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Backstaged has 12 Reviews

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

1. 

   reeshas gave it on 29th Mar 2009 and said:

   Hi there, I saw your site and it reminded me of the credits on Beyond good and evil a fantastic video game. So I just had to review this site on that account. Kind of foolish but you’ll get a star just for that awesome banner up top. Now the 4 links you have up top are nice, their colors are good, but the LINKs link is under the HOME link when it should be next to the WRITINGS link. So it seems as if you messed up when you were coding this or maybe you added the dimensions unevenly or added a break. You should fix that up. Let me see if I can help you out. Normally I don’t like to view codes, but here I will. I see that you didn’t add a so I’m guessing it’s an alignment error. Alright I found it:

   /*----------------------------------------------------------NAVIGATION*/
#navi {
width: 560px; !!!should be 554px!!!
margin: auto; !!!or center!!!
padding: 10px 5px 20px 5px; !!!make sure that left & right have 5 pixels from the edge!!!
}

   You use PT as in POINT, but that doesn’t work or is read by all machines and browsers, try using PX as in PIXELS which is the right measurement for any design and is the most common one use! I’ll talk about those pages later, for now I’m giving you my opinion on HOME PAGE. The site name Backstaged is kind of cool, sounds like what it says, the back of the stage xD. I like the title font and the text color and size you used. I see you left plenty of space in-between your entries, but adding a divider wouldn’t be such a bad idea. The smileys you could customize but they don’t look bad because there is yellow in your design. I like your links and how they change colors when they hover. But the top hover links have very strange colors; you should try to match them to the colors in your banner. Your bottom is kind of strange, try centering the text in the footer and linking Baohan to his/her site. Make the words LIKE IT? a different color, you’ll get more feed, really you will!

   ABOUT: oh ok, so I see that you’re Baohan, and then you could just link on the bottom to your email or contact page on this site. That would be wise. You have a lot to say, that’s good, shows you aren’t trying to be strange by hiding info. You say a lot about yourself. You also have enough to offer about your site. Sway is very cool, I like it! you know what would be awesome, if you could add a little picture from the banner, like cut out some part of the banner and turn it into a 100 x 100 pixel avatar, and link it using a border on the about me page, your text looks fine on the home page, simple, but on the about me page, there isn’t much to keep the viewer occupied with all that writing, a little colorful avatar might help keep the attention on that page. You can use this easy code to link the image with your text.

   img src=”AVATER IMAGE” border=”3px” align=”left”

   !!!if the image is bigger than 100 x 100!!!

   width=”100” height=”100”

   put these in the >< you know

   WRITINGS: this page is full of neat writings, I really like how you linked them and listed them. Great job, I also like the comments form you have under each of them, well planned out.

   LINKS: for links, again, great job! Organized, clean, and linked. I see you also added Credits to this page, this is the first time I’ve seen this and I have to say, I like the idea, why have a whole separate page for credits if they aren’t that long, they look nice on the links page. Alright that’s all I have to say, this site was very cool and interesting, thanks for reading!

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2. 

   Rai gave it on 18th Feb 2009 and said:

   Layout: I like that your layout is centered and has a footer. I do not find your header very attractive, however.

   Content:
   About - This page is very well done. You have included plenty of information about yourself and the website history. I would suggest you avoid using words like 'thingy', though. The follow sentence does not really make sense: "I have the basics of human beings." You should change it to, "I have the basics of a human being." Also the following sentence is missing the word 'read': "...I do actually do some activities such as [read] Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lingren and Gone With the Wind..."
   Writings - I see that you have listed this page in alphabetical order which is good.
   Links - You should also list this page in alphabetical order.

   Conclusion: Your website is well organized although it doesn't iclude much to be organized.

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3. 

   Greykitty gave it on 6th Jan 2009 and said:

   Layout
   I don't usually like rainbow type layouts much but this one looks nice, and I like the colors you have used. None of them are overly bright. It's organized, the font is easy to read. Only thing I would suggest is maybe making a layout where more of the graphic header is included in the content part of the layout...like a colored column that has your content in it or maybe overlapping a bit of it onto the header image and have it fade down into the content. Right now it is just a bit lopsided color wise.

