Presentation:
Beautiful, lovely design. Really. I love the colors and how you artfully pulled off the grunge look. The fact that your layout is centered and has an interesting, yet subtle, background really packages this look neatly. You definitely have a penchant for aesthetically pleasing layouts. Beautiful and interesting as it is, your look isn’t perfect. For starters, the TRE M part of your site title in the image is nearly illegible. At first I genuinely thought your site’s name was IRIE, but double checked your url and realized there was darkened text that I couldn’t see. Bad move on your part. Yes, you were trying to create an interesting contrast, but you simply can’t see it!! I suggest maybe moving the text to the far right so it has a black background and giving the TRE M a new color, a bright red to go along with the rest of the look. Play around with it. You need to do something about the “an online portfolio” text as well, maybe create an outer glow in the color white?

Another issue is your header text. It’s too close together, you should increase the letter spacing by some amount, or maybe change the font completely. Some words are hard to make out because the letters run into one another. I’m also kind of puzzled by your footer, what were you thinking?? For starters, no one checks the footer for affiliates. Additionally, there’s just about no padding between you copyright information and the end of the webpage. It might also be nice to see a proper footer image, maybe one to “close off” the content box, maybe with round corners maybe not (you’re the artist!!) just so that it’s a little distinct from the rest of the site. It’s odd to see the site just ending abruptly like that!!

It might be nice to see you incorporate the scribblies in you header image elsewhere on the site in some way. Perhaps you could use it as an “underline” for all of the headers, or maybe in the menu. I like that aspect of your header image and I think it would be nice to see it elsewhere on your site. Why is “About the site & webmistress” on the front page? It clutters your index to have a welcome message, update, AND an additional information section all cluttered onto one content box. Keep it short and simple. Lastly, what is UP with your cursors on hover?! It looks like the viewfinder of a sniper (I’m guessing, seeing as I’ve never touched an automatic weapon before…). Customization in websites is great, up to a point. This addition is pretty tacky and distracting. By all means, please remove it!!!

I really can’t stress enough how beautiful and well-done your site’s look is!! This whole section was me being nit-picky and picking out some of the weaknesses.

Content:
Services: A pet peeve of mine is “under construction” or “coming soon” pages. If you intend to have a services section up, then do it!! Don’t keep a placeholder for people to stare at. It’s useless and a waste of your server’s space.

Linkage: I love your buttons, very well done. I think they could use a simple black/brown border though, it might be a nice convenience for web-owners to put them on their sites that may not necessarily match your color scheme.

Contact: I think this page is lacking alternative methods of communication. I highly suggest installing some sort of e-mail form so that visitors can more readily contact you. If you have any AIM, Yahoo, or MSN address that you’d be willing to be contacted at, I really recommend doing so. If you plan on providing pay-for services, it’s super important that potential customers have numerous methods to contact you.

Exit: You should maybe move the links from your footer to this page as well, perhaps under a different heading as the current links. I don’t see why you have to separate them. “CS Portfolio” & “ILumin” in your footer didn’t load. “Electronica” seems to be under construction.

Portfolio: Wow, I am so impressed with your traditional art section. I like that you used an image management script and included details about each art-piece including subject matter and mediums used. However, your last two of the reggae singer and Bob Marley, did not include which medium you used; I am so curious because I love the technique you used and want to know more about what you used to achieve those looks. Amazing stuff — I love how you’re not afraid of color, but in your black-and-white pieces you still have really lively passion.

Seeing as this is an art site, I was kind of disappointed with the main menu for your digital art page. Though I’m fully aware the difference between blends and vectors, others may not be. For that reason, I suggest picking your favorite piece from each sub-section and maybe making a 250×250 button with the section name on it. It’s a nice preview into your style as well as a type of definition of what the art is like before people venture into the page. Text links=boring, have fun with it!

I noticed that your vector images don’t have descriptions with the lightbox pop-up, nor do you define what vectors are or what platform you used to create them. Some people are unfamiliar with vectors and may want to know the difference between raster and vector layers. On your special art page, why is there a link to “page 1″ if there is only one page in this section? I’m also unfamiliar with the difference between your “Special” section in digital designs and your “Custom” section in designs. You should remove any “coming soon” links in your Design section; it’s distracting and pointless.

In your Graphics section (even though I don’t know why it’s under “Portfolio” in your menu), you should definitely inform your visitors that the icon link leads to another site. Your photography should definitely include captions, especially because you urge your visitors to use them for viewing purposes only — experiencing a picture fully sometimes needs some sort of context (at the very least the city it was photographed in).

To sum up: your artistic abilities are amazing. The entire time I was looking at your art, I was thinking to myself: wow, I really wish I knew how to do that! I really wish I could do that. You definitely have talent, I just wish you had more in your portfolio for me to see!!

Coding:
Hrm. Well, your coding is very… interesting. Tables are meant to be used for storing data, such as “product” in one column, and “price” in another. Though they are used to create layouts and websites, general convention is to use div layers, which are HTML properties specifically designed to hold content. Your site should probably have four div layers, one for the header and footer, and two for the content (side bar and main page). Jem of jemjabella.co.uk has a great tutorial on how to create a tableless layout.

More importantly, although you tout your website as being valid XHTML coding (and it is, according to the validator), you haven’t really incorporated the main purpose of XHTML: separating style from content. The idea is that instead of specifying height, width, background, etc. on every element of your site, you just assign them a CSS class that you create to your specifications. That way, when you decide to change your layout/design, you only really have to edit your CSS file (unless you want to restructure your site as well, which may or may not take a bit of XHTML tweaking).

First and foremost, you should remove all style=”" attributes from each of your tags. Instead, assign them a class in your CSS document and use that. Second, should you decide to keep the tabled layout (which I strongly advise against) then you should remove all width/height properties and assign them to a class in CSS. Rinse and repeat until all of your tags on your HTML document have nothing but a class/id specified. Your coding has a good start — it’s nice that you bothered to validate it — but unless you separate style from content, you really haven’t incorporated the whole purpose of XHTML: accessibility. Further, why bother having an external CSS file if you’re going to incorporate internal CSS? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?

I noticed that in your CSS file, you have about three different classes for navigation — is there any purpose to this? I really suggest you go through and eliminate any codes you aren’t using from your CSS file.

Rating:
Well, your design and content are quite good, but your coding is lacking. I really, highly, suggest that you look into using div layers in lieu of a table layout, and that you sort of reassess why you’ve validated your site to XHTML transitional if you’re not going to bother separating the style from content; the whole point of putting something on the world wide web is to make it accessible to everyone — no matter what their language or disability. Good luck with your website and all future endeavors, I hope to see much more art in your portfolio!!!

• Guest reviewers: If you want to have a moment of fame with just one or two reviews, that’s completely fine. You will obviously review out of the “No preference” queue line. A sample review is required from you. If you don’t have any handy, please review either my or Vera’s site so we can get a taste of your style. You obviously must adhere to some loose form of the scoring rubric on this site.
• Part-time reviewers: Like a guest reviewer, except we’ll expect more than one or two reviews from you. You won’t get your own private queue line, but you will get a permanent account at Truculent.
• Full-time reviewers: Oh lordy, if there are any of you that want to be “full-time,” then by all means PLEASE!! Full-time doesn’t mean you need to submit a certain amount of reviews every month, look at how long it takes us to post reviews. You’ll get your own private queue and you’ll be considered a staffer at Truculent. This is a long term commitment, so please go in expecting to submit reviews for a couple of months at the very least.

There you have it. There are about a million ways to contact us regarding becoming a writer here. Use the contact form to your right, e-mail us at truculent.reviews@gmail.com, or comment on this post. Only respond if you fully intend to help out, thanks muchly!

Presentation:
Where should I start? There’s so much wrong with this look I can’t even really find a place to begin. I guess the most glaring problem is that it’s left-aligned.  As you can see, on larger browsers there’s a bunch of empty gray space. So your layout is only friendly to smaller browsers. Inobscuro has an amazing tutorial on how to create CSS layouts; pay special attention to the “float” properties — Jem also has a really fantastic read on how to create a proper layout. The importance is having it aligned to the center, that way it looks just as fabulous no matter what screen resolution your visitors are using. Accessibility and consistency are what make successful and practical layouts. Left-aligned is so last century. Additionally, your page goes on forever. There’s no reason why you need to have a thousand and a half posts on your main page! That’s what archives are for!

All the blinking buttons and seizure-inducing banners in your sidebar are a complete no-no. Not only do they make the sidebar ridiculously long (try to maintain the length of your website to maybe 2-screens down), but it makes you look like an amateur. No one uses plugboards anymore, and if they do it’s proper to put them in a separate page so people can optionally look at it and not have advertising for other pages thrown at them at the get-go. Your visitors just got to your website and already you’re sending them away! As for the entire “ETC” section in your sidebar, get rid of it or at the very least hide it.

All of the logistical stuff aside, your layout is just unattractive and extremely amateur looking. I applaud your attempt at not stealing images photographers took of celebrities and manipulating it into yet another fanboy/girl layout. But even though you haven’t conformed to the “norm,” the layout isn’t pretty. Haphazardly splotching ugly brushes you probably didn’t make all over with gray and pink… it’s just so… ugly. Ditch the checkerboard pattern on the right and crop the header image to just the name across that banner thing. The thing your layout lacks is inspiration… creativity! Using such generic patterns won’t make your site look trendy, it will make it look tired and lacking. And the old gray-pink combination is rarely successfully pulled off… I suggest you try using better contrasts because gray can get your layout looking glum.

