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Site Name: Sindle
Owner: Chloe
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 10th March 2009
Site Name
It’s short and easy to remember. Quite unique as well.
Coding and Validation
Your coding has 108 errors and 1 warning.
You’ve used a doctype of XHTML 1.0 Transitional. The first error I notice is that your stylesheet include is outside of your head section and it should be between the head tags.
You’re using tables for your layout, which isn’t always desirable. A tableless or CSS layout is the better way to go. It will save you putting incorrect attributes in your coding causing errors in validation.
I won’t be going through every error but you aren’t even putting an alt tag on all your images, or ending them with a trailing backslash like so:
<img src="http://yoursite.com/image.jpg" alt="photo" />
It’s important that these tags are ended and that alternative text, even blank, is placed on all your images. Read through this tutorial to help you sort out those errors.
Your CSS has 1 error – you have not put a # in front of the background-color 946161.
Browser Compatibility & Usability
Looking in Browsershots.org – your background is fixed, and your content is centered, so in different resolutions, things would appear differently.
In a smaller laptop screen the girl in the background image cannot be seen as clearly and part of her is covered. The layout is a creative idea but keep in mind that these sorts of problems can occur.
You’ve written the following note:
Best viewed in firefox with a resolution of 1680×1050.
Just because your site looks the best in Firefox with a resolution of 1680 by 1050, doesn’t mean your visitors are going to bother changing their browser or resolution just to see your site. You should be catering for your visitors, not them catering for you.
The navigation is easy to see and I like the divider below it, but I don’t like the fact that you have links at the bottom of your layout as well. Also, when I click ‘links’, I get even more navigation. Your site would be better divided into sections.
Your DeviantArt link can be placed on another page, maybe with your portfolio or with links. I don’t think it’s necessary to have so many links.
The text is easy to read and of a good size and colour.
Layout
It’s quite a simple concept but is well made. I like the detail of the girl in the background. You’ve used brushes quite creatively in your header image.
The layout is very neat and also very creative. I quite like it!
You’ve chosen a good selection of colours. These sorts of reddish colours are rarely used, so it’s quite unique.
Content
Portfolio
The images here lead to different sections. I think you should label the image with the section name, otherwise people will think it’s just a thumbnail.
Your digital artwork is great. They all look very high quality and I can tell you’ve put a lot of work into them.
Instead of having different pages for each year, I suggest having everything on one page and having the years as subheadings. You don’t have a huge amount so it should be okay.
I usually prefer if the thumbnails were of the whole image but since these are different sizes and not things like photographs, these cropped ones will suffice.
On your sketches page:
these should be These
more current should be more recent.
Your pixels are very nice. I don’t think you should have ‘coming soon’ though. Just put them up when they’re available. It’s annoying that each pixel/type is on its own page. I don’t understand why you couldn’t save space and have them on the same page under different headings. It saves pressing ‘back’ all the time.
Hosting
This could be combined with the hostees page. HTML should be capitalised.
Hostees
Self explanatory..
Tutorials
Your art tutorial is set out in a rather unique way – an image! The tutorial is great. But I would make a note on this page that the image/tutorial will open in a new window; some people have popups blocked.
Again you have ‘coming soon’ tutorials. This gives the viewer the impression that the site has unfinished parts, which is why I recommend you leave them out until they’re done.
Most of the basic HTML tutorials aren’t very useful. Many people would already know these things. And for those who don’t, they wouldn’t even understand the concept. Essentially, they’re just copy-and-paste codes.
You should remove the scrollbar tutorial. Coloured scrollbars only work in Internet Explorer and only on certain operating systems, and the coding for it is invalid.
Iframes are just as bad. They can cause browsers to lock up and freeze, or slow down dramatically; they won’t even allow the bookmarking of a single page, and having the page view in a box means that search engines will completely skip them because they’re not viewed as a whole page – not to mention that they are horribly old.
There are better options than iframes, and having this sort of tutorial will only encourage its use again.
On your popup window tutorial, you should capitalise ASAP.
On your page anchors tutorial, expecially should be especially, and ASAP should be capitalised.