   Content
   Your about page is very nice and complete. It'd be nice to see a way to contact you added in there somewhere. You say you like taking photos, why not add a section on your site for those? :) It would add some eye candy to your site and give people more to look at. I think it would help to draw some people in. And yeah doesn't deal with content but if you take photos maybe consider using some in your next layout. :D
   Quite a few nice little poems, not much really more to add on that. It's nice to see some original writings up. Maybe you could add to your writings and put some of your opinions on things up there too. What you think of current world issues, or even just in your country, opinions on books vrs movies. Things like that. Maybe open it up for visitors to share their opinions too.
   Links, they are standard and nicely organized so no comments about them.

   
   Other Stuff
   I liked browsing your site. It could use a bit more visitor content, oh yeah one last thing too about your blog entries. They are pretty good, but I would suggest adding a way to go back to archives in your navigation, and also try to blog on more than just day to day happenings. If you start tossing in your opinions on movies you saw recently or music or anything like that, it would lengthen your blogs and add a bit more spice to them.

   Overall
   Your site was nice, could use a bit of work here and there but you have a strong base. Keep up the nice work and good luck with it in the future!

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   Baohan's Response:

   Thank you for reviewing the website. I'm working on an articles but your idea of books vrs movies seems really nice. (Steals and runaway...) I'm considering adding the contact and the photo page. I think that I will. :)

   Thanks again.

4. 

   Laurence gave it on 2nd Jan 2009 and said:

   Hey :) Thanks for requesting a review, it will be a pleasure to review your site! Let's start!

   Layout
   First of all, nice job, no copyrighted pictures on your layout! It looks nice and colorful too! You managed to bring a personal touch to the classic neon colors and dark background design. You used flashy colors without blinding me, so that's great too. Well centered, links aligned correctly, everything seems fine so far... The footer would have looked better with an image in it, but I read the previous reviews and saw that some people didn't agree. Maybe just bring back a few elements from your header? If not for this layout, for the next one. A footer is a really important part of the design, but people seem to forget it. I didn't have one in my layout and as someone suggested in a review, I added one and it complements well the header now. It really makes a difference! Overall, good job for the layout!

   Organization
   Everything is greatly organized and the sections are clearly identified. No subpages too, so good job for that. Hum, the only thing that bothers me is the rss link at the top. Shouldn't that be in your footer or at the bottom of your blogs? On your links page, you should reduce the space between the title of each links section (Blogs, Fanlistings, Credits) and the links. Right now, there is a huge gap between the two, which doesn't look great. Also, the title of the page shouldn't be smaller than the title of the links section. The size of the text is by order of importance, normally. The title of the page should be bigger, the subtitles a little bit smaller, then the text a little bit smaller again.

   Home
   I see that your blogs are your main content. However, you only blogged three times in November and once in December! I'm not a very active blogger, but I have other content to make sure that the visitors have something new to look at regularly. Since you barely have any content except the about me page and the links page, I would suggest you to blog more often or add some content. Short blogs are a good idea and will encourage people to read them. Many people are discouraged when they see a huge blog. So my advice: short blogs more often. Also, I'm sure that many events (funny, dramatic, etc) happened in a month. You should blog about them, that will make your page even more interesting ;)

   About

   I liked that page: short and sweet! I really liked your writing style, I wish I could see more of it. Maybe you could add articles or opinions? That's up to you ;)

   Links
   Good idea! Easily accessible and all the information is there.

   Miscellaneous
   You should change your smileys... They're the default ones, right? There's nothing wrong with that, since I use some default ones too, but yours aren't high quality. I can see all the pixels! If you don't want to make some, find other smileys that are higher quality, it will look much better that way! Smileys, when not over-used, really bring a cute touch to a blog, so don't neglect them ;)

   Conclusion

   Overall, your site has great potential! You have a good writing style and a great design. However, you barely blog and there is nearly no content :( Try to be more active and I'm sure that your site will get more popular. Good luck!

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   Baohan's Response:

   Hey, thank you for taking the time to review me. I added a section called "Writings" which includes my poems. It was there before but I didn't really like it so now I'm going to work harder on it.

5. 

   Mimi gave it on 20th Dec 2008 and said:

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

   First Impression:

   My first impression was that it looked simple and cute enough. I think some of the headings are a little out of place but I will get to suggestions for that later in the review. Also I think the footer image is completely unnecessary because it's way too big and takes away from the glory of the header image, which I think looks perfect. :)

   It also loaded quickly so no complaints there! A lot of sites have some loading issues and I want to bang my head on the desk because of them! O.o Not yours, though. Hehe!

