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Site Name: Rains Essence
Owner: Cassidy
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 12th December 2010
Site Name & First Impression
I have to apologise, first off, for taking so long to get around to doing your review. I’m sorry I didn’t do this earlier and that it’s taken months, but I hope it helps you out anyway.
I do keep typing your actual website name with an apostrophe – ‘Rain’s Essence’ – because it seems more correct. I don’t have a huge problem with that, though.
I’ve looked at your website quite a few times before actually starting this review but my early first impressions were definitely good. I recall thinking that your website was rather organised and simple, and the layouts I’ve seen so far have been easy on the eyes.
The current layout doesn’t seem as original as other layouts of yours that I have seen – perhaps because you are using images of Emma Watson which I have seen on other people’s website layouts before. However, there are little elements that do make this layout unique, such as the navigation and the structure of the main image and content.
Coding and Validation
According to the HTML validator you have 20 errors and 23 warnings.
According to the CSS validator your CSS has 34 errors and 3 warnings.
You really need to clean up your CSS as you have extra open brackets: } You’re also attempting to use rounded corners with code that only certain browsers will accept. If you really want to use that rounded corner look, Rounded Cornr can help you, and there are other ways of achieving the look. They may not all be perfect, but some are better than using the webkit code.
Your CSS should really be in an external stylesheet. This will make it much easier to update. I understand that PHP includes may do the job for you, but you can reduce file size this way, as well as improving flexibility.
I would advise against using a lot of Javascript. Some platforms do not support it or people turn it off, meaning that they cannot see the effects you want them to see.
Your HTML is alright, but it can really be cleaned up. You’re missing some </div>s to close some <div>s, and you are using <br> unnecessarily, such as in between sections of <div>. If you want space in between, you should add padding or margin to the div using CSS.
Also, <center> is deprecated (no longer considered correct), so consider using something like <p class="center"> with .center { text-align: center; } in your CSS.
You’re missing specification of character encoding in your <head> section. It is needed for any content published on the web:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
Browser Compatibility & Usability
Your website is looking fairly consistent in Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome. I notice that in Internet Explorer, your sidebar headings “hello”, “updates” and “ads” are centered, whereas the others are aligned to the left. You have forgotten to close with a </center> for your affiliates.
While I do like the navigation, and though it does stand out, the text on it should be a bit clearer or a bit bigger. Along with this, I believe the sidebar could be made a little wider to accomodate the text in the welcome message. Even so, the welcome message is not really necessary (it is only one sentence). Why not combine that with the “hello” message?
In your blog you are using smilies that are a bit taller than the height of your lines of text. You could balance this out by using line-height in your CSS.
Layout
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve seen the Emma Watson images being used by others. I think that this layout is not as original as your earlier ones. I do like the textures on the image and the colours you’ve used in the CSS. However, the overall feel of the layout is quite “light”, whereas the blue on Emma’s skirt stands out quite a lot. To create a bit more balance, you should soften the layout image itself.
The textured background is a good choice as it tiles properly, and has minimal noise so that text is still fairly easy to read on it. I like the shapes around some of the sidebar elements. They are a bit too clean for the vintage style of the layout, but the light borders make this less noticeable.
Both the sidebar and content sections could be widened a bit – the whole layout seems a bit narrow. There is a lot of text in your blog and the area in which your pages’ content loads is going to look a bit cramped.
Content
Visitor
I’m usually not a fan of links changing style like the way they do on your subheadings (‘icons’, ‘banners’, etc.). I do like the style and colour but the change of links on hover is a little distracting. I do prefer these links italicised, as I think it adds a bit of variety in the CSS.
The bulk of the icons are lovely, though I dislike having to hover over every single one with my mouse to see the icon properly because of the opacity effect you’ve placed on the images. This isn’t necessary. The warrior cat icons don’t look as good as your other icons, and some of the icons have text that is rather pixelated and sketchy:
The ‘glow’ effect on some of the icons’ text is not that good; it washes out the text and is a bit blinding. You could try setting the text layer to Overlay or Soft Light, which can often give a better effect. Icons like this one are much better in terms of text.
The banners are really very nice but I don’t see how anyone could use them on their website – they might want it personalised; these could be too small for a layout; they could be too big for forum signatures – things like that. I like these designs and it would be nice to see a few of them used in some free website layouts.
The hiatus signs are lovely as well but I don’t see these kinds of signs being used very much anymore; often people make their own or simply use text.
The smilies are very cute! I think they’re larger than your usual smilies but they work.
The subjects of your photography are good – I think that some of these photos are a bit dark, though. The pink flowers also appear blurry.
The textures are great. I’d love to see more of these.
The themeless layouts are under construction; seems like it has been about four months since you posted that message.
The flashy banners don’t look that good. It’s nice that you can animate graphics, and some of your icons had this effect too, but animated graphics can be really distracting unless the transition between frames is much smoother.
