theStudioLark

theStudioLark

***-- (Rated by 8 people, viewed by 208 people)

theStudioLark is the blog of a sixteen year old girl along with a bit of visitor content.

Added by studiolark in Personal

theStudioLark has 8 Reviews

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

  1. [img: avatar]
    blondishnet gave it **--- on 1st Jan 2010 and said:

    First Impression: Blue is my favorite color, but this site just has too much and is very bland. There really is nothing to make it stand out or have any variation from other sites.

    Content: A lot of your icons, you really should not be handing out. They violate copyright laws, regardless if you even give credit. Celebrities, models and such, you need to contact the original artist/ photographer to receive permission. Although it there is a small chance of you being found and told to remove them... you should rely on your own skills.

    HOWEVER... you can call them 'fanart icons' instead and that is far more acceptable to nit pickers.

    Your 404 page should conform more to your site. I am surprised to see sites around that are not using WordPress or Habari or Serendipity such as yours.

    The problem with your 404, you should at least have a way to get back to your site, other than clicking on the back button in your browser menu.

    You need to be cautious on your spelling. I caught one on your main page - pixles should be 'pixels.'

    Coding:
    You are missing key elements in your DOC Type information for browsers to read your site properly. You should move your CSS to its own file.

    Design:
    As said, you need to rethink your color scheme. Everything is very bland, nothing short of a black and white movie...except all in blue.

    Some of your content header tags are not consistent and should not have lowercase lettering, which is not consistent with your other header/ section separators.

    In your blog entries/ site update entries, you should put some padding around your avatar image. The text literally clings to the avatar.

    The margining in your sidebar and the margining in your content area are not consistent. The margins in your content areas on both left and right of the text are wider than the gaps in the sidebar.

    Summary:
    Simple sites are great, but this site, even with color is bland. I know I have said that already, but that is what sticks in my mind.

    Seriously, correct your coding and at least you will have a site that is easily read by most browsers.

    I like that you provided content, but try to use your own natural talent rather than rely on sprucing up pics that are not yours, nor belong to some of the LJ groups providing illegal scans from magazines and other print material.

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  2. [img: avatar]
    katibbyxx gave it ***** on 20th Dec 2009 and said:

    So I absolutely love your site. I was on it earlier today after i found you on 's SOTM page :] I was extra happy to found out you were on this site so I could review your site.

    So let's start. First of the name, It's original and cute. Which is always a plus you deff want people to think you are original and what better way but with a name. Next I wanted to say about your layout. When I was on earlier today it was the gray, green & pink one. And I was expecting to review that layout, and if so it would not have been the best review. But seeing as how you have changed it I don't have to worry about that. The new layout however is amazing I love the wintery theme and the color. It's very well organized and you have just the right amount of content on the sidebar. I love that your content is easy to get to. you have a very good amount of visitor content. I really can't find anything i don't like about your site. except one thing that bothers me is it gets a little unorganized near the bottom of the sidebar. :]

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  3. gave it ****- on 20th Nov 2009 and said:

    The layout is outstanding in my opinion.

    First impressions:
    Good layout, but I have to squint to read your blog.

    Your affiliates are falling onto the image, we want to see the pretty image, try and fix this okay?

    The chat box, those always bother me. I just think, why would you need a chat box, when you can talk through comments.
    That's just my opinion

    Overall my first impressions are okay. 3.5/5
    first impressions aren't everything

    Content > Icons > People:
    I'm probably being a hypocrite here because I do this all the time, and I'm truly sorry about being one. But I have to stress this, celebrity graphics are illegal, although I do it a lot. I understand you do them when you have no inspiration, which is cool.

    But, other then that. They look amazing. I really like the one that says "How Can I Decide"

    Content > Icons > Food:
    I'm just gonna do a quick review of these, because they are totally making me hungry.
    They are pretty cute, but yet again making me hungry. I cannot get side tracked from the review.

    Content > Icons > Food:
    You and your icons, are making me tempted, now I wanna go buy clothes. Aha, just kidding.
    Very good, I might use these in the future.

    Content > Icons > Animals & Nature:
    These are also good.

    Overall Score for Content > Icons: 4.5/5

    Content > Blends:
    I'm not a big fan of blends, but yours are okay.

    Overall Score for Content > Blends: 2.5/5

    Okay. I really wish I could finish this but I really gotta cut it short. Maybe later I'll have some time to finish it.

    So far score for entire site: 3/5

    UPDATED 20 Nov 09:
    Continued:
    I have to rush through the rest... sorry!
    Content > Quotes:
    Not bad.
    Are these yours?
    If so, good job!

    Overall Score for Content > Quotes 5/5

    Contents > Wallpapers:

    Ah, cute. I like the one that sorta looks like American Eagle.
    Very good,

    Overall Score for Content > Wallpapers : 4.5/5

    Okay, I really don't have time to make comments on the rest of your content, just gonna rate it.
    Sorry, I'm not really into sitting here and typing all day..

