something you may seen in an advertisement in a magazine. You do good work. I know most people are down on folks using celebrities in design work, but I find it to be fine as practice. In the real world of graphic design, a designer has to be able to take images of people or what-have-you and work with it. You show promise.

    If you are interested in web design - your graphics side is where you have strength. Your coding skills are a bit weak at this point. Definitely an area to study up on. Subscribe to some RSS feeds for web design with a focus on the code side. Pick up tips and snippets here and there, work with some stuff. The great thing about web design is you can find out how to do anything - for free!

    Biggest thing that I want to point out is you have 2 instances of the starting html, head, and title tags. I'm guessing you're just having a little trouble with the Wordpress templates.

    Some other things: I would also like to see some consistency with your headers on each page. The blog headings appear to be in one style, salma and site in another, and portfolio and resources in yet another. If choosing among them, I'd say go with what you've got for portfolio and resources. Also mildly confusing is the date/comment style being so similar to the left sidebar's headings. Think consistency, step back and look at your site like it's your first time seeing it. I think your menu is fine, the main image is what appears to be a bit off, being narrower than everything else. It's pretty, but could fill more horizontal space.

    Some things to look into would be css shorthand (resource) and table-less layout techniques (resource).

    You've got some bold, beautiful graphic work going on in your portfolio. Definitely keep it up. With a little more focus on the code side, you'll be a force to be reckoned with.

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  4. Derick gave it ***-- on 21st Nov 2008 and said:

    Your overall layout is good, I guess. It is not fantastic, but it is not completely awful either.

    I like the colors you used for the titles and stuff. I don't really know how to explain what part... Like when you say display:block; - I liked the colors there.. haha Hopefully you know what I am talking about. It looks good.

    The links at the top do not fit with the layout at all. I suggest changing those because they are very obnoxious.

    The other thing that really bothers me is that the background doesn't flow. There are big splice marks. I know this is hard to fix, but it would look so much better if it all flowed. Also, the right side of the image doesn't flow with the background either.

    Your site is definatly not awful, there are just a few things to work on.

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  5. [img: avatar]
    Haley gave it *---- on 17th Nov 2008 and said:

    My Review:

    Before I get into my review, I need to tell you that you should *never* use other peoples work on your PORTFOLIO site. Using the images of Julia Stiles automatically discredits your site as a portfolio. Portfolios are 100% original work. Yours is not. You are using celebrity images in your portfolio, and that's not cool. So I would call it a "personal site/blog" versus a "portfolio" right off the bat. Now to my review.

    --Style/Design--

    The style is kind of "emo", if I dare use the word. It's grungy, and a little overly so. Your background does not repeat correctly, and thus is very distracting. I like the navigation. It's cool. I'm also happy your sidebar goes all the way down with your content. Very good. The header...not so good. It doesn't match the background, and I don't think it's very original. Again, using the celebrity image is a HUGE no no for a portfolio. Your color scheme is a little odd. I don't really love the green/pink.

    --Content--

    Your portfolio - as I said - is NOT a portfolio. I would never hire you if I was an employer looking for an employee. You just have blends of celebrities - that's not "work". That's a hobby. You need some genuine website coding examples and layouts you've done. Not celebrity blends. Your resources section is very bare. Needs more stuff - I like the tutorial idea. Go with it!

    --Coding--

    Your CSS could be a lot better. Font-family means a family of fonts, not one font alone, for example. You have a lot of things/errors like that. Also, I know you used a theme by Luciana (found here) and it's...not that different from yours. You need to make it your own if you are going to use a WP theme. I was hoping your theme was 100% original, but I see it's not. You can't have someone else's WP theme on YOUR portfolio website. A big no no.

    --Originality--

    ...is something your site needs. The only things that are original are your name and biography. Your site needs a lot of "originality" put into it. IE: a new layout, new portfolio pieces, etc.

    --Overall Thoughts--

    Your site needs a lot of work. Definitely not a portfolio site, and definitely not something original. Could use a big revamp. I can't tell if you have potential because your layout was made by Luciana, and merely edited remotely by you. I would like to see something you have made entirely by yourself.