   Coding:

   Let us start with CSS. I always start out by checking for validation and then seeing what areas we can improve upon in the style sheet. When I enter your CSS in the W3C validator it does not validate. One element that you are using does validate in CSS Lvl 3, so I changed it but there are only a couple of things to change, so I shall address those first. :D

   Your whole section you have dedicated to hiding your tracker is invalid. Might I suggest you use a better tracker that is invisible to begin with? Google Analytics is extremely powerful and trust me, whatever tracker you are using now will look like a loser compared to Google Analytics. That way you can remove this:

   #tracker{
   position:absolute;
   filter:alpha(opacity=0);-moz-opacity:0.0;opacity:0.0;

   }

   .. completely. There goes two errors right there. :) The next error is in this piece of code:

   Home
   About
   Links
   RSS

   Where you have <div style="clear: left; align: center;">, align: center; isn't even a real property. It won't do a bit of good. Remove that and you are error free when it comes to validation. There are also two color errors and this is what the validator says (copy and pasting, hehe):

   73 Same colors for color and background-color in two contexts #navigation li a and h4
   311 Same colors for color and background-color in two contexts #navigation li a and a.nav:hover

   Now that we are error free, there are a few other things I would like to address. The first would be a wonderful thing called CSS Shorthand. Your CSS file is pretty slender to begin with so ifyou use the suggestions I am about to give you it will be even awesomely shorter and will look fantastic!

   Let's start with your h2 tag. It has a LOT we can clean up using CSS Shorthand. Here is what you currently have:

   h2 {
   font-family: Georgia, serif;
   font-size: 15pt;
   color: #a32759;
   text-decoration: none;
   background: #1e1e1e;
   padding-left: 40px;
   padding-right: 40px;
   padding-top: 5px;
   padding-bottom: 5px;
   width: 200px;

   }

   Here, I will go ahead and just do the shorthand for you so you can see an example in action and also a couple of things that I did to it. Here is the cleaner version of the same tag:

   h2 {
   font: 15pt Georgia, serif;
   color: #a32759;
   background: #1e1e1e;
   padding: 5px 40px;
   width: 200px;
   }

   Yes yes, neater huh? Anyway, you can always combine things like the font attributes; font-family, font-weight, font-size and line-height (just to name the most popular ones). You canalso always combine your margins, paddings, borders and even background attributes. You can use Jem's Shortening CSS guide and for the parts she doesn't have finished yet, this guide covers. Just for fun, let's do one more. :P Oh wait, before I forget.. When you are using h1, h2, h3.. etc, you don't have to use font-weight: bold; because they are already bold by default. So you can remove that line from h3, h4, and h5.

   Another thing you should try to do is not use px for your line heights. It's very good that you don't use px for your font sizes but it defeats the purpose if you just go ahead and use px for line heights. Reason being that when you set something with px it will remain that way no matter what. If a user with a sight disability wants to make the text larger on your site, they can because you have your font size set with pt but since the line height is stuck in px, it will most likely make all your words squish together and be unreadable anyway. To convert those line heights from px to pt (em and %s also work) see this conversion chart.

   While scrolling through your CSS I see a lot of inconsistencies. For example, you are using CSS Shorthand for your borders already. Maybe you just didn't know about the rest of shorthand? I didn't for a long time, either. :) Also, some of your line heights near the bottom are in pts instead of pxs.

   As for that second example, I found one that has some unnecessary stuff in it as well, so let's attack this one:

   #container {
   margin: auto;
   padding: 0;
   width: 650px;
   text-align: left;
   padding-top: 30px;
   background: #323232;
   padding-bottom: 10px;
   top: 0;
   }

   First of all, the top: 0; doesn't matter since you are not using positioning. You can just remove that. Also, you have padding: 0; but then you have padding listed underneath that? Let's clean it up a bit like so:

   #container {
   margin: 0 auto;
   width: 650px;
   text-align: left;
   padding: 30px 0 10px;
   background: #323232;
   }

   Mo betta, yes? :D There is a bunch more that can be shortened but I am not going to sit here and re-do your style sheet. For one that would be rude, two it wouldn't help you learn shorthand any faster. So I shall shut up about it for now. ;P

   After you go through and make everything better with shorthand, you should run it on over to Clean Css.com to see if it can compress your file anymore. I went ahead and ran it and the only suggestions it has for you is to change all of the font-weight: bold; to font-weight: 700; and all of the font-weight: normal; to font-weight: 400; . It actually saves a lot of space, compresses it by 38.7%! Which means it's 38.7% less cluttered.

