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Site Name: CorylDork
Owner: Coryl
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 19th-20th June 2010

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CorylDork

Site Name

You know my comments here; I’m fine with the name!

Coding and Validation

According to the HTML validator your coding is valid for the most part, and your CSS validates to CSS3. In the stylesheet, quote any fonts with whitespace (sans serif, for example).

Your coding is so very well done and very neat. I don’t feel like I can make any complaints here.

Browser Compatibility & Usability

Your website is looking consistent in Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome. The dropshadow on some of the text does not appear in Internet Explorer, though.

The javascript for what appears to be your website counter sometimes hinders the loading of the page. I don’t think this can be helped, though.

The navigation isn’t as aesthetically pleasing as I’d like it to be. I think it could be a bit larger, considering the large amount of text in the header, and the large size of text used for the <h1>. It could be bigger to balance it out, as the navigation is an important part of the website.

Layout

Firstly to the navigation – as I mentioned, it could be bigger. Having it on the right seems really “separate” from the layout. I think it would look a little better with more padding, and together with the advertisements you have beneath it, all with the background. It seems a bit cramped in its current position.

There are a lot of horizontal lines in this layout which I believe you could reduce. The bold colours are very nice. I’m not a fan of the pink but because the bold brings out the distinct lines and sections of the layout, the navigation and “sidebar” might look a little better without the lines between each item.

I feel like the colour scheme has one colour too many but the styling is really well done and incorporates these colours nicely.

Since the footer contains some important information that is separate from the actual content of the page, I think you could make it a bit more obvious. On some pages, especially the shorter ones and ones with less content, the “about” and “word corner” look a little bit out of place.

Overall I think you’ve done a superb job, you always seem to be very daring with the new layouts you try.

Content

Dork

Where you list your favourite artists it might help to write a few words beforehand, such as “The artists I like include”.

Hopefully you get to re-do the autobiography; I was actually looking forward to reading this again but it’s not done. Perhaps remove it from the navigation until it is? It’s not always a good look to have pages “under construction”.

To make the table on the favourites page neater, I suggest using <td valign="top"> so that the headings line up together at the top of the table regardless of the amount of content within.

‘Folio

On the 365+ project, I think you could place more whitespace between each album on the days in which you completed more than one. It’s a bit squishy.

I’m not going to read through each and every one of your poems. I think the list of links could be improved though. Since there isn’t really a long blurb for each poem, I think you could make the links smaller or remove the underline to make it less bold. Perhaps keep it the way it is and write the blurb next to the title? At the moment I’m not liking how it looks; the right alignment also throws me off a bit.

I really like the way you’ve set out the typography. “Click” could be written as “Click the thumbnail” or “Click the image”.

“Corners” was a really good read.

In the first excerpt for Vincent and Mordechai, performanceyesterday should be performance yesterday.

Views

I actually didn’t know this meant “reviews” until I clicked on it and realised. I was a bit confused at first.

On the Twisted Maze review, the site title says “Imajenation”.

Stuff

I love the icons; they look terrific.

Since you’re using h1 on the articles page, it messes up your layout. I think you forgot to edit this page accordingly.

The colour palettes look great; definitely a good idea to have put in the colour codes with their backgrounds.

On the smilies page, do you mean “transparent backgrounds” instead of transparent smilies? I have seen transparent smilies before, so if you’re only referring to the backgrounds, it would be a better idea to write “transparent background”.

The fifth and sixth sky textures link to 404s.

I love the icon tutorial, it’s very well done. I look forward to seeing more.

WWW

There was pretty much nothing wrong with this section. On the “People in Blogs” page, you could try and put the data in a table, because the images throw off the organisation. By using a table to display these, you could effectively organise the pictures with the blurbs.

On the credits page, Fuzzable.com doesn’t exist.

On the past layouts page, I don’t think you updated this with your previous layout.

Originality & Creativity

You always have very original layouts. I notice you use a great deal of typography in all your layouts. They all are very unique, and your content is also very well done. I would like to see more icon tutorials, maybe even a typography one.

Organisation & Errors

I think you have done an excellent job with the organisation; the breadcrumbs, titles and organisation of pages is very well done and very accessible. I can tell you’ve put a lot of thought into it. I think a few of the headings could be evened out with more blurbs under each, or the horizontal lines removed. There’s too much going on with the horizontal lines, especially when present in the layout header and the content of the page.

Overall Comment

I don’t have much to say. You’ve done a fantastic job and I find your site very impressive and original. I think the design of your current layout could be fixed in a few places but other than that, everything is very well organised, you have put a lot of effort into your website that I can see.

Keep up the great work.

Rating

(out of 5)