Reviews

To whom it may concern, or to you, dear reader:

This is a short article about my reviews, why I kept them, and why I no longer do them. You can view published reviews.

For a couple of years I did reviews of websites – personal blogs, hosting websites, graphic websites, fansites – and it took up much of my time. They were “a thing” back then in 2008 to 2010. Nowadays they aren’t as popular. I suppose I jumped on the bandwagon, but over the course of a year my reviews got very popular.

I did reviews because I felt that I could help people improve their website. Some people were also open to receiving opinions from me. I saw myself as a relatively good reviewer because I had been designing for many years, and because I studied user-centered design and creative design practices and theories at a tertiary level.

I aimed to be professional in my reviews, but one cannot write a completely unbiased review when their personal opinion affects their thoughts on the subject. I made comments and reviewed based on web standards and theoretical practices but if I didn’t like a colour, I simply didn’t. I looked at cross-browser compatibility as well.

Before jumping into why I’ve kept these reviews on my website, I’d like to state that I will not review websites again. It is unbelievable how much time it took me for some of them, my longest being 10,000 words. I had to even ask people to help me check links, to help me thoroughly review a website, and I will not lie: It was hell.

Reviews were something I greatly enjoyed, and I will admit, they helped keep my website popular, or even get popular, but now, I have no interest, be it for community, finding new blogs/websites, helping people. I’m out of that field now, and it completely became a chore.

I will not review websites again because it is time consuming and while one person can give an opinion, the internet is a vast resource upon which you will learn yourself, find out new things, without having someone to directly tell you that something is horrid.

I’ve kept the reviews up on my website because many have claimed to have learned a lot from them. I considered deleting them due to my personal embarrassment from some rather old opinions and immature comments, which you might find amusing, should you happen to look at the oldest reviews. I did not keep any private reviews.

You’ll find that review format changed over time, and you might have even noticed my own personal development and improvement in code and design, but nothing is more evident than the fact that technology and markup is ever-changing. What is in these reviews are by no means timeless, but they reflect a point of time during which not only I – but many people – learned from the corners of their bedrooms like iframes on a page, that there was simply more outside the box and the simplicity and tidiness of design pulled them into maturity and to get off their computer and clean their messy room and perhaps kick a ball around instead of wearing their eyes out. That era is long gone, and so soon will the current one too… but until then.

— Wednesday 28th December 2011