   All of that rambling aside, your CSS isn't bad at all. I'm just trying to help you optimize it! It's really easy stuff to do but I better move on.

   When checking for XHTML validation there are 6 errors popping up. I read through them and really it's only two issues that are causing all the errors. They are both from Divs that you forgot to close. :) The first one is <div class="container"> and the second one is <div class="story"> . Simply find the areas where they were supposed to be closed and add two </div>s and you will be error free as far as that goes. :)

   Other than that the rest looks pretty good. I really hope you will study up on the CSS stuff, though.. I love to see people benefit from my reviews/blabbing.

   Design:

   I am going to list things in this section because after all that coding blah blah I just did, I am feeling quite lazy. :P

   - I like the navigation a LOT, but I think that you should change the color of the text when you are NOT hovering over it. I don't like how it matches the background because the header is so pretty and colorful that the use of variating colors is sad. :( You have a large palette to choose from, so choose something else?

   - I really really really don't like how the date is as big as the post title and on top of it to boot. I really think it would look 10x better if you put the date underneath the post titles and made it half the size it is now.

   - While on the subject of the post titles, I think you should let it extend all the way to the right side instead of stopping it. Ok wait, I just realized you are not even using a header for that. I recommend that you get rid of one of the h1, h2, h3, etc.. and make your post titles a header. This way it can extend all of the way. It looks a little silly how it stops but all of the text underneath it keeps going on further out.

   - I got down to the section where it says "Comments(#) | Older Posts" and it extends all the way but one side is touching (the right side) the very edge and the other side has some padding? Looks kinda silly. Let me look.. Hrm, I looked for a while there and I can't really figure it out! Perhaps add margin: 0; to the .editcomments section in the CSS? I'd have to be able to play around with it and see the results first hand to give you a definite answer on that.

   - I think I already mentioned that I think the huge footer image should be removed, but if you are really wanting it there, why not reducing it's height by a lot? If it wasn't so big and bulky I'm sure no one would have many problems with it being there. :) I am going to say if you made it about 65px in height it would look nice.

   - The footer "disclaimer" sort of thing is also kind of floating awkwardly there.. not really centered but not on one side either. The problem there is how you are trying to position it with margins. It would look much better if you just removed:

   margin-left: 20px;
   margin-top: 120px;

   and let it do it's thing naturally. As it is it looks sort of sad.. :(

   - AGH I need to backtrack a bit here. The first two blog entries the .editcomments section is messed up. However I was just looking and the very last entry was not messed up. Are you manually blogging? If so, the forgetting to close the story div makes sense now! It must be that on the last two entries you made, you forgot to close the <div class="story"> ! Aha! I feel like a detective now! :3

   - Once I started venturing onto the other content pages, just about to go into the next section of the review, I noticed that the footer is all sorts of messed up on these other pages. It looks like you have just forgotten more div closing.. again. My advice would be to start paying more attention to them because they are messing up the layout a LOT in these sub pages.

   Alright, I think that is it for the design section. I really do like it, so please don't be discouraged by my suggestions. :D I think it just needs some fine-tuning.

   Content:

   Perhaps maybe you should include a little more about the site other than once sentence? Also more about yourself? I also think having "Category: Uncategorized" at the top of the pages is unnecessary, but it makes me think that maybe you do NOT manually blog thereby proving my theory up above incorrect. Poo. :(

   Er.. your blog entries are really short, there is hardly anything about you or the site and then there are some links. I'd say the content is.. lacking?

   Final Thoughts:

   While I hate to give this site a bad grade, there are just many things I think that factor into it. The design concept is good but the execution seems faulty. It is also apparent that you do not update at all hardly and that's sad. I really hope my review is not wasted. :(

   On account of this and the lack of content, overall not paying attention to things like your divs, I will be giving you 1 1/2 stars. I think you can do better if you start spending more time working on your website! Add some content, fix those errors! :D Oh and, use more colors! Those pretty header and footer colors are almost wasted on the rest of the site. :) I think you have a nice set up, you should just update more!