Another glaring mistake in the visuals on your site is the way you’ve styled your <em> and <strong> (<i> and <b>) tags. Besides the fact that you’ve used either one almost every other word on your sidebar, thus destroying the emphasis intentions of the tags, the colors you’ve used are completely blinding or too subtle. The pink is way to bright and seems like a different shade completely of the pink you’ve used elsewhere in the layout. The gray is almost illegible against the pink background. This also goes for the pink in your navigation area… completely illegible.

Overall, I am not only unimpressed with your look, but sort of annoyed with its clear lack of effort and ingenuity. You need to completely redo your site’s aesthetic!

Content:
Splitting this up into sections..

Me: About Me: The excessive smilies, “lol,” and emphasized words make this entire page really confusing and muddled. You start off well, introducing your family and boyfriend, and then ease into how most people think you’re “a geek and a freak.” Instead of making this assertion, why not tell us why they might think you’re a geek and a freak?

I love reading, shopping, writing, sewing, drawing & painting, web designing, photography, clothes designing, graphic making and a bunch of other stuff.

Wow, this entire paragraph is so nonspecific and could apply to almost anyone. Instead of telling us about your favorite books, designers, pattern-makers, artists, photographers, etc. you just list off a bunch of activities that I’m sure everyone likes. I would suggest focusing on a little more “special” hobbies and telling us more about it, e.g. clothes designing and painting. That way you can elaborate on a hobby and let us know more about you in the process. I don’t want to have to visit your online store to see some of your handmade creations!!

Me: Contact Me: This page is pointless because you already link to these places in your sidebar.

Me: Favourites: Instead of listing off your favorite everything, try and truncate the list. Then incorporate those favorites into your “About Me” page, that way we can get a lot more information about some of your favorite favorites and be more informed about why you like them.

Me: Random Facts: Instead of using ampersands, please use bullet points on this page… the <ol><li></li></ol> scheme should work just fine. As for the actual content of this page, I don’t really see how they are random “facts” about you. Most of them are likes and dislikes, which could easily be incorporated into your “About Me” or “Favourites” pages. Sidenote: if watching the Fast Food Nation movie turned you off of McDonald’s, you should probably read the book… it’s way better than the movie and much more informative. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, though about socialism, has a lot to do with why Fast Food Nation was written as well.

Me: Piercings & Tattoos: Being into the whole body modification subculture myself, I really enjoy this page mostly because you have a lot of narrative about each modification. My only worry is of the picture where you’re flashing your visitors. You claim to be sorry for showing us stuff we shouldn’t be seeing, yet using the crop tool in any photo manipulation program can easily solve the problem — you seem to have learned this lesson on your last photograph of your hip tattoos. As for your tattoos, I would have appreciated more explanation as to why you got them — what the meaning was to you. What does “Terra Caelum” mean? Maybe you could define it and explain to everyone why it’s so meaningful to you instead of relaying to us the experience of getting it done.

Me: Makeup: I’m glad there was nothing on this page, yet offended at the same time. On the one hand, it’s kind of a dumb idea and uninteresting. On the other hand, having a “Coming Soon” page is one of my worst pet-peeves. My suggestion? I say, remove the page completely and forget about it. Unless you plan on writing up a tutorial on how to achieve your makeup looks, I bet no one really wants to see them.

Me: My Bag: Eh… kind of pointless, again. If there was witty commentary that went along with all of the items in your bag (e.g. a quasi-interesting anecdote that goes with how you acquired each item) I could maybe see the merit in this page. But for the most part, a list is a list is a list… and it’s boring.

Me: Toybox: I hate these types of pages. Enough said.

You: Graphics: It started going well with your totally adorable and well-designed emoticons and then spiraled down into the generic LJ banners that I totally detest. Not only is there NO variation whatsoever (well, aside from changing the color over and over and over again), the designs lack finesse and usefulness. If your site is intended to be personal in nature, I see no reason why you need to distribute these inspiration-less and tacky banners. Your icons, too, are completely lacking. For one, you have about 10 icons to every image and very little variation of what’s between. A lot of them are identical, except one is zoomed in more. Even more atrocious is the fact that you did absolutely NO image editting on these. Your efforts on these icons consists of you literally copying and cropping images you took from popular culture. Why would anyone want these???? My suggestion: go for quality, not quantity. Ten really good icons beat out fifty identical ones any day! Try using different filters, color-schemes, texts, and borders for these icons. Make them unique and distinct to your design aesthetic. Otherwise, remove this repetitive page!!

As for your Icons Bases page, it has the same problem as your header image: the brushes are used as the main feature instead of the accents and then completely fall flat of a good design. What’s more, why would anyone want to credit you if you used someone else’s brushes? The entirety of your effort is downloading and stamping onto a 100×100 image and then posting them on your site!! As far as I’m concerned, your collection of 100×100 icons in the previous page makes for better icon bases than this one!

Does anyone use PSDs anymore? I’m not going to even discuss your quotes banners or textures because they really are atrocious and I feel like I’m beating a dead horse here. You REALLY need to work on your design skills before you offer up graphics to people. Or maybe you’re an incredible designer but these free graphics suck because you wanted to make a whole bunch and therefore sacrificed quality to get quantity. Either way, the graphics are a complete disappointment.

Your Adoptables are really well put together. Though you’ve re-used your emoticons as bunnies here, I really do see how you’d make a more successful layout sticking to pixel creations. Sozai is pretty pointless, and you should really add some sort of contrasting something or other to make your white .gifs more visible. Not really impressive at all…

In the Candybar Dolls page, you say no to editting and redistribution, even though these aren’t your original designs!! Using a dollmaker, despite the site’s trying to convince you of this, does NOT make your doll designs original or yours!! You’ve just mixed and matched pixel designs someone else took hours to create, how could you redistribute these as your free graphics? Not only is it more satisfying and rewarding for visitors to just go make their own if they really want one, but crediting the site doesn’t make it okay to pass these off as yours.

Your color pallettes (note, 2 t’s) are really nice but for the fact that they’re monochromatic. Try coupling up different, contrasting colors to give people an idea of a color scheme… that’s the whole point, isn’t it?

Well, your “You” section was typical of “visitor” sections. I always thought the point of personal sites was to learn more about the girl behind the scenes, to see your world through your eyes. Instead you gave your visitors stuff you expect them to want, though free graphics appeals to an extremely SMALL audience. My suggestion is that you focus your whole site more on you. Remove the “you” section of the site, and just include more interesting stuff about you. Show us your photography, show us your fashion designs. Teach us how to sew or make patterns. If you’re in to reading, let us know about your favorite books and give us reviews. You’re studying philology, so show us some etymology or interesting finds you’ve had about linguistics (maybe in an article or something?) I think this site could be way more successful if it focused more on you…. you seem like an interesting person so let us know!

WWW: About the web: It’s nice that you have a bit of information as to how your site was created, but you don’t really go into much detail on why you fell in love with web-design, or how your site evolved to its current state. You sort of veered off course when you cautioned your visitors against stealing your content (though in all honesty, why would they want to?).

WWW: Awards & Gifts: I’ve always thought of these pages as a bit narcissistic and uninteresting for visitors to look at. The entire point of your site is to entertain others, which is why it’s posted publically. So why on earth would you show us your shrine of donated graphics to you when it really poses no point of interest to us? I understand maybe wanting to show the webdesigners who gave you these gifts some appreciation, but I really don’t see why you need to devote this much space to it.

WWW: Credit: This page is completely disorganized. You should split it up into mini-sections categorized by what types of sites they are (e.g. brushes, textures, scripts). “Of the sky,” “Riot Squrrl,” and “Kawaiiness” did not load, and “Hybrid-genesis” is closed for the time being.

WWW: Hosting: Pretty clear instructions. Just one criticism: on your contact form, the default topic should be “hosting” as this is a hosting page…

<rant>REMOVE “PAST LAYOUTS” COMING SOON PAGES ARE LAME.</rant> Thank you.

WWW: Reviews: I like when web owners have the guts to post reviews on their website that others have given them. It shows that you appreciate the time and effort others (like moi) took into writing up your review. However, I think this page could be improved by adding in some of your comments to points made throughout. A review of a review, if you will.

WWW: Links: What’s the difference between “Affiliates” and “Links out” aside from the fact that one is text links and the other is button links? “Kayla” (Affiliates) moved her site, keep your links updated. As for your Links out page, the following buttons led to sites that did not load or were moved: Starry Reflections, Kawaiiness, Hungry for Pixels, Sugar Milk, Kathy: Bunny Cafe, and Apple Crunch. Also, you listed Afef (Strawberry-gashes) on both your affiliates and links out pages — was this intentional?? As for the buttons you offer up to your visitors, I love them!! All too often I’m forced to review atrocious buttons, but you really know how to make them and made the perfect amount — just enough for your visitors to have choices, but not so many that the choice will be hard to make. Offer a button-making service on your website, it will be popular!

Reviews: Hrm. Well, I don’t know that you should necessarily be dispensing web advice to people, but I’m sure with practice this section will become really great. I can’t really review any of your reviews because you have none up yet — perhaps you should advertise this section more?

Hosting: You’ve linked this page in your WWW section — I think it belongs there.

