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Site Name: Chasing Lights
Owner: Becky
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 11th April 2009
Site Name
Chasing Lights. Fairly simple and easy to remember. You’re right, your URL is long. Well, CL.cirquedefreak.org could have done, but I won’t hold that against you. 
I thought this was necessary to mention here, but I encountered a bit of downtime while trying to visit your site.
Coding and Validation
Your coding has 11 errors.
After your sidebar information about the layout “3rd April” – you have written <br> instead of <br />.
Same with those near your ‘reviewed by’ links. You need to put the trailing backslash since you are coding in XHTML, not HTML.
Your CSS is valid. However, there are 11 warnings, simply because you’ve used the same colours in background and font colours.
I can’t really say whether you have adequate coding or not, because you’re just editing a WordPress theme here.
Browser Compatibility & Usability
Looking at your site at Browsershots.org, your layout is looking consistent in most browsers.
The layout is centered – good job. The header image also isn’t too big.
Text is easy to read!
Navigation is good. Uniquely off to the left. However, your “blogroll” links are unusually larger than the navigation, which I find a bit odd.
Layout
Cute! I like the pink. The image you used in the header is nice. I like the slight scrapbooky feel.
I think you could have written ‘chasing lights’ in a different colour though, it’s quite bright and doesn’t look too good.
You did a good job editing the theme and chose the CSS colours well. However, you didn’t choose the styling so I cannot comment on that.
I like the slightly grungy background and how it contrasts with the cute style of the header image. The image is also quite small in height, which is good.
Content
Owner
Well organised, neat, and written well.
Normally I’d prefer if your favourites were in a list. However, this isn’t too bad.
Resources
In your website tips article, CSS should be capitalised. Cutenews actually can work on Webs.
More tips here would be great, of course.
On your “Are You Good Enough” article, actual should be actually.
noticed should be notice
there not should be they’re not.
This article was written very well. I like how you showed examples of a bad review and a good review. (Thank you for the mention/plug, by the way. ^_^) You definitely know what’s good and bad out there. I liked your sample review. You would make a great reviewer, actually.
Textures. Before I check out the textures, I would like to point out that in your sidebar, your entire welcome message appears as a link. A little coding error there!
I like the thumbnails. I usually prefer the thumbnail to be of the whole image though, so I know what the entire thing looks like, rather than just a snippet.
These images are very large. My internet is quite slow at moment (slowing to dial-up speed!) so do keep in mind that people with slow connections may have to wait a while for these things to load. Usually an optimised .jpg will be a bit smaller in file size than a .png. You can do that in Photoshop, if you use Photoshop.
The last texture leads to a 404.
The icons are very nice. Good to see that you used mostly your own pictures. I like the effects on these and they’re all pretty good. The Blythe doll one scares me though. I like how some of these have a grungy look. Very cool.
Site
Hurry! Make some buttons. And soon. We don’t like to see something not there!
Groups(now should be Groups (now.
Credits page is not too bad. Don’t forget WordPress and your host, and other similar things.
On your affiliation page:
comment the blogs should be comment on my blogs
up, should be up;
you will taken should be you will be taken.
Tutorials
There’s only one, so moving on to that..
Ok should be Okay
depeneding should be depending
image, i should be image; I
beginging should be beginning
to image should be to the image.
Not a bad tutorial! Some of the steps could be explained better. For instance: sharpen the image. How? Which menu is it under?
And how do you make a new raster layer? What menu is that under? This sort of thing just needs to be explained more. Other than that, the tutorial is set out well in steps, and thankfully not in a big clump of mess.
I’d definitely like to see more tutorials. Your textures and icons are fairly good and I’d love to know how you do all the effects.
Originality & Creativity
I have seen a lot of sites with the same sorts of things – icons, textures, and so on. You have some nice icons though, that are also quite original. I usually see celebrity icons a lot.
Organisation & Errors
Well organised. I spotted one broken image.
Other errors were just small grammar/spelling errors.
Overall Comment
You have a rather small site, Becky, but I imagine it will continue to grow. I have the feeling you are a good writer as well as having good graphic skill.
There isn’t much to basically improve on, but what you can do is have a go at coding your own WordPress theme, and obviously adding more content. You’re currently lacking, which I’m sure you know, so adding more stuff would be great.
Just fix those minor errors and particularly with textures, try and make the images smaller. They are quite huge in terms of dimensions as well.
Your site is very small and there’s nothing hugely wrong with your content – just add, add! Good luck making your own themes.