   The end! :D

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   Baohan's Response:

   Hey, thanks for the review. I'll take everything in to account. :)

   And no, it's not wasted.

6. 

   Ricky gave it on 16th Nov 2008 and said:

   Okay well, this is my first review that I am writing, so I apologize for the lack of content in my review.

   First Impression: My first impression of the website, was WOW, great header. It is really refreshing seeing a header, that doesn't use images to be the sole basis of their layout. You have created something, that is new and is well contrasted with the background.

   The Name: Very original, but the url is extemely long, do you expect first time visitor to remember that long URL. Even if you have amazing posts or content, you will lose new visitor as they die trying to remember the long URL. I would suggest, mabye shortening "backstaged" to maybe a letter or something like back. Or you can even get a co.nr (something like). The ideal choice would be getting your own domain, but I understand, that it may be not in your best interest to do so. But it would help.

   Layout: At first it was all good to me. The layout is centered, the links are neat and organized. Then then BAM! I scroll down and I see the header in a bix box that looks really ugly. To my dismay when I click LINKS, it seems to cover the bottom fourth of my screen. My first reaction was OH NO... VIRUS. LOl it wasn't but still, please get rid of that.

   Two, on your about page and links page, the headers are hyperlinks that lead to no where, i don't know if you intended that, but it is quite useless, and can be removed.

   Three, why is everything Uncategorized, more specifically why is your about and link pages in a category in the first place?

   Content: After reading your autobiography, I find out that this is a personal blog. So i just click back and to read your posts. The first one, was barely two sentences, if this is JUST a weblog, you should put more effort into the lengths of your posts. If you want comments, visitors need substance to blog about. Also, between your posts are a couple of days, which makes the situation of short posts even worse.

   Links Page? I am really confused about this page. Why do I need links to other people's blogs or fanlistings. Unless they are affiliates, then you need to specify that. Also your credits should be in a "site area, where you talk about the site in general. New visitors like to all about the site, and what your blog consists.

   Lol, sorry if i was harsh.

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7. 

   Gin gave it on 11th Nov 2008 and said:

   This page isn't displaying right in my 1024x768 browser. The RSS link ends up on a new line, throwing the entire page off. The same happens with the "back to top" text at the bottom of the site. It causes the page to be slightly stretched.

   It seems you focused too much on the pink in the image, although the pink is not the dominant color. The pink is also too bright for me, almost blinding me when looking at the main links. The site looks much better when I scroll and make the text smaller. It doesn't seem to have been built with a 1024x768 browser in mind. Also, I'm not much into the default smilies, since they stand out a lot against the background.

   Overall, it's not bad but it doesn't really rise above the line. Fix the sizing and it would probably earn another star from me.

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8. Olivia gave it on 10th Nov 2008 and said:

   First Impressions: Very poignant :) The header really stands out well against the dark background. I do like it, but perhaps the header could be thinner? It would balance it out a bit.

   Your blog posts a short and cute and I like that -you're giving an insight to your world flashes at a time. Small stories from your day are sometimes what makes the visitor stop to take a look. It would be nice however to see longer blogs with more detail about you or the people in your life. :)

   About: Why does the date for this page say 'December 31st, 1969'? I can see you're 13 - do you mean 1996 for your birthday? This seems like a random quierie but it's a quite random date! The way I see it, because they're is no little introduction of who you are on the homepage, this About page should give us all the details.

   Your description of yourself if very frank and to the point, and to be honest I don't mind the (quite frankly pointless) description of you having 'two eyes, two ears, a nose and a mouth',
   because that instantly portrays your stubborn personality. I feel like you've blurted out all that you think of yourself here, but are you really 'boring'? I don't think so.

   This page should instantly paint me a picture of who you are yet without the basics of your location for example, I feel like there are gaps.(Tenor to Soprano? Wow!)

   You've squeezed a little info about the website at the end of this page, but I feel like visitors would like to know more than a sentance! I certainly would :) For example, what made you
   want to create the site? Why did you decide on this layout? All this type of information could give an insight to you and your world.