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  6. [img: avatar]
    Sewwy gave it **--- on 10th Nov 2008 and said:

    First impressions: Upon loading the site, I noticed that your background does not load completely, rather, it part loads, then part loads again halfway down the page, and so on. It looks rather ugly and takes away from the overall feel of the layout. It makes everything seem disjointed and incomplete, which is a shame. The header image is alright, but again, doesn't really seem to fit with the rest of the layout. Both the side bar and content area, as well as the navigation at the top are all wider than the header, and so it seems rather unusual (this is made abundantly obvious as a result of the problems with the background, I'd imagine it doesn't look so strange when things load properly.

    Your blog entries are relatively interesting. They don't focus on every day boringness, which is important to me because I don't quite enjoy reading about day-in-day-out activities. One qualm i do have relates to a recent entry, which claims someone called Sophie created an "blog every day for a month" challenge. Well, Actually, she's just ripping off NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, which many bloggers have appropriated into National Blog Writing Month. This normally occurs in November, so really, you're only contributing in NaBloWriMo, not anything else ;)

    Anyway, back on topic...

    Your About Me page was relatively informative, and I felt I learnt a lot more about you from that page than I did your blogs.

    Your portfolio page is well set out and has some interesting works there. Keep it up. Your Site page is rather generic, so I won't really bother saying anything about that, they're all the same, afterall ;) ...

    Your resources link seems rather redundant, as you list your resources under the credits. Surely you could just merge the resources and credit pages and remove the resources link from the navigation all together. It seems like it would fit better under Site related pages anyway.

    Overall, I wasn't overly impressed with the site. It was alright, but not great. Very simple. Some more blog entries with some opinions, reviews, thoughts and ideas could help spice things up a little.

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  7. [img: avatar]
    Aisling gave it *---- on 10th Nov 2008 and said:

    I see in your screencap that you have some sort of grey gradient background, but it's not displaying for me. I don't know if it's browser issue, or if you took down the image because even from the screencap, I can tell it's probably not something I would have enjoyed.

    Your layout is centred around a celebrity image, which most likely wasn't yours to use, and is therefore violating copyright laws. But what is more, celebrity images are a cop out as far as really being original on your website goes!

    Your font is tiny! So tiny that I can't even bother to read an entire blog entry, because I don't even want to think about the eye strain that would undoubtedly occur. I mean, even your SIDEBAR text is a little bit bigger than your main text. It's supposed to work the other way around, with your main text big, and your sidebar slightly smaller, to compliment the main text!

    Your "Because I'm Lazy," but in your sidebar also irks me. Don't be lazy! It's just creating extra clutter that nobody cares about!

    Your navigation isn't half bad, but I would make the entire block clickable. It's easier that way.

    Your Salma page was a bit difficult to follow. One second you're talking about yourself, then your cats, then yourself. Lots of jumping around.

    On your portfolio page, I am once more seeing a lot of copyrighted images that don't belong to you being used. Honestly, I find your Avril blend to be scary. Your layouts aren't bad, but the best part of them are the photos which aren't even yours to use! Pity.

    Your site section has all the typical information. I find it lulzy that your terms are so extensive, when you yourself steal celebrity photos. I know, you mention that the photos belong to their owners, but THAT DOESN'T COUNT. It doesn't make what you're doing any better. You seem quite adamant that none of your graphics be taken. I'm sure if someone did take them, you would be upset. Why do you think the photographers who take the photos you steal would feel any differently?

    All in all, your site needs a lot of work. But keep it up!

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  8. [img: avatar]
    Baohan gave it ***-- on 8th Nov 2008 and said:

    I liked the overall look of your site. It is simply elegance yet not boring.

    I can see that you used a celebrity's picture on your layout. I am not a huge fan of celeb's picture because of copyright infringement. However, your site, unlike other site, actually used the picture nicely and created an amazing layout. Not everyone can do that.

