Unfoolish-Miracles.net

Unfoolish-Miracles.net

***-- (Rated by 7 people, viewed by 187 people)

I know the design of my site is far from perfect. It's something I like to do when I'm bored, but the actual blogging part is my main focus. It's like therapy for me, and I like to write. I created the domain on the last day of 2004. Back then it was a trend to put two words together. I've thought about getting a new domain with a name that relates to my personality more, but UM has been my home for four years, and I can't give it up.

Added by Britney in Personal

Unfoolish-Miracles.net has 7 Reviews

Below are the reviews left by other members on Unfoolish-Miracles.net. Jump to review form?

  1. exclusive gave it ****- on 15th Nov 2008 and said:

    My first impression of your site is good. I like your name, a lot. If there was a page with just links to sites, no previews, nothing, just the names. I would defiantly click on yours. ;) Your layout isn't anything special, but it's nothing too bad. You could use a little work on your graphic making skills. Read a couple of tutorials, and I'm sure your graphic skills will go up x10 ! I like how your layout's simple. Keep that up. If you observe what others do on their sites, and read tutorials, that'll help a lot.

    As for your sidebar, everything looks nice overall. It would help if you'd make it shorter. Try to either take some links off, or try and put them side by side. I have that on my sidebar, if you don't know what I'm talking about, you can check that out.

    I like your blogs a lot. I'll defiantly come back to read more. Blogging often will get you more returning visitors, and it's a great way to get them to tell their friends, who will tell their friends, etc. etc. etc. ;)

    Movie Reviews:
    It's a great idea to have movie reviews. A lot of people want to watch movies, but don't know what to see. So they'll go to your site! Keep it up, and try and update it as often as you can. (:

    Overall, your sites pretty great. You could use some improvements, but overall it's good. Keep up the good work!

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

    It was the title that first caught my interest in your site. "Unfoolish Miracles", just seems like a name that you would remember.

    The site layout is cute and neat. I love how its center-aligned; that get you two thumbs up. I may be biased because pink is my favourite colour but I like the pink coordinates with the brown. Its bright and colourful, without being garish. The navigation was easy enough to find and is big enough.

    I really liked your "About Me" page. Gosh, we have so much in common, but 'm not going to go off on a tangent about this even though I want to! I really agree with you on your views/morals about sex. I mean, you even love pink like me! You rock. ^_^

    'Movie reviews'. These look good, I don't see many personal sites that include these as a big section. You have quite a few too! Its useful that you include important information about the movies such as who stars in it and the certificate. Your reviews are quite substantial too, it shows you've put some thought and effort into these.

    Your 'site' section was neat and organised. I see no errors here so that's ok. I viewed your first layout and wow your site has certainly improved. Don't knock your design, personally I think your doing a good job.

    Yay, a 'links' page! Its good that you include sites that you regularly visit and there is a lot of them listed here. Maybe for your links page you could include where people can find you elsewhere on the web. I know you've already put this in your sidebar but maybe you could move them to the links section. Same goes for the 'listed at' section in your sidebar.

    Overall I liked your site. Your blogs are well written and frequent which is good. I can't stand going to a site and seeing that its been inactive for a month. Keep working on your site as writing is one of your strong points. :)

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

    My initial thoughts are that the design is quite nice: It's nice and simple, and works well for the site. However, it is rather cluttered. It could be wider without causing any issues in any resolution, reducing the clutter. A little bit more padding couldn't hurt either. I do quite like the colour scheme you have going, though.

    I read through a few of your blog entries and there was something that simply did not draw me in. I suppose that the blog entries seem a little generic. I know blog entries can get generic pretty easily, however. Perhaps spice up your blog with some opinions, maybe some reviews. It makes things a bit different to the day-in-day-out blog entries.

    Your about me page was quite informative, but perhaps a little on the long side. That being said, it provides a good means of your viewer getting to know about yourself and your interests quite quickly.

    I quite liked your movie review page. It's quite unique and it's good to see that it wasn't just a one off. It could be an idea to categorise the movies based on rating, providing the reader a quick means of finding a great movie quickly.

    All in all, it's a well thought out site. It could use some improvements, as mentioned, but generally, is a nice personal blog.

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  4. sarabara gave it ***-- on 9th Nov 2008 and said:

    Layout-
    I like your header very neat but it still needs something more. It has just too much white space. I'm not too crazy about the font, I like the brown color just not the font itself. The background just doesn't go with your site. Maybe if it were a different color or just not wood.I do like how your site is centered and not off to the left or right. Kudos.
    Now it's just off a bit but the header doesn't quite match up to the body.