Shop: Just from looking at your CSS source code, you should NOT be selling anything regarding CSS to anyone until you’ve brushed up on your skills. I’ll brush up on your errors in the coding section. But again, I’ve kind of gone over how your graphics are pretty generic and rushed, so why would anyone want to pay you for this service if there isn’t adequate proof that you can do it well on your site? Egh, I’m having horrendous flashbacks about LTY Designs‘ review that I did a while back… you just aren’t ready to be selling your web-design services to people.

Overall, your content is very… lacking. Your site has both personal and graphics-oriented overtones, so I really suggest you pick one and stick to it, or partition your site into personal and graphics. As for the graphics part, you should become more creative and inventive with your designs. Instead of having to credit others for their brushes, why not make and distribute your own?? If you plan on going the personal route, which I suggest because you seem like an interesting and fun person (and I’m one of those nosey types), then go on the suggestions I posted above: keep everything centered around you, provide lots of thoughtful commentary about yourself, and let us into your life more.

Coding:
Sigh. First thing’s first. Why do you have a javascript in your external STYLE SHEET? The idea is that the content in the CSS file will replace having to paste everything between the

<style type="text/css" media="screen">
</style>

tags. You seem to be redundant in a lot of your CSS coding, as in… you overcode for no reason. I’ll try to help you consolidate some of your CSS. The following is your specifications for links:

A:link
{ text-decoration: none; color: #000000; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;
letter-spacing: 0pt;
font-weight: bolder; }
A:visited
{ text-decoration: none; color: #000000; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;
letter-spacing: 0pt;
font-weight: bolder; }
A:active
{ text-decoration: none; color: #000000; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;
letter-spacing: 0pt;
font-weight: bolder; }
A:hover
{ text-decoration: none; color: #929292; }

Instead of listing the a link, a active, and a visited as separate entities, you can consolidate them into one line.

a:link, a:visited, a:active {
text-decoration: none;
color: #000000;
font-family: Georgia;
font-size: 12px;
letter-spacing: 0pt;
font-weight: bolder;
}
a:hover {
text-decoration: none;
color: #929292;
}

The following coding is also in all of your header CSS:


margin: 0;
margin-top: 0px;
margin-bottom: 2px;
padding: 0px;
padding-bottom: 0px;
border-bottom: 0px;
BORDER-RIGHT: 0px;
BORDER-TOP: #000000 1px dashed;
BACKGROUND: ;
BORDER-LEFT: 0px;
BORDER-BOTTOM: #000000 1px dashed;

For one, keep everything lowercase. It looks better and more organized that way. Second, the margin, padding, and border properties can be consolidated into one line. The rule is that padding { and margin { are shorthand for top, right, bottom, and left in that order.  Therefore, listing margin as 0 and then top and bottom as two different amounts is redundant. Also, why do you list a background property if you aren’t going to specify a background for it? Consolidated, the h1 property of spacing/borders should look like this:

margin: 0 0 2px 0;
padding: 0;
border-top: #000000 1px dashed;
border-bottom: #000000 1px dashed;

Isn’t that so much neater?? I suggest you read up on this article at W3.org about the properties of padding, margin, and borders… it will teach you how to use the aforementioned properly. Again, if you can’t really code your own CSS properly, you probably shouldn’t be selling it as a service to your visitors. I suggest browsing a lot at W3C’s site because the articles there are totally informative and set policy for web browsers to fit to industry standards.

As for your HTML coding, your website literally couldn’t even be validated. I’m not surprised in any respect because upon a cursory look at your source code, I can tell that you make the same mistakes over and over again because you simply copy and paste without realizing what you’re doing. First of all, in all of your div layers, you haven’t separated style from content. The idea is that you put all of the content in your index.php page, and all of the stylization information in your CSS page. Examine the following code:

<div style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 10; width: 700; align="justify"">

One glaring problem is the two quotation marks after justify, there should only be one quotation mark. The second glaring problem is that you haven’t specified what units you’re using next to the numerical values. The third problem is that you have a style element in your div layer. Let’s assign this puppy an id and properly code it, shall we? The following goes into your CSS document (rename “samplediv” to whatever this layer corresponds to… I think it’s your header but everything is so muddled I can’t tell):

#samplediv {
margin: 0 0 0 10px;
width: 700px;
text-align: justify;
}

Then you call your div layer in your coding like this:

<div id="samplediv">

See how much easier that will be to code when you change layouts?? But I really suggest that you read up on how to center everything because it will make your site look more professional and accessible. All of your IFRAMES are incorrectly coded, missing quotation marks and unit values. I think the main problem with your coding is that you never really bothered to learn the mechanics of it, you just found out what worked and continually copied and pasted, editting as needed to fit the current layout. CSS and proper HTML are not difficult to learn, and many websites out there are amazing at teaching it. I suggest tutorialtastic.co.uk and w3.org for learning how to validate your coding as well as the importance of it.

Rating:

I was debating what sort of rating I should give you. You seem like a really nice girl with a lot of interesting things to say, but as far as this website goes, there’s so much to improve upon in all three key areas. I think your most glaring error is that you offer up your design services for a fee when you clearly lack basic web-design knowledge. My suggestion is to start from scratch, reassess what you want out of this website and go for it. You have a lot to learn, but you do have a lot of potential as well! I hope this didn’t seem like a personal attack, because it wasn’t. I tried my best to give you advice on how to fix all of your errors, and if you need more help don’t hesitate to ask. Here’s a listing of sites I recommend you visit on how to properly code (which will, in turn, help the presentation of your site… killing two birds with one stone!!)

• W3C
• Tutorialtastic
• Codegrrl
• 3till7’s article on how to be a good webdesigner

Good luck and I hope you take this review in stride. Also, check out some of Truculent’s affiliates and maybe submit to a few other review sites and see what advice they have to give. Good luck!

Presentation

Your header image is extremely well done. I love the way the colors flow together so nicely. Unfortunately, once I moved on from the image, it gets rather lost in the overall design of the layout. So my general feeling of your layout ends up being that of one large amalgam of color. I don’t exactly dislike it, but I feel that you could have made much better use of the header image.

Let’s start from the beginning. You have this gorgeous image that you want to impress your visitors with. This means that you have to make sure that it attracts a fair amount of attention. So don’t use a background image with so many vibrant colors. The latter takes up much more space than the header image, so of course it will attract more attention. You need a less obtrusive background image. How about making it a solid color, and perhaps having a horizontal background (one of the birds) toward the bottom?

The tree that is on your sidebar looks nice, but I’d put it on the other side of the layout: on the bottom of the content area. You can specify as a background, using CSS:


backgroud: url('bottom.jpg') bottom right no-repeat;


You header image is “busier” on the left, so having the tree on the other side would complement the design better. Speaking of your sidebar, the thick black line looks really ugly. Get rid of it. You can leave a larger distance between the sidebar and content frame (either by using padding or margin in your CSS). The black line, as you have it now, does indeed separate the two sections, however it also attracts way too much attention to itself. I really shouldn’t have my eyes drawn to a separating line.

Another aspect which irks me, is your overuse of borders. First of all, you should specify them as CSS rather than background images, as it takes less time to load. You can use border-top, border-left, border-bottom, border-right for this. See example below:


border-top: 1px solid #000;


The same goes for plain-colored backgrounds. There’s no need to make use of an image if you’re only going to use one single color in it.

All in all, your design would have looked much better with a green background (#95C37A) for the main page, and the light green background from the sidebar, used for the entire content. It would have given your design a feel of “wholeness”. Right now I look at your layout and see a header image, a thin green stripe, a large white one and a horizontal green one. I prefer to look at a layout and not see its cmponents right off the start.

Your site title is easily overlooked. I suggest you place it more toward the right side of the image, where there are less drawings. That way there won’t be other things to distract the eye from reading the site title. Speaking of the font, and pattern: it’s all right for the site title, but for the headings on the sidebar, it makes things difficult to read. Consider using plain text instead. It will also load faster.

On the sidebar, the rotation and affiliate buttons look rather out of place. Your layout’s style is different from the happy-go-lucky Neopets style. I suggest you use text links in the future, as they are always easy to integrate into one’s design. Besides, the image links attract too much attention to themselves. I understand you wanting to advertise your affiliates, but don’t do so in your own site’s detriment.

As far as cross-resolution compatibility goes, your site looks fine in 1024×768px and 1280×1024px resolutions. It side scrolls a bit in 800×600px resolution. Since it’s not much (about 15px), I’d suggest you look into making your layout fit this resolution as well. I’ve also tested your site in Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 6 and Opera 9.5 without any problems, so good job on that.

On a superficial glance, your layout looks amazing. However once I have a second look, a lot of little details jump out to me, which detract a lot from an otherwise lovely design. For future layouts, I suggest you don’t try so hard to separate certain areas of it. It’s much more pleasant to look at a layout as a whole.

Content

=Home=

Your updates, and latest news are displayed here. For the most part, it looks fine, however the navigation directions are superfluous I believe. Well, unless of course most of your visitors are incredibly stupid. Don’t center the text in your welcome message. Just leave it left aligned.
Also, I urge you to switch from CuteNews ASAP. It’s a highly insecure script, plus it hasn’t been upgraded for a long time, and it won’t be. My personal choice would be Wordpress, most especially for the large amount of support available. If you prefer a flat file blogging script (i.e. non database driven) you should give Flatpress a go.

