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Site Name: Forever Angel
Owner: Erin
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 27th June 2009

Site Name

It’s a name that’s easy to remember; you mentioned the mistake in the URL. That’s a bit unfortunate, though. I find it confusing every time I type in your URL.

Coding and Validation

Your HTML has 187 errors and 8 warnings.

You need to clean this up. Every error means a possible error on a certain browser or operating system. It is important that you validate your website and remove these errors.

Firstly, you should place your CSS in an external stylesheet. This makes it easier to edit, and it also keeps things organised. Your styling should also be within the head tags.

You’re using XHTML 1.0 Transitional, but you don’t seem to attempt to validate your coding or remember simple rules. All images must have an alt attribute to provide alternative text, particularly for screen readers, so that the images on your page are not ignored.

Not only do the majority of your images miss an alt attribute, but they miss the trailing slash that is needed at the end of an image tag:

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

You also neglect to close many of your tags, such as paragraph tags. You do not use <p> correctly. This is the correct way to create a paragraph:

<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
<p>This is another paragraph.</p>

You are creating a list incorrectly. An unordered list should be created like this:

<ul>
<li>list item 1</li>
<li>list item 2</li>
<li>list item 2</li>
</ul>

You need to review your HTML coding to ensure you have correctly coded everything, and make sure that you recognise simple validation rules. You must also make sure that all tags are closed and nested properly, particularly if you are attempting to validate to XHTML.

Your CSS has 5 errors.

font-variant should not have the value of “none” but should have the value of “normal”. font-weight: italic should be font-style: italic if you are attempting to italicise your text.

Browser Compatibility & Usability

According to Browsershots.org your site looks similar in most browsers.

The navigation is clear and stands out; I would highly recommend increasing the text size a bit though, as it is rather small. Rather than a size of 11px I suggest 11pt; pt is preferable over px.

I recommend making your links a pale shade of yellow so that they are distinguishable from the text. Also avoid changing the font size or type; often in some cases the text can be dodged around, moving large paragraphs and even making some links hard to click (an example is Brittney’s email address on your ‘about Forever Angel’ page).

Layout

I am not sure if the layout credit means that “Zach” created the entire layout, including graphics and coding, but I shall share my opinion on it regardless.

Good simple header image. Great fitting, non-blinding simple colour scheme. This is a simple layout but the rounded corners and edge shading give it a touch of complexity.

A good colour scheme is chosen; the white text is legible on the dark background and there are nice subtle shades of yellow used throughout.

The updates are included in the ‘about’ box but I think it would be better if the updates were in a separate box. If there were two boxes, horizontally side by side, instead of the one whole ‘about’ box, the site information can be placed in one, and the updates in another, keeping everything a bit more organised (less scrollbars) and adding just a bit more interest to the layout. Alternatively, the updates can be placed in the sidebar.

On the left hand side of the layout, further into the content area, the background doesn’t tile so nicely, as you can see here. It isn’t too noticeable but should still be fixed.

Content

About

Correct me if I am wrong, but should Sugar-Blossom.net be Sugar-Blossom.info?

MySpace and Freewebs should be capitalised.

On the contact page, soo should be soon.

On the link buttons page, you should be using <code> to display code, not <textarea>. textarea is intended for user input and not for displaying code.
Try and create some inanimate link buttons as well; animated ones can be distracting.

It’s not necessary to change, but the credits would look better in a list down the page.

It would be better if your past layouts had a thumbnail and maybe some information about the layouts.

The rewards and gifts page is pretty self explanatory. I think the images should be shown bigger though. I clicked on them, expecting to see them full size, but instead was taken to the websites that gave them to you.

Visitor Content

The tutorials and downloads all link to external websites; I won’t be reviewing them.

You only have one blend; I was expecting more. It’s not a bad blend. I think the image could be linked to like a thumbnail, instead of having the viewer “right click” (which is inaccurate; my secondary click is the left mouse button as I am using a left handed mouse) and click “View Image”. It is a lot easier for the visitor that way.

The banners are quite nice, but why are they all so small in full size? They’re nice and well decorated, but I don’t see why the very first one is so large and why the rest are quite small.
Clicking through the images just to view them full size was annoying; please make them as thumbnails instead.

I don’t really see the point in the animation; I don’t know where it could be used but for what its worth it’s an alright animation.

The icons are mostly of high quality and well made. This one looks a bit pixelated though. Try to make more unique icons and not use the same celebrity images again and again; I see Ashley Tisdale icons a lot. And you should be getting permission to use these images as well.

“Uncoded layouts” leads to an error page.

Some of the coded layout links lead to CreateBlog.com. I think it would be better if you put them on your own server or at least put an asterisk or symbol to indicate that it will open as such.
Some of these layouts aren’t bad. They’re very simple. I like how they are all in different styles. I think the background on the Ashley Tisdale layout could be put as attachment: fixed; it doesn’t look nice when I’m scrolling.

“Twitter layouts” leads to an error page.

The CreateBlog layouts are nice; more interesting than the other layouts I have seen. They have a bit more depth and texture to them.

Link us

This simply leads to the same section linked in the ‘about Forever Angel’ section. I don’t see a need for the double-up.

Contact Erin or Grey

Another page I’ve already looked at.

Need a Review?

Pretty self explanatory.

Originality & Creativity

You had some nice creative graphics here but you should be more original with the images you use. Celebrity images are used a lot so they do get boring after a while. Try creating layouts with different images that will appeal to a wider audience.

Overall I think you could be more original and perhaps make layouts that are a bit brighter; you tend to have some dark ones.

Organisation & Errors

Fairly well organised; no problems.

Some of the links led to error pages as I mentioned.

Overall Comment

You’ve done a good job with the website. The layout was rather impressive and unique, although it could do with a few tweaks.

Try and add more content; since you have a number of people working on the site I would have expected more content. I know you can build it up so keep it up.

Your graphic skill is quite good; you need to create content that is essentially more original, and definitely add more. Your coding does need to be cleaned up a fair bit as well.

Please increase the font size, clean up the coding and try and make some inanimate link buttons.

Rating

(out of 5)