    I see that you have a metallic-rusted-oxide background but then it changed to gradient gray and then white. I don't know of this is on purpose or not but I would recommend you to keep the consistency of the background. You might want to keep the rusted background through out the page or you can stick with the gradient. :)

    Your about page is well written however, complicated. I would recommend you to try to keep it simpler. Just go around a read other's people about pages and learn from it.

    It's good that you have cats. I like cats.

    The Portfolio is interesting to look at. However, once again, I would like to bring up the copyright infringement, unless you own them, you shouldn't be using them. This might be why my favourite was the Halloween one. It looks so cute without anybody's image on it.

    Your brushes are really cool. I hope that you keep on making 'em! Your tutorials are great aswell. But you might want to use more images as people tend to learn from pictures more than words.

    To conclude this, I think that your website is arse kicking. It could even be better if you keep on improving and cleaning up the celeb's pictures. Ever thought of using a brush only layout? You can be better and I believe that you will. Keep it up!

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  9. [img: avatar]
    xtina gave it **--- on 8th Nov 2008 and said:

    I'll admit, I like the general idea of the layout. I like the whole eroded elegance look. That kind of thing generally works for me. However, I'm severely bothered by the fact that the top portion with the marble-looking background doesn't blend into the plain white, but instead is just cut off and replaced with a weird gray-to-white gradient. Also, the marble background doesn't match up with the center image. It just looks improperly tiled.

    And the use of the celebrity image bothers me. The general rule: if you didn't take the picture, you're not actually allowed to use it. I noticed you offer a lot of avatars and such with celebrity images -- the same rule applies. Therefore, your portfolio is actually rather pointless as of right now. You obviously have talent in terms of graphic design, I just think you should stick to things that are 100% made by you. If you used a copyrighted image to create it, it's not allowed.

    I also think that you should maybe rearrange the order of the menu up top. Shouldn't the link to your portfolio come before the link the the site section? I you should put your menu links in the order that you would want people to read them. I definitely think a portfolio is more interesting to read them a list of affiliates or credits, no?

    Oh, gosh! I only just noticed that your entire website is designed using tables. While it looks fine in my browser, it doesn't always work for others. It's best to convert it all to div layers. Another positive for divs: they're a lot easier to manage!

    As for the sidebar, it looks a little odd. I think it's because the text is squished (increase the line height maybe?) and larger than the text in the blog. Also, the big Times New Roman links make me cringe. It's best to use the same font and size for links. People will still be able to tell that they're links because they're different colors. But everything will look a bit more uniform. I also see no real point in the calendar. I understand that it links to the blog entries you've posted for each month, but your visitors are all very capable of hitting the "Older Entries" link at the bottom. Last but not least, the "Because I'm Lazy..." section. I'm glad you're being upfront about that and all, but it looks incredibly sloppy. Is there really a point in posting referrer links for all to see?

    Overall, I think you have some really great design ideas. However, I think you should brush up on using div layers instead of tables, and try to make your own graphics.

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  10. Morgan gave it ***-- on 7th Nov 2008 and said:

    First Impression:

    The layout is cute, it's not incredibly memorable but not horrendous, either. I dislike your navigation, it looks out of place simply sitting at the top of the page, and doesn't mesh well with the rest of your layout.
    Also, the background looks incomplete, I like the initial patterned background but as it fades to white, it simply looks like my computer stopped loading the image. It'd be much nicer if you repeated the initial background image that you have at the top.

    I'm not a fan of celebrity-inspired layouts perse, but your blend (I think that's what they're called?) is very nice and doesn't go overboard. It's subtle and but conveys the message. Nice work on that.

    I also dislike the title/headers you use for separating the blog entries and sidebars. The main image is so nice, and then you have these plain, empty looking titles. I think you should add something to them to make them stand out a bit more.

    The content:

    Under the sidebar in the "Welcome" section, you have a few grammatical errors.
    A semicolon should go after the site name, remove the comma before "found in her blogs," and "it's" should be "its", no apostrophe since it is a possessive word.
    But, now that I've read further, I see that English is not your native language (?), so I can understand the small mistakes.

