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Site Name: Tranquility
Owner: Carmen
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 8th October 2008
Site name
I love the site name. It’s a nice name, but what bothers me is that I don’t think it’s that unique.
Layout
I see originality here, which I love. Paintball! Woo! It’s awesome. I love the header image and how the goggles stand out. I like how you’ve added your site URL in the corner. I like how the layout is set out with the navigation uniquely down the side, even though I don’t really like how the whole layout is aligned to the side, because in bigger resolutions there would be an even bigger space on the right hand side where your layout ends.
I’m not too fond of the colour scheme you’ve chosen. It’s a bit bland – the background could do with just a little texturing and possibly be lightened a bit. I also don’t really like how the greeny writing for your main text goes with the background. It looks too dark, which is why I mentioned to lighten the background or add texture. The greeny writing is the same colour as your navigation – I think it should be different so the navigation stands out.
Still on your CSS, I like the style of everything, it’s basically the colours. I just see the greenish colour everywhere and I don’t like it. The header is in a serif font which is nice, but add some colour to it!
Reading your blog about the blending of the image, it’s not really that obvious because of the grayscale, but the tree is annoying me from time to time. And ‘iditos’ should be ‘idiots’.
A problem with your navigation is that ‘ect’ should be etc for et cetera. And with your CSS, the bottom of the headers are always squished with your text. I don’t see why you’re using an h3 tag for the text, but if that’s easier for you then so be it. You just need to add a link break or something beforehand – because on all your pages you have major squishage between the h2 and h3 tags (in other words, there is no space, so put one!).
Content
Owner
‘antoher’ should be another
‘balck’ should be black
‘biitches’ should be bitches
‘like a lot of thing’ should be like a lot of things
‘if your my friend’ should be if you’re my friend
‘if your just someone’ should be if you’re just someone
‘rnadom’ should be random
‘don’t the leave the house’ should be don’t leave the house
Place a line break or two before the ‘hugs, kisses and bitches’ section. It looks too squished up. I also don’t really approve of the centering of the page, it makes the layout look funny because of the length, and placing something in the middle makes it look a little messy.
Your profile makes me a little freaked, but after reading it I’m not at all scared. I’m sure you’re a great person. 
Lovely thumbnails. I like the dashed border, though you’ve only put it on some of the thumbnails. I’m not a big fan of cropped thumbnails and prefer if they were of the whole photo though. The links all work but I think you should resize the photos and make them a little smaller because they take a while to load.
Memories
Usually I don’t see a point in reading through people’s shoutouts and things because I don’t know who they are talking about. But yours had me reading! I think it makes all your friends feel very special – these shoutouts were lengthy but they were full of heart. I enjoyed reading about your friendships and things.
Normally things like these would not appeal to a regular visitor, but your site is a personal site too, and it’s excellent to see this sort of stuff.
It seems you’ve put a lot more effort into this section than your others in terms of grammar and spelling. I see no errors in the shoutouts to your best friends. Great job!
In 2008, on your paragraph before the first set of photos, ‘feel’ should be fell. And in the last set, hockey game: the third last row, second thumbnail – the link doesn’t seem to work.
Sometimes you use a link saying ‘pictures’ that leads to photobucket.com. As this is an external link, I think you should make it open in a new window.
Your other pages seemed to be fine.
The paintball edits are all great. I think though, that it’s not necessary to repeat ‘Taken and Edited By…’ because you’ve done them all, it would be simple to just say it once at the top of the page.
You need to put a line break before you put another header in, to get rid of the squishage!
Ect
(Which should be ETC. 
)
Photo layouts are good! However a few were rather large when I clicked the thumbnail. For example the first one. Try to downsize them a little, or change the image format to a .jpg so it loads a little faster. I think you should call this page ‘layout images’ because people still need to code things and such; they’re not a complete layout yet. 
I really like these photo layouts and you’ve edited and photoshopped them well. I think some of these would be nice as your current layout too.
‘Old’ Layouts are good. Your count is wrong, though. You say 32 when there are 15.
I like the icons, they’re better than all the stupid ones I do =P. I like the travel ones, they’re a smart idea and they’re all really good.
Signatures were good. The random ones and some others did have names on them though, like your old site name Twisted Dust (and there was one under Anime). I suggest putting them under ‘made for others’ or something similar. I really liked your brushes ones. Again though, with the thumbnails. I know you’ve worked hard on them, but I’d prefer to see the whole image. I think you’re better off putting these all in FULL VIEW on the page, because the images aren’t that big and would fit nicely like your icons.
Pixels are of fairly good quality; I think they’re cute! And I LOVE the ABC pandas!! They are so adorable! I’m just going to yoink one. Which reminds me – place something on the page to let people know they have to link you back.
Emoticons are good. Make some more colours though!
Site
Again you need to put a few line breaks before each section to stop things looking squished up. Your site history is good and has just the right amount of information. As for the links to past layouts and so forth at the top, I suggest putting them before your header that says ‘the basics’.
Your past layouts are all very unique. I remember seeing your third layout! With the images, in future I think you should take a bigger screenshot, of the whole screen and not just the header.
I’m impressed that you’ve got some of my awards and things here! Just as a note though, the items have moved places here on my new domain so I hope it isn’t too much trouble to find what you’re looking for.. I’ve also removed the hints. Sorry!
With your links out, same thing with the line breaks. Don’t get those headers sandwiched between the text! ‘bolg’ should be blog, here. I like that you have a code for your button!
What I’m disappointed about though is that you don’t have credits written anywhere. I know you use your own photos which is excellent but you should credit other things – fonts where necessary, people who’ve helped you if there are any, etc.
Originality
One word: Perfect.
Organisation/Errors
Sorry, but I’m still not liking the thumbnails. That was my only problem. I found minimal broken links or anything, which was great.
Overall comment
Your site was something very unique and original, Carmen! I think your photo layouts are excellent, but I think you need to put a little more effort in refining your website layouts, CSS, and basically what the visitor sees. In your current layout, I mentioned the squishing of the headers. It all looks tight. And a lot of page would be better off just aligned to the left. Your whole layout in general could be centered too.
I suggest changing some of those thumbnails, the cropped ones, to make them look something like the thumbnails for your photo layouts. You have so many photos on your site and I realise they are important to you and no doubt you’ll be adding more in the future. You have used photobucket as a simple album. Photobucket can make slideshows too, I believe, so perhaps making a slideshow would be of benefit to you and your visitors.
I also suggest using a script to thumbnail your files. This would make your job a lot easier – you wouldn’t need to crop parts of the picture to make your thumbnail.. AND the thumbnail would show the whole photo. I am pretty sure you could find one of these on the internet through a search engine. Sorry that I could not refer you to one.. I don’t really bookmark resources.
Another note on large images like your paintball edits. They were in .png format, which is generally quite large (even though the quality is friggin awesome). I found that they took a LOT longer to load than your photographs (which were .jpg). If you use Photoshop you can save your edits as a .jpg but in maximum quality. The quality is roughly the same as a .png, but the size of the file is so much smaller!
Carmen, you’ve got one very original site, and your content is great. From your photos and your entire ‘memories’ section, I can see you’ve put more work into making your site a personal one. I think it’s excellent, and I’m laughing at your ‘owner’ page because to me you seem like a lovely person with a great site.
Keep up the good work, and don’t stress out with making thumbnails on your own (and I’m sorry I had to yakker on about them so much). 
