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Site Name: Lyrical.nu
Owner: Brian
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 9th December 2008
Site Name
Lyrical is a unique name that really suits your site. Knowing that it comes from your passion of music, it also somehow suits the content on your website such as the writings.
Coding and Validation
Checking your site through the W3C Markup Validation service, your site is validated as XHTML 1.0 Strict. Excellent work; that saves me a lot of time on your review.
This gives me the impression that you’re a good webdesigner and definitely shows professionalism. You have it noted in your footer but I still had to check.
Your CSS is also validated, as I expected after seeing your coding validated. Well done!
Browser Compatibility & Usability
According to Browsershots.org your site looks the same in almost all browsers, at least the common ones. However it doesn’t look the same in all screen resolutions.
Centered layout; well done. It’s a couple of pixels too wide for the 800 by 600 resolution but otherwise is fine.
I like how you’ve used red to break up the black, grey and white. The navigation is clear and easy to see.
Your font is of a good size and colour.
Layout
Very professional-looking. I like how it’s very simple and how you vary the shades of grey. The layout is very user friendly.
The sidebar is very organised. The tabbed navigation is simple and at the same time quite unique. ‘Lyrical.nu’ is written clearly and stands out at the top of the page. The dim grey splat in the background adds variation to the layout.
Overall the layout is very simple and professional looking. I don’t have many problems with it at all, but it’s a little too wide for the general resolution of 800 by 600 pixels.
Content
About
This page is very well set out and very organised. Your photo should be a little smaller though, and it’s XHTML and CSS should be its XHTML and CSS.
Writings
Brian, I’ll tell you now, I won’t be reading all these but I will be briefly skimming through them. Your ‘About’ page really pleased me because you write very well.
I like how the navigation comes out in the sidebar as well, which is uncommon, and increases usability.
Thumbs up for the LGBT article. Congratulations on all your other writings, which I found very interesting and very well written. I like how you’ve included a brief introduction to them so we know exactly what it’s all about and how you came to write it.
The essays are very good. The lyrics and poetry are short but lovely.
Including the hosting reviews is a good idea because they can help with people looking for hosts. I like how you go into specific detail for each. These would really help people out. Maybe some free host reviews for those who can’t afford to buy hosting?
Photography
I love what you have so far and you’ve presented them well. I would only suggest to add more, it all looks pretty good, and even if it’s ‘amateur’, it still shows little snippets that reflect you and make your site more personal.
Contact
Well written page, pretty self explanatory. Good job on the frequently asked questions; wasn’t very nice of someone to say ‘homo’.
On your contact form page, I’m sure very person should be very busy person.
Links
Organised and neat, well done.
Originality & Creativity
Your writing was excellent and I obviously saw lots of originality in the topics you bring up. Your blogs are quite interesting to read.
You can’t really go wrong with writing your own stuff, so I definitely saw your site as something original.
Couldn’t see much creativity though as there wasn’t much to stick points on there.
Organisation & Errors
Extremely well organised! A pleasing layout that was well organised, all pages were well organised as well.
I couldn’t find any broken links and there were only a couple of spelling and grammar errors.
Your writing is extremely good and definitely something that impressed me.
Overall Comment
Brian, you’ve got a very professional, clean, organised site. Definitely one of the best I’ve reviewed. You did well in all sections of this review.
Your essays and articles are great and you write very well; in your blogs as well. I liked the photography section as well as it showed some variation.
I don’t have many suggestions but do keep adding to your ‘writings’ section. You appear to have good knowledge in coding and webdesign and I personally think you’d do well offering site reviews as well as hosting reviews. Of course it is only a suggestion and you don’t have to agree!
I would like to see more photography as well. I would recommend adding more lyrics to your writings to further reflect your site name.
No further comments, well done on such a great site.