    Also, I think having all of the site referrers and a calendar on your sidebar is a bit excessive, I doubt your visitors are interested in either. I suggest removing them, it detracts from the layout.

    Salma Page:
    It's very informative and I like how you didn't just outline everything like some other blogs do, but actually introduced yourself.

    Site page:
    I also liked how you included how you came up with the site name and your history in web development. I found the site name portion quite interesting, actually.

    Portfolio:
    I must say, I absolutely loved your Halloween image from your portfolio. I thought it was the cutest thing!
    The rest of your portfolio is nice, you obviously have a talent at graphic design. The only thing I suggest is trying to steer away from celebrity-slash-model based layouts and stick with designing from your own creations, like you've done with the Halloween layout.
    I also like how you've made the thumbnail icons and remembered to make the pictures appear in a new window. However, I don't know what "relentless soul" is, so it would be nice if you included a small explanation.

    Resources:

    I like how you've included both abr and stamp brushes. I always hate when sites only provide brushes that require a specific graphic application to use them. It's nice that you've provided both.
    As for the brushes themselves, they're okay but nothing that's really eye-catching.

    Overall:

    Your site has some nice content, I'd like to see a little more however, and I think your layout could use a little work. You obviously have great skills at graphic design, I think you should show them off more in your own layout!

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  11. [img: avatar]
    Peter gave it ***-- on 7th Nov 2008 and said:

    Overall design:

    I noticed that you have a table based design. They are not horrible, but I would recommend that you work on converting it to DIVs (see tutorialtastic).

    There are also way to many BODY tags. There is only supposed to be one body tag (including the close for it) and one head tag, and the body tag should contain ALL of the content, including those little script at the bottom. The HTML tag starts at the VERY beginning (except when you need to insert a PHP script at the beginning) and ends at the VERY END.

    I also noticed that the CENTER tag appears several times throughout the design code, and it is a deprecated tag! You should get rid of all the deprecated tags as soon as you can. You can replace the center tag with (your content).

    The gradient under the background image is a bit weird. Is it supposed to be a shadow? If so, then it should be a bit darker at the top, and maybe not as tall.

    On the header and navigation:

    The navigation is nice, although you if the background color was white it would look even better, because the background blends in with the first and last links. It is simple, yet you know where the navigation is as soon as the website loads. I like how you have it at the top so that it is the first thing that loads, since it is one of the most important elements of a webpage, especially when you are looking for a certain page and want to get to it quickly. The actual links are a bit weird, because when you hover over the box, it turns pink, but then you aren't actually hovering over the link, this is only a minor problem though. Instead of using a table for the navigation, how about a list? The link "Salma" confused me at first, since I didn't know your name. How about replacing the text with "About Me" or "Webmistress" or something similar?

    I'm not a big fan of complex header images, but yours isn't to bad. There seems to be a lot of text on it, and it is a bit frustrating because I want to be able to read it :P. You don't seem to have a logo, which is usually the header images for most websites, so you might want to think about having one, or at least your website name somewhere other than just the sidebar.

    The header image is a bit large, and it is 312kb, which is a bit large. I suggest saving it as a JPG, when I did that it was only one sixth of the size (52kb) and hardly effected the image quality! You also might want a header image the same width as the navigation and a bit shorter for a more fluid look.

    On the sidebar:

    I like how the sidebar stretches down to the bottom of the page. It adds a columnized (is that a word? :P) look to it all. I also like the headings for the sidebar, and how they have a different background color from the text. The text should have a bigger line-height (about 150% maybe?), because the text is almost overlapping, and under "About the Layout" the underline under the word "Fairytale" is touching the text below it.

    I wouldn't put the referers/cpanel stuff (under "Because I am Lazy"), but that may just be me. I don't think that "About the Layout" should have its own place in the sidebar. The site isn't centered around the layout, it is centered around you and the visitors.

    On the main content layout:

    The whole content box has a background color of white, which overlaps the gradient, so you might want to not set a background color for it.

    On some of the tutorials some images were wider than the content box, which stretched the whole page out and made it look ugly, so I would recommend that you set a max-width for the images.

