back to Completed Reviews
Site Name: Hidden Tragedy
Owner: Georgia
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 6th February 2009
Site Name
Hidden Tragedy is a nice name. I see the two words ‘hidden’ and ‘tragedy’ used a lot, but not together!
Congratulations on getting a domain too, by the way!
Coding and Validation
Your coding has 19 errors – in HTML 4.01 Transitional. This is your doctype but I think you’re trying to code in XHTML in some places. I see a bit of XHTML coding and also the use of FanUpdate might have made you do this. In this review I’ll be pointing out errors in HTML though.
You’ve got a doctype and character encoding – which is good. However, the <head> you have at the start of your document should be before your stylesheet coding. Also, you need to put a <html> before that.
In your stylesheet include, put stylesheet in quotes. And see the backslash at the end of your stylesheet include? Remove that. And you have one in the code for your layout image. 
See this:
<body/>
</html>
That’s wrong. I don’t know if you noticed. This part should be after your FanUpdate include, and it should be:
</body>
</html>
You’re also forgetting to close your layout div, so put a </div> before your end body tag.
Before your advertisement script, style should be style type. However, I would recommend you use PHP – try this random linked image rotator PHP script. It’ll stop the errors – or a few, at least.
I think you should check out my validating HTML tutorial to fix all these errors. A lot of your coding needs to be cleaned and picked at, and you have to make sure you’re writing each code correctly.
Your CSS has 74 errors. That’s a bit.. unholy, for want of a better word.
Well, font-weight can’t be ‘none’. It must be ‘normal’ (see your h1 and h2). And you’re leaving blank values for some colours – like the background in your h2, h5 and h6.
For text-decoration in your hover text, it should be underline and not underlined.
You need to fill background under your navigation with background-color: #000000 (or whatever colour).
A lot of your errors are caused by all these silly blank values which you should really take a look at yourself.
Browser Compatibility & Usability
According to Browsershots.org your site looks the same in most browsers.
Your navigation is clear and your default font is of a good size. I suggest changing ‘Main’ to ‘Home’ though.
Layout
The colour scheme is nice, even though it’s simple. It’s a neat layout and I like the header image. It isn’t too wide or big, so it would look good in smaller resolutions as well.
The layout would look better centered. Try this Tutorialtastic tutorial.
I like the dropshadow on the text, and it’s nice to see the colours in the CSS to break up the black and white, but the colours could have been chosen better.
For instance, the colours in the navigation are too bright. You should try to stick with just the colours in the stripes to the left of your header image. There’s too much light purple going on, which you’re using both for links and italic text. Perhaps a wider range of colours would work, or not to use so many colours.
Content
Your advertising page is okay – that should be than.
Ditto for the affiliate application – it’s all good.
Site
Woo, no problems on this page! And I do wonder what questions you asked, but I’m glad I could help!
Me
You’ve put on this page ‘Owner’ as the title, that would be good as the link, rather than ‘me’. This page is well set out.
You don’t need to capitalise ‘computer’.
Visitor
The affiliate images are alright but people can make their own. The ones with faces are nice but aren’t of good quality.
The button bases aren’t that good and look slightly pixelated.
The smilies are not bad, but you don’t have to count every single smiley. I was under the impression that there were 22 sets.
The cat smilies look very similar to those at Dottish.com.
The image links aren’t of good quality and they’re kind of boring. Make them a little more interesting!
These pixels are nice and very cute. The colours are all quite bright though, and I’m not a big fan of animated ones.
Your photography page is titled ‘pixels’. Oops. Must you capitalise every word in your sentences?
I like the photography but of course you need to work on quality. I’d really like to see more.
The premade layouts don’t look that good. The first one is too cluttered and just looks like you’ve put random brushes everywhere. The second one is a bit better but could do without the scratchy scribbles. You should make layouts how people want them. Templates aren’t a good idea.
The request form is pretty self explanatory. There’s this error message on your page though:
You have the maximum number of forms in the free plan ( 5 forms ).
Try using a script for a form, or try Allforms for an alternate form provider.
‘Ask Me’ is pretty self explanatory.
On your Jumping Text tutorial:
here.) once should be here). Once.
Note that it’s the same error I pointed out when I reviewed your old site. Yet you didn’t bother fixing it.
Some screenshots would be nice on the text effects tutorial.
The pixel tutorial is nice, but:
Firsly should be Firstly.
The text shadow tutorial is alright but pretty boring.
On your Downloading Fonts tutorial:
Local Disc should be Local Disk.
On your Haloscan tutorial:
Register should be register
visitors Comment should be visitor’s comment.
You should make smaller images and place them on the page, or put thumbnails on the page. It’s hard to notice the links to the images when they’re linked with single words like ‘here’.
The downloads list is handy. Programmes should be Programs.
The games you have are fun, but I’m sorry to say that I have seen them before.
Hosting
You are quite generous and have fair rules!
Few errors:
bandwith should be bandwidth
programme should be program
DEFINATELY should be DEFINITELY.
Also, no need to capitalised ‘Hosting Support and Help’.
Originality & Creativity
Your graphics were really quite boring and all your content was quite generic. I’d really like to see more original things. After all, a lot of this content is from your old sites.
You can be creative but what you need to improve on is graphic quality and aesthetics. Less is more!
Organisation & Errors
Things were pretty well organised and spelling/grammar was okay.
No broken links found.
Overall Comment
Georgia, while your site looks a lot neater and more organised, you still need to improve on your coding.
You should also try and work on graphics. I see they’re not of the best quality and you also need to update old content and add more – things that will keep visitors coming. Just because you have a domain it doesn’t mean your content is great.
I would just work on graphics for a start, and make sure that when you code a layout, it’s done carefully. Fill in all the values in your CSS too, otherwise take out the attribute altogether.
Good luck with your site.