    Overall Score for Content > Textures: 3/5

    Overall Score for Content > Coded Layouts: 2/5

    Overall Score for Content: 2.5/5

    Oh my god, I gotta go. :|

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  4. daffadillies gave it *---- on 19th Nov 2009 and said:

    The layout is odd. It's very small and left-justified, which makes it look like an image. Also, there are a lot of links in small places, so it makes it hard to digest.

    It also has a lot of ads.

    In general, it's just very cluttered.

    However, it looks like what I'd expect from a sixteen year old girl, so you're getting it right for your audience.

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  5. [img: avatar]
    karenboswell gave it ****- on 11th Nov 2009 and said:

    Mozilla Firefox
    1440x900pixels

    First Impression 2/3
    Love the layout. Hate the small fonts. One of your affiliates have a really long name and that screwed up the navigation. Maybe cut short her name?

    Content 3/4
    Nice amount of content you have there. However they are all arranged ugly. (sorry for the term, couldn't find any other suitable word) What I mean ugly, the title is on the right, while the links are on the left.
    I don't like the fact that my eyes have to go right, then go left.

    Others 2/3
    Love what you have the rest. The links to other sites, the about you. Nice. ^^

    I think the only major problem is your small font.

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  6. [img: avatar]
    Greykitty gave it ***-- on 11th Nov 2009 and said:

    My first impression isn't so great. It's really small and cramped and pushed all the way to the left of my screen and I can barely read the font in your blog. A good font size is at least 10px.
    Your ad scroller is really distracting and moves too fast for me to figure out what you are advertising. I would get rid of it and just use a banner rotation. They are just as effective and don't distract from the content of the page.

    The colors are ok, but the orange clashes against the duller grey blue. My suggestion would be try to go with a theme of warm colors or cool colors but avoid mixing them, most of the time it doesn't work so well. When I hover over your navigation your text moves around. This is a bit annoying, I would suggest fixing this so it won't do that. Specify a height and width for your navigation boxes in your css.

    That is also the other thing I would work on is pulling your style out of your basic layout and going to a stylesheet. It really helps clean up your code and helps with editing as well.

    I would center your layout so that there isn't a huge gap on the right side of the screen. Anyone with a wide screen monitor or even a high resolution is going to just see a whole lot of nothing there. It's distracting and takes away from the site.

    Since the text is small I don't really feel like straining my eyes to read your blog, sorry, so I won't say much about it.

    Looking at your content pages it's organised but in a very confusing way, your header fonts are huge and your links are tiny. I would even this out and keep them all on one side of the screen.
    You seem to have a fair amount of content, which is nice. Nothing terribly original but the stuff that is there is nice looking and it looks like you put a decent amount of effort into it all.

    Extra, as with your other page I would keep all text on the same side and makes sure that there isn't such a huge variation in font size. Anyways the section is a bit small but I'm sure you'll be adding to it and articles are always great to see. Maybe add opinions, and beliefs on certain topics there too. Or add debate topics where you can leave them open for your visitors to comment on and share their opinions as well.

    The domain section is complete enough, though one thing is missing, a little section about you. Granted not everyone wants to reveal too much about themselves online but a little bit about you would be nice since you run the place. Besides you blog there. Maybe I'm missing it or something but I couldn't see a section about yourself.

    Watch out on your coding, I would run your site through a validator. Remember to close all your tags and to start your page with html tags and head and body tags too. These are really important.

    Oh wait I just found the about section, it was hidden up top. I don' t like the drop downs too much cause they are really blindingly bright colors and don't match your layout. Always keep your form types in the same theme as your layout.

    Sorry if I jumped around a lot in this review, it's late and I just kinda wrote as I thought of it. Hopefully it's easy enough to follow. Overall your site's not bad, I just think your layout and coding needs more work and you should get in some more unique content. Stuff that you won't be able to find anywhere else. You do have some nice downloads but those aren't enough to keep people coming back. At least not in my opinion.

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  7. [img: avatar]
    Sillyish gave it **--- on 9th Nov 2009 and said:

    The layout

    GENERAL POINTS...
    This layout is very small and smushed up against the left hand side of my screen. Because of its small size, I think it would be more effective centred, or, better yet, bigger AND centred.

    Additionally, there seems to be some weird background colour issues going on. this image's background does not match the #e3e3e7 that is the rest of the body's background. I'm assuming you WANT these colours to match, and the best way to do this would be to take a small piece of the main image's background (like a 2x2 square) and use that as a background image of the body, so that every computer will render the colours exactly the same, instead of it being monitor specific.

    Also, there is an odd dark purple line at the top of the layout that seems out of place.

