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Tugboat has 4 Reviews

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

1. 

   Rinkurai gave it on 3rd May 2010 and said:

   Hello there! My name is Rinku and I'll be reviewing your site. Please note that this is my first time writing a review for a website, so I'm clearly a bit inexperienced. I have maintained a graphics site of my own for a couple of years, so this review is mostly based off of personal experience and general suggestions. I also would like to apologize for the fact that this review will not focus on details such as spelling and grammar, which is clearly not my specialty. I will not go in depth about what you've written, I will just point out small errors whenever I see them here and there. Anyway, on with the review!

   Design:
   Your layout is certainly graphic and bold, not only in color choice, but in (dare I say) "how it is laid out". :D The first thing I saw when the page was loading was the striped background. I actually really like the stripes, but the color blue you used against the white was a bit much for my tastes. I suggest adjusting it to a lighter blue like this. The second thing that caught my eye was the dash of pink from the text and lines on the header. I found it to be a nice touch, and I only wished you had used it more in the text-CSS of your design. For example, you could have used a pink color on the update headers instead of the small tagline, but overall it's not that big of a deal since I noticed you used it in some of your other headers further down the page. The only other thing I personally would have changed was the positioning of the navigation links, I would have moved them up a bit on the stripe so it's centered vertically. Overall the first impression is generally a good one, I quite enjoyed the vector-work on the banner, and the layout overall seems well suited for the site. I'm excited to see some of your other graphics!

   Coding
   The first thing I did before even looking at your coding was valid using The Markup Validation Service by w3.ORG. It seems you have ten errors, and five warnings, and they all seem to be easily fixable.First of all, you need to add an omit-tag for the link to your external style sheet. You can do that like so:

   <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="stylesheet.css" />

   I'm sure you know how to self-close a tag since you've used it on images throughout your coding. Then there is an issue of your use of the center tag. on line 70 you have the center tag which is not allowed between a paragraph element. This can easily be fixed, if you want the paragraph to be centered you can modify the p tag.

   <p align="center">CONTENT</p>

   Finally the last problem shown on the validator is the URL of one of your links includes an Ampersand. The validator gives a link to explain how the URL can be fixed to use HTML special characters.

   It looks like your CSS is completely valid, but it does give four warning in regards to adding quotes around font names that have two words for example:

   h2, h3{
font-family: "century gothic", verdana;
font-size: 16px;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}

   Notice how Century Gothic is in quotes. Anyway, besides the things listed your coding is completely valid so nice job! Structurally your coding is sound and quite clean, but some of the CSS is a bit bland, and could use some work. For example, the updates on the main page are quite close together, I would have added an extra break between each of them, just to separate them out more, even with the existing hr divider. Normally I would also criticize the fact that the text has no line-height property, but surprisingly with the font and size you chose it doesn't bother me too much. Also in the way of spacing, the footer is very close to the end of the content where it says "Powered by FanUpdate 2.2.1". Another break or two there wouldn't hurt. If the page looks like it has too much content after adding all the extra spacing I would suggest adjusting it so that there are only three or four updates per page.

   The only other thing, that I would suggest, is that the pink headers (like the one used for "Affiliates") were either a slightly larger text size, or were all-capitals, because again the pink color is lovely and the headers are much smaller in comparison to those used for the updates.

   Ok, finally, I'll be moving on to the content. I apologize for making so many little comments, I do genuinely like the layout overall. :D

   Main Page:
   I already made a lot of comments about the spacing and such, but there are still some small things I thought I should point out about the main page. Your introduction sounds alright, and I said I wasn't going to talk about wording, so in reality the only problem with it was a missing apostrophe, it should be:

   You can read more about Tugboat's history here.

   Instead of "Tugboats". Also in your footer the affiliate list could be centered, and the copyright could be rephrased a bit:

   © Tugboat, Hosting by Three-Words. Anime & manga art belong their respective creators, view all credits.

   Overall the main page looks nice. I like that you've kept your updates short and to the point, and your archives seem to be well organized. Let's move on then...

