Review: Dani @ Back In Wonderland

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Site Name: Back In Wonderland
Owner: Dani
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 6th March 2009

Site Name

It’s cute. A bit long but cute.

Coding and Validation

Your coding has 78 errors.

You’re missing a character encoding, which tells us what ‘language’ you’re using. You need the following code in your head tags:

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

Your layout image also needs the alt attribute. All images need this, in fact. Even if you leave it blank there still must be one.

For your div here, you don’t need the backslash at the end (backslashes are only used in XHTML):

<div style="position:absolute; width:110px; x-index:0; left: 280px; top:480px;" />

Unbelivably that takes out half the errors!

After your affiliate links, you have put </h3> – but you don’t have the starting tag. I’m sure you meant to put that somewhere!

Again, you have an opening <h3> tag before your reviewer links, but you have forgotten to close it at the end.

You’ve put a </body> </html> tag before your content div. You know they are supposed to go at the end of your document, right? :)

Also again with your content div, you don’t need the backslash at the end.

You have a stylesheet include:

<link rel=stylesheet href="http://backinwonderland.freehostia.com/style.css" type="text/css" />

You already have this in your head section, so take this out.

You have some styling in your head section which could go in your stylesheet!

You seem to be using the <h3> tag a lot. But for your blog entry titles you’re putting the <h1> in them, and that isn’t allowed. Why not customise the <h1> to how you want?

You do the same thing with your footer, putting a <center> in a <h3> tag. Just pop the h3 to make it centered, or use other heading tags to customise. For example, use a <h4> for the footer instead.

All that gets you valid coding! But it does produce some warnings, because of the fact that FanUpdate posts your entries in XHTML rather than HTML. But you can of course move on to that later!

Your CSS has 10 errors and 200 warnings. You have forgotten a } before the end of your internal styling (the styling in your document). Of course I recommend you put these in your style.css file.

I don’t know why you’ve written background, scrollbar, cursor. It isn’t needed.

I see you’re trying to create a fixed background as well as tiling it. You don’t want to have the background move, right? background-attachment:fixed should do the trick – not property. :)

All that will guarantee you validated coding and CSS. Then of course the other pages in your site, if you wish.

Browser Compatibility & Usability

The site looks the same in most browsers according to Browsershots.org.

The layout is falsely centered – not everyone has the same resolution as you. Have a go at centering your layout using containers.

The text size is okay, but you should extend your sidebar’s width; the text looks squished. Also in your blog, You should make the paragraphs more distinct – skip a line before typing another paragraph – because everything looks like a blob of text.

The navigation is clear but I don’t think there should be a text transform on hover. “www” would be better as “site” and “main” better as “home”.

Layout

It’s also quite cute. Simple as well. I don’t know exactly who is featured in the layout but I am guessing it is a celebrity. While you might certainly like the celebrity, it’s illegal to edit photos that you haven’t taken yourself, without actual permission.

Nevertheless, you’ve blended the images well and cut the outlines very nicely. The purple glow is just a little too big and bright though.

The decorative text on the layout is nice; a little unusual.

The colour choice for this layout is also a bit unusual, but it works. I see a bit too much purple though. The bold text, instead of people purple like the links, could be a dark grey colour to complement the grey in the header image.

Content

I don’t know if the spelling in your sidebar is intentional (“hai thurr” and “frands”) but I personally don’t like it.

Www

The page looks pretty organised.
Dani opened should be Dani, opened
worth while should be worth
definately should be definitely.

I actually can’t see the main text on your ‘about me’ page (only bold/italic/underlined text) – I have to highlight it, as it’s in some default text of my browser. Perhaps you forgot to fix the CSS on this page?

This page is done well. You should put a little line break or gap after your gallery/music links; it’s a bit squished.

The gallery is good and all the images and links work.

Ditto for the music page; though I can’t see some of the text (under “short list”) without highlighting it. It seems that this problem is only occuring in Firefox. I think you haven’t put in CSS for default text. Mozilla Firefox possibly doesn’t recognise this.

On your advertising page:
get a unique number of hits should be get a number of unique hits
You’re site should be Your site.

On your affiliates page:
acceot should be accept.

Your rules are fair. I don’t think anyone would have any problems with them!

The contact page is pretty self explanatory. Maybe for those who prefer to email rather than a form, you could include other contact details like on your ‘about me’ page?

The credits page is alright but you need to credit what you took – why you’re crediting these sites.

Past layouts is pretty self explanatory.

Art

your feeling should be you’re feeling.

The layouts and collages are very well done, but I can’t say they’re too original because of the use of common celebrity images.

Same with the icons. They are really quite nice though. Since you don’t have many I don’t really like the Icon Sort.

The drawings are great; you’re a great drawer! This is definitely original stuff!

Nothing much under ‘Etc’. The brushes are quite cute. The icon textures aren’t the best – a little fuzzy.

Writing

Again there is that funny glitch on this page with the text.

I’m not hugely into fanfiction. I read through yours though, and I spotted some mistakes. Here’s a bunch from your first fanfiction:
I woke up the morning after to my phone ringing should be The morning after, I woke up to my phone ringing
its a high pitched scream should be I had a high pitched scream
strangled, but I don’t function should be strangled. I don’t function
new albums should be new album’s
ok should be okay
its a chance should be it would be a chance
there hair should be their hair
You have two \par things here which I think were little accidents.

