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Site Name: WhoaBaby
Owner: Danielle
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 15th November 2008
Site Name
The site name is okay, it’s pretty ‘cool’, so to speak. I don’t really like the hyphen because your host already has a hyphen in her URL and it’s a bit annoying to type.
Coding and Validation
Your CSS isn’t validated, mainly because you didn’t put px after a lot of your measurements for width and height! Running your site through the W3C CSS validator results in 19 errors. Also, these, which are snippets from your CSS file:
text-transform: normal
font-style: none
should be the following, to ensure it is validated:
text-transform: none
font-style: normal
When I look at your source code and run your website through the W3C Markup Validation Service, you have a LOT of errors..
Firstly, no doctype! This is important to tell the browser which HTML or XHTML specification the document uses. This is most likely the doctype you’ll need, and you need to paste it FIRST THING in all your pages:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
You also have no character encoding. The one that should be used is UTF-8. This should be placed in every page:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" >
Another thing that causes a problem is the smilies in your Cutenews. They have a backslash “/” before the end tag like this:
<img src="IMAGE URL" alt="" />
and should not have that slash – so should look like this:
<img src="IMAGE URL" alt="">
When I look at your source code, your stylesheet call is right at the top. It’s not in the head tags, and that is where it should be!
Browser Compatibility & Usability
Your site looks the same and looks good in almost all browsers according to Browsershots.org so well done on that.
Your navigation is clear and I really like the way it’s set out. Good job there!
Layout
I really like the colours, which is the first thing I notice. They all work very well together and I like how the navigation is set out. I also like how the lines on the header image fade out so it doesn’t look like it’s chopped. It would be nice if you could apply that effect to your sidebar.
I notice you are using a celebrity image, and I don’t know if you are aware, but they are actually illegal. Read this article for more information.
Your CSS looks alright. I think your text is too small for your bold, italic and underline, though. Your default text is already small enough. I particularly don’t like your underlined text. The double underline is too rough – I would recommend removing the green.
The links are the same colour as your default text and it’s a little hard to differentiate. Using a colour from your layout would be better. The white hover is a little annoying. I know you’re aiming for a light colour, but white isn’t the way to go when that’s the same as your background.
The layout overall is lovely, but the CSS needs a little touch-up.
Content
Content
I notice the links are in alphabetical order, you’ve done a good job there. This section is best renamed to ‘resources’, as ‘content’ refers to anything in your site.
The backgrounds page is set out very nicely, and it’s nice you’ve included the credit at the top of the page. Some of the backgrounds don’t look too good, particularly the ones with circles. The simpler ones look better.
I’ve seen the colour schemes a lot – very common. It’s a little boring to see the same thing again. These aren’t bad, though.
The dividers are nice – I haven’t seen these around in a while.
On your emoticons page:
you sites on your blogs should be your sites, on your blogs
please please should be please, please.
These look alright. I like the pandas. The ghosts look a little rigidly pixelled (like the top of them), and the green blobs too. I don’t really like those. The pandas look so much better – did you use a template or are they newer improved emoticons?
The gradients are nice. I was wondering why they were so small, then I realised that each number was a link. All the numbers lead to the same broken link. If you were linking them to a download or another file, I suggest linking the thumbnails or previews instead. But well, I don’t see how people can use these at the moment if all the links are dead.
Add some padding to the cells in your table of coded layouts. New York Streets/Vanessa Hudgens/JoJo are so close together. It would be preferable if you had small screenshots as the previews. The New York layout isn’t too good because the navigation isn’t centered and it stretches out too much.
All the layouts with celebrity images – I’ve seen the exact same images in other people’s layouts. All the stylesheets for these layouts have the same font as your current layout, just with different colours. Try varying it a little in future.
These button bases are okay. Maybe you could write “88 by 31″ somewhere on this page.
Tutorials
You’ve capitalised your links here, but in your ‘Content’ section you haven’t. Try and keep it consistent.
With your advanced picture tutorials, put your tutorials in a list, like you have your links in a list. And if you can, try and specify the effect of each tutorial, that way you can name it more effectively. And you can remove this unnecessary subpage and link to each tutorial on your tutorial index page.
On all your advanced picture tutorials, you should be using a colon – that is :, instead of a semicolon (;). Also, you’ve completely neglected to specify which program you’re using! How is that going to help your visitors?
On your adding emoticons tutorial:
cutenews should be Cutenews
folder; should be folder,
ect should be etc
the click should be then click
Your done should be You’re done.
Cutenews is a highly hackable and holey script that can be injected with malicious PHP code, so I don’t think this tutorial should be offered as it may just encourage use. It’s a good tutorial though.
On your image mapping tutorial, I don’t know why you need the ‘thunderstruck’ image at the top.
but should be by
your done should be you’re done
A internet should be An internet
page go to should be page, then go to.
You should not write in square brackets as it isn’t grammatically correct, and there’s no need for the spaces, for example:
[ hello ] should be [hello].
You may also like to change the URL on ‘thunderstruck’ or edit this tutorial as it seems to come straight from your old site without editing.
On your PHP tutorial:
I still even should be Even I still
help should be help.
you have like should be you may have
paitience should be patience
and it may should be as it may.
Same thing for the square brackets applies here. Your fourth step needs to be on a new line. This tutorial was pretty well done.
Site
Here your links list is back to lowercase – I suggest making all your link lists consistent.
Congratulations on adding credits. A lot of sites fail to do this, or fail to credit everything.
You shouldn’t have a gifts page up if you have not yet received any gifts.
I was expecting to see other links buttons but there aren’t any. I don’t think this page is necessary as you already have the link button code in your sidebar!
Music is a dead link.
The Owner is already in the main navigation, why the double-up?
On your past layouts page, November should be capitalised.
On your terms and conditions:
Please please should be Please, please
my site the password is should be my site requires the password:.
Owner
tell all should be give all
is just should be are just
hollister should be Hollister
abercrombie & fitch should be Abercrombie & Fitch
american eagle should be American Eagle
this earth 09.01.08 should be this earth as of 09.01.08
pink; orange and white should be pink, orange and white
turquoise; spring green; and a light grey; should be turquoise, spring green and light grey
that cause should be that, ’cause.
A well written page, and I love how the text wraps around your photo. You’ve given out a comfortable amount of information!
Reviews
I obviously won’t be reviewing this section, but you should have two links instead of ‘home’ – you should have one that goes to ‘updates’ or something similar – updates of the reviews, that is, and one that maybe says ‘WhoaBaby’ to go back to your main page (whoa-baby.paper-hearts.org).
It actually just gets a little confusing because everything changes, including the sidebar.
Originality & Creativity
I didn’t see anything unique here, a lot of the content was really generic. I do like your layouts as they’re quite creative but I didn’t think that your content was original. Your layout and the layouts you offer have celebrities, which isn’t original.
Organisation & Errors
Just a few errors I did mention. Organisation was fine.
Overall Comment
Danielle, your site layout was very nice and you had a good amount of content. You had some errors here and there. I know you like using the semicolon as decoration but it is grammatically incorrect when writing instructions and such.
Your coding is not strong and obviously it’s something you need to work on. My only suggestion would be to stray away from the celebrity graphics and try different things. Your graphic design skills seem good – I think you could work on making more graphics.
Good luck with the site!