    Navigation- Half of the top navigation doesn't work- about me, movie reviews, links. I got an error page so those should be taken off. I saw under "site" it says you don't do link exchanges so I wouldn't think you would need that page anyhow. The welcome part doesn't even really need to be there. That all could go under "the girl". Under your side navigation, again under "the girl" there's a link that says "more", (I'm guessing thats your about me) that's missing. Maybe for the links do some rollover effects or some other kind of hovering. You can barely see the underline. Under site, I'm wondering why you have both registered and opened date unless it's to fill space. I think maybe instead of "elsewhere" you could put "find me". Disclaimer could be in a page like terms of use, you don't want to scare people off right away. Extreme tracking...I never understood why people have these. Why would I need to know how much traffic one has or doesn't have?

    Footer-
    Where did that run to? Add a terms of use, sitemap, copyright, why are you looking at my footer instead of my post.

    Favicon-
    You should get one. It makes it stick out when someone bookmarks you, like Jem. I don't even need to find the name I just look for the ninja.

    Site in general-
    Wow you have a lot of categories. I don't think I'd even try to read half of them but it will keep a variety for all different viewers. I would not have guessed you had this site as long as you did from the looks of it. Since you have a blogging site, you'll want to spruce it up some to make people stay. Even if you just have a really nice header with a plain background would help. If I wasn't reviewing it I would have x'd out of it completely. Hopefully I'm being helpful.

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

    Okay, so your site loads, and the first thing I think is how much I dislike the background you're using. It's like, a really tiny wood pattern, I think, but because it's so tiny it looks kind of sloppy. The actual content of your site could use a bit of padding. It seems very cramped. The header image is pretty cute. It should have much more attention on it, since it is the main design element.

    I really dislike when links do not change on hover. Your navigation is an image map, right? I like image maps, but there is a way to make them more accessible. Right now, if I choose to turn off images, I can't get anywhere on your site. That is a serious problem, especially for some forms of mobile browsing. You could easily still use pretty fonts as background images in a block-type navigation. And make them change on hover. That would be fantastic.

    Your sidebar looks organized. My only issue is the extremetracking code. And I will mention it to anyone who has it. It's so ugly! Is there no better option?

    On to content, your about page is interesting, and it covers a lot of topics you wouldn't normally find on an about page! Your movie reviews page is interesting to read. The domain page is also lovely. ... I don't have much to say on the content because to be honest, none of it stands out. It's not bad, but it's not particularly interesting either. It would be nice to see some content that relates more to who you are, and your interests.

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

    I actually like your header, but it's just kind of floating up there and not really given much attention. It's really cute. I think you should make it BIGGER. Give it some oomph and the attention it deserves. And, I just realized the text in it is brown. I LOVE brown! Can I recommend possibly changing your font color to the darkest hue of brown in your header? And maybe if you changed the wood grain background to a darker brown.. it would really make the fact the header text is brown POP. It would also give your site more contrast, while keeping the interesting texture of wood grain. The yellow you have doesn't really match anything but the border on your headers, and really, it's not enough to tie together the design.

    Moneypenny mentioned the search box, and I agree. Though, I think a lighter shade of pink would suffice... or even a nice gradient. Something pale, though, definitely. I think it needs a border, too... maybe you could do the highlight effect? Where the top border is lighter than the background color, and then the left, right and bottom borders are darker? It's very sleek.

    You could use a footer. Personally, I love footers. You could incorporate some of the flourishes from the header into it, use the font from the header to leave a "thanks for stopping by!" sort of message. Footers need not have a whole lot of information in them. They're just like the difference between... a loafer and a sexy boot. You know? It adds a little bit of style, shows attention to the details.

    Your side bar is... typical. I think the massive amount of categories you have displayed is unnecessary. I personally like the category "clouds," where the most used categories are displayed on the main page, and then you can put an archives link underneath the cloud, so people can go looking for more if they want. I think it's taking up unnecessary space. Your disclaimer doesn't need to be in the side bar. If you want to include a copyright statement, put it in the footer. But if you want to have a full-blown disclaimer, a small part in your "site" section would suffice. Also, your bullets should be consistent with your layout. They seem simple, but really, attention to those sorts of small things... bullets, link styles, headers, block quotes... they all matter, and they really bring a piece together. I recommend maybe making a bullet image... you could maybe use a small, pixelated flower that would match your header, or maybe a very small fleur-de-lis that would match the flourishes you've used. There's all sorts of potential with this layout... embrace it!

    I'm taking a look at your code, and the first thing that assaulted me was your unnecessary amount of meta tags! You do not need to include an entry for every single thing you've ever written about -- Google can categorize that when it crawls your site. You would be better off putting your name, your site title, and a few of the basic topics that you enjoy talking about. It's not recommended to have over ten, honestly. Even if you get a hit for having "bed sets" in your meta tags, they're not staying, and it's just a waste of your bandwidth. They're not coming back, they're not who you're targeting.

