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Site Name: Into The Roses
Owner: Evie
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 5th June 2009
Site Name
Easy to remember, quite interesting – no problems here.
Coding and Validation
Your coding is valid. However you have a few small errors on some of your other pages, such as forgetting parts of tags and such. Be sure to fix these.
Your CSS for your theme is valid. However you have a lot of warnings due to using the same colour in two contexts. Looking through your CSS and cleaning up and simplifying it will help remove these warnings. Also, your URL in your stylesheet is so-pink.com instead of so-pink.org.
There are errors in the Lightbox stylesheet. I admit I’m unfamiliar with Lightbox but I am assuming the stylesheet cannot be changed.
Browser Compatibility & Usability
Browsershots.org tells me your site is generally the same in most browsers.
Your font size could be increased a bit; it’s rather small.
The navigation is very clear and stands out nicely.
Layout
The header image, to start off with, is blended well. However I don’t see the need to have the red edges of the image when you can fit the layout together without those edges. Also, because the width is exactly 800 pixels, the layout will have a horizontal scrollbar in a resolution of 800 by 600. Consider re-doing the layout and removing the red edges of the image.
The content and sidebar are a bit off from the header image. I have provided a screenshot.
Back to my comments on the header image – the models in the image stand out quite a lot, and they make your website name look like a mess. I recommend fading the models out a bit, or reducing the opacity, so that the website name stands out a bit more. The image just looks a bit intimidating with so many faces, and it would be better to fade it out a bit.
The CSS is good – I really like the headers and the navigation. I don’t see these shades of red and blue used together very often. I think for more variety and “brightness”, you could have tossed in a few brighter shades of grey and blue.
Content
About
I don’t think you need comments enabled on this page of contents, just the individual pages if you like.
On the site information page, you might want to put the dates in bold, like late 2003/04/05/06/early 07.
Don’t forget Photobucket on your credits page. I noticed you used them for some of your images.
For You
I don’t think there’s a problem with calling this “visitor” – that would be a bit more effective.
The blends are very nice, but you shouldn’t be using celebrity images. They’re illegal because you’re using photos that belong to someone else. Unless you have explicit permission from the photographer, it’s like editing someone else’s work without permission. They’re also unoriginal so try to use non-celebrity images; I’m sure you can come up with something just as amazing.
The same point goes for the wallpapers, even though these are for personal use, you’re still redistributing. Nevertheless these wallpapers are very nice. I like how you have widescreen sizes as well. However, for the “crazy” wallpaper, the sizes aren’t quite accurate. The 1024 by 768 size is actually 800 by 600 pixels, and the 1280 by 800 size is actually 1024 by 640 pixels.
Similarly, the Keira Knightley 800 by 600 wallpaper is actually 1024 by 768 pixels. And the 1280 by 800 is actually 1024 by 640. I understand that some of these are in the same scale but you should keep them accurate because not everything looks great resized.
I like the lyrics idea! Very simple but so effective. I like how you included the artist and song name as well.
The brushes are quite nice. You might want to have an imagepack for the first set.
Personally I don’t like categorising icons, but yours don’t bother me too much. I like the previews. These icons are also very nice, but next time avoid using celebrity images.
The closing signs are very nice, but these aren’t used often at all. Maybe hiatus signs or “revamp” signs – but in general signs aren’t used, so these aren’t a hugely useful resource.
Creativity
Your GSCE art is beautiful! I love your work. This page is well organised. I love the consistency of the image sizes.
I don’t like the use of Lightbox because it won’t work for everyone because it uses JavaScript, and some people don’t have JavaScript enabled. I also find it a bit slow when it comes to loading time.
I like how you kept the images small for your photography though, it really makes a difference to using large images. I like that one of the squirrel under Florida; it grabbed my attention.
GCSE help
Perhaps a little introductory paragraph on what the GSCE is would be helpful. If I didn’t have friends from the UK, I’d have no idea!
This section is definitely unique and I’m sure it will help people. I never liked chemistry so I did another subject instead, haha. More content added here would be very, very good.
Reviews
I read through a few of these. I don’t really have any comment to make; after all they are your personal opinion.
The review for “Love Actually” doesn’t exist.
Originality & Creativity
You have quite a number of original things but I suggest using some legal stock images or even your own photography for some of your icons and such.
You definitely show creativity in your website. I think you can make a much better and more appealing layout though, because I can see that your graphic skill is very good.
Organisation & Errors
Very well organised. I didn’t see many errors, just a few, one broken link which I pointed out.
Overall Comment
Evie, you’ve got a solid and well-kept site with some very high quality content, all of which is organised neatly. I enjoyed reviewing your site and reading those reviews you wrote on certain movies.
You don’t have a great deal to improve on or fix. Your site will be more original with graphics that are less generic and of the average celebrity. Also, you might want to add resources that are a bit more useful, unlike the closing signs. Perhaps some graphics tutorials as well?
I also think you should come up with a more interesting layout. This one was nice and orderly but I believe you can create a better one that shows off more of your skills.
Also make sure you validate all your pages!