    I like the font that you picked for the headings (I am a fan of serif fonts for headings). I don't think you should use a background color, and if you really want to then you should add plenty of padding (like on the sidebar headings). You shouldn't have an underline if you have a background color for it.

    The font for the paragraphs could be just a bit larger (only 1 or 2 pixels), but I like the font and line-height you picked for it. The links are also very distinguishable and are good.

    I like your format for the date and info, but the date should be at the top so I know how old the entry is before I read it. It says "Posted by Salma" in the info, but does it really need to be there? If you are the only one posting, then each entry doesn't need your name on it.

    Conclusion:

    This website has a lot of potential, but it needs to get several major changes first.

    P.S. Sorry I didn't review the content, but it was already so long that was to lazy to review it. Also, this is my first review EVER, so it might not be the best, some of the things might not be accurate or the best advice, the organization probably isn't that good, and I probably used the word "also" too much, but I enjoyed doing it and I hope it helps :)

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  12. Vitalis gave it **--- on 7th Nov 2008 and said:

    Messy brushes splattered on top of a stolen celebrity image does not a layout make. You're probably going to find this rather difficult to believe, but many people find these types of layouts revolting and very unprofessional. Stray from celebrity images; your common variety monkey could make these types of layout. They show no creativity and they show no amount of talent.

    The navigation bar at the top of the page doesn't look like it's meant to be there, it looks more as if it were a quick hasty add on to the layout rather than something that was thought out. The only redeemable aspect about this layout is the footer, and I'm not entirely sure if you were the one who made it. The color scheme is another problem I had with this layout. Take a look at your affiliates section of the left side of your home page, the words are barely noticeable. The colors are grey on grey! Tell me that isn't something that has to be changed.

    Graphics aside let's take a look at your content. The first thing I noticed was the The Owner section written on the left hand side of the website.

    "(The word my would make more sense than "the name...") The name is Salma who happens to (have) be(en) born on the 28th (of) January, which makes her an Aquarius. She (has) so far lived for 15 years and is currently (get rid of happily) happily living in the UK. Her passions (Are is an awkward choice of wording) are (art) Art, (tennis) Tennis and (fashion) Fashion . Serve her an Italian Pasta dish with Ben & Jerry's ice cream for desert and you will be loved. The hate list is pretty long, which includes the (the who?) moany and the complainers, the stuck-ups and the (Hypocrisy, thy name is Salma!) unoriginal."

    Aside from the blatant disregard for the English language and its rules, why couldn't you have simplified this into something short and sweet?

    "Hi! My name is Salma, and I was born on January 28! This makes me an Aquarius. I'm currently fifteen years old and am happily living in the UK!", etc etc.

    Something simple like that won't kill you and it's quite a bit easier to read. You're also less inclined to make grammatical errors that make you sound like a ten year old rather than an actual teenager.

    A constant grammatical error that I've seen littered throughout your blog is the misconception between the words its and it's. It's is a contraction that forms it is, whereas the word its indicates possession. Let's take a look at a small fragment of your welcome message: "...and contains some resources for it's visitors." If you were to replace the word it's with it is, you would have: "...and contains some resources for it is visitors." See the difference?

    I honestly don't see what the need for the Calendar is. I'm capable of reading the date and time off of my computer screen, and any momentous occasion shouldn't be left dangling in the left hand corner of the screen, right? You would blog about it instead.

    Your Site Statistics should have a page of their own, unless you were trying to cleverly expand upon the left sidebar? Your site is a personal blog, people come for your content, not to see how well your website is doing or who the host is.

    I could go a little bit more in depth but I believe you've gotten the gist of this review. Hopefully, when I view your site in another two months, or maybe three, there will have been some improvements. Until then, your website receives two stars.

    UPDATED 07 Nov 08:
    I forgot to mention that claiming an image as your own or merely crediting an author or a source for an image (Your image of Julia Stilesin in the header image for example) without first getting their consent is stealing and punishable by law. It's called copyright infringement, I suggest you brush up on it.

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