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Site Name: Magical Surprise
Owner: Ashley
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 8th August 2009
Site Name
It’s fairly easy to remember – I don’t really have any problems with it.
Coding and Validation
Your coding has 27 errors and 7 warnings.
Firstly, you need a doctype to declare your document as an HTML document. You have good basic structure but are missing these fundamentals. The doctype below, HTML 4.01 Transitional, best matches your coding. You need to place this at the very beginning of every page, before <html>.
You also need a character encoding to define the character set of your webpage. The most common one is UTF-8. You should place this in between the head tags.
Another key rule with validating coding – specify an alt attribute (alternative text) for all images. Screen readers such as those for the blind will be able to read these more effectively and give a better description if you put some alternative text on your images.
You have an extra </a> after your welcome message.
<font color=#FF0099< should be quoted like so:
After the bullets in your sidebar, you have </a> after the image code, which is not needed.
Your CSS is valid.
However you have nine warnings. Writing fonts like Trebuchet MS, you need to place them in quotation marks: "Trebuchet MS".
Also, it is much easier to use an external stylesheet, and it helps your website load faster.
Pieces of your CSS can also be shortened such as the following:
Can be shortened to:
A tutorial on how to shorten CSS code can be found at Audio Rush.
Browser Compatibility & Usability
According to Browsershots.org your site looks similar in most browsers.
Your website looks the same in most browsers and the navigation links work.
The navigation should be first thing on the sidebar though. I have to scroll to see the navigation, which isn’t a good thing. The navigation text should be larger as well, so it’s clearer to see.
The sidebar should have a white background like the content, so that things are easier to read. On the coloured background it’s a bit hard to read.
The font size and text is fine. It’s easy to read but perhaps adding styling to your text would make it more interesting. It’s at the default text at the moment, which does get boring. You can use the following to change your text, or something similar:
You can also do this with your headers and such.
Under the links in CSS, you have font-size : 11px; which should be removed so that the links will be same size of the context they are in. 11px is also very small.
Layout
The layout is much better than when I last reviewed you. It’s good to see you made it on your own, at least the bulk of it.
The simple theme is nice, especially the choice of background. However, parts of the layout don’t have a white background, so that makes the text hard to read. I think you should have a white background for all the content so that the background looks nice and uniform. The container should have background-color:#FFFFFF.
The header image looks pixelated. The hearts are nice, but they appear fuzzy on the edges. The website name should also be in a more decorative font rather than the default.
Content
In the welcome message, “welcome” need not be capitalised, and enjoyed should be enjoy.
Site
On the site history page, capitalise I. Try to paragraph this page out.
On the trophy arena page, Tropies should be Trophies.
Visitor
The form for the review application should be customised to fit the styling of the page, and there should be a title.
On the given reviews page, there should be spaces after the commas in the dates. Also, visitors could benefit from the text in the reviews being formatted with headings and bold text and such. And not meaning to offend you but you should not be reviewing coding if your coding isn’t up to scratch.
Morgans’s should be Morgan’s.
“SOTMs” are pretty generic – nothing much to comment on there.
The random sentence competition is interesting, but how do you judge? Completely from random (just so it is fun) or from the ones you actually like?
Game of the month is definitely something unique, even if you have thanked someone for the idea, it’s something I have rarely seen. It’s quite interactive, but of course if the game was something you created or had your own personal touch it would be so much better.
On the “guess the number” game, Your gonna should be You’re going to. Write number instead of # – it looks messy and confusing.
The puzzles page is simply a link to puzzles; try and integrate it into your website.
Resources
The avatars should be squares like my avatars. Also, avoid using celebrity images. They are illegal and you’re in breach of copyright if you’re using the photographs without permission from the photographer. The first two posterized edits are nice, even though it’s simple.
You have used a generator for the glitter so it isn’t really counted as a “resource”.
The HTML codes page isn’t completed. You should not leave incomplete pages like this on your website. It makes your website look unfinished and messy.
Reviews
You don’t need this in the navigation as it’s already in the visitor section.
Originality & Creativity
You’ve got generally quite a few original ideas here. I notice that your website is quite interactive with the competitions and such, but you do need to work on your graphic skill and creating your website so that it is attractive on the outside.
You didn’t have many graphics or that much content so I couldn’t really judge your creativity. I see you like to keep things relatively simple, but there are some things to improve with your layout so you can get that look without leaving things too boring or messy.
Organisation & Errors
The organisation of the pages in sections was okay. You could do a better job with the text on the pages and keeping them free of mistakes and such.
Overall Comment
A much better job than last time, Ashley. You still have a lot to work on but I am pleased with how far you’ve come, with a bit of help, to create your own layout. Keep working on the HTML and graphics skills.
I suggest going for a premade layout – many can be found on the web, such as at Audio Rush, and editing that so you can learn from coding. Using base templates can help you and you can practise on these to create a better layout. You particularly need to work on styling. You can keep the layouts graphic-light, but having the styling nice will make your layout more appealing.
I’m not sure what graphics program you use but saving things as PNGs is much better quality. Don’t use PNGs too much as they can be large in file size, though.
You have your website mainly focused around visitor interaction – thinking up original ideas would be fantastic.
Best of luck with your website.
3 Comments so far — leave one?
Sophia says:
Good improvement, good luck with you website Ashley
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Jorja says:
I agree with Sophia.
Keep on working at it.
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Ashley says:
Thanks for the review! I’m gonna use it to make my site grow better! I won’t be on the Internet over the weekend but I will edit my site a LOT on Monday, seeya then!
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