Your stats, and staff only links have no place in the layout, though. Visitors will care about the quality of your content, not the amount of visitors. Also, why display links that most people can’t use? I’m sure you’re able to bookmark them if it’s so difficult to remember the URL.

=For You=

I’m a bit puzzled by this naming, seeing as the section below this is called Tutorials. Isn’t that for me (me being a generic visitor) as well? I’d consider renaming this as Resources, maybe.

The first line of your backgrounds instruction page is rather off putting. Why do I have to place the background images into tables? Why can’t I define them directly as the main page’s backgrounds? The instructions for setting the images as backgrounds are a bit confusing, even though I do know how to do all of them. I suggest making use of screenshots as well. Oh, and left align the text please. Don’t center it. Only titles/headings should be centered.

The CSS which specifies the scrolling is damn near impossible to read. Why are you putting code into textareas? These should be used only in forms. (X)HTML comes with a special tag called “code” which you can use for such a purpose. Jem has a blog post on how to customize code tags. Furthermore, the textareas are minuscule. How could visitors actually read their content before copying them?

Taking a look at the actual code, I’m starting to think that this is intentional:


<style type="text/css">
body{background:url(http://imgs.rainbowbliss.net/bgs/animals/purbutt.gif) fixed}
</style>
<center><img src="http://imgs.rainbowbliss.net/bgs/bg.gif" border="0"></center>


If you’re setting an image as background, why exactly do you have a centered HTML image tag in there? And the center tag is deprecated, so don’t use it. Use margin: 0 auto; or text-align: center in CSS. The correct code for fixed and regular backgrounds are:


body{ background: url('myimage.jpg') fixed; }


respectively


body{ background: url('myimage.jpg>'); }


Oh and… where are the tables that you mentioned in the help page? Not that I am complaining about the lack of tables, however you’re confusing your visitors here. Then again, looking at your own coding, I believe you need to understand it yourself, before you start teaching it to others.

As far as artistic quality goes, your backgrounds are average quality for the most part. Some are downright ugly, such as bg15.gif from the textured backgrounds. Admittedly I quite liked some (eg: mypic110 - bubbles, mypic140 - stars), but not as backgrounds. For the most part, they are much too bright and lively to be used as backgrounds. In order to be “effective” backgrounds, their pattern shouldn’t be striking. They should only serve to complement the rest of the layout, not attract attention by themselves. For example, let’s take the current layout of Guitar Angel. It has a soft pattern, which is not immediately obvious, but when it is noticed, the patterned image skillfully avoids a “boring” background. As you see, the effect is rather subtle.

I thought button makers were more or less extinct. Oh well, I’m not really fond of them, since I never had the patience, but at least it works in Firefox, unlike most I’ve seen. I’m not entirely certain that the explanatory page about using print screen should open in a new window. At any rate, do notify users about this.

I would not recommend saving it as a JPEG image since it causes it to slightly blur. For a screenshot with not too many colors, GIF would be a good file type to use. However, saving it as PNG will give it the best quality, although it will have a slightly bigger file size.

The first statement is not true, if you use a professional image editor. Or even IrfanView, if the quality is set at maximum. Besides, it’s a button, so I’m assuming its size will be something like 100×100px at most. It’s not a header image. JPG or GIF file types are perfectly fine for such files.

You keep the small code containing textareas, though at least you enlarge them a bit… still they are not supposed to contain code. Two of your enter signs are rather unusable, seeing as the text is almost impossible to read: pinkstars.png, enter1.jpg (bottom most). There are also those using the font Lainie Day which can’t be read by any normal human being.
The “words” page is rather odd for me. What could they be possibly used for? Humongous forum signatures perhaps?

The cursors don’t work in Firefox 3, so I had to switch to Internet Explorer to see them. Some of them are cute, but seeing as I’m a Firefox user, they’re not really of any use for me.

You call link hover backgrounds… link effects? I personally find it a much too fancy name. I rather doubt most people will find it cool to have their text disappear and be replaced by these images you set as background. Also what’s with the img tags again? I find it rather presumptuous to ask people not to change faulty code. Besides, it’s not your visitors’ role to point out mistakes in your site. You as a webmaster should be aware of them first and foremost.

I can’t read any of the text on your word blinkies… well I probably could if I glued my face to the monitor, but I’m not quite that interested. I like your “Shapes1″ brushes… in the screenshot anyway. Other than that, I’ve seen the rest more times than I care to remember.

=Tutorials=

In the installing a font tutorial, point number 1 is not really explained. You should mentioned that most font files come archived. Font files themselves are not .zip files. About 3/4 of this tutorial is explaining how to unzip a file, you might want to rename the tutorial.
Your introduction to HTML is… well I’ve heard of brief, but this is ridiculous. b, i and u tags are deprecated. Use strong and em instead. You can underline text using CSS (text-decoration: underline). Do close your paragraph tags, that’s why they have closing tags.

Now, using <br> instead of <p> would give us breaks instead of paragraphs

If I were a beginner I would have no bloody idea what you meant. The correct term is “line break”. In your example, you should type 1st line, 2nd line, 3rd line. 1st break, 2nd break and 3rd break gives me a sneaky suspicion that you might not be entirely certain about what the br tag does.

I’ll have to skip your Neopets page, as I’ve never used that site.
Why is the “coming soon” a link to this page, under Photoshop tutorials? You should leave it as plain text.

=Site Stuff=

I pride myself in having good English skills as well

You’re joking, right? It’s “a bit”, “a lot” and “different from”. Also, consider using a few commas here and there.

Anna is a female that is 12 years old and lives in the UK.
Sandy is a female that’s 15 years old and lives in Australia.
Paul is a male that is 15 years old and lives in Australia.

I feel like I’m back in high school Biology class. You’re not observing some wild animals here.

We like to see alot of original content

Yet yours are anything BUT original.

A very wonderful gift from a very nice person, Thanks Emma!!

Wonderful means “the nicest”, so don’t use comparison with it.

Well, basically, I tought myself

You probably (also) taught yourself coding.

I will definantly use them as suggestions however.

How about definitely?

Coding

You seem to know a bit of coding, however for the most part your are completely confused about what goes where. You used divs, and then tables… and more divs. Tables are not meant to be used for layout structure, only tabular data. Divs are not storing paragraphs, so don’t use them as such.

Why do you have two external stylesheets? Put everything into one single stylesheet. Also, get rid of the truckload of inline CSS, and put everything into your external stylesheets.

I suggest you check out the following tutorials, to better understand coding:

• Create a tableless layout
• Customizing the unordered list tag
• Vertical CSS Block Navigation

Rating

In short, I was bored. Most of the stuff you offer, I’ve seen on the likes of Aethereality some 3-4 years ago. You proudly proclaim your coding and English knowledge, yet in both you display rather mediocre skills.

Your current header image is indeed lovely, but the graphics you offer as content are rather lacking. I suggest you make more graphics such as the one in your header image (style-wise), visit some CSS layout galleries to see the latest “trends”… and just all around catch up. You’re still stuck in 2004.

Presentation:
I’m all for minimalism in every respect (look at my website for Christ’s sake.), but you’ve really taken this to a whole new level. How can I put this? Your website is completely one-dimensional. It lacks color, intrigue, and a certain level of finesse that might make one’s eye catch and want to stay at your site. I’m not saying you need a fantastic layout design or that you even need a header image! I’m just saying that maybe gray and purple only go together slightly, and maybe you’ve created a design completely void of all inspiration and any hint of talent. The lavender color you used for the side bar clashes horrendously with the background color, and though your use of lines does help the look a bit, it’s just not… pretty.

Yes, content is extremely important. But having an eye-catching layout is too! People’s opinion of you is shadowed by first impressions of your site. If you want people to stay and read a while, you need to have a respectable look. If you haven’t caught my jist yet: you don’t have a respectable look. Your site is kind of like that clueless homophobe who appears on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and I’m a group of tasteful stereotypes trying to push you to improve. I think the other drastic problem with your look is the links. They’re easy to spot and everything, but the rollover color is too bright and clashes with gray. Gray, as you might have realized by now, is a really finicky medium to work with. Everything goes with white, everything goes with black, and few go in between. So, with this mentality, please go in and try to redesign this site smartly, include some sort of graceful look that people can be impressed by and want to stay! The truth of the matter is that people do judge a book by it’s cover. If I weren’t reviewing your site, I would have exited minutes ago!

Content:
Split into sections…

About: I do like the fact that you merged personal and website in this about section, and kept everything brief. No one likes a long, windy biography that includes you describing the personal fulfillment you derive from clipping your toenails. You described your appearance, but I think that maybe including:

but don’t be alarmed at the figure; I’m tall and have DD breasts

sounds a bit insecure even if you didn’t intend it to; also, it’s extremely tacky to post bra size on the internet. I like how the page progresses from external to internal, and then eases into a nice summary of your likes and dislikes. You also kept the about-the-site section short and sweet; thank you.

Goodies: 100×100 Icons: I’m definitely a proponent of outlines for images, especially avatars. It makes them “pop” more, and adds a really nice definition. That way it doesn’t clash with the background - you don’t know where your visitors are going to use these! Though I understand you have an obsession with Cillian Murphy (who doesn’t?), I think having seven different avatars of the same person is a bit excessive. There’s just about no variety in your Degrassi avatars, and the Tudors ones look quite similar as well. Otherwise, there was just the right amount of photomanipulation done on these, it looks pretty professional.

