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Site Name: Belle-Meurtre
Owner: Casee
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 28th July 2009
Site Name
It’s unique but it’s a bit hard to spell and remember the spelling.
Coding and Validation
Your HTML is valid.
Your CSS is valid.
This is really great work. There are some pieces of embedded styling in your HTML, such as the styling for the lists and the horizontal rules. Try and specify these with CSS instead.
Browser Compatibility & Usability
According to Browsershots.org your site looks the same in most browsers.
The navigation is quite clear; I like the neat boxed style it’s in. “You”, “Me”, and “WWW” are not accurate and they can be confusing. Stick with “Owner”, “Visitor” and “Website”.
The font size is fine; it’s easy to read and is of a good size.
Layout
I’ll make a brief comment on both of your layouts.
The “Spaceman Lie” one is okay. I like the uniform boxes and the general style. The style is good but the header image doesn’t really match with the styling. It has quite a soft look, and doesn’t stand with the bold and striking CSS.
The red is also a harsh addition to the colour scheme. It’s much too bright for everything else. The pink is okay, though. On the other hand, the affiliate links and links in the sidebar could be a bit clearer; the font is a bit hard to see there.
The dark grey sections in the sidebar also don’t look good, and the “admin” section is cluttered. Using text links for the CSS and HTML validating buttons would look neater. You don’t need all the login links either; just bookmark them on your computer instead of placing it on your website.
The other layout is okay. It’s very creative but the hot pink should be replaced with a teal or lavender colour. The h4 is also too small here.
Content
You
You don’t need the “coming” section if you don’t have pages up yet. It makes your site look incomplete, which is not a good thing.
You have “coming soon” under Photoshop – why not just remove this until you have already created the page?
The tutorial on changing the WordPress logo is original, but I don’t see why it needs to be changed at all. Instead of having the asterisk to show the step that is only necessary for graphics with white backgrounds, you should write it in the step instead:
003. If your image is not transparent, open ~/wp-admin/css/login.css and edit the background color’s by searching background and replace all hex codes with #ffffff.
“Now simply replace the old image” isn’t clear. How? You upload it to your FTP – but you need to state this. When you write a tutorial, don’t assume that the reader knows things.
The example that you link to isn’t an example – the logo is the same.
The layouts should be thumbnails linking to the full sized image. The layouts also have on them what I assume is your old website URL. You should also show a preview of the entire layout, not just the images. People also look for layouts to be coded for free; it’s unlikely that people would pay for these.
I don’t use MySpace but the animated graphics look pretty tacky. I have seen the generators on numerous other sites. If you didn’t make them yourself and code them yourself, you should be crediting the website you got the generators from.
I don’t see the point of the icons. Did you make them yourself? They just look like logos for soccer teams and such. Why are they under MySpace graphics, exactly?
Me
None of the links on this page work. They don’t link anywhere. I cannot view your biography, music, or handwriting.
Otherwise, there’s nothing hugely wrong with this page.
WWW
On the past layouts page, *Click on Images for Full Size* should be written at the top of the page, not at the bottom.
The affiliates page leads to a 404.
On the credits page, you should link to the websites you are crediting; that is how you properly credit them. Douxriens.com doesn’t need the comma afterward.
Reviews
You should have a rubric or criteria page to show how you review the website.
Originality & Creativity
You’ve got an original layout, but you didn’t have much content at all. I didn’t find it very interesting. I don’t use MySpace but the MySpace graphics you have don’t really show that much skill.
Organisation & Errors
Your website was fairly well organised, but you had a lot of missing pages and “coming soon” pages.
Overall Comment
Your website was okay. There wasn’t a lot of content and there were a lot of errors. You have creative layouts but your website overall needs to be updated more.
There were missing pages, which you should add. If your website focuses around MySpace graphics, keep that as the focus, and perhaps use more interesting graphics for that section. You currently have content that isn’t that good – it’s boring and doesn’t really show much of your graphic skill.
If you add more content and work on the colours in your layouts your website will improve.
