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Site Name: Secret-Circle
Owner: Ann-Marie
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 15th March 2009
Site Name
It’s a nice name. I haven’t heard anything like it, and it actually gets my attention.
Coding and Validation
Your coding has 7 errors. Which isn’t too bad. But, the structure of your document isn’t even correct.
It should be like this:
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
Yours is a mess and it’s all over the place. The ending head tag should go after your stylesheet include. Anything to do with your layout and look of your site should go between a <body> and </body> tag.
After all your coding, at the end of the document, there should be a </html>.
You don’t even have a doctype at the beginning of your document. How is the browser supposed to understand that this is an HTML document? It can’t guess. Therefore, you need this at the top of every page:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
In between your head tags, you should also have a character encoding:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
Also, on all your images, including your layout image, you need alternate text on it. That is, using the alt attribute. Even if you have no alternate text you need to have the attribute.
Why are you using HTML for your background? Use CSS instead:
body
{
background-image: url(http://i44.tinypic.com/29olsw9.jpg);
}
You’re using iframes, which I don’t understand when you could be using divs for the same thing. Iframes are a pain and you’re using divs for everything else anyway.
You have a </center> in the middle of nowhere when you didn’t even start it.
Your CSS has 1 error and 10 warnings.
The overflow of your div cannot be none. It should be visible, hidden, scroll or auto. (See the proper definition of overflow.)
Also, in some places you have quoted font names with whitespace, such as “Lucida Sans Unicode” – but you haven’t done so with some fonts in your CSS like Times New Roman and Trebuchet MS. Be sure to quote them.
You’re using the same colour for font and background colour in some places. That also doesn’t work out.
Overall you need to work on coding. You don’t even have the basic structure of an HTML document. It makes your coding quite a mess and makes your website take longer to load, believe it or not.
Browser Compatibility & Usability
Looking in Browsershots.org, your layout looks the same in most browsers.
However it looks different in different resolutions. It’s not centered. I go on a laptop and your layout is shoved over to the right way too far. It’s not centered. It’s falsely centered because you’ve used absolute positioning. To achieve a centered look you should be trying a tableless layout with containers.
The navigation should be bigger. Your headers for your blogs and sidebar are way too big. They just pop up in my face. Too big. Decrease the size.
You need to differentiate your links more. It’s hard to tell what’s a link and what’s not, because it’s a very similar colour to your text.
You should increase your main font size, it’s too small. It should be at least 8 or 9pt.
Possibly due to your iframe being an insane height of 2000px, there is a big grey blank section under all your content. Having such a big iframe to prevent scrolling can actually cause browsers to lock up and freeze.
Layout
It’s nice, but too bad I hate Taylor Swift. That aside, I have also seen her on way too many website layouts. I can’t say your layout is original.
But! It’s a very nice layout, and you’ve chosen some very nice colours. The peachy pink and grey combination is something I haven’t seen before.
I really like the navigation and the header part of the layout, but all your content is just so messy. The header is nice; the grid effect quite unique. The colours match up well. I don’t really like the overlapping text of your site name and tagline.
The CSS needs some work. Too much varying font size gives me a headache. Everything looks simple but the sizes are hell. The links should be a significantly different colour from the main text. A bit more variation and use of different shades of the pink and grey would be better.
Content
You have a lot going on in your sidebar. The link button is not necessary; people can find your link buttons if they want to link you.
I also don’t think the tagboard is necessary; you would get more comments on your blog if you didn’t have one. It also makes things look way too cluttered.
There is no need for the ‘ignore’ links. You can just bookmark or favourite them in your browser. It’s almost impossible to ignore these trinkets when there’s a big ‘Ignore’ above them. Just put them under the disclaimer; no one will touch them.
The font in your footer is way too big.
Content
This would be better named as resources or visitor. “Content” is just the stuff that’s in your site. It can be personal content too. “Visitor” or “Resources” is more effective.
You need to capitalise I in your rules.
I don’t know why you have blank sections under ‘downloads’ and ‘fun’. If you have nothing for it yet, then don’t put a random heading that looks out of place.
The icons are quite nice, I like the sepia-type effect on some of them. Some images look pixelated, like the Miley Cyrus ones. A fairly good job here, but I wouldn’t use any of these icons because hmm, I don’t really like any of these celebrities. Using celebrity images is actually illegal unless you have permission from the photographers to use them. So while these icons are nice, I wouldn’t say they’re original.
On your wallpapers page (you only have one! Add more!) it would be better if you had a thumbnail for the image. I don’t like the Jonas Brothers either (sorry) but this is a great wallpaper. Simple with small effects and not too much clutter. More like this would be great!
I don’t see why you have icon bases when you could just make icons out of these. Your icons were great, so I think it would be better. Again here, the icon base of Miley Cyrus seems blurry and pixelated.
I don’t see the point of the signs. People can make their own. A lot of people just use text for signs like these. And if people don’t like the Jonas brothers, they obviously aren’t going to use your signs.