Goodies: Font Size Conversions: A nice little table to have around as a desk reference.

Goodies: Spiderman 3 Screencaps: Um… gross. There’s nothing I love more than ripped off, copyrighted content that isn’t even presented properly. Take the time to create some sort of makeshift gallery, use Lightbox or some other script — don’t just direct your visitors to some shoddy file listing!!!

Goodies: Smilies: The smilies are a bit large, and the lack of color really detracts from them. You have all of the basic emotions down which is nice, I just wish you had a larger, more developed section with color variations and maybe shape variations.

Joined: Agh… I sort of hate these pages. On the one hand, it does give us a glimpse into more of what you like, thus giving us a better picture of who you are. On the other hand, it’s a long and tedious list, rarely ever checked for accurate links, that no one really uses. Pi (Academia), Rose Byrne (Actresses), Garden State Soundtrack (Albums), Jason Todd (Characters), Tabbed Browsing (Computer), XHTML (Computer), Elizabeth I (History), Damages (TV), Grey’s Anatomy (TV), & Project Runway (TV) moved. Bill Nighy (Actors), Black Parade (Albums), Venom (Characters), Johnny Storm (Characters), Silver Surfer (Characters), V (Characters), Venom (Comics), Peter Parker/Harry Osborne (Comics), Jason Todd (Comics), Johnny Storm (Comics), Fonts (Computer), Firefox (Computer), Nintendo 64 (Games), Adult Slash Fiction (Fan Works), Fantastic Four (Movies), Fantastic Four 2 (Movies), The Hole (Movies), Little Miss Sunshine (Movies), Star Wars III (Movies), Sunshine (Movies), The Academy Is… (Musicians), The Arctic Monkies (Musicians), Franz Ferdinand (Musicians), Harry Osborne & Peter Parker (Relationships), Mace & Capa (Relationships), & Macbeth (Stage) 404′d. Glitter’s web-directory doesn’t seem to be open yet.

Links: Luckily all of your links were intact.

I didn’t really see an abundance of interesting material for me to read through; from recollection I figured there would be oodles of stories and poetry for me to sift through. It looks like your blog is the main vehicle for that, but even there… most of your entries are filed under Day to Day. So your site is mainly an online journal, which I can respect. Except the entries are extremely short on top of everything else! I browsed the majority of your site quicker than I should have, and I didn’t really see a point to half of it (the links and fanlistings, for starters). As for blogging, I think that you should sort of stray away from day-to-day stuff. Or use an experience in your day-to-day that led you to a realization and then share that realization. Honestly, detailing how grueling work is is not at all interesting, but maybe discussing something deeper about it might be. Like your layout/look, your content fell pretty flat.

Coding:
All of your coding passed W3C validation unsurprisingly, you seem to be pretty gung-ho about standards compliance, kudos.

Rating:

So to sum up: your design is bad, your content is mediocre, and your coding is impeccable. Which is why you get this rating. The main problem I think is your site needs a drastic facelift. It looks really amateur, and from the fact that you can code so well it seems like you’ve been in the web-design world for quite a while. If you’re not the greatest with Photoshop, you can still come up with a great minimalist layout.. many people do. I would definitely stray away from gray because it’s drab and doesn’t seem to be working for you. Your content, too, needs a bit of a bulking up. There seems to be a lack of direction or purpose; your strengths seem to be in writing and the arts, yet the only “content” you have is goodies, most of which are graphics (which is clearly not your strong suit). Play on your strengths, post interesting articles or opinion/rants, keep your viewer interested… have something for them to read other than your first day closing for work!

Presentation:
So when I first entered your site, I pretty much thought it was some sort of internet scam site. You know that aesthetic — something plain, perhaps well designed and functional, but entirely sketchy due to lack of color and proper design structure. The “latest post” resembled some sort of ad, and true to form there are many shameless plugs at the bottom of the page in “asides,” seems like sponsored ads. I’m not a huge fan of “personal” sites being sponsored, but that’s just personal taste — any income is good income, I suppose. Your “summer” layout hardly evokes imagery of sand and surf, but rather ugly patterns found in the dark depths of Photoshop presets. On the bright side, your layout is completely functional. Every page is easy to find, there’s a clearly marked “search” box — I know exactly where I am and the structure is clean-cut.

So yes, your layout is quite functional. But it completely lacks style, that “wow” factor that makes a good first impression. Let’s face it, this is the first thing people see when they visit your site. It should be appealing and show off some sort of competence in design. Like I said, you have half of the important stuff down — all too often the situation is reversed and though someone has a beautiful layout it’s completely impractical. You seem to be suffering the opposite: it’s almost too practical and lacks “oomph.” Try solving this by being a little more imaginative with colors. Try using a different color from white for the background, and make the links more bright instead of a simple pale blue-gray. But please, please adjust your banner image! It’s really quite poorly designed and looks amateur. If you’re giving tips on web-design, you better have a fantastic layout to show off your “credentials.” Additionally, your font is teeny-tiny. When I go to your webpage, I don’t want to squint or strain my eyes to read your links or journal articles. 14px font is just common courtesy.

Content:
Okay, I’ll go through this site piece-by-piece.

Affiliates: Glancing quickly at your side-bar, I always like to do quick link checks. Sure enough, “Sweet Simplicity” & “Vintagesque” did not load.

About: I noticed when you try to defer to links, you use phrases such as “click here” or ” —- is here.” Quite frankly, it’s a lot more professional/specific if you incorporate the link into what you’re talking about. The subpages for this section are really subtle and can be easily missed. You should probably make your “about” section more clearly marked for visitors to see.

About: Support: Your link buttons are simply unattractive — the colors you contrasted together aren’t flattering but rather jarring. All of your buttons seem like a variation on a theme: a few strips of bright colors on a bland background with really prominent text for the site name. Aside from the fact that the buttons don’t line up with their respective text areas (I’m on a Mac browsing in Firefox), you should probably redesign the look of these buttons. Try to make something more appealing and eye-pleasing. Your second row of two buttons is quite attractive, but the colors are all washed out and therefore hard to read. The others lack a defined border and look amateurly designed.

About: Webmiss: This narrative is really choppy. You begin by giving basic information, and then go on to talk about the tragedy of your mother’s death (I’m so sorry, by the way.. cancer is awful). But you leave out many details. If you are seventeen now, and she passed away and you don’t talk to your father, did your sister raise you until now? Where in Puerto Rico do you live? I also had some trouble with the following sentence:

I strongly believe she had changed me as a person, being less than a year old.

This cause-and-effect sentence makes no sense; the first clause has no relationship to the second. Instead of discussing qualities of your niece that changed you, you describe something as superficial as her age. Instead of talking about how she changed you, maybe you could discuss how remarkable it is that she’s had such an effect on you seeing as she’s less than a year old. Maybe that’s what you really meant? I think the fact that you ended your “Webmiss” section with “I need to add to this soon…” sort of sums up the lack of planning and direction in this place. You open up about huge and personal tragedies/problems in your life, yet don’t discuss specifics about hobbies you partake in, subjects you’re interested in school, what movies and TV shows and music you listen to… I don’t get a picture of who you are as a person by such a sort and uninformative page; it doesn’t have to be so personal unless you want it to be. Try making it more like a snapshot of your personality. Try to present yourself as wholly as possible while still keeping the page light and succinct.

About: Plugins Used: It’s nice that you forewent the whole plugins used plugin and instead opted microreviews of the plugins you used, but you offer no link to the plugins. It’s sort of a tease when you go on and on about how useful something is, and then require your visitor to figure out where it’s offered on their own. Please update this to have the plugin names either link to the creator’s website or the plugin listing on WordPress’s “Extend” section.

About: Credits: WordPress and any programs used to create this site is woefully missing from this section. Aside from that, all of the links check out which is nice — there’s no worse thing than a broken link!

Posts: Lessons: Your single lesson on how to steal and convert videos for iPod is kind of a joke. Many websites already provide the same exact “tutorial,”¹ and at best you just restate common sense to any novice “pirater.” I don’t really see any clear direction here, aside from software recommendations. As far as your “explanations,” they are all probably stated clearly in the FAQ that come with each software download.

Posts: Photoshop Tutorials: Your eye-color tutorial contains clear direction and many screen shots, which is extremely helpful to learning a new technique in Photoshop. Where you fell short was any clear direction on how to choose the right color. What would have been nice is color values for “natural” eye colors and the results next to each color value. You delivered on how to change the colors, but fell short on explaining the significance of which colors look more natural. Additionally, you used 3 bullet points to explain how to set the color, but not why you did it the way you did nor a clear explanation on how to choose the right color.

Your “Whitening Teeth” guide seems to echo the same exact technique as your “Changing Colors” guide. I don’t think this merits another tutorial altogether, but merely a “Different Results” section on the previous tutorial. This also goes for any “Changing Hair Color” tutorials you have kicking around in your head.

Posts: Plugins: The fact that you wrote an Exec-PHP plugin tutorial is kind of absurd. First off, all plugins come with some sort of FAQ that explains how to install them. Second, you have a similar page where you praise the plugins you use in the About section — the section where you should put this article information instead.