   Links - nicely organised, I'd happily come back to this pageif I felt like a blog-browse.

   Final Comments:
   I'd suggest you work on telling us more about yourself not only on a seperate page but within your actual posts aswell. You could create entire pages based on your opinions, or again just work them into your blog. I feel like a lot of content (of your passions, life etc) is needed to complete your personal site. You've probably got a lot to say (whether it be on issues or just life in general) so go ahead and say it! It will make your site more engaging to visit :)

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9. 

   Roxy gave it on 10th Nov 2008 and said:

   Your header image is interesting to say the least. I feel that the site's name can either more prominent on the image or taken out all together. I'm just not too fond of it as of now, though. Perhaps, making it smaller would help, as there isn't much to it?

   While I have a soft spot for "dark" layout designs, yours is a bit too dark. I have to squint in order to read your headers and that not a very good thing to have your visitors do. Since your header image is so bright, why not have gone with more brighter colors for your styles?

   For example the blue tint probably would have looked better as the main link color, rather then that dark pink/purple-ish color. For your navigation, you could have used the darker gray color and when rolled over, changed to possibly the yellow/lime color with a black font. (its hard for me to say, as I would need to design it in order to get the colors right, these are merely suggestions)

   Just know the overall color scheme is not right at all and takes a lot away from not only your "design" but also what the website has to offer.

   As for the layout structure of your website, I noticed the bar holding the "comments" link goes off to the right side. I'm not sure if you have it set to do this, but if so, its not attractive and makes the layout look sloppy. Scrolling further down, I can see this was not done on purpose as the last "comment" block is centered. You should look into getting this fixed ASAP!

   Your footer is smaller then the last "comment" block and is too large. Either make it MUCH smaller, or get rid of it and just add the "footer" block you have to the bottom of the page.

   Onto the content!

   About: Simple and to the point, I like it. The only thing I'm not sure about is your first line..."I'm a Baohan". What is that? Sorry if it may be obvious and I'm just slow, but I'm not sure and who's to say others will not know. Please explain. Thank you!

   I'm sure from reading the other reviews, that you know some of your grammar is incorrect and needs to be looked at? So, I will not repeat that here.

   Blog Post: Nothing too interesting, maybe adding more meat to it would perk them up a bit?

   Overall: I wasn't too impressed with your website. For being "Personal" you should add more about YOU. Your favorite things, hobbies, things you like to make...etc. This will add more content to your site and will be more interesting to look at then one-liner blog posts! Good luck with fixing up your site, be sure to reply with an update and I'll be happy to re-review you! =)

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10. 

    Sewwy gave it on 10th Nov 2008 and said:

    My initial thoughts are that I quite like the design. It's simple, but quite lovely. The colours work well, and it's not too overpowering. The width of the content area could be wider, however. There is a lot of "white space" just hanging around waiting to be filled.

    The blog entries itself seem rather uninspiring. The three pages of entries I went through are short, uneventful and, I hate to say it, boring. Try padding up your blog entries with more content for your readers to read, make them interesting, fill them with discussion questions, thoughts, ramblings, reviews, and the like. There's no point in having a blog and maintaining it if you can't entertain your readers, especially because your site is lacking in anything other than blogs.

    Your about page is quite informative, however, your grammar is rather shocking. For instance "What I already owned is far enough for me." should read "What I already own is more than enough for me" - You struggle with your wording a little. You also say you enjoy writing, so I'd imagine that this should be a primary aspect for you to focus on and aim to improve. Microsoft Word should help you with grammar and spelling errors. If you're reluctant to use such a program, you could ask someone to proof read your entries and even your writing before finalising anything.

    You've made for the effective beginnings of a website, however, I'm relatively unimpressed with what you have so far. The site and content could definitely use some work and improvement. Keep building on what you've got and you'll be well on your way to a successful site. :)

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11. 

    Aisling gave it on 9th Nov 2008 and said:

    "Backstaged," is one of my favourite blog names on the web. It must be the theatre nerd in me.

    Let's see what we have here. Lots of grey with splashes of colour. Definitely a concept that I enjoy, but I'm not sure you're quite hitting the mark with this one.

