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Site Name: Blood To Death
Owner: Dye
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 9th November 2009

Site Name

I don’t like the sound of the name but it’s definitely one that’s easy to remember.

Coding and Validation

Your coding is valid.

Your CSS is valid.

You have a lot of CSS coding. I understand that there is no way to cut it down with all that styling affecting your layout though.

Attempt to use <strong> instead of <b> and <em> instead of <i> from now on, for semantic – more meaningful – purposes. Screen readers for the blind will be able to provide more meaning if you do this.

Browser Compatibility & Usability

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

What I don’t like about this layout is that it’s aligned to the right. Had this been a wider layout it would have looked better, but it is quite obvious with all the whitespace to the left of the screen. I like that it is unusual but in this case it’s a bit too obvious and on my rather large screen it seems squashed unnaturally to the right, and having browsed your site a bit before starting this review, I felt the need to scroll horizontally all the time because of the way your layout was aligned.

The navigation is easy to spot and is all laid out nicely.

The white on grey text is really quite hard to read and I have to highlight the text on every page in order to read it correctly. A darker grey would be more appropriate.

Layout

As I mentioned above, I don’t like the fact that the layout is aligned to the right. Perhaps a background with a little bit of texture would make the left of the screen seem less “empty” and plain. You have a light watermark-background behind the content but I suggest having this very subtly on the “background” of the layout.

I like how you have used grey to balance out the bright red in the header. Grey has been used generously here to bring out the colours in the image.

The use of a diagonal line on the layout makes it look creative, and the boldness of these lines are subtle and give the layout a unique, organised-looking shape.

Content

Main

On the “about” page it’s owner should be its owner.

On the history page:
crazy(or insane) should be crazy (or insane).

On the owner page:
this here website should be this website
it’s distance should be its distance
an unique should be a unique
soul source should be sole source.

The contact page is self explanatory. It might be a good idea to include an email address as well if people are uncomfortable with using a form. You’ve got this as an email icon in your footer but having it in print on this page would be good.

You have a great credits page. You have even credited the images very specifically. If you have any websites that assisted you with tutorials, it would be a good idea to include those too.

The disclaimer would be a good thing to include in the footer but that’s up to you.

The links are well organised.

On the terms of use page, .css Again should be CSS. Again.

Services

On “Advertise your Website”:
Your Website should be Your website
1.) should be 1) [and so on]

On the button rotation page, Your Website should be Your website.

On the website hosting page, my hostees should be my hostees’.

On the website reviews rules page, illegal nor adult should be illegal or adult.

Interactive

Under the rules on the contest page:
adult nor illegal should be adult or illegal
Inline Frame, Div, Table, or Pop-Up should be inline frame, div, table or pop-up.

On the plugboard, adult nor illegal should be adult or illegal.

On the tagboard, adult nor illegal should be adult or illegal.

Designs

The avatars are well organised. They are not my style but they are of good quality and have nice effects.

No problems with the desktop wallpapers.

I like most of the premade layouts. They’re all very creative. I don’t really like this one though. The stripes should be faded out behind the content.

I also don’t like this one because it’s much too pink and the sections of the layout, because the navigation is to the site, looks disjointed.

Resources

Not much to say about the avatar bases because they’re only bases. I personally prefer icons that are already made.

I love the first two large textures; they’re beautiful!

The screenshots are of good quality – nothing much to say about these because they’re just screenshots.

PNGs are good as a resource but otherwise, people can do this sort of thing themselves.

Articles

These articles are very brief but I found the one about plugboards to be useful and interesting. I realise articles aren’t your strong point but more of these would be great.

Tutorials

The back/forward buttons one is very simple. Not many people use these links anymore since buttons are integrated into almost every browser.

The basic HTML tags tutorial isn’t all that useful. A person new to HTML would not really learn much from this, and someone beyond this level wouldn’t find much use for this.

The SSI tutorial could be explained in a bit more detail, particularly with the part dividing the content into the header and footer parts.

While the Frameset Preview Bar tutorial is unique, I wouldn’t recommend the use of iframes.

Originality & Creativity

I can’t say that a lot of your site was original because not all the graphics are actually originally by you and you did have a lot of “base” graphics. But you do have creative graphics, which are well edited, high quality and have been put together nicely.

Organisation & Errors

Very well organised. I only spotted some typing mistakes, but I didn’t spot any broken links!

Overall Comment

I couldn’t find much to complain about in your website. I can see that your strong points are the graphics – layouts in particular. I think your visitors could really benefit from some graphic tutorials – maybe icon tutorials or something similar – because yours are really great.

I feel that the tutorials you have can be either removed, improved or replaced with better ones. I also realised that you do have a requests page but it is closed – of course I encourage you to open these again!

Again I feel I must reiterate the alignment of your layout. In future you should have your layout off to the left (from left to right is, by convention, how most people read) or centered. I am finding it strange when there is nothing in the middle of my screen.

Despite that, you have a great site, so keep up the great work.

Rating

(out of 5)