As I saw from your blog, it seems like you’re planning a major re-design so I hope these comments help on the creation of your new content. Try keeping things original and fresh; your resources section is young but useful (thanks for the plug by the way) and perhaps you should grow on that a bit. Instead of explaining how to install plugins that already have instructions in the file download, you should post reviews on the functionality of new plugins so that your readers will know which ones you rely on and why. As for your photoshop tutorials, you have so few of them for me to comment on globally, but hopefully future articles won’t use the same exact technique yet again! Again, keep everything fresh and new; give your readers a reason to check back!!

Coding:
Like I said before, the main problem with your site is not coding difficulties, but aesthetics. Everything is so cluttered that I can hardly get my bearings! Regardless, your site isn’t perfect and fetched 23 errors in the HTML validator at w3.org. For the most part, your coding does separate style from content, but gets mucky around the footer area — you have a lot of odd issues there; it looks like you didn’t really check to see if the coding was neat. It looks like you have some sort of alternate style sheet for IE7?

<!--[if lt IE 7]>
<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”http://www.final-stop.net/wp-content/themes/tma/ie.css” type=”text/css” media=”screen, projection”>
<![endif]–>

Your site should look THE SAME in all browsers, giving people a different experience just because they use a browser that utilizes correct CSS markup is absurd. If your CSS is only fully functional in IE, then you haven’t really grasped the language and are coding incorrectly. Opera, Firefox, and Safari rely more on proper CSS markup than IE which is why many webdesigners have made the switch to alternate browsers. Your main CSS file had errors. Fix them.

Rating:

I found your site rather underwhelming. From a pretty bland facade to equally bland content, I found myself questioning whether or not I would be willing to return to your website. I think you need to rethink the purpose of your site and provide more helpful and original content, stuff that is both interesting to read and educational/informative. Finding that balance can be hard; hopefully with your re-vamp you’ll improve. Good luck!

1. Note how all 3 comments are spam comments from companies/spambots that teach the same lesson as you.

Presentation:
My only qualms about your overall look is the cardboard-style background which I don’t find that attractive — I tend to like solid backgrounds better. Besides, how does notebook paper relate to cardboard other than the fact that they are both office supplies (generally used for completely different purposes)? Additionally, though the search form is cleverly placed and designed, I think it is a little understated and can definitely easily be lost in the design. Though it looks good, it lacks optimum functionality because it’s blended in so well. Otherwise, you have impeccable taste! The brown header matches the pink sidebar perfectly. A definite plus is the submenus that appear in every section, and the fun rollover images you have on the main menu. Seriously, I want to steal your design aesthetic, this site is fabulous. Let’s move on, before I stroke your ego to death.

Content:
About Me: Quick Bio: The narrative is witty and does a good job of catching your personality. I think you did sacrifice some details, and it’s not a “bio” so much as a snapshot of who you are. You did leave out some big details, such as how old you are or where you reside (from the spelling I assume the UK?). The facebook links (I swear I wasn’t stalking) lead to dead-ends. Unlike your well-crafted introduction, the list at the bottom is ridiculously long. I’m not a fan of these sorts of lists, I’d rather read about the facts in a narrative (and wouldn’t you know, you are from the UK! According to your fast facts, that is). Yes, most of these are amusing (marital status being followed by martial status), but some shouldn’t be said¹ (e.g. your astrological sign — why not give us your daily horoscope while you’re at it?). So unless you’re going to rename this to Not-so-Fast Facts, then I highly suggest you truncate the list a bit, removing unnecessary and uninteresting factoids.

About Me: Childhood Drawings: Hilarious! The only thing more hilarious than the actual drawings was your commentary. This is reminiscent of the article Maddox wrote mocking children’s artwork, and any writing comparison to Maddox is purely complimentary.

About Me: Handwriting: At first I began to think “Jesus, why the hell can’t I read any of this? I hate this page.” But then I read your commentary on the “handwriting analysis” and it made my squinting and keyboard-smashing worth while. Generally I hate vague generalizations about certain things (e.g. horoscopes, handwriting style) that can apply to anyone, but your subtle mockery made me giggle: who likes being overwhelmed indeed.

About Me: People in my Blog: These pages are definitely useful when you mention real-life people over and over again, and even though a quick run-through of your recent posts didn’t really show that you mentioned the majority of the people on this page, at least it provides for a bit of insight into the people you associate with and how they’ve affected you in some way.

About Me: Top 10 Bands: I noticed how you switched between “Myspace Official Site” and “Official Myspace Site” which is the only inconsistency I noticed on this page. I love the page anchors paired with album covers at the top of the page, definitely a smart and original way to organize your top ten. Are these rankings significant in order of importance to you? If not, you should specify. Of the few bands that I share a liking to (Beck, Muse, Ladytron), I think you more than adequately crystallized their sound into a neat little paragraph while still keeping everything relevant to you (because after all, this whole site is about you, isn’t it?).

About Me: Top 10 Teevee: Although I completely disagree with the merits of the first two shows you outline, I definitely like how you’ve incorporated plotlines and stylistic elements of television and how they relate back to your taste level. Again, the thumbnails are a clever touch. Side note about spellings, and yes I am only educated in US spellings and grammar so excuse me if I make a mistake in cross-country spelling practices, in “Everybody Hates Chris” you misspelled ‘demented.’ Also, unless it was intentional, you made up a word in “Sugar Rush” — ‘naivity,’ unless you meant ‘naiveté.’ And in “Robot Chicken” you misspelled ‘acquainted.’

About Me: Weapon of Choice: From the title of this link, I had no idea where the page would lead me. That’s really not ideal for a link title, but I suppose if you had a different title=”" element in the link you could include a more specific description of the page. The photo quality and crop-jobs on these pictures are really sub-par, and you really delivered on the opening statement of: “This section may or may not be as interesting as you perceived it to be.” Setting yourself up for a boring page in the first line is probably not the best way to approach creating content that people will enjoy to read. Out of all of the personal section, I deem this page to be the least amusing… relating material goods back to yourself is tricky business.

Site Info: The definition section on this page was probably the best satirical section on your entire website. It’s always bugged me when some pawn with access to the internet decides that I can’t comprehend what “gracious butterfly²” means… And the subtle link to Charlie the Unicorn is just genious… I love that cartoon

Site Info: Gifts & Awards: Rhiannon’s fan-sign to you doesn’t load up, but luckily you have properly alt-texted your image so it’s not a big red x in my browser. Aside from all of that, I tend to dislike these sorts of sections because apart from the usual narcissism that is necessary for anyone to own and operate a personal website, it sort of becomes a lame shrine that no one but yourself really enjoys viewing. And yes, it’s nice to show appreciation to gifts that people have given you, but in the end why bother putting your visitors through this boring mess?

Site Info: How To Link Me: While it’s nice that you’ve really packed for a rainy-day by giving everyone every possible dimension link button, AND included a way for people to direct link you, I think you’ve gone way overboard and have provided too many link-buttons for your visitors to choose from. Let’s face it, the majority of these buttons have the same exact background and color scheme, and your 468×60 banners have two different-yet-the-same DO YOU NEED IT banners. Keep this page light and simple, there’s really no need to clutter a page with samples from every layout you’ve ever used ever condensed into a 50×50 button and all the other dimensions you decided to use. It’s overwhelming and I felt you sacrificed quality for quantity.

Site Info: Links Out: Ambie (Friends & Blogroll) moved her site, you should update her link. Dave’s (Friends & Blogroll) site, Chocolate Trousers (Art), Mawled and Dolled (Art), Smason (Music), & French Dalek (Dumpster) are no longer in existence.

Site Info: Rate Your Site: If you are no longer taking reviews, I don’t see why this page is up — for us to glance at rubrics that don’t even apply to our sites?

Site Info: Web History: Definitely digging the fact that you have two different versions, the lazy-man’s one and the in-depth one. Aside from the fact that you repeatedly spelled ‘lose’ as ‘loose’ (I won’t go all Freud on you for the implications of this slip-up), I liked the fact that you did go into the actual development of how you became who you are as a webdesigner today. Too often people simply list what websites they made while skipping over what they learned from the experience.

Portfolio: College Work: The paintings in this section are incredibly intense and well done. My only reservation is that you didn’t really explain what the Destruction Project was and when I clicked on the DIM Blog link in your sidebar to maybe read up on more of your college projects, I was led to a 404 error page.

Portfolio: Freelance: Mika and Lyann’s layouts were overwhelmingly large when expanded — couldn’t you have cropped the bottom parts while still keeping the integrity of the layouts you intended? I wish you had developed Battle Part One & Two into an online comic series, I really enjoyed reading just that snippet (and I’m not huge on comics). The image quality on your miscellaneous pictures was pretty awful: I hate poorly saved jpegs.

Portfolio: University: Your flash game is actually a 404 error.

To sum up this section, aside from the few quirks I love your content. You really do get the point of a personal website — everything is about you, and you keep your readers interested. The entire website is witticism after witticism, and I found myself chuckling all the while. Even though you’re a grand artist, you’d certainly make an amazing writer.

Coding:
So this section is usually where I critique coding. But I can’t really critique something that I see no problem with. Your site’s coding was valid with the W3 validator, and it was no surprise because aside from the thousand and ten broken links on your website, there were no functional errors to speak of.

Rating:
So your site kept me amused. And there’s a huge return factor too, because even if you don’t have a ton of new content to be sifted through, your blogs are a surefire way to get a chuckle alongside my morning coffee. The few errors were what got you nicked a half star off… broken links and made up words get under my skin more than they should… but honestly, fantastic work. I can’t wait to see what you cook up next.

