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Site Name: Queen of Snugglies
Owner: Carissa
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 14th June 2009

Site Name

It’s quite long but it’s pretty cute. Not the greatest of names but definitely unique.

Coding and Validation

Your HTML is valid. Well done!

Your CSS has 3 errors in CSS level 3. In CSS 2.1 there are a few more errors.

You’ve got some minor errors you can fix. The following, in your CSS:

#form .submit1, .submit1 {
...
align: right;
}

Needs to be fixed. align should be text-align.

The same thing goes for the following:

p.cutenewscommentsubmit {
text-align: center;
align: center;
p-align: center;
}

Also, p-align is a property that doesn’t exist, so use text-align: center to get the look you want.

Your CSS is embedded and it would be better and easier to manage in an external stylesheet.

Browser Compatibility & Usability

According to Browsershots.org your site looks the same in most browsers.

Good to see you aren’t using iframes. I don’t mean to prod a stereotype at you, but quite a number of “kawaii” sites use iframes. It’s pleasing to see the use of PHP includes, in a good way as well.

I spotted the navigation almost straight away, but personally I’d prefer some scribble text as navigation. Also pleasing to see alternate text on the navigation so people wouldn’t be too lost without images.

You should increase the text size. It’s a bit hard to read because it’s so tiny. You don’t have to make it huge, but at least the text on your blogs and pages should be bigger. I know you might want to keep the text inside the sun image the same.

Layout

It’s very bright and the colours are really nice. You’ve chosen a great colour scheme.

I like the scribble-style spotty background; it definitely matches with the layout. The spots could be toned down a bit, so that they stand out less. If you have a dark background or a netural-coloured background, it would actually leave the layout to stand out more, which would be nicer.

There are many parts to the layout. It is a bit distracting to have so many parts, with the tagboard, the content, then links. It would be more organised to have two parts, one with content and one with the tagboard and links.

Content

You

The pixels are very cute. Some are quite light; of course they would look better on dark backgrounds. I love the seasonal ones as they are very unique and made very well. I like the animated ones but I’m not really liking the blinkies because the font you’ve used it rather bold, and the animation is just distracting. I’m not saying to remove them but maybe some non-animated clique buttons would be better. And some people might prefer these.

The scribbles are beautiful! The shading on them is exceptional.

The big pixels are also very cute. I couldn’t see the tub in the last image because it was such a light colour.

The bullets are nice – I have rarely seen ones like check boxes. Again I’m not a fan of the animated ones. You should make more back, forward, updated and new icons.

People can generally make their own link buttons – but it seems that people are beginning to like pixelled-style ones so this is great. I like the idea of the animated one too. Perhaps a tutorial on animating a button would provide detail and be useful.

The favicons are cute! Perhaps these could go under site material because there aren’t many?

Backgrounds – other colours would be great.

The premade layout you have is “toadally” cute! I suggest making more.

The emoticons are very cute.

I think I’m really going to enjoy reading these articles, or advice, as you have named these. The first one is great. For the first article I’m reading on your site, it’s very organised and well written, with great tips. It’s also on a topic that I rarely see articles about.

I’ve seen an acne article before, but not for a while. I think yours could go into more depth – things like tea tree oil and other natural oils can help reduce acne. You might want to expand this article a bit!

Your article about limiting spending on clothing is good. I think you could apply this to anything you buy though. Personally, I have problems with spending money on luxurious restaurant food. Heh, heh.
Also, instead of just posing rhetorical questions in the article, give an example and give better options, such as discount stores and warehouses, etc.

Your web etiquette article – top stuff. It’s hard to express how much bad grammar and spelling annoys me. You should probably change affies to affiliates.
Good job on this article. I’m really liking how your articles are organised into bullet points; that way it’s a lot easier to read.

It’s been a while since I treated my hair and left the conditioner in. Sometimes I leave it for ten minutes to let it in. Good article though!

The ‘be likable’ article reiterates some points in your web etiquette article. It’s not a problem but they are pretty similar.

Your advice for doing what you don’t want to – heh, that makes me feel bad for being slow with my reviews. I guess I just have too many things to do. Haha. Hopefully this motivates people to stop procrastinating. I find that having my friends push me along works.

You should change affie to affiliate in your article – after all, “affie” isn’t a word. I like this article as well, even though I have seen similar things a few times. Most people think affiliates are just for the hits.

In your cell phone usage article, you might also want to mention that texting while conversing with someone is rude, not just common!

I love the title text on some of your articles. Very handy.

With the PHP includes, you can use external CSS. You simply place the regular stylesheet code into header.php and call on header.php as usual. You should fix this tutorial. And you should also apply it; perhaps that is why your CSS is not external as I noticed before.

People always get confused with editing bullets in CSS so this is a good tutorial.

Favicon tutorials are common; yours is similar to others I’ve seen but it’s a good tutorial.

Here is the animation tutorial I was looking for – good job! Personally, I use UnFreez, a program in which you just drag and drop the frames.

The basic layout tutorial isn’t really a tutorial; it’s more like tips. It’s a good set of tips though – I love how you outlined pros and cons.

I am not familiar with Blogger either but this tutorial seems straightforward; it’s also easy to understand.

Site

On the buttons page, you shouldn’t say ‘left click for maker’. I use a left-handed mouse so left clicking doesn’t do anything. “Click” would be fine.

On your besties page You can be an affie and and elite should be reworded – I’m not sure what you’re trying to say there.

Affiliates and the application form are pretty self explanatory.

Don’t forget Cutenews on your credits page!

Nice hall of fame. You should put the ‘what is this’ paragraph at the very top though.

Try to save the past layouts in PNG or JPG format. BMP files take a while to load.

Everything else in this section is pretty self explanatory and has no problems. I like your site and layout information; very interesting to see how you make your layouts and such.

Me

Your profile page is condensed but it would look more organised if you listed the likes, dislikes and random facts down the page.

I love the goals page! The little check boxes that show what you’ve accomplished and what you haven’t are very nice.

It’s quite interesting to read about diabetes. I have a history of diabetes in my family so hearing it first hand from someone who has it is interesting.

I like your prom photos and how there is alternative text when I hover over each person. Very unique!

Originality & Creativity

Very original with a lot of original content. Even though I didn’t really like your layout components, it’s definitely original.

Your site is a good mix of both graphics and writings and tutorials.

Organisation & Errors

Very well organised! Barely any errors. Very good job here.

Overall Comment

You’ve got a great site, Carissa. I enjoyed looking through your content. It’s nice to see a variety of content, not just the regular pixels and scribbles, which I would expect from a pixel/scribble site.

You have very original content and a great, well organised, almost error-free site overall.

I only have a few suggestions. Firstly, fix up your coding to use an external stylesheet. Just place the code to the external stylesheet in your header.php.

I suggest increasing your text size a bit. It’s really quite small and hard to read, especially on your articles and advice pages where you have a lot of text.

I suggest creating a layout where your divs have an automatic height; it will save scrolling in a rather restricting box, and since you have a lot of content it will look better presented.

Other than that you have a great site so keep it up.

Rating

(out of 5)