The button bases are boring – pretty much like cropped images. People can also make their own.
You have blank headings in your coded layouts. Again, if nothing’s ready, don’t make a heading or page for it. Again, thumbnails would be useful here.
The layouts are based on the same coding as your current layout. Unnaturally large headers, uncentered as well. You haven’t even customised the CSS! I don’t like the Katy Perry one. The image of her looks blurry and the CSS is boring. You need to add more colours and a variety of fonts. Ditto for the Vanessa Hudgens one.
All that is good about the layouts is the header image and design.
I can’t tell you how to review so I won’t be reviewing that section, of course.
You must capitalise I on your blend challenge. Also, how does the competition work? Do you decide who wins? Or is there a vote? You need to mention this sort of information!
You must capitalise I on your other challenges too.
Why does your text cut off on your Fearless album review page, like this? It happens on your competitions pages as well, and your Twilighter page.
On your host list, Piok Smash should be Pink Smash. This is quite a handy page for people looking for hosts.
Your book list page looks like this. I think you need to fix that.
Did you actually create this site namer? I don’t think so. I don’t think you made the script so that needs crediting.
It’s nice that you offer your service of installing Cutenews, even though the script isn’t exactly the most secure because of it’s lack of a MySQL database.
Tutorials
Again, it would be a lot better if you didn’t have pointless empty headings.
I somehow highly doubt that your Cutenews login box will work. seciruty is in your code, and that.. really isn’t.. how you spell security. And don’t you have a screenshot of what this box will look like? What if someone doesn’t know what a Cutenews login box looks like? If you’re writing a tutorial you’re assuming the reader doesn’t know how to do something.
What’s a commenters hack? Are you teaching people to hack here? What’s the point of this ‘Commenters hack’ tutorial?
Graphics tutorials – finally something good and worth looking at! I really like the colorization tutorials but the image previews should be in the tutorials so people don’t have to click a link to see.
There doesn’t appear to be much difference between the results of the two colorization tutorials. I would really like to see more, particularly on other graphics-related areas.
The custom error page tutorial is okay. Normally I’d just ask my host to do that, if I was on a subdomain.
Advice
On the queue page, it says ask for a review.
Same for your answered advice.
I don’t know why this needs its own section.
Owner
You should put these links in alphabetical order to be more organised.
I don’t see the point of your schedule; I don’t think many people would look at it.
On your facts page, there is the same problem with your div not taking up all the space. That should be looked into and fixed. I think your likes/dislikes would look better as a list, but it’s up to you.
Contact me, fanlistings, goals – fairly good pages, pretty self explanatory. I do hope you make those goals! Care to trade places? I play all three instruments and it’s quite a workload sometimes. 
Sub-Domain
This would be better as ‘site’. The title on the page reads ‘Domain’ and should be corrected.
Linking back LLL Designs is required!
That, on your advertising page, should be corrected. Similarly on this page, some of your text just goes ballistic. It could be the width of your div or the line height of your text.
On your affiliates page, you DO NOT need to have empty subheadings! It is very annoying and looks like I’ve walked into your site in the middle of a revamp.
I don’t think you need to categorise your affiliates, and the form to apply could be on the same page.
Link buttons are fine, past layouts are self explanatory. I don’t know why you don’t give a preview of the whole layout and not just the header image.
Don’t forget to credit your host and the site you got the site namer script from, in your credits.
Ask Me
Pretty self explanatory.
Originality & Creativity
I think you can be very creative in what you design but your website is very ordinary and not that unique.
I’ve seen much of your content on other sites, celebrity-filled graphics and such. I think you could try working with legal stock images rather than the conservative celebrity graphics. They get boring after seeing them on many sites.
Organisation & Errors
Things weren’t very organised. You had way too many sections with nothing in them. This makes things look unorganised. Your text also, should be more organised.
I didn’t spot broken links or images but organisation needs to be improved. I also pointed out the problem with your text not extending to cover the width of your div. That also needs to be fixed.
Overall Comment
Your site needs some work in terms of organisation, Ann-Marie. You really need to clean up your coding – don’t use iframes! Use divs instead. And since you’re in PHP, try PHP includes. They will make layout changes a lot faster and easier.
Please, do get rid of empty sections in which you haven’t added anything! They’re really a bugger, and don’t look professional at all.
Your CSS needs tweaking – a lot, in fact. Headers need to be made smaller, the main text bigger, more colours and variety need to be added.
I have no problem with the majority of your graphics. They’re great, most are high quality, and creative, but I would really have a go at using something other than celebrity images. You never know what original thing you could come up with!
I would also get rid of the more superfluous things like Cutenews tutorials (they’re just like copy-and-paste codes, eh! Write some proper, more awesome stuff!), and signs. No one will use the signs.
In essence, you need to work on coding and styling, and organisation, organisation, organisation! Good luck!