1. Or typed, whatever.
2. or whatever the hell adjective-noun combo they have going

Presentation

These days it’s not exactly often that I am disappointed right at first glance, nevertheless your site comes close to making it happen. Let’s see: I hate the anime Card Captor Sakura and I hate Internet Explorer as a browser. Ironically enough your site looks better in Firefox than in Internet Explorer. There is no sidescrolling for the sidebar, for one. Aside that, I prefer my own browser’s scrollbars; I don’t appreciate when my software (browser in this case) is changed to the liking of another. I’m the only one who uses this computer, after all.

Moving on, I’m greeted by a blinding magenta-colored background, which is seriously going on my nerves. Background colors are not supposed to make a visitor be keenly aware of them. Their purpose is to subtly enhance the overall aesthetic appeal of the layout. With your layout however, the background is so striking that my eyes keep being drawn to it, rather than the header image.

The brushes you use in the header image are actually quite appealing, but the pink is overdone. I wouldn’t have used the feathers as well. The flowers are a good choice, as they are present in black as well; same for the bubbles. These two look quite appealing, precisely because the two complement each other. There is nothing to complement the feathers; they are much too light-colored on their own. At first I thought the feathers were some random scribbles.

The general idea of having Sakura as a shadow, and the iPod as a “solid” object, is not bad in theory. The design would’ve looked better without the iPod, though. It would’ve been consistent with the background for one. For another, due to the monochrome nature of Sakura’s body, the iPod appears to be hanging in midair, not really attached to anything. Perhaps if you had made the shadow of Sakura more “fleshed out”. Compared to the iPod, Sakura seems much too ‘flat’.

Next, your sidebar is much too small. You end up with 3 words per line, which is highly impractical. First of all, sidebars are not supposed to have too much written text, second: why is there a need to repeat the self description details on every page? I’m sure visitors will get it the first time around.

All in all, your layout’s main fault is the magenta background. It’s blinding and is likely chasing away a lot of your potential visitors. You header image has way too much going on, and is too large. If I switch to a resolution of 1024×768px (my default one being 1280×1024px), the header image alone takes up more than 3/4 of the first screen. Not only is this murder on those whith slower Internet connection, but you have to keep in mind that not everyone will like your layout. So offer them the option of your content then; besides, from what I browsed around, it looks as if your site is mainly a blog. So put more emphasis on the content, rather than the layout.

For future reference, don’t use header images with height larger than 200px, and size over 100KB. Furthermore, the main navigation should always be immediately visible: i.e. on the first screen. If I follow the instructions from the splash page, I find the main navigation at the bottom of the second screen. You might as well not have it. Most visitors just barely glance at the first screen, a select few might also scroll down to see the upper half of the second screen, and almost no one scrolls lower than that. That said, you effectively hid your entire content from first time visitors. Rather counter productive, don’t you agree?

Content

Despite the fact that I only managed to finish this review now, I have been browsing around your site quite a bit. For some reason, I was under the impression that you have so much more content beside blog entries and generic information about yourself. Then again, I guess that’s just because I saw those awards, and assumed you’d be displaying your work on your website.

=Home=

Cutenews is powered by PHP, so why exactly do you use iframes? Aside this, why do you have only one single blog entry per page, when your sidebar is so long? Let’s take your latest blog entry which says you’re going to update soon (written almost month ago): what could people possibly find interesting about that? Nothing, right? Now, if there had been other blog entries (about 2-3 per page), then people would get a better idea about your blog.

While the information on the ergonomics website is relative well documented, the design is anything but ergonomically pleasing. You didn’t go into details in your blog entry, so I’m not sure why you couldn’t use divs. Still, even if you had to use tables, you could have made a decent design. The problem with this is that you didn’t put enough thought into it. True, tables are not supposed to be used for layouts, however if you know how to use colspan and rowspan and well as CSS, making a layout is quite easy.

For example, the flash effect is ugly and useless. The sidebar is right there, no need to duplicate it, plus your links are (for the most part) blue so they are quite easily distinguished. You should have made the first link (what is ergonomics) blue as well. You should have used flash (if absolutely necessary) for link effects, or maybe a discrete animation in the header image. The way the site looks, I get the impression that you were concentrating more on having all these effects, rather than making the site look ergonomic. Considering the theme, you should have put more thought into arranging things in a pleasant and efficient way.

=Teh Gal < 3=

I’m not particularly fond of chat speak, unless done with the intent of mocking, so I don’t quite find the title funny. The only useful information I get from this page is your ethnicity. Your age and nationality are specified in the sidebar only. Furthermore there is no such thing as “Internet-ing”, since Internet is a noun not a verb. The expression you’re looking for is “surfing the Internet”. No, it’s not even remotely funny.

This page is (normally) supposed to tell the visitor a bit about webmaster. Unless you consider yourself to be a bunch of statistical data, there’s hardly anything of interest her. I am a complete stranger, I don’t know you, nor am I your fan. As such, I really couldn’t care less about your date of birth, favorite colors, artists, food (no plural by the way), etc.

Incidentally your “Least favorite food” makes no sense. Slashes (/) mean “or” not “and”; therefore you should have used comas instead. Plus it’s “bad tasting” not “tasted bad”. So rewrite that line as:

Least Favorite Food: Anything slimy, uncooked, bad tasting

The following are some very good examples, of about pages: Jemjabella, Hey Girl, I’ve Been Awake All Week. Notice that they are brief and don’t limit themselves to a bunch of lists.

Speaking of lists, the self description you have in the sidebar is way too much and confusing. If you really MUST keep it, consider writing a short sentence instead. Oh and get rid of the picture. It’s not you, the girl page uses a different one, and the former takes up way too much space. The sidebar is already too small, no need to minimize its content area.

=Fan of…?=

I don’t really see why this has to have a link on the sidebar. You could have either attached it to the girl page, or had a link to it from the girl page.
The following fanlistings don’t exist, or have changed their URL: Division 6, Zabimaru, Ichigo Rukia Ken, Bleach music, Syaoran, Kanna, Kirara, Lacus, Risa, Jeile, Hoshina Airi, Anna, Shizunasa Touguu, Usio, Haine and Fye. I apologize if I didn’t misspelled some names, but I’m not familiar with most of these anime series.

=Site=

In the Joined Contests page, the image for the graphics contest at Sorrowful Memories is broken.
In the Awards Received page: Anime Euphoria has moved to solaris.beloved-kingdom.com, Frozen tears has closed, and Blades of Eternity is now at hyuu.iigaken.org

Coding

First of all, learn to code. You source code is one big mess. Check out the following links in that order: Basic HTML: Your First Web Page, Create a Tableless Layout and Creating an External Stylesheet.

As for what is wrong with your current code:

1. You’re missing the doctype, html and head tags. You don’t even close the body tag.
2. The page title, links to external stylesheet and favicon declarations go into the head section. Delete the second declaration of the favicon, once is enough.
3. The statcounter script should be placed right before closing the body tag.
4. Div tags go into the body section.
5. Allowtransparency is an attribute for frames and iframes, so don’t use it for divs. Besides, if you don’t specify a background for a div tag, it will be transparent.
6. Image tags (<img … >) must always contain the alternate text (alt) attribute. You can leave it blank if the image serves no purpose other than a decorative one.
7. Instead of using the line break (<br>) tag so many times, use html lists. You can customize these to be used for navigation as well: horizontal or vertical.

Rating

As I said before, your artistic skills show some promise and you’re certainly quite eager to participate in as many online events as possible. Aside that, the only thing you have is a few blog entries and some lists. That will keep your visitors entertained for 2 minutes at most.

For starters I suggest you try to blog more often and write a few paragraphs about you/the site. Visitor content is not very important for me, I like blog only sites as well.

By the way, using anime/manga images is illegal. Yes even if it’s not for profit. Since you’re site is not anime/manga oriented, I suggest you make use of stock images next time.

Presentation:

I’m constantly stressing the importance of a straight-forward navigation, however I don’t exactly want to be attacked by one, either. Every time I glance at your layout, my eyes are automatically drawn to the navigation. I suppose if it made use of some “fancy” design (such as Appasionato), it would have some saving grace. That beige background looks rather out of place there too. I’m assuming that the picture frame uses it, however combined with the darker patterns, the overall effect in the picture is much more pleasant. If I were a first time visitor, I wouldn’t spend more than a couple of seconds here.

I rather like the concept of the picture on the left, as well as the way you chose to “complete” it on the bottom. Great job on integrating it with the light gray background, as well as the focus/blur effects… and that’s about all I like about the layout. It’s a pity really, because it has great potential, if used differently.

My suggestion would be to use a different colored background for the content, and have part of the image overlap said different colored background. You have too many blog entries on the first page. My current screen resolution is 1280×1024px, however I still need to scroll down quite a bit to see the bottom of the design. Have fewer entries, and in such larger resolution have the bottom part show in the first screen.

I highly dislike the purple “sidebar”, because not only does it look out of place there, but the text color is rather hard to read. You should have used the light gray from the main background for it, rather than left it black. Why not have the introductory message on the top of the main page instead? And the exits are fine enough being placed in on a links page; or you could make use of a larger footer, similar to the one in Aneesah’s Hideaway, if you insist on having those on the front page.