   Site:
   Looking at this page I think you should add a bit of space between the first header and the top image. Really, an easy way to do this is just find the CSS element it looks like you're using a div class called "head" and add a margin-top line to the CSS. All of the .head divs could use some extra space on top in my opinion, and again, a text indent, larger text, capitals, or something just to make it stand out more. Also you could consider adding a link to the list of credits to this page as well.

   About Tugboat:
   Again, I'm not going into detail about the writing and grammar and such, but this page looks fairly reasonable, though I do think you could add the bit about "Tugboat's start" to the first paragraph instead of having it at the bottom of the page. Then maybe you could make a separate header and call it "Past Sites" or something. I just think the main information about Tugboat could be at the top of the page since that's the main focus of the page anyway.

   Contact:
   Looking at this page made me a bit confused at first, I noticed right away that the text and header looked completely different from the rest of your site, so I looked and saw that you were using javascript for your form. I don't understand why you'd want to use it for a contact form if is only meant to e-mail you that is. There are several easy ways to create your own e-mail form. I personally use PHP to code my forms, and w3schools has a nice tutorial on it here. But if you want something simpler, you can just use an HTML form. W3schools also has an example of how to create an e-mail based contact form with just HTML. Honestly, in the end it doesn't matter too much if you have a javascript based form, I just think it's more convenient to use PHP or HTML since some people disable javascript on their browser.

   Link Back:
   This page is fine, and the buttons are nice. =)

   Link Exchange:
   I suggest adding a small line onto this page explaining what a link exchange is and potentially saying that if anyone is interested in link exchanging they can contact you via the form or something along those lines.

   Past Layouts:
   This page should probably be reorganized. Again, space between each of the layouts to signify that the description is below the image instead of above. Also the images seem to be a bit large, perhaps you could put a thumbnail that links to a larger version, because right now the page is a bit messy.

   Graphics
   Yay! We're finally getting to the good part, the graphics. I'm quite excited to see what you've made! :D On the main graphics page I noticed you said "Credit to Tugboat is required." People unfortunately might skip over that, so perhaps you could write up a short list of Terms of Use for the graphics and resources, just to emphasize that content should not be redistributed, stolen, etc.

   Forum Sets
   Looking at the sets themselves, I actually think they're quite nice. The ones that have blending work are nicely done, and the color compositions are nice. The only thing that really concerns me is the icons. Almost all of the icons just look like cropped versions of the banners. You definitely could have put a bit more effort into them by just adding a bit more to each of them like matching text, an extra texture, or brush. The icons should be just as nice when they stand alone from the banner. That being said, I do like the banners and I think they're a nice quality, my favorites are the one of Vocaloid and 07 Ghost. Lastly on this page I think the HTML image code that you supply to the user is pointless. Forum sets do not usually require using HTML coding, and you're also giving users the code to direct link the images, which is never a good thing because it hurts your bandwidth. I suggest instructing the user to save the images and upload it themselves.

   Icons
   Overall your icons look pretty good, some of them are a lot better than others, so they could potentially use some preening. I noticed that you've added a little "TG" to each of the icons. I assume it stands for "Tugboat Graphics". To be honest, on half the icons you can't even see the little TG it's so light, and anyone who sees it probably won't know what it stands for if the icon is being used off your site. If you're worried about making sure credit is given, again just write up a terms of use page, it seems a lot simpler than adding a tiny watermark to everything. I noticed that you didn't add the TG to your Video Game based icons. I'm going to assume that these are newer and you realized the watermark was pointless. I suggest continuing this trend in the future. :D I also find it strange that you've organized the icons into two large categories. Since you don't have too many icons currently I don't see why you've decided to sort them into such general categories. Also, if you want to sort them by series, there is a lovely script called Iconsort that will help you easily organize them.