    Back to the code... your categories are automatically put into a list by Wordpress, but the lists you made are not. This isn't semantically correct, and it's really easy to correct.
    <ul>
    <li>item one</li>
    <li>item two</li>
    </ul>

    It's that easy. And you can look at all sorts of stuff online that will help you with stylizing your lists. I notice in your links you tend to include "target=_blank." This is generally discouraged for all sorts of accessibility reasons. According to your stylesheet, you have a colored scroll bar. Delete it. It only works in IE, and it's a browser hack. People don't need you to decide how their browser's scroll bar should look. And really, it doesn't make the design look any better. Your CSS is fairly bloated, but I don't really have the space to go through it line-by-line. I recommend reading up about minimizing CSS bloat, though, and trying to apply it.

    I've read through several blog entries, and you're very personable in them. You talk about a range of topics, and you're fairly thoughtful. I don't care for your about page... it's a bit disjointed; it kind of topic jumps. There's not a whole lot of flow. I'm glad you don't tell your life story.. that's boring, and webmasters who do are just wasting their time. But I don't think what you have is much better, because it doesn't give me a feel of you. I think you can reorder everything you want to say, and say it better, if you give it more consideration. I don't want to toot my own horn, but I kinda suggest looking at my about page on my website, because I've received compliments on it. I also recommend looking at Jem's (jemjabella.co.uk) and Rose's (lifeasrose.ca), because they both have about pages that don't go into their life story, but give you a HUGE sense of their personality. I don't really see a lot of you in your about page. You seem boring, and like every other teenage webmaster. And you're not -- you can tell in your blog. But your about page doesn't reflect that. You need your about page to help you put your best foot forward.

    Well then. Now that's I've written you a novel of things to think about, I think I'll give you time to look it over, and I'll keep checking back.

    UPDATED 09 Nov 08:
    Ughhh. I apologize about the weird gobbledegook for the code. I thought I needed to enter it that way, because that's generally how Jem has things work, and in the preview it was correct, but evidently it didn't transfer. I'll send her an email and ask her to do.. something.. about it.

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

    My first impression is that it's a decent-looking layout, but it's not very exciting. You use colors nicely for the most part, choosing a color scheme that is easy on the eyes and font/background colors that make your text readable. I don't like the pink background on the search form fields; I think a subtler color, like a pale orange from your wood background, would look better.

    I dislike how the header is not centered. There's such a large gap to the left of the image/main navigation that it looks as if you're trying to center it and it didn't work. I would say fully center it or left-align it with a smaller left margin.

    I would increase the padding in the sidebar on the left side to match the padding on the right side of the main column. This would balance the layout better and also I think the increased padding would look better.

    Your sidebar looks very typical for a personal blog. There's the little blurb about the site, then a small photo of the owner with non-sentence descriptions, blog categories, and outside links. It's really the site blurb and the author section that seem so cliche; I just see them everywhere. Maybe other people are using the blog category links, but I never find them so useful as to have them immediately on the home page. I usually provide a link to blog archives and the archives page has all my categories, tags, etc.

    Your header graphic isn't unattractive, and I like the use of colors in it. You do seem to have a great grasp of how to use colors, what with the blue section headers, the pink links, and the pale orange background. I wish your header image were a bit more elaborate and awe-inspiring, but it's fine.

    I wish your main navigation links had hovers. Even a simple color change would add interest. It's kind of expected anymore to have hovers on links, and I'm always a bit let down when links do nothing as I move my cursor over them. :(

    I think you could make the sidebar more compact vertically to good effect. Little to no padding between list elements, and also decreasing the line-height (maybe 1.2 or 1.3 for the sidebar, and something like 1.4 or 1.5 for the main content) would work. I also tend to make the font size of my sidebars smaller, since that's a visual cue that the content there is less important than the content in the main column.

    The bullets in your sidebar don't match. In the categories list, you have empty circle bullets, but in 'elsewhere' and 'listed', you have small, solid dots. The thing that really makes a site stand out past the basics is attention to detail, and having different bullets in various lists for no apparent reason shows a lack of attention to detail. I would style your bullets with a snazzy image, too, while you're at it, just because that also shows you're paying attention to everything and really trying to make your site look great down to the small features.

    Your layout rather abruptly ends with just a 'Next page' link for more blog entries. There's no footer, and the white column runs straight into the bottom of the screen. You might take some of your sidebar content, or maybe you have some other content you didn't fit into the sidebar, and put it in a footer. Then you could have a little bit of space between the bottom of the column/footer and the bottom of the screen.

    Your body background doesn't mesh: it's a repeating background but it's obvious where the edges of the tiled image are, at least horizontally. I would fix that so that it's a seamless background.

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    Britney's Response:

    Thanks for the review. It seemed accurate, and I would even rate my own site a 3 as well. As I said in my description, I'm not that great at designing, but I try.

    About the bullets, wordpress automatically put those circle bullets beside of the categories. I tried removing them, but it ended up looking awkward. :/

    I know that the little about me blurb in my sidebar is very cliche. I've been wanting to get rid of it, but I like going to a blog and seeing a little picture of the owner. If I left the picture and took out the text it would just look awkward. Not sure what to do with that yet.

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