    READABILITY...
    The text is very difficult to read, because it is #1 far to small and #2 very similar in colour to the background.You'd definitely benefit from having larger, darker text. Also, it's very odd that the orange affiliate links and take me away links are SO much larger than the rest of the site's text. It seems out of place.

    Finally, the text is quite close to the edge of the borders of the layout, more padding would look nice.

    SMALL FIDDLY THINGS
    Wasn't overly fond of the hover effect on links. I would have preferred it if it just changed colour and nothing else. The larger font/bolder on hover = major turnoff, the strike out = not as bad but not really to my taste.

    Thought the sidebar was a bit messy and removing some of the clutter, such as layout info, and putting it into the "site" section instead, would have been more attractive.

    The rainbow dropdown menus in the 'about' section seemed out of place on a very faded purple layout.

    The past layout image links would have looked nicer if instead of going to a .jpg page they had some sort of lightbox effect

    Sidenote: Your really old site examples made me laugh because they remind me a lot of my OWN first website examples (10 years ago!!). And in fact, even your current layout reminds me of something I might have made 8 years ago or so :-P 

    Coding
    I'm not a big fan of nitpicking over code in reviews, but here's a bit.

    When I went to view your source, I was pretty surprised at how utterly dismal your coding was.

    I know that sounds super harsh, please don't take it too personally!

    Your page started with some closing tags for a table which wasn't even open. There was no <html> tag at the beginning, no head, no body... it was just a bunch of random codes thrown together in no particular order. You could really benefit from a basics of html crash course, because this was probably one of the most poorly coded websites I have seen in a long long while.

    Content
    I got some 404s for some sections of your site, not sure of you're aware of this problem or not. Funnily enough, one of the 404s I got was when click on the "404 signs" download link. I thought it was a joke at first until I got the same error message for the hiatus signs link.

    Your downloads didn't interest me at all, but they seemed similar to downloads I have seen on other sites, so I'm assuming that they are popular with others.

    I did think for sections like makeup and skin care tips, more would have been much better. A whole page devoted to TWO tips? Would have liked a list of 20 or more, written in an entertaining article format.

    Anyway, I hope I didn't crush you too much with this review, I realize I probably came off as fairly mean in parts, but I honestly am not trying to hurt your feelings, just help you out and point out things that can be improved on. It's a never ending learning process, so keep it up!

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    studiolark's Response:

    Thanks so much for the review. It was actually very helpful. I agree with a lot of the points you mentioned I will be working to improve in those areas. Thanks Again. =]

  8. [img: avatar]
    themngopngn gave it ****- on 8th Nov 2009 and said:

    Your layout is simple. The only downside is that there is a bit of that lavender blue at the top of the page. I am guessing that it is the background? I think that I have fallen in love with your domain name. The layout and site name contrasts well.

    Then I see the first header. I am not too fond of the "All About Mwah". Also, horse-loving, girl should be horse-loving girl. and it looks awkward justified. Maybe if it were not justified it would not look so awkward? The only thing that makes it awkward is the separation between obsessed and creative.

    I do not like the color of the link hover. That bright yellow against your two backgrounds does not mix. Maybe a tan or teddy brown would work against the lighter background, and just a simple black would suffice against the lavender background?

    Your blog text is too small. I have to squint in order to read it when I should not have to. With your CSS in one big blob of text it is difficult to see what the size of the blog text is in order to help you.

    Extra-
    Again, it is difficult to see your text. It is too small.
    The Icon Contest page said that if I scroll down, I can get some ideas from the drop down menus. Where are the drop down menu? Maybe you forgot to add them? Also, the background for the table is a little messy here. It does not align with the header of the image. Besides that, it is November 7 and the contest ended October 31. Hair 401 is not readable at all. Unlike the Icon Contest page, I cannot even depict a bit of what this page says. You may want to include where you got these things from, though. Because 401 sounds familiar. I think I saw that in a magazine just recently.

    The Makeup and Skin Care page has text that just says "links". What is this? I know that I can click it, but my browser does not let me see what the link is in my status bar since I do not have one. Therefore, how do I know that this is safe to click?

