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Site Name: Open Wings
Owner: Cami
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 23rd April 2010

Site Name

You put “Openwings” in your application, but “Open Wings” is written on your website in numerous places, so I assumed that was the safer option.

Coding and Validation

According to the HTML validator your coding is valid. Great job.

Your CSS has 18 warnings. With the amount of similar colours you’re using on your layout, this is probably why the warnings are appearing.

I can’t say too much more on the coding; I know the base is a premade layout of mine.

Browser Compatibility & Usability

I have looked at the majority of your site in Firefox. It looks pretty consistent in Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome – there’s not a problem there.

However the problem I do have is with your text colour. I’ve actually looked at your site on different monitors – a regular CRT and my brighter-screened laptop. I am finding the black text on grey extremely difficult to read, and in the header image, I can barely see “Batman is here” unless I fiddle with my brightness. It’s nice that you took the layout to a dark level but what you need to do is add more contrast by making the main body of text a light grey, like your links. These are much easier to read.

See the footer image? It stands out amazingly because it’s white (or, at least, a shade close to white) on black and the contrast between the two colours makes the image clear and stand out. Similarly, your text should stand out in the same way, because it’s just as important as your layout images.

I don’t have too many problems with the text size or navigating the site in general; I know your layout is based off my theme – I congratulate you for doing such a good job, though.

Layout

I love the boldness in this layout and the way you’ve kept the header simple, but put a very reflective and suiting image as the footer.

As I mentioned earlier, I think that the black sections on grey really need to be fixed up as they’re very hard to see. I think that the header image might look better as white text (or with glow) on black (rather than grey). Otherwise I have no problems with the image or structure.

However, I think that the CSS needs some work. You could make the navigation a font other than Georgia, as that doesn’t quite suit this layout. Basically, the text colour needs to be more readable (light grey or white) and perhaps organise the sidebar a bit.

Content

Visitor

I don’t really like the look of the favicons necessarily, but I’m impressed that you went out of your way to make favicons of every letter of the alphabet! To make these better, as well as the non-letter ones, I think you could use a bolder font. This delicate font (Monotype Corsiva, I’m guessing, or something similar) isn’t so good on a favicon. Favicons are something to remember a website by, and it’s nice if they’re bold and unique. Perhaps make these with a bolder font (TW Cen MT and Century Gothic are some examples) and in different colours.

I’ve only downloaded one set of brushes to have a look, but I think that as well as having them in format for GIMP, have them as an imagepack. It would be nice for users of Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro or programs other than GIMP, to still be able to use the brushes.

I don’t think the brushes are that great. They are unique, but I think you can draw over these “doodles” with a thinner brush to maybe give it a more “scribble” sort of look – it will make it look like you’ve put more effort in, and not just a basic drawing with the pen tool.

The textures are okay. I really like the flowery ones. With the black ones, you could make the elements on there lighter. If you had really light fireworks on a black background, it will look better as a light overlay. The red hearts texture is much too blinding, though.

The uncoded layouts are very nice. However the term “uncoded layouts” is a little strange, if not outdated. The layouts are very nice, and I have the feeling that coding them might be a little on the difficult side for you, but they really would look good if they were coded.

The ninth unedited icon doesn’t link directly to the image, but to Photobucket’s display of the media. I don’t think these “unedited icons” are very useful. I don’t think they’re cropped or coloured well. You should call these “icon bases”, in fact. However, I don’t think these are a very useful resource because users usually like to crop icons themselves and design icons the way they want.

I think that you should either:

1) have stock images with the original photographs, or
2) crop multiple variations of the same photograph, with the subject on a different angle, in different parts of the icon, etc. to get a better range of “bases”.

I am assuming that half of the wallpapers are photos you’ve taken yourself. It is a really pretty effect in the river photographs, making it look a little like a painting, but in the flower wallpaper, it doesn’t have the focus on the flower that one would expect. I think these need a little bit of improvement in quality, and the other wallpapers could be a little more exciting. However, I commend you on the fact that you have made wallpapers in quite a few different sizes!

The WordPress themes are okay. I like the last cream coloured one. The others don’t really look so neat – I don’t like the dashed borders on the green and black layouts. I also think you could do a lot better with the styling and use more fonts and more shades of colours.

The green “CSS” links to a HTML page instead of a .zip file like the rest of the layouts.

I notice you have a red “New!” note next to one of your articles. I think the red is really hard to read on the dark blue-grey and it’s a little blinding. Perhaps use a different colour like white.

On the “Taking good pictures” article (might be better off using “photographs” instead of “pictures”):
lens. Especially should be lens, especially
you legs should be your legs
don’t have twist should be don’t have to twist
best you could should be best you can

On the “Making a tree” article:
becasue should be because

If someone were to look at your “big leaves” article, they might not know exactly how to do this. You need to make your instructions clearer, and perhaps refer to your article about “making a tree”.

“Being A Christian” – I’m not sure where you’re going with this article exactly, but as it is expected people will not always believe in God the same way you do, a disclaimer is advised.
simillar should be similar
Bible(which should be Bible (which
word)says should be word (says
thats should be that’s
Testemant should be Testament

On “Being Nice”:
articles is should be article is
Ok should be OK or Okay
have a tolerance, and a limit would be better expressed as a limit to our tolerance
boundaries(limits) should be boundaries (limits)
of those nature should be of that nature
Some examples might help here, such as examples of what you would say or what you would do (what is good, and what is bad, in terms of reactions to meanness, tardiness, etc.).