The blends could be better, and perhaps more useful if they were placed in a layout. Just like the banners, these aren’t really useful due to their size and shape.
On the celebrities article you have a few mistakes:
magazine, Or should be magazine, or
name off should be name of
photo’s should be photos
their selves should be themselves
i’m going should be I’m going
isint should be isn’t
in which her dad was not very inpressed about should be which her dad was not very impressed about
When you say “signs autographs” – I think you mean “gives autographs” or “signs for people” – since the two words are similar in meaning.
On the Uglies review:
didint should be didn’t
lived. since should be lived. Since
takes placed should be takes place
intersesting should be interesting
very creative. With That. should be very creative with that
almost to much sacrifices should be almost too many sacrifices
On the pet peeves article:
website, They should be website, they
dont look should be don’t look
too, But should be too, but
Mozillia should be Mozilla
I did used to should be I used to
Neon Blue should be neon blue
and It isint should be and it isn’t
doesent should be doesn’t
You don’t clearly state that GIMP is a free program unlike Photoshop – make sure you do, so that people are a little more convinced. I also think that your articles need some proofreading because I believe your writing is much better than this.
On the layout coding tutorial, note pad should really be Notepad, assuming you’re referring to the text editing program. Your CSS should be placed in an external stylesheet, as I mentioned earlier about your current CSS on your layout. Also, there should be no hashes (#) before h1 and h2. This is a nice tutorial and I like that you put it into practice with an image, rather than just going through the code and the technical information. However, I do think this tutorial could be better if you proofread and edit your mistakes, use an external stylesheet and explain the HTML for the content and sidebar sections.
The PHP includes tutorial is very vague and not very clear. People may be confused as to what they are supposed to be putting into the header and footer files. You need to make this clear with a more solid layout example. Using the one in the previous tutorial would be good.
I like the “inside” into your Photoshop work but I think it would be more appropriately named a “guide”.
The curves tutorial is very simple. It would be more beneficial if you used it on a dark picture – curves can be used to brighten the image without it looking saturated or blinding.
The glowing text tutorial is simple, though I can recall that this was useful the first time I used it. You might also want to go through how to make an outline using the blending options. It might also be an idea to clean up this tutorial a bit! Your done should be You’re done.
The “make a website” tutorial page displays your blog. Make sure you fix this up.
More screenshots would be useful for the Photoshop actions tutorial.
When I view the magazine scans, I cannot see them in full unless I grab the image URL and paste it into the address bar of my browser. It would help if you linked these images to their full size.
Having the brushes as an imagepack would benefit those who don’t use Photoshop, but other graphics programs that allow for brushes.
Owner
I think you need to proofread this page because there are contractions missing apostrophes or spelled incorrectly, such as “Im”, “dont”, “thats” and “doesent”. You’ve spelled words like “raspberries” and “tomato” incorrectly – also, Beiber should be Bieber.
Website
You have quite a lot of links at the top of this page. Since there are so many, it might be a good idea to lay out this section like your visitor content section. I may be wrong but this page looks like it needs a serious proofread and update – it definitely doesn’t look like it reflects your current blogging style with the amount of words you capitalise unnecessarily.
On the links page, use <code> instead of <textarea>, as textareas are meant to be for user input and not displaying code. I have a tutorial on displaying code correctly.
You have the subnavigation at the top of the website page, but it is not on the others. It might make the pages a little easier to navigate in this section if you placed it at the top of every page here.
On the terms and conditions page, “alot” is two words – a lot.
I believe the past layouts page needs to be updated. I don’t see the layouts that I saw a few months ago!
The affiliates page would be better organised if you displayed them in the same way – all buttons, or all text. And if you choose buttons, having them the same size would be a great idea too. On the affiliate application form, undertstand should be understand.
Hosting
This is a separate part of your website so I won’t be looking at it.
Originality & Creativity
I think you have some creative designs and you have shown that you have tried a few different styles and effects with your graphics. I like that you have put in effort to use Javascript and edit your CSS in certain ways, even though it may not always be aesthetically pleasing or fully functional. You’ve shown that you have tried something more advanced.
To be honest I did not find your website all that original. The graphics were all very typical and I didn’t see any completely unique ideas or creations. You do have creative ideas and a good small selection of tutorials – but these can be improved and built on to create more tutorials.
Organisation & Errors
Your page organisation is not bad. You do need to proofread your pages. There are a lot of typos in some of your writing. I already pointed out a few of the errors in your coding. These should be fairly easy to fix.
Overall Comment
I’ve said most of it in this review. You should proofread your pages, and make sure they are all clean and organised. Your content is fairly strong, and you have a variety of resources. I think you could make more textures and icons and improve by trying different styles.
1 Comment so far — leave one?
Cassidy says:
Hey Georgina!
Thank you so much for the review! It has helped me so much, and I am going to use most of your suggestions. I really appreciate, you taking the time to write my review, and thanks for your help!
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