    Without You poem- This poem sounded familiar, and I now know why. It has pieces of old songs and old famous poems in it as if you took them all and sewed them back together.
    Realization-
    No one but me stands alone in the crowd. This line does not make any sense. It could be worded differently.
    Finally I see, I can’t be anyone, but me. should either be Finally I see -- I can't be anyone but me. or Finally I see I can't be anyone but me. Commas are not needed everywhere. :)
    You followers and such. should be You followers and such,
    Sunsets-
    the colors are painted
    across the sky
    at the site of such beauty
    my hearts wants to fly.     It seems as if you got lazy on capitalizing. In poems, you want to follow the pattern you began with, unless you do not follow a pattern from the start.
    If you do not have anything for a particular category, why waste the space and keep it up there? It looks a bit tacky to me.
    Sunshine should be sun shine since you are using it as a subject and a verb.
    Some pointers for the terms of your writings:
    Type each one, and mail it to yourself. THAT is your copyright, and if you see your writing on someone else's website or somebody use it, you will be able to have proof that you wrote it. The only way to have the full copyright, though, is to NOT open it. It is better to send two copies to yourself, too. The stamp/packaging is you paying the amount of money that it would cost to copyright it. Credit for the information goes to my old editor (who retired :() at Author House.
    Content should be changed to Vistor, because content means the entire website.
    The icons of people are copyrighted. You did not take the pictures of those celebrities, or did you? Also, try saving in .gif or .png for better quality. For the rest of the icon pages, did you take those pictures that are used? If not, they should not be on your website.

    Same with the rest of the graphics.

    Hostees-
    Hostees is not a word; it should be 'family', 'hosted' or something along that line...

    When abbreviating your site name, or anything for that matter, you capitalize everything (TSL).
    "fast replies to contact attempts" should be worded differently. It does not make sense. Also, you use we a lot, when there only seems to be one person running the website.

    Domain-
    Not everyone starts out with the 'crappiest' things. I had been designing other's web pages for quite some time before I finally got my domain in seventh grade. Using "Like everybody else... " is an understatement, and it is unfair. I did not start out with a 'basic' website, either. It was complex and required Flash. Perhaps you could spice up this page by fixing your spelling, punctuation and grammar mistakes. There are a lot of fragments, and it feels like I am speaking to you in a chat room or something instead of reading about your website. I see your Disclaimer, too. If you are using them for redistribution, it is copyright. The only way to get past this is to print and scan what you wish to use, then give the domain name for the website that you found it on. If it was found on a website that requires you to pay before using it or to get the full picture and you print and scan it, that is considered illegal.

    About Me-
    Ah, there are the drop down menus. As stated above, you really need to fix your punctuation, spelling and grammatical errors. I dislike the colorful drop downs. Why not just color them normal?

    Validation
    I would suggest not using a CSS code generator and creating a style.css file to keep your CSS coding in. As for your HTML/XHTML, it was difficult to help you validate it since you do not have a type specified. You can learn how to validate your website so that it is viewable in all browsers here. She also provides how to validate to XHTML in her tutorials section if you would rather convert to that.

    Overall
    I would not leave the copyrighted objects up. I would take them off and use my own pictures. It is more creative and original. They do not always have to be of you, either. Ask a few friends if you could take pictures of them for your website, or just ask for help. If you see a picture online that you like, try to recreate it by yourself on your own time instead of taking someone else's picture in their time. How would you feel if someone took a picture of you and redistributed it all over the World Wide Web? Hopefully you see my point... I also suggest that you fix your errors that I mentioned, or at least the English errors. English meaning spelling, grammar and punctuation. The small text is not a good attraction either. It turns people away when something is too small for them to read. A little small text is okay but all of your pages are small, and it is not attractive.

    Hope this helped? :]

    Viewed in Google Chrome.

    UPDATED 08 Nov 09:
    The copyright information is not known as what you described it provided you do it correctly. If you are in high school, give Newspaper Productions or Yearbook Productions a try. Even they will tell you. You can also email Sonya Sones via SonyaSones@aim.com asking. I took my work into court using that copyright and won. I would not have suggested it if it did not work.

    Also, your writings were on your website, and you put your website on here for me to review. If you do not want those sections to be reviewed then do not put them there. It is that simple. Not to mention the fact that I reviewed your website -- it does not mean that you actually have to listen.

    Either way, it is still the same concept -- For the Disclaimer paragraph, that is.

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    studiolark's Response:

    Thanks so much for taking the time to review theStudioLark. I will definitely think about some of the things you mentioned. As far as what you mentioned about the "Disclaimer" I was referring to images of celebrities used in a few of my graphics. Just to clear things up besides the photos of celebrities or movie screen caps - everything else used was available as stock photography and most are royalty free. I also do not offer any content from other sites. That would be redistributing with is against my personal beliefs and most site's terms of use.

    I do want to mention that you are reviewing websites. Reviewing graphic content is okay, but if people have personal content such as poems or stories, please don't offer your opinion or critique them unless you were asked to do so. That would be like me pointing out the errors in your life story. "With Out You" was a poem I wrote several years ago. Any likeness it as to anything else was unintentional and mainly coincidence.

    The copyright you refer to is commonly known as poor man's copyright and isn't exactly the most reliable way, it's not secure and probably wouldn't hold up in a court setting.

    But again, thanks for the review.

    UPDATED 08 Nov 09:
    Okay, thanks for the info on the copyright. I'd never heard of anyone actually winning a court case with that copy right so that's definitely something I'll do.

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