    I like the idea of the stained glass. I like the subtle brush effects, i.e. all the brush effects that aren't white. The white ones just don't work. I find the whiteness too bright in comparison to the rest of the layout. Meanwhile, focus on, say, the pinks along the right, the brushing there sort of works with the stainless style. The black lines? What's that? Is it meant to be a crack? It's not really doing it for me.

    Your navigation is nothing special, but it's not horrid. It's just... blahhh.

    I don't really enjoy how your heading's backgrounds and comments area are the same colour as the main background. It's like... a hole. Like someone ripped a chunk out of your layout and you can see through it. And that irks me. Also the way the div that says "comments," is... is just bizarre. What's up with the margin on one side? Centre it please, or make it stretch the entire area.

    The footer is sloppy. I think that the stained glass image should stretch all the way across and stick to the bottom. Right now, it's up against the div that says "comments," and it doesn't even align with it! The box that contains the actual footer information is just.. floating.

    Your About page has a date on the top of it,and is in a category? That confuses me. Is it a post or a page? It should be a page, it doesn't need a date. The content itself is well written, although I would like to see more on Backstaged itself.

    Your links page is nice, but still has the date. Oh look! The footer stretches all the way across! That looks quite a bit better, although the floaty box with the info is still questionable.

    Overall, a good start, but still definitely quite a way to go. You have a lot of the right ideas, they just need a bit more tweaking!

    Using Firefox on Windows | Report This?

12. TWD gave it on 8th Nov 2008 and said:

    Layout:

    When I first viewed backstaged, I thought, "Wow, there's no contrast between the text and background." Then I turned my screen brightness up and found that at full brightness (which is probably what you had made it in), it was actually quite readable. I would also like to be able to see more content "above the fold" (the part of your site I can see without scrolling)—your header takes up more than half the space on my 1280 x 800 resolution, so I can only see the first paragraph of your most recent entry. The header also draws attention away from the content because it's so large and bright in comparison to everything else. As for the graphic itself, I think it could use some work. The black zig-zags on the left are out of place in comparison to everything else, and it appears as though it could use more effort. I haven't used Photoshop in a while, but it looks like you ran a stained glass filter on a multicolored image, then took a white scratchy brush and brushed over the image several times and set it to overlay, and used the same brush in yellow behind your site name. I'm sure you can do better than that! I was also clicking around near your header and was teleported to your extreme tracking page. You might want to consider putting that someplace people are less likely to click on or, if it's possible, avoid linking it to your login.

    Moving away from your header, your navigation seems fine, if a bit on the blocky side. It ends two pixels too early in Opera, my primary browser, and IE7 but looks right in Firefox. The rss link could safely be placed in the footer, since that's not the first thing people will want to look at.

    The post layout needs to be a little more unified; there's too much space between each element and they're too distinct from one another. For instance, the headings seem like they're floating around. You could try making the background span the whole content width, decrease the contrast between the heading and content background, or get rid it the background altogether so that it becomes more connected to the post. Notice how Amanda and Jem use color to distinguish their headings, but keep the meta information (date, category, etc.) nearby—something like that is much more cohesive in appearance. Additionally, your date and post title seem to be locked in a battle for dominance; pick which one's more important than the other, or combine the two. I also have no idea what's going on with the individual posts' footers, but there are links to older posts on all of the ones on the front page, when just one link at the bottom would do, and when you do click on older posts all the posts have two older post links. Try playing with WP a bit to make the post layout different on the main page than on an individual post page. I noticed that each successive post has an increased left padding/margin , which I found a bit odd.

    Finally, we hit your footer, which is my least favorite element of your design. It's stuck right up against the bottom of the final post, is really large, and contains another chunk of your header image, so it detracts from the content in the same manner as before (too big and too bright). The copyright paragraph looks like you made a mistake in the coding, because it's off center, and is especially awkward because there's only one word on the second line. Instead, have it span the width of the image, or better yet, get rid of the image entirely and just leave a paragraph at the end of your page with the copyright information.

    I thought I was all done with the layout, and then I clicked on your about link to find that the footer looked different! A bit better, in fact, although I'm still not a fan. What I said about your post headings also goes for the about page, but I think you should eliminate the category and date, along with the near-empty div at the bottom. The subheadings on the links page are much better, although the main heading criticism still applies.