On part 2:
tshirt should be T-shirt
Thye must should be They must
every thing should be everything
must of thought should be must have thought
there Bebo should be their Bebo
Britains best should be Britain’s best
pratts should be prats
definately should be definitely
shes there should be she’s there
littl should be little
sqeeled should be squealed
Right, its, urr, its fine should be Right, it’s, urr, it’s fine
wouldn’t calling should be wouldn’t call it.

I have to say again that I’m not into fanfiction and I don’t exactly like your style of writing but it was done fairly well and I actually want to know what happens next! :P

Your article was done well. I like the topic you discussed – I haven’t seen that topic on a website before.

Tutorials

I really like the look of the layout tutorial. The first one looks really authentic!
your finished should be you’re finished.
‘Step 5′ should go on a new line.
I think you should actually display the shots, because it’s a bit annoying clicking ‘here’ all the time.

On the second layout tutorial, you say “similar to this” in the first paragraph. The link leads to the current page.
your using should be you’re using
othger should be other
“this brush” links to this tutorial, not to the brush.
You have nice thumbnails to click on instead of the word “here”. I suggest doing that for the first tutorial too.

Under your CSS tutorials, navagation should be navigation.

In your custom navigation tutorial, you need to correct the spelling of “navigation” throughout.
Also, you need to space out your explanations in your blockquotes. It’s hard to read. Bolden the attributes and place the explanation on the next line. Everything is just too squished.

Ditto for the horizontal navigation. Spell it correctly and space out the text in the blockquotes.

Your first icon tutorial is very simple. I don’t like the colours though; you could offer other colours for the texture!
your done should be you’re done.

Your second icon tutorial is also simple but I like this better than the first one.
Now you’re icon should be Now your icon.
Before your 2nd step, you have a <b> tag which is making all the text on your page bold.

I don’t really like the colours in the third tutorial. I think there could be less steps though, instead of putting different colours multiple times as overlay.

On your absolute path tutorial, instead of saying “remove the stars”, type the actual code. Use &lt; and &gt; for < and >.

Your PHP includes tutorial isn’t helpful at all. If I put those codes on my pages, they wouldn’t do anything. Just pasting the includes? You haven’t gone through anything about how they really work and what you’re supposed to put in header.php and footer.php. You haven’t gone through editing the header and footer sections, or about switching every page to .php.

On your glowing image (PSP) tutorial:
your done should be you’re done.

On your selective colouring tutorial:
its done should be it’s done.

The majority of these tutorials are good. I quite like the selective colouring one because I’ve been looking for one for a while. I don’t like the shine effect one; it’s too bright.

“Making PNGs” should be renamed. “PNG” is simply an image file format. I can go to Paint, draw a scribble, and save the file as a PNG. Easy. You should be calling this tutorial something like “cutting/cropping an image”.

Contests

Aw, there’s only one. I’d like to see more. Contests are something I see so little of nowadays. There aren’t any problems here.

It’s annoying having to press “back” all the time, so consider not dividing your tutorials into sections, but rather on your main tutorials page, set things out like this:

Paint Shop Pro
Angel Effect
Glowing Image
Image Effect 1
Pixel Effect
Selective Colouring
Shine Effect

Of course though, they’d be all linked.

Originality & Creativity

I saw lots of creative stuff. Your layouts have a unique style to them. Or maybe I haven’t been browsing websites much? But I did like your layouts, I thought they were quite unique.

Mm.. about the only thing original was your drawings, in terms of content. You should try using legal stock images. This list has 100 sources, at least one of which I’m sure you’ll find just as interesting as using celebrity images.

Of course, being a McFly fangirl you’d want to have layouts with the members, I assume. Perhaps you can say shame on me for not having heard their music, but ah, I’ll be sure to listen sometime.

Organisation & Errors

Well organised! I spotted a few errors and some errors in your writing but other than that things were great!

Overall Comment

I enjoyed looking through your site, Dani. I’m not sure why – was it your content, or your layout, or was I just in a good mood?

Well, I can honestly say that you left a fairly good first impression. Your layout grabbed me and it wasn’t horrible on the eyes or overdone. Many celebrity layouts I see have too much colour or too many images blended together. I think you really did well in 1) the colour choice 2) the minimal effects and 3) keeping it simple.

Of course I gave you a tip to change a bit of your CSS and use some grey, and to make your sidebar wider (it’s weborexic! Aaah!). Also, I didn’t mention this, but the background could be toned down just a tad.

Your coding was okay. There were a lot of errors but many of these were just little things you probably weren’t aware of. You have the correct basic structure – and most sites I have seen don’t even have head or body tags!

I also mentioned the errors in which some of your text came up funny in Firefox. I’m sure that could be easily fixed by comparing it with the text that has no problems.

Your site was good overall. There are grammar mistakes but these can be fixed. Your tutorials are quite good. I would suggest adding more on graphics – your coding ones aren’t as strong. And I’m not sure if you use PhotoShop often, but I certainly do, and some tutorials would really help me out myself!

I really liked the article you wrote. If I had to suggest anything, it would be to add more articles, and to try something other than celebrity images – that would make your site both original, and cool.

Rating
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(out of 5)

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