   Website Layouts:
   I downloaded both of your current layouts, and the first thing I noticed was that you didn't include an external style sheet. This would be annoying to anyone who intended to use your layouts because it's a hassle to have all the CSS and HTML on one page. You obviously use an external stylesheet for your site, wouldn't you want one made for you if you were using a premade layout? This brings me to the next main problem, the download files are using a .php extension instead of .html. Many beginners may not have hosting that supports a .php extension, and since you have all the coding on one page, what's the point of even having a .php file extension? Anyone who would want to use php includes on their layout would probably be experienced enough to be able to edit the .html files themselves and convert it to php. Finally, when I tried to view the layouts that I downloaded neither of them worked properly because in your coding all of the images have a file extension stating they're in a folder called "images", but when you download the .zip file, there is no images folder, the URL extensions are all wrong. I think there is an easy way for you to fix this. I suggest creating a folder on your site for each of your layouts, and placing all of the images and files into the folder. This way you can have a external style sheet, and all of your images for each of the layouts in one place. Regardless, you should fix the fact that the downloaded version of the layouts don't even work.

   Putting that aside, both layouts are alright design-wise. Based on what I've seen from your other graphics and your current layouts, I think you could put a bit more effort into designing them, because I think both have the potential to be a bit nicer on the design front. I definitely think that the second layout "All Knowing" is much nicer than the first. The only thing that sticks out on that design is the green hair of the two girls, it looks completely out of place against the purple background, and you wouldn't even have to change the image just colorize the hair to be brown or purple. On "Celebrate" I think the main thing that could be improved is the image quality, it looks a bit grainy, and you definitely could have added some more brushes or altered the texture a bit more. Finally I checked the Validation of both layouts, and both had a couple errors that I suggest you look in to fixing.

   Resources:

   Blank Buttons:
   These seem a bit worthless to me, I don't image I've seen anyone actually use this type of thing before, I mean the ones that you've made are nice, but I don't imagine anyone actually using them. I suggest if you keep this page make more of them, so there's at least a large variety.

   Brushes
   Amazingly, this is one of my favorite things on your site. I'm personally I brushes fanatic, and I think if you create more of these and put a lot of effort into each package that people will use and enjoy them. Not that this is relevant, but I could totally hug you for making Modest Mouse Lyric brushes *coughs* they're like the best band ever! *coughs* On a more serious note, the flaws in the page include: once again, there should probably be space in between each row of brushes, and also the .zip files for the packages "Destroyed Arrows", "Dot Grid", "Time Words", and "Uplifting Words" are not working. The links are broken or there is no file uploaded because I'm getting a 404 Error page.

   Patterns:
   These seem quite nice as well. I don't know why you've decided to separate them into packages because there is no reoccurring theme throughout each package, so it might be better for the convenience of the user to just allow individual downloads.

   Smilies:
   I was actually really excited to see these and the previews look adorable, but unfortunately neither of the download links were working. Again, I'm getting a 404 error.

   Webmistress:
   This page looks nice and well-put-together. I don't really understand why it has its own place on the main navigation, it could definitely be filed under the "Site" section. I feel that a better alternative link on the navigation would have been a link in/out page with all of your affiliates, link exchanges, and link buttons on it, but perhaps that's just a personal preference as is many of the suggestions I gave in this review.

   Final Comments:
   In total I really enjoyed your site. I think a lot of the things I mentioned in this review were minor changes, and just details that you can choose to ignore or not. My main concern with the site is the errors in the download files for both the web layouts and some of the resources. Those seem easily fixable, and to honest, I read that your site was currently on hiatus, so for all I know you may be on revamp and in the process of fixing such things. All in all, despite its errors here and there, Tugboat is a really cute site and I think it has a lot of potential to go far. Good luck, and I apologize if any parts of this review were vague or hard to understand, please let me know and I will clarify any of the points I was attempting to make.

   Using Firefox on Windows | Report This?

   tugboat's Response:

   Thanks for the review! It was really helpful! I keep getting a problem with my HTML that there's an error with the letter "u" in some of me links. Do you know how I could fix that?
   Thanks again!