While I did say, I like the picture, it is extremely large, and in a resolution of 800×600px it is cut. Also, the entire layout side scrolls when using this resolution. Given the simplicity of the site’s design, I don’t see why it can’t be resized to work in this resolution as well. Oh and another pressing problem: I don’t see your site title anywhere on the front page. Nor do you mention it in the purple sidebar. Is there a reason why? I know I don’t generally look at the browser’s title bar to find said information.

Here is a screenshot of a suggestion on how you could change the layout. It was hastily done in Photoshop, so some things may be slightly misaligned and I was too lazy to change the text color.

Content

I was under the impression that this was a personal site. You don’t exactly mention the type of it anywhere… Well aside “my underwear out on the line”, which would indicate personal site in its nature. Anyway, back to topic, due to this site being personal, I believe it is more logical to put stuff related to you (ie Creator) first, and have the rest after.

= Blog (X) =

I’m not particularly fond of the name you chose for it on the navigation. If you wrote with a smaller font, typing Index or Blog wouldn’t have been so difficult. I see you don’t display any archives, as you’re not making use of a CMS. This is not particularly bothersome for me, but I’d assume it would be easier for you to maintain your blog if you used one. Haloscan opens comments in popup windows, which are blocked by popup blockers, not to mention that hardly anyone these days uses popups. Or if they do, it’s for brief informational data.

It’s a pity really because some of your blog entries are very entertaining, but I only see a few comments here and there. My personal suggestion would be that of Wordpress, I DO admit that it IS rather bloated, but it comes with exellent documentation. I haven’t used other CMS, but Expression Engine seems to be highly regarded as well. Or if you’re uncomfortable with database driven scripts, try Flatpress.

Of course it’s not a requirement to use a CMS, however they come with a lot of features which make browsing blogs a lot easier and more pleasant for visitors. You might want to take that into consideration. Right… so that would be the end of advertising.

I’m rather bothered by the purple box on the right. Not only is the text hard to read, but its content is not so lengthy so as to warrant its existence. I clicked over to Projects and saw that it’s still there. Why? Is it necessary to remind people on each and every page that they have reached your site? You can just welcome your visitors once on your homepage. The screenshot of the suggested layout uses that paragraph as the first one.

Another thing I don’t really get is why you’re displaying links to other sites as the second paragraph in your welcome box. It’s your site, why would you want to direct your visitors elsewhere right from the start? Put these on a links page, or make use of a large footer and put them there.

= Projects =

The purple link hover background is not a particularly vise background choice. I’d use something closer to that shade of beige. The idea is indeed to differentiate hover links from regular ones, but the difference doesn’t have to be that glaring.

I had initially decided not to review this section, seeing that it seems it’s not part of Gem.Inamorata, but then I’d be drastically reducing your content. So I did decide to include it in the review after all.

Instead of opening “Body Language” a new window you should mention that it’s a different site… or well not quite part of your personal site. You could even follow Yahoo’s example, and have some sort of arrow, indicating an “external” link.
Regarding the zine itself: I dislike the layout, however not so much that I wouldn’t read anything. It bring back memories of the magazines I used to read as a teenager. And once I read the introduction my interest is sparked. I found it funny, witty and in many places I could relate to things very easily.

On second thought, I think the layout fits. It is, however, rather impractical seeing as it’s made up entirely of very large images, which may take a lot to load on slower connections. From your description, it seems as if this is only a static project now, however if you change your mind, I’d suggest redesigning it. Use a very simplistic layout (eg. Sarai’s Dark Gray template), and just float the images you use now, to the left and/or right… made smaller of course; I’m thinking a maximum size of 150×200px would be good. It would be a pity to let this go to waste. I truly enjoy reading these articles and will be back later to finish.

The “101 Things in 1001 Days” is scaring me slightly, seeing as I turned 23 last year (not yet 24 hehe). I’m not sure I did half of those… I could never have such determination XP. For point number 8, instead of “agin” you should write again. Haha, I’m loving the little notes under the completed/tried out items… and I really hate lists on web sites, so this is saying something. For the record I did see a movie by myself, twice. It’s so much better with company. I have to tell those snide remarks to someone.

Your “Icons” align a bit weirdly. After the first 2 rows, the rest of the rows seem to be aligned more toward the right. I’d suggest not using line breaks at all. Just post them there one after another, because they’ll automatically align themselves correctly. Of course, if you want to use 100% correct coding, put each image inside a list item (<li>) of an unordinary list(<ul>), and float these list items to the left. By the way, image tags must have the alternate text (alt=”") specified at all times, even if left blank.

The icons themselves are not that interesting, nevertheless they all display a certain style, which I think really represents you. Or well, they’re consistent and seem to be of the same style type as the images you use in your layout(s).

= Stories =

The first word is rather hard to read, due the link color, which is more or less the same as the shade of the skin on the girl’s leg. Consider fixing this: it’s rather annoying. I’m of the type who wouldn’t highlight, unless I was in a very stalkerish mood.

“Little, Ironic Smile” had me captivated from the first line which you put as introduction. I really really like it, you write so well, and have such an easy style. I did find the following a bit weird though:

Even though she was still in college and five years younger than he

However, before that, you say:

he was calm and collected at twenty four while she’d just reached twenty and was going every which way.

So, should the difference be four years?

I’m not sure if it is because I’m having a day off today, and am feeling really relaxed, but I really liked “Sincerely” as well. Now don’t take that as an insult, it’s great that you write stuff which I keep liking a lot. In my experience, whenever I found such a writing that I enjoyed, it always seemed to be one of a kind. See? This is another reason for which you should use a CMS. Then you can add these stories as pages and let people comment. I’m sure a lot of them would like these stories a lot. They’re brief, but they don’t seem incomplete. Plus, they all seem so funny, as well as slightly bittersweet. I can’t believe you hadn’t before got an A in an English course (unless you forgot to update your to do list).

Normally, as a reviewer who respects herself, I should read the rest as well. But I’d like to finish this review today… I have slacked off again. I do promise to come back and read the rest though. And you’re definitely on my blog roll (ie link list). In “Creative Journaling” you have an extra > in the last paragraph (”>Claire in Top Form”).

= Photos =

I like them a lot, but you really need to put a bit more effort in arranging them in a more eye pleasing fashion. For example, see Lil’s (Hey Girl) portfolio. I’m told she uses a script called plogger, which is easily integrated into any site. Give it a try.

= Creator =

You’re an English major, that’s nice. I reviewed a girl (twice) who apparently received honors in English, but I rather disliked her writing style: much too school essay oriented. She got right pissed with me for that. I had almost decided that 1) either all English majors suck at writing (lol, yeah I know), or 2) I’m never going to understand their work. Your writing style is very pleasing though. I’m glad I was proven wrong.
Whoa! You definitely like lists… I don’t so I’ll probably just skim through this. I really can’t stand so many list items.

= Gem dot Inamorata=

I was about to finish the review and post it, when it occurred to me that I had not seen the site section. I was expecting it to be linked on the main navigation. Instead of Photos, you could put this, and make photos part of the creator section. By the way, why are you spelling gem without capitalizing the g? Alias or not, it does seem a bit odd for me.

Your previous two layouts quite nice, I especially like the vexel one… though I’m not sure about the yellow. I have some trouble viewing bright colors in large amount.

Coding

I’m glad that you don’t use tables, but you need to read up on more recent coding practices. Yours are rather outdated, and thus affect the ease with which Google may index your site in searches.

You use a correct doctype, but it would be advisable to use meta tags, to ensure that search engines render your site in more relevant searches. Jem’s tutorial on Basic Meta Tags should be a good start, and continue with Rachael’s tutorial for custom keywords.

Moving on, I see that used a div for each link. That’s rather complicated. How about you make use of the two tutorials for Semantic CSS Block Navigation: vertical or horizontal.

Similarly <span> tags are not supposed to be used for titles. Use the heading tags, there are 6 of them h1 - h6. Surely that’s more than enough for your needs. And if not, you can always customize them using CSS. By the way, you do underline titles a bit too often. Don’t underline anything unless it’s a link, or if you want to put some sort of emphasis on it. Use font-weight: bold, change its color, but underlining is considered to be harmful for anything other than links. The default styles in browsers denote links by it, so try to adhere to those accessibility requirements… whenever possible.

Image tags (<img … >) must always contain the alt attribute. When I tried to validate your Icons page, I got a lot of validation errors due to the alternate text missing. If an image serves a purely decorative purpose (eg a fancy separator), then you can leave the alternate text blank (eg <img src=”my_image.jpg” alt=”" />), however in every other circumstance have a short explanatory text. There people who are forced to browse using text only browsers. In such cases, a short explanatory text can be very helpful.

I noticed that you have a tendency to leave some paragraph tags open. If you open a tag, then do make sure that you also close it, to ensure proper display of the web page.

Rating:
I am the type of visitor who is greatly attracted to layouts with a lot of eye candy. Therefore, I generally need a little push to check out sites, which might not make use of these web 2.0 style of layouts. Yours is one of such sites. It’s a pity really, because your site is great. Your writing is excellent.
I was quite surprised actually, because I remember not having liked your site much when I reviewed on YourSite.nu. I have to admit, that it may very well have had something to do that I was frustrated by your dislike of my own site . You need to put a bit more thought into your layouts. It’s fine if you’re not the type to use flashy designs such as say… Guitar Angel, but simple professional layout would greatly benefit your site.
To answer the question you posed in your Creator page: I have indeed enjoyed your little corner of the web tremendously.