On “Being free from unrighteousness”, You’ve copied some text from Biblegateway.com but you need to edit the formatting as there are numbers appearing before some of your points.
assisitant should be assistant
Wendesday should be Wednesday

In “Saving images” you might want to mention that you can also change the quality of a JPG file, and sometimes images can get lossy if not saved with the right quality level. You might also want to mention that GIF accounts for very few colours, so is only best with images with less colours and solid areas of colour. This article could be improved if you do more research and include more file extensions like TIF, as you mentioned.

On “Why use forms” – perhaps a list of advantages and disadvantages would be a better way of putting this. This article can be expanded more. “Form hoster” should really be “form host”.

Tutorials

On the “settling into WordPress” tutorial, you should clarify “to your root directory”. I think you should say “to your site’s root directory”.
When you say “WordPress > wp-content > plugins” you should specify that this is in FTP.

Permalinks means the way your links work on your website.

No, that’s not what “permalinks” means. A permalink is a URL that links directory to a single blog or archived page. It’s not the way links “work”. You can change the structure of permalinks; that is all. /%postname%/ is also not the best structure of permalink to use. It is commonly used, but in many blogs, the permalinks including the year and month are so desired because it gives a clear indication of the date and time of the post.

You’ve missed the beginning part of the PHP code for the Gravatar.

If you want a page to be a page without comments that is located at the bottom of where you are editing the page.

You need to be clearer. Mention “the option to disable comments” or something similar.

So you should realize that WordPress is a blogging system and you don’t have to get fanupdate, cutenews, or anything else.

FanUpdate and Cutenews are also blogging systems. WordPress is a publishing platform and content management system (CMS), not just a blogging platform.

On the plugins page, Askimet should be Akismet.
Most every site should be Every site
to complicated should be too complicated

On the divs tutorial you need to explain how to write in a class or ID.
simillar should be similar
Gerogia should be Georgia
100% is not always 16px; it differs according to screen resolution, browser and operating system, so keep that in mind.

On the border tutorial, goove should be groove. Great job on the previews and mention of padding.

On the Needed CSS tutorial:
css fundamental should be fundamental CSS
Webmasters should be Webmasters’
Code is not fluid – layout is. And just because a layout is centered does not necessarily mean it is fluid. It might be centered, but have a ridiculously large width like 1200 pixels, meaning that it isn’t really fluid if you’re looking at it in a resolution of 800 by 600 pixels.

Also, select puts drop-down menus and selection menus with the same background in a form.

The “green shrink” tutorial is not bad but the quality of the image isn’t the best. I think you should also number your steps or space them out a bit more.

I like the “night wings” tutorial but you might want to invest in a font like 04b, which is perfect for buttons needing small text, and looks great when small.

On the Gaussian blur tutorial, dialouge should be dialogue.

On the “making tutorials” tutorial:
to often should be too often
to big should be too big
pixles should be pixels

Site

On the main page html should be HTML.

On the link back page, you should be using <code> to display code and not <textarea>. Textarea is intended for user input on forms – not for displaying code. Further information is given at this tutorial on displaying code correctly.

On the credits page, it might be a better idea to list both the name and why you are crediting (under permanent credits). For example, “Smilies from CorylDork”.

I know it was a while back but I think I recall reviewing one of your very old sites – this coming to mind after reading “past reviews”.

Owner

On the main page freinds should be friends.

You might want to include your email on the contact page just in case people cannot reach you through the form.

On the Jesus page:
thrid should be third
Becasue should be Because
contrdictions should be contradictions
becasue should be because
minipulation should be manipulation
becaue should be because
thats should be that’s
Again, like I mentioned earlier, not everyone will agree with you on God and will have their own opinion so they might not appreciate your rhetorical questions – a disclaimer is in order.

Originality & Creativity

You’ve got a lot of original ideas and content on your site. Admittedly it was not all of good quality, such as the graphics, and the tutorials needed some clarification and a lot of touching up, but generally you do have a website that is very individual and unique.

Make sure you work on the graphics and layouts – tidying up structure of pages and premade layouts is something I would suggest – and checking that your spelling and grammar is correct.

Organisation & Errors

Your site is quite well organised – it was easy to navigate and everything had its place. There were also a few mistakes I pointed out, all of which you can fix.

Overall Comment

(I just realised I reviewed your old site over a year ago, haha.)

I think you’ve done a good job on your site, and it’s unique, but your pages need some editing and you need to work on the fine details. Touching up your grammar and spelling and the structure on some of your pages needs to be done. With your tutorials, they should be spaced out, step by step – more clear and concise. Assume your visitors are completely new and have no idea how to do what you’re telling them to do.

Your layouts have improvements all the time, and are unique, but I think you could develop a better use of colour. Degraeve has a colour palette generator which is handy, and Colour Lovers is a fantastic place to go for good colour palettes.

You’ve got wonderful ideas for your site but I believe you can do better with your layout – even if it’s simple, I think you can improve your use of colour. Your graphics also need a bit of work.

Rating

(out of 5)