    Overall, your layout is on the right track—a little more attention to detail will go a long way! You need a bit more cohesion in your color scheme, and the graphics can be improved. I would also suggest a faint background pattern or texture for the body to add a little more contrast and flair. Different pages have different setups, which can be confusing or irritating the the reader. Try to tie things together a bit more and you'll be all set. :)

    Coding:

    Your code is pretty good; the only things I noticed were minor. You use an XHTML transitional doctype. According to the W3C:
    

    Authors should use the Strict DTD when possible, but may use the Transitional DTD when support for presentation attribute and elements is required.

    You run a personal blog; I'm sure that you can accomplish that while using code that isn't out of date, so stick to the XHTML Strict doctype instead. You could probably get rid of the div surrounding your navigation, and the line break tags that follow it are also unnecessary—use margins instead. The same goes for the line breaks between the heading, categories, post content, and post footer. Your heading structure's a little screwy, though. I blieve that generally, h1 applies for the overall heading (your site title), h2 would be for blog/article/page heads, and depending on your interpretation of semantics, h3 could be your meta information or just any article subheadings. You start with h4 for your date and then don't use subheadings any further. The reasons proper use of headings is important are that a) it's semantically correct (as you keep going into subsections of a page or post, you'd use lower level headings, right?) and b) it helps search engines make sense of your page. You should also run through your CSS and get rid of any portions that you aren't using (#content, h1, and h2, for instance) so that you cut down on file size and page load time (although the load time is pretty small as is—good job!).

    Content:

    I can't really say much about your writing style from the blog posts, because they're short, but your grammar and punctuation seems fine. A few things I noticed on your About Me page:
    - "I own and operate this website" is a bit redundant; readers (or at least I) assume that if you own it, you operate it and vice versa.
    - "I have the basics of human beings; I have..." instead of "; I have" use ": two eyes and ears, a nose, and a mouth." It's shorter and less awkward.
    - "What I already owned..." should be "what I already own"
    - "who come full package" should be "who comes
    - "My hobbies include...designing stuffs" should be "...designing stuff"
    - "which I am really good at doing" would be better as a parenthetical statement - "sitting on my arse (which I am...)"
    - underline the titles of novels (Anna Karenina) and other long works, and try ", along with many others." instead of "and many more."
    - "great superior skill of procrastination" is redundant and awkward; "superior skill in procrastination"
    - "Besides from lying around" should be "Besides lying around" (unless there are grammar differences between where you and I live)
    - "Rather than to site and procrastinate, I am actually suffering..." This bit is out of place. I would suggest making a new paragraph about your phobias, if you can elaborate a bit (although I'm not overly fond of phobia lists). Additionally, I believe you don't need to capitalize phobia names.
    - "Therefore, birds zoo, feather-y stuffs, and extreme sports" might be better off as "As you might guess, bird zoos, feathery things, and extreme sports" (therefore doesn't fit in with the casual tone of your page, and feathery is a word).
    - In the music paragraph, you can delete the bit about procrastination and combine "I sing in the school choir. I have a big range.." to make "I sing in the school choir; because of my voice range (from tenor to soprano), I can be placed just about anywhere."
    - "...there are no chair for me to sit." should be "...there are no chairs for me to sit in."

    The pessimist bit came out of nowhere. Why don't you elaborate? In fact, I think it'd be interesting to hear more about you in general, besides the lazy and procrastination part which seems to be common to most people. You've also got just one sentence about Backstaged - why not add more or put it in the beginning, where you talked about owning the website?

    Regarding your links page: what's the difference between people on the "dailies" list and people on the "admired" list? Do you not visit sites on the second list daily? Are the folks on the first list ones you're close to? I was too lazy to check all of your links, but Aisling has moved to dreamling.ca so you might want to update that. :)

    Overall: There's not a whole lot to say here; your content is pretty standard and your writing isn't bad. About pages are definitely difficult to write (for me, at least) so it's understandable that yours doesn't blow me away, but more information is definitely a plus. Post a little more often and I might be able to say more about your writing, but I'll reserve judgment for now.

    You get 3 stars! With improvements to the layout, you'd hit 4 stars, and in order to get a 5 you'd need some more interesting writing. Kudos for your start, though, and keep working on Backstaged! I hope this review was of use to you and not too long to go through. :P

    Using Firefox on Windows | Report This?

    Baohan's Response:

    Thanks for the review. It sure helps me a lot!

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