Review: Emi @ Candy Apple
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Site Name: Candy Apple
Owner: Emi
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 22nd December 2009
Site Name
It’s not really that much of an interesting name but it’s easy to remember.
Coding and Validation
With 50 errors and 16 warnings in your coding and 50 errors in your CSS, this is getting a bit out of hand. I know you’ve used a premade layout but there are so many errors, which could have been made by either you or the original creator.
There are a lot of lexical and parsing errors in your CSS due to missing a few important symbols and embedding CSS in your HTML, which can easily cause problems when not done properly.
Browser Compatibility & Usability
Your site is navigable and functions in Firefox, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer, despite all the errors you have in your coding.
The navigation is a little off; the first background image is a nice round block, but the rest have a rather lopsided shape on a closer look. I have noticed that the links are actually part of the header image, which aren’t desirable. With image navigation, visitors would be stuck if they could not view images. Not such a good choice of premade layout though, seeing as you cannot customise the links to read what you want them to.
Layout
I won’t be reviewing this because the layout was not by you; it was by Lakambini.org.
Content
The “more” link in your sidebar just leads to your homepage.
Site
On this main page there are a few mistakes:
myspace should be MySpace
regularily should be regularly
piczo should be Piczo
haha And should be Haha and.
You have this reviews page but you also link to your reviewers on another page. I think it would be appropriate just to have one.
Girl
I personally don’t like groups of words slunked together to describe someone in an “about me” page very much, but to each her own.
You
Your request form is really wide and goes past the width of your content section.
The text on the request rules page is really tiny. You should make it larger.
Nothing much to say about the fonts because you didn’t create them.
The HTML codes aren’t really useful at all. Perhaps for MySpace users, but not for those looking to learn HTML. It’s just not enough information to understand. Additionally, strong, em and ins should be used in place of b, i and u, as this code is more semantic.
The entire text in your “installing a font” tutorial is blue. I don’t think that was supposed to happen. Also, installing a font is simple and there are instructions on how to do so within the Windows Help.
“Things to do in an elevator” is just copied from the internet. You should provide credit for things you do not write yourself. The same goes for the “You know you live in 2009 when…”.
Links
On the link buttons page, you should be displaying code correctly, by using a converter to convert the code, and placing this within <code> and </code> tags. textarea is intended for user input and not for displaying code.
Credits
This is an external link to your host. You could include an actual page of credits.
Originality & Creativity
I didn’t really see anything original on your website. A lot of your content was just generic and there just needs to be a lot more added and something unique on your website. I’m assuming it’s mostly just a blog – and I won’t review blogs. Perhaps you could write a few articles yourself for visitors to read, rather than information from the internet.
Your graphic skill is quite limited and that’s something you should work on especially if you’re going to be taking requests for graphics. If you’re struggling that area, I would suggest creating a basic layout, starting yourself from scratch, and using basic colours and shapes to define a layout.
Organisation & Errors
Organisation was really quite good and there weren’t many errors at all, at least none within your content. I’m not sure how you are on coding but the theme you are using has a lot of errors, and if you aren’t good with coding I suggest trying something on your own by following tutorials.
Overall Comment
There was nothing really interesting or original on your website. You can definitely do a lot better if you work on some coding and graphics and thought of something original to add to your website.
You have a very good sense of organisation but you should take everything that one step further to expand your skills. Good luck with your website.
Emi
Thanks so much for reviewing me! The text on the tutorial was actually meant to be blue, but I had many second thoughts about that (originally they were supposed to be bolded steps with pictures in between and more explanations so they wouldn’t look ALL bolded) but I fixed that now. I’ll take all your advice and work harder. Thanks again
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