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Site Name: Crystaldrops.co.uk
Owner: Hannah
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 8th June 2009
Site Name
Ah, it’s pretty. I remember visiting your site quite a while ago, actually. Good name and easy to remember.
Coding and Validation
Your coding has 17 errors and 37 warnings.
It is very important to have your site validated. While it isn’t absolutely necessary, it can solve errors that can occur in different browsers. A lot of other corrections can make your site a bit more cross-browser compatible.
You need to place alt attributes in your image tags. The reason for this? It provides alternative text for an image. When people have images turned off, they will see the alternative text instead.
In your navigation you are specifying an id for the list item and the link. You should be using a class instead of id. An id can only be used once in a document, whereas a class can be used multiple times. Read this tutorial for more information on classes and ids.
Your CSS has 14 errors.
You have your CSS embedded; I don’t see why you couldn’t put it in your external stylesheet. You’re using font instead of font-family in your CSS.
You’re also using quite a lot of asterisks in your CSS which are casuing parsing errors.
Browser Compatibility & Usability
Browsershots.org tells me your site is generally the same in most browsers.
Your layout is rather wide, even for my large resolution. I think you could really cut down the width. Especially when you don’t have a sidebar, it’s nice to have a bit of a narrower layout. It allows ease of legibility of text so there is not so much text on one line. Additionally, your layout wouldn’t be as easy to navigate in smaller resolutions because of the width.
The navigation is a little bit confusing. I assume the main navigation is down the side and the links at the top are “quick links”? You should make the main navigation down the side stand out a lot more. Bigger text – and the colour should be a purple (like for your text) rather than white.
Layout
The colours are very nice. I like the combination of orange and purple and how you’ve incorporated different shades.
I’m not liking how your background scrolls horizontally. This is what I mean. You should not have that background image so wide. Rather you should create it so it tiles horizontally and won’t result in a horizontal sidebar. And instead of inserting the image using img src, you should be using it as a background image with CSS.
Content
You
I’m not really liking the little “teasers” or “previews” when I open this page. It confuses me as to what is the navigation and what isn’t. I just don’t like this sort of thing because it doesn’t seem that organised.
I’ll just be navigating through the links down the side.
You shouldn’t be using <textarea> to display code. You should be using <code>, as textarea is intended for input of text, not for displaying code.
The link to ‘Shuni’ dolls doesn’t work.
I don’t find these dolls very useful or interesting. They’re really quite old and tacky. They couldn’t really be used on a website; many are animated and aren’t that good at all. They’re not entirely original; I have seen a lot of “dolls” online. Also, you must have used a base for these, not entirely made them pixel by pixel.
The icons in the graphics section are quite nice. They’re of good quality and quite original and interesting. I also like the way these are organised.
You should remove the icons using celebrity images because they are illegal. Unless you took the photographs yourself, you shouldn’t be using them because it’s like taking someone else’s work and editing it.
The flashing graphics are just that – flashing graphics. Animated graphics are very distracting. Where can these be used? What can they be used for? The colours are blinding and the animations are not very practical. Again you should be using <code> to display the code.
The fashion flashers are just pointless. I don’t see where they can be used, and they’re very distracting. Looking at them for a few seconds hurts my eyes already.
I don’t see the point of the quotes either. They are very nice, don’t get me wrong, but what can one do with them? They’re nice as signatures and things I suppose. In essence, these are better than the dolls, really.
The backgrounds are nicely made but they’re not very versatile, particularly the ones on the first page. I wouldn’t really like a background like that because when it tiles, the text wouldn’t look very nice. It’s really quite small. The colours are also hard to match with a layout if someone’s just looking for a background. Go for simpler colours and simpler patterns.
The ones on page two are much nicer, such as the one you’re using as your current background. These ones tile a lot better.
The web sets are nice but I’m not a fan of the fuschia colour and the font style. These wouldn’t appeal to many people, and such signs, especially enter signs, are not used anymore.
Most of the signs are useless. Enter signs are not used anymore – enter pages have become quite annoying. I don’t see the need for all these large signs simply to label something.
The hiatus signs page is empty.
The dolls on the closed signs look pretty tacky and the colours aren’t too appealing.
The birthday graphics are not really useful either. Where would one display these and for what reason? Dolls again? These really wouldn’t appeal to everyone.
The Playboy graphics and flowers are nice, but what can one do with them when your site name is printed on them? And Playboy? Interesting choice.
Word graphics as well – I just don’t see where you could use these. You have nice graphics and good skill but I don’t see why you can’t make something like layouts or banners, or something more useful.
The scribbles are very nice. You could try scribbling more original things and drawing your own characters.
You only have two blends. They are of celebrity images; I suggest you remove them. These blends are too small for a layout; I don’t really see the point of these.
The blank buttons are alright but rather plain.
The ID cards are quite tacky and aren’t really useful. This sort of content is really old-styled and barely anyone uses these.
I’m not a fan of the wallpapers, particularly because of the tiled backgrounds. They look rather cluttered. I don’t really like the celebrities you have featured either.
The pixel graphics are nicer and more appealing. I think you could place all the little pixel graphics like the cupcakes and arrows on one page. There are too many subpages and too little content on each page.
While these graphics are nice I still don’t see them as useful. Things like the pixel texts and names are rather plain.