2. 

   reeshas gave it on 13th Apr 2010 and said:

   pages
   the first page is home, updates and what not, usual. now the colors are a little too strong for me, i mean this color you've chosen are normally for highlighting, this bright aqua and its quite an attractive color but you just went all out and i think used too much on this one design, the bring pink title tugboat stands out because of the other bright, but glass city is normally a little more paler or bluer and crystalized, this is just aqua everywhere, that doesn't make this look like glass, just annoying because of all the brightness. under site, the first page has details about the sites. great! now the contact page you just ask for the name and a message, this is a bad form because you are asking for spammers and bots to bother you and fill up your inbox with junk. so always put in a verification code and ask for their email address. instead of asking them to add an email and a site in, why not just make seperate lines for those 2 things. your graphics quality is outstandingly impressive, clean cut images, clear and vivid (which in this case is a good thing) i like your collection of avatars. you have a good list of resources. the webmiss page is so cute, your so talented! explore your talents even further, don't be trapped inside making layouts lol really it gets boring over time, believe me!

   overall
   your site is too bright for what i'm used to and looked nothing like a city of glass. the colors are too bright and my eyes keep pulling back to the title TUGBOAT because of the strong vivid color you used. I liked the site content but not so much the design you used to present it on, these bright colors look better with black then they do with white, and too much can never be a good thing, anyway, your sites pretty neat so i'll give you a 3. i think your design took the 2 points away because that's what really annoyed me lol :P

   errors
   your â–  Cutenews Templates page does not work under RESOURCES. otherwise, everything else looks prefect

   Using MSIE on Windows | Report This?

3. Misski gave it on 12th Apr 2010 and said:

   Layout:

   The bright, striped-background doesn't look pretty (for the lack of a better word). I say at least make the stripes smaller, and avoid the white and the turquoise, as it will blind some people (not literally, of course).

   Maybe use colors like #48B8D2 and #82CBDD so they can closely match, and yet you can still be able to see two different colors.

   The header consists of typical, low-quality brushes and just plain, red font. I don't particularly like the combination of red and turquoise. Also, everything is "blue". How about simply making the text black or #333? I don't know- it's just too much blue for me.

   Content:

   I suggest making the header of each blog post bigger, maybe even adding < h r > under each posts to separate it. It almost looks like one, big, giant post.

   Bleh... Icons. Icons full of images that doesn't belong to you, no less. Well, practically, most of your freebies consists of stolen images.

   On your main page, the top note links to creativecommons.org, where it basically states no stealing. Isn't it a contradiction when you have all of those anime pictures that I assume you didn't create?

   You can still create things for your visitors without using those images. Maybe learning typography will help? It helped me- plus, it's fun. :)

   Anyways...

   Under the page "Resources", "Cutenews Template" is a broken link. The smilies packs are also broken links, so I can't download them (which, btw, is it just one smiley, or several? If several, preview all of the smilies).

   The patterns are cool.

   The brushes... I see them everywhere. It's just typical quotes, scribbles and such.

   Validation:

   Your CSS is validated. Cool. But your web page isn't. The errors are fairly simple to fix, so maybe visit http://validator.w3.org/ to correct the errors.

   The footer is too close to the main content. Add the code margin-top:10px; for your footer just to make some space.

   Overall:

   Your website could be better, but it's generally okay. Hopefully, I won't have the same reaction as Jamie over there for reviewing your site. Reviews are supposed to make you better. It's not supposed to offend. Some people can be hard, and others love to sugarcoat things. In the end, people have opinions, so you should take it into consideration. :D

   Best of lucks!

   Using Firefox on Windows | Report This?

4. 

   Jamie gave it on 12th Apr 2010 and said:

   Hey, I'm Jamie and I'm going to be reviewing your site on a PC Using Google Crome internet browser.

   I Love how your site has some many colors :) but I don't get the site name "tugboat".... its different... I can say that... XD

   I was looking at your past layouts and say the one titled "November 2009: Bright Blueprings" I like that one better than your current one :/

   I don't know what this "skyline designs" this is all about but its kinda annoying how your putting in every post three times.
   why not put it in one post three times then add it to the bottom of the page with the rest of the little icons like that.

   Overall your site needs work. I would go into further detail but I gotta go to bed! bye uhh... I can;t find your name on your site..! You might wanna fix that! XD

   Using Safari on Windows | Report This?

   tugboat's Response:

   Um... thanks? If you have time, a longer review would be awesome so I can know what exactly I need to work on. If you wish to know my name, there's a "Webmiss" link at the top in the navigation.

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