back to Completed Reviews

Site Name: Dollface
Owner: Em
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 19th July 2009

Site Name

It’s cute and easy to remember.

Coding and Validation

Your coding has 51 errors and 4 warnings.

You’re missing a character encoding to determine the character set of your webpage. This should go in the head section:

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

Also, as you’re converting to XHTML, you should have the slash in your stylesheet tag:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="css.css" type="text/css" />

Your navigation and other sidebar elements use <h3><center>. You cannot place a center tag in a heading tag. The center tag is also deprecated. To center the navigation you must place text-align: center; as an attribute for h3, or some other header.

In your navigation links and other links, as you have left target blank, it’s best to remove it.

In XHTML, all <br> should be written as <br />.

Another key rule with validating to XHTML – all image tags must be in the following format – an alt attribute is mandatory, as is the slash:

<img src="image URL" alt="photo of dogs" />

Attempt to use <strong> instead of <b> and <em> instead of <i> from now on, for semantic – more meaningful – purposes. This is necessary for devices such as screen readers for the blind.

Your CSS is valid.

You have quite a few warnings. You should place fonts with whitespace, such as Arial Narrow, in quotation marks like so: "Arial Narrow". Also, you’re using the same colours in two contexts which is causing a number of warnings.

Browser Compatibility & Usability

Browsershots.org tells me your site is fine in most browsers.

It’s good to see that you managed to center your layout without any problems. It looks very neat and uniform.

The navigation is fairly clear, but using something like CSS block navigation and using bigger text would make it stand out more.

While the layout is compact and the text size matches it, it is very hard to read as it’s small and narrow. Consider making it larger.

Layout

It’s very nice and very neat. I like the use of large text in the header image showing the site name, but the image in the background of the text is hard to see. It should stand out a bit more, otherwise it just looks like a meaningless smudge.

A textured background would really complement the layout. As I mentioned, the layout is quite compact. While this is a good thing, the text is still hard to read.

The stylesheet is simple but creative. Numerous fonts are used, and colours are chosen from the layout. The text simply needs to be made bigger; it looks small and squished and at times is hard to read.

Additionally, the bold light blue text should be darker as it’s hard to read.

Content

You

This section would be better named as “visitor”.

Instead of having the tutorials listed on a subpage, they should be listed on the visitor page under a heading such as “tutorials”. There is no need for the extra subpage.

The PHP includes tutorial needs improvement. You should be using <code> to display the code, not <textarea>. textarea is intended for user input and not for displaying code. code is also a lot neater, and you can customise it with CSS. In doing so, though, you must replace < with < and > with >.

Also, there is no need for the asterisks when < and > are suitable replacements for < and >.

Also, there are errors on the PHP includes tutorial:
reguraly should be regularly
dettered should be deterred
div’s should be divs
ad’s should be ads.

The history links tutorial is pretty pointless. People have back/forward buttons integrated into their browser for a reason.

Good to see you are not using textarea for your bullet points tutorial. Also, the tutorials I have seen so far are very squished due to the small text. You need to spread it out.

On the Cutenews tutorial, use to should be used to.

Cutenews is not recommended. It is an insecure script due to it using flat files rather than a database. By creating these tutorials you are encouraging its use. The tutorials you have are good, but they’re not really useful. Cutenews has its own documentation as well.

On the site names article:
Also names can also should be Names can also
appearantly should be apparently
Your now should be You’re.

Site

On this page:
wayy should be way
piczo sites and freewebs should be Piczo and Freewebs sites
Btw should be By the way.

Including past layouts on this page would be more interesting. Also, don’t use textarea to display code. A contact form would also be handy for those who don’t want to open their email.

Music

On this page listening too should be listening to. This is unique idea that’s personal as well as interactive. It’s nice that you also provide a variety of music, even though I don’t spot any of my favourite oldies.

Originality & Creativity

You’ve got a generally creative and original site here, but you also had some very generic tutorials – they can be found on many websites. Your article and your blogs are fairly well written so some articles would be a really nice addition.

Organisation & Errors

Fairly well organised. The pages could be spaced out more – the content on the pages looks so squished. It might just be the text size or line height though.

Overall Comment

Overall, quite a good job. The coding needs a bit of work as you are not abiding by simple validation rules.

The layout is a good job but it is vital that you adjust the text size as it’s hard to read.

You have rather generic content. You have done a good job on your website but it needs to be more unique and grab more attention.

Rating

(out of 5)