Disabling right click won’t help anything, and it’s not a neat code at all. What does it help? Even if visitors cannot right click they can still “steal” by pressing ‘print screen’ or going to View in their browser and looking at your source code.
Additionally, it only hinders your visitor and as a piece of JavaScript only makes your site take longer to load.
The words URL and ASAP should be capitalised on your ‘drop down menu’ tutorial.
I notice that many of the codes you offer are a mess, like your website coding itself. You shouldn’t write in capitals and switch to lowercase and mix it up. You should keep it consistent.
Similarly in your email forms tutorial.
You shouldn’t be using a textbox to show code. You should be using <code>. And if you’re choosing to display HTML, you should be using < for < and > for >.
I won’t be reviewing your actual reviews, obviously, but having a scoring system for each section is something I personally deem inaccurate.
heart, should be heart;.
Commissions
Coming soon. A waste of a link in your navigation, I should think.
Other
I don’t understand why this couldn’t be named ‘resources’ or something similar; everything in this section isn’t totally random that it doesn’t belong somewhere else – more like it’s just a bunch of visitor content.
Yet another ‘coming soon’. I believe I have seen about four or five of these notes so far.
I didn’t see a need to fully organise the website signs into their sections, and further, their styles. I do not think the enter signs are useful at all; hardly anyone has an “enter” page and if anything, they are annoying and usually have nothing but an “enter” sign on them, leaving me to click some sign just to enter the site.
Your button templates are okay, however they just seem like cropped images with not many effects. Also, the links to the other sizes don’t work.
Rules
A lengthy page. The rules should be on the pages containing the images. If they’re on a separate page they most likely will be ignored.
cant should be can’t
look familiar should be look similar
so its not should be so it’s not
discludes should be excludes
aloud should be allowed
pixel in it should be pixels in it
bases should be bases’.
To make a “wall of shame” in the case that someone breaks your rules would be immature, and you should simply deal with the person privately. I suggest you remove any notes on that.
“Unrecognisable”. But what if people want to heavily edit your graphics and still will credit you for the base? Essentially most people would.
Sisters
It’s just one link.
Links
Nothing wrong here. I don’t see why all the links couldn’t be on one page.
DeviantArt
It’s an external link.
Tagboard
I don’t see the need for a tagboard when you have Haloscan for commenting. Nevertheless this page is fine.
FAQ
This is always a smart page to add.
your going should be you’re going
you layout, should be your layout;
wont should be won’t
i have should be I have.
About Me
Cool! I live in Australia too. 
You have some errors:
arent should be aren’t
i love should be I love
Art Stores should be art stores
jewelery should be jewellery
atm should be at the moment.
There are many things you capitalise in your summary of loves/hates/appearance that you don’t need to capitalise beucase they are not proper nouns.
Contact
Self explanatory.
Originality & Creativity
I must say – all the graphics here were really quite original. You’ve got a creative and original style, shown in your portfolio works.
I particularly liked the layout style and the idea of having the tutorial as a cool image, however many of the tutorials were really pointless.
Organisation & Errors
I didn’t really think your site was well organised. There were far too many subpages which would have been better removed. Many of the pages were small and could be easily combined with others in the same category.
There weren’t any broken links but there were quite a few spelling/grammar errors which need to be fixed.
Overall Comment
Chloe, when I first visited your site I was very impressed, particularly by your graphics. However as I went through the review, a lot of your content became very boring and I began to feel displeased.
Your coding needs to be edited so it is validated. Your layout is fine and I have no complaints there.
I didn’t really like your navigation and the way you organised your pages. You didn’t use labels for your portfolio sections – which I do think is needed – and you just had so many different pages for each little thing.
Your pages should be placed in appropriate sections, rather than having the links lining your header and footer at the head and base of your layout.
There were too many things which were ‘coming soon’; this really made it seem like there was a lot less content than there actually was on your site.
Your site could do with a bit of organising. Mainly, you need to get rid of unnecessary subpages and pointless tutorials (you really are better at graphics-related tutorials rather than coding) and anything that might not exist yet (“coming soon”), as well as pulling things into appropriate sections and correcting spelling/grammar mistakes.
Good luck with that, and keep up the good work.
