back to Completed Reviews

Site Name: Crazed
Owner: Aileen
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 16th October 2009

Site Name

Easy to remember and quite unique. No problems here.

Coding and Validation

Your coding has 15 errors and 8 warnings.

From glancing at your coding I can see that you’ve done a pretty good job. You should be specifying alt – alternate text – for the area shape in your imagemap. You should also finish the map with </map>.

You also need the universal character encoding of UTF-8, and it should be placed in the head section:

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

1	<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

You need to replace the « and » in your Cutenews entries to « and » so that your document can still be checked in the validator.

Your CSS has 1 error and 2 warnings. In your blockquote, align:left should be text-align: left. Also, Monotype Corsiva should be quoted in your stylesheet.

Browser Compatibility & Usability

Your site looks the same in most browsers and is navigable and functions in Firefox, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer.

Your layout is falsely centered. You might have the same screen resolution as me which is why it appears centered to me, but on smaller and larger resolutions it is not centered. I recommend you look at my tutorial to see how you can center your layout.

You should not depend on images for navigation. If people have images turned off or cannot view them, they would be lost on your site. You should opt for text navigation.

The marquee is quite distracting because it is moving. It is not the best way to display affiliates on your site.

Instead of using Javascript for your advertising, try PHP code.

The colour of text you have is hard to read. It’s light on a white background, and it should be darker.

Layout

It’s a nice layout. I like that you have kept it simple. I can’t tell to what extent this image has been edited but it looks nice and the colours are soft.

The colour scheme flows well and I like that you have incorporated the backgrounds into your CSS for added interest. The varying fonts are quite nice as well.

A simple background would look nice and make the layout look less empty. Also, not using celebrity images would be more original.

Content

Content

This section would be better named as “visitor” because “content” would refer to all content on your site, regardless of topic.

You have some errors on the site tips article:
help you’re site should be help your site
alot of scripts should be a lot of scripts
html or xhtml should be HTML or XHTML
Heardrops’ should be Heartdrops’
nessecarily should be necessarily
firefox should be Firefox
This really quite should be This is really quite
compatable should be compatible
for entering should be to enter
If you are a graphics site especially should be Especially if you have a graphics site
Don’t have should be Don’t make
monotype corsiva should be Monotype Corsiva
alot of sites should be a lot of sites
courier sans should be Comic Sans
see the pattern. should be see the pattern?
Key to should be The key to
Gerrard Way’s should be Gerard Way’s
alot of visitors should be a lot of visitors.

You did well in that article and went into quite a bit of detail. However, I find it ironic that you mention Monotype Corsiva when it is the very font you’re using for your headers. It is also ironic that your article mentions bad grammar when you need to fix quite a few of those mistakes in this article.

The icon contest is okay. However, instead of this:

and create an icon that shows the best of your graphic ability

You should write something like this:

and create the best icon you can from these bases

Additionally, Interested. should be Interested?

The backgrounds are quite nice and there’s a good variety. I don’t know if you got the idea for displaying these backgrounds from MemoryLast.net but if you did, it would be nice to give credit.

The brushes are quite nice. There’s nothing much to say about them.

The HTML codes aren’t really that useful. Someone cannot learn from these directly. There are also a few issues with this page. You are displaying code using textarea which is incorrect. Textarea is intended for input and not for displaying code. You should be using <code> and replacing the brackets with their HTML entities like so:

<code> <a href="http://google.com">Google</a>< </code>

1	<code> <a href="http://google.com">Google</a>< </code>

Also, you should use <strong> and <em> instead of <b> and <i>. This is because they are more accessible and provide actual emphasis, particularly for screen readers for the blind.

I don’t know why you name your layouts “domain” layouts. They could be used for a subdomain or freeserver too. You only have one layout though. It’s quite nice and the colours are pretty good. However, using celebrity images isn’t very original and you are better off using legal images that you actually have permission from the photographer to use.

There’s nothing much to say about the fonts. It’s nice that you’re linking to Dafont and not redistributing them but otherwise, this isn’t much more than a handy reference.

The icons are quite nice. I don’t like the animated ones though, and some of the text on the icons could be edited to fit better with the background colours – more effects and such. Again, not using celebrity images would be more original. I have seen Twilight icons everywhere.

The actions look great. Capitalise “Photoshop”. Additionally you might want to use original images here too.

The pre-cut site models are better than your average overloaded celebrity “PSD” or “PNG” files. I think it is excellent that you have named these with a better description and used more original images other than what is generally seen out there. The only downside with these images is that some of the models have their arms or legs out of the picture, so they aren’t as easy to work with.

Nothing much to say about the scans, but you need to change some of the BMP files to PNG or JPEG. Also, you should make separate images for the thumbnails (which are smaller) so that the entire image doesn’t have to load simply for the thumbnail. It is time consuming but it’s much better than all the thumbnails taking a while to load.

Nothing much to say about the sunvectors. I have seen these on a few sites before. They’re quite nice but not everyone’s style. I don’t come across a lot of sites that use these though.

There are quite a few tutorials and they would probably deserve their own link in the navigation too.

On the “Changing the emoticons in a Cbox” tutorial, “Photobucket” and “URLs” should be capitalised.

The GIMP tutorials are great. I don’t see many of these around and they’re easy to understand as well.

The downloading fonts tutorial is pretty common but you did a great job explaining it.

I like the Photoshop tutorials. The second advanced picture one is a bit too light though.

The glass button tutorial is nice but I don’t like how the inner ring of the button is so prominent.

The vampirisation tutorial looks great. It’s quite unique and the effect is good. It is also of high quality.

On the reviews page:
nessecarily should be necessarily
bebo, myspace, piczo should be Bebo, MySpace, Piczo
a html should be an HTML.

For the one completed review, there is no link to it. If it is a private review make sure you state so.

Site

Again with the codes, you should be using code and not textarea to display them.

On the “about” page:
Scotland the should be Scotland; the
though, if should be though; if
I’ve loved should be I loved
authors last name should be author’s last name
msn should be MSN
psychopatic should be psychopathic.

On the awards page, Thank you to should be Thank you for.

Bebo

This is an external link.

Originality & Creativity

I found your website content to be a bit generic but you had a nice way of organising things and your content was very interesting. I think you also have great skills with graphics and I can see your layouts are quite unique.

Organisation & Errors

Well organised. I would just recommend checking spelling and grammar on your pages as I did spot some mistakes.

Overall Comment

As an extra note, I had to write parts of this review two or three times because I had loss of data due to my internet and computer being uncooperative… I apologise if any of this review seems a bit out of place.

You’ve got a great site. You have helpful tutorials and creative graphics, and good skills as well.

My suggestions would be to make a few more premade layouts and brushes and graphics in general. You can also write articles because the article you have on your website now is really good, save the grammatical mistakes. Make sure you check these before publishing.

You can also tweak aspects of your layout a bit in order to make your site more accessible.

Keep up the good work.

Rating

(out of 5)