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Site Name: CorylDork
Owner: Coryl
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 14th November 2009

Site Name

I don’t really like people having their name in their site name – feels a bit weird – but I don’t have any problems with yours.

Coding and Validation

Your coding has 2 errors.

You have a script after your </html> tag. These should go before </body> and actually be in the body section of your document. If you don’t wish to display it, you might as well remove the code altogether.

You have very neat semantic markup. There are no pieces of embedded styling, everything is neat and you use correct paragraphing and use headers correctly – an excellent job.

Your CSS is valid.

While your stylesheet is very dense, you’ve done a great job keeping it error-free and you’ve shortened most of your codes. Good job.

Browser Compatibility & Usability

Your site is navigable and functions in Firefox, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer.

The layout fits well in most screen sizes and looks great. The font size is large enough to read without peering, and the navigation can be differentiated easily with its change of font and styling, not to mention the coloured hovers. The navigation could be made just a tad bigger – as it’s towards the middle of the page, vertically, it needs to stand out just as much as the header does.

I’m really liking the way you’ve customised FanUpdate with such a clean look. The archives navigation is equally as impressive – it looks like the way some WordPress posts are paginated!

Layout

I don’t really like the position of the stripes in the layout. They don’t seem to fit right, being in the middle of the layout through the middle of the screen. I think that if you wanted to include this, it would work better being at the top of the page. For the “separator” under the header image, a solid faint line would look nicer and less out-of-place. The stripes don’t seem to suit the bold colours and lines you have going on.

I like the unique sort of typography you’ve used in the header image with the “GREEN”, “YELLOW” and “RED”, and its surrounding words and phrases (including the very subtle grey words). While I like the other element with your site name and the shapes, I think the site name could be displayed in a simpler, bolder way, so that the header image looks like it flows. At the moment I feel like I see two separate parts. The “GREEN”, “YELLOW” and “RED” could even do well on its own.

The styling is, for the most part, bold and eye-catching. It’s easy on the eyes and the colours give off a nice mood.

Content

Visitor

Whoops. There’s a mistake on your site names article – wrond should be wrong. Funny that that was wrong… haha.
someone suggest should be someone suggests

On the website standards article, eachother should be each other. While I personally hope this article isn’t an attack to the reviewers out there including myself, some people still wish to notify people of errors and warnings that come up on their site. Valid coding is not a must, but the less errors you have, the less chance you have of your site looking like crap in other browsers. Large layouts and non-centered layouts are fine – but sometimes people do have ridiculously large header images that do require me to scroll to see content (and I have a rather large resolution of 1280 by 800).

Also, with semantic coding being more in use, using <strong> and <em> instead of <b> and <i> is preferable, especially for screen readers for the blind.

The brand names article leads to a 404.

The icons aren’t very interesting but the photos you’ve used are of good quality, and you have nice effects. The ones with text are a bit hard to read so maybe using a little bit of glow or a little bit of colour under the text would make them easier to read.

I love the smilies – they are so cute! A bigger preview would be nice. Include not just one emoticon, but a few. I had to download them to actually see the whole lot, and personally, downloading zip files is a bit annoying.

The textures look great, especially the sky ones. When I load the page though, some of the images stop loading and time out. It might be a better idea to create a separate smaller image for the thumbnail/preview so the page doesn’t take long to load.

Reviews

On the example review, Suggestion for should be Suggestions for.

On the rules and application you appear to have copied part of this from another rule:

Please don’t ask me to “hurry up and review my site” or else it will be moved to the bottom of the queue, if it’s long, or removed entirely.

You should remove “if it’s long” – this doesn’t really apply for this rule.

The title on the rules page reads “Example review”. Since no one appears to be on the queue it would be nice to actually write a note of this, such as “no one waiting” or whatever you wish.

Coryl

On the quick facts page, as long as it’s fully charged should be “unless it’s fully charged”.

It’s like this heavy metal rap screamo shit.

Personally, I think that might be the most terrible sub-genre ever invented/created/founded. Haha.

On the autobiography:
450$ should be $450
writer’s should be writers.

The favourites page is very organised.

Portfolio

I really like the Kabomb piece in your typography!

On the pages with your poems, the header on both pages reads:

bitch/h1>

Obviously that needs to be fixed.

I really like how you’ve written your poems; I like how they’re very long as well!

Website

On the history page, Unforunately should be Unfortunately. Also, freehost should be free host in some cases.

Originality & Creativity

Pretty much everything on your website was original. Regardless of content or style, I love websites that are original, and yours was one of them.

You have some creative typography pieces. I think you made a good choice for the one on your layout. You don’t have many graphics but your articles are excellent and you’ve got a good start on your icons! I was impressed by a lot of your typography – mostly the more simple ones with less text. They look great.

Organisation & Errors

Only a few mistakes and a broken link.

Your site was very well organised!

Overall Comment

I enjoyed reviewing your website and looking through your content. It was hard to make comments on a lot of pages because they didn’t have problems at all.

Your articles are excellent – more of those would be great. I know you aren’t keen on graphics but from your icons I can see that you can make much better ones, and from your dabbling in typography you’re doing a terrific job.

Overall I think that you just need to work a bit on the graphic skill and make sure you proofread and fix those mistakes.

Rating

(out of 5)