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Site Name: Cherry Coated Lies
Owner: Gina
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 24th November 2008
Site Name
The name Cherry Coated Lies is cute and very original, but your URL is so long! CCL would have been just fine as a subdomain.
You should embrace your site name more, write it on your layouts and such.
Coding and Validation
When I run your site through the W3C Markup Validation service you have only three errors! I’m very impressed. You’re missing character encoding. Stick this after your doctype:
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
Another little error – you need the alt tag after EVERY image you use. Even if it’s blank, like:
<img src="IMAGE URL" alt="">
You have defined your iframe twice – in a div and in an iframe code. If you’re putting an iframe in, specify the position in the iframe code – no need to put it in a div!
You have defined your sidebar twice. It seems that you are putting your site information and introduction separately; just put them after each other.
It may also be because you’re using a HTML editing program, or because you’re not giving your layout sections different names. For each part, give it a different name. This is only causing two errors, so you might have to fiddle around with things.
Your CSS is validated, WELL DONE! Check here if you want; though I think you already know. If not, you can always show off that button 
I have a minor suggestion – your CSS is embedded, and maybe you should put it in its own file called css.css or something like that, which you can do by opening Notepad, then saving the document as “css.css” (or something.css, including the quotation marks).
Then you will need to use a code on your page to call on the CSS file:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css.css" type="text/css">
Browser Compatibility & Usability
Everything looks the same in most browsers according to Browsershots.org. Well done on browser compatibility!
The navigation is clear, which is great.
The text is readable except on the homepage in your blog, the black should be the light grey it is on other pages.
Layout
Iframes are never a good idea, and you can achieve the same look with divs! And after that it’s easy peasy to convert to PHP. Check out this tutorial to help you. Iframes give search engines hell, and if visitors just want to bookmark one page on your site, they can’t.
You’ve got a small site though, so I should be more lenient – but if your site is small, that means not many pages, meaning that divs are not a problem to convert to at all! And you won’t have to estimate the size of your iframe because you can make the width auto!
Your layout image is a nice image, but the colours are really odd and saturated. And the image also looks a little pixelated. If you edited the image, I’m sure the original would have been much better.
I notice you like simple layouts, which is a plus. But your image should be jazzed up a bit, add something to it, even your site name.
The layout looks okay – the navigation and short information fit nicely. If you used divs and the content run down the page without the iframe scrollbar, it would have been so much better.
I love your CSS, the colours are great. I like the colours in your introduction, just be sure not to overdo it! Congratulations on showing UNIQUE hits and not just hits (otherwise I’d refresh your site like 10 times and you’d get 10 fake invalid hits). You might want to center the counter, or use a text counter.
Your navigation is very nice and very clear, but it doesn’t quite fill up the space.
Your black text in your blog would be nicer as the light grey you have for your site information and introduction. And it would also be easier to read. I notice on your other pages it’s the grey, but not your blog.
Your textareas are actually really annoying – only the text. It’s capitalised and tiny. It’s hard to see, and I can’t tell if I’m typing in capitals or not. Please choose a different font!
Content
Affiliates
You should have more link buttons, and of different sizes! And maybe capitalise your affiliates’ names.
Credits
Very well done. Capitalise Cutenews. And try not to say ‘from Google’ – give proper credit and link to the actual site you got it from. Google only searches for images for you.
Owner
Try to paragraph a bit here – and maybe list your favourites down the page – makes things easier to read.
incrediblyy hot should be incredibly hot
hysterical crying should be hysterically crying
anytime should be any time.
Site
Your layout still says Relient K, and like blogging should be blog.
You have a dead image for one of your reviewees. Perhaps change these all to links, just to be consistent.
You
You have your ugly back/forward button at the top of this page. EEK!
Advice form is all good.
I really think all these things should be on separate pages.
I love all your icon backgrounds. They’re so unique and all very cool. The colours are great.
With all your blends, have them open in another window. They’re too big. Same with your paintings on your ‘my stuff’ page.
Your layouts aren’t too good. Your coding is a mess in these – they all look really old and don’t look like much effort has been put into them.
Your basic HTML codes should be removed, they’re not really useful at all, and many people know these. The CSS one isn’t too great and you shouldn’t have embedded CSS codes.
These tutorials are a big mess! Put one tutorial on one page – that will make things a lot easier. The icon animation tutorials are not bad, but you haven’t specified what program you’re using! And they’re also old. You need to update these tutorials.
The fading colors tutorial isn’t really a tutorial. It’s more of a resource.
Quotes – more like a reads page. You have that back/forward button on this page. And plagerism should be plagiarism.
Originality & Creativity
I saw some originality here, but a few celebrity images sneaked their way in. They’re illegal (article here) so cut down on their use.
Some creativity. I particularly liked the graphics, especially the icons. They were very creative.
Organisation & Errors
A few spelling errors here and there; otherwise grammar was great.
Everything was organised up until the ‘you’ section. Quite a mess. Too many page anchors. You really should have one thing on one page because it’s hard to tell what’s going to open in a new page and what’s going to be an anchor.
A lot of the tutorials were also quite old and the layouts.
Overall Comment
Gina, your site has improved so much since we became affiliates! I really like your simple layouts better. And stray away from those celebrity graphics as they’re illegal.
Your icons and avatars and backgrounds just amaze me! They’re so cute and I love the colours. I don’t like the layouts you offer though, they’re really messy. And your tutorials aren’t very good. I suggest you stick to the graphics and if you’re going to offer layouts, make them look better and more organised.
I’m impressed with your coding, I would have thought it would be a mess.
The suggestions I have are to continue with graphics. Don’t do too many coding tutorials. Graphics are your forte so graphic tutorials would be best.
And ORGANISE the ‘you’ section! It needs a LOT of organisation! Don’t put so many different things on one page. And don’t forget to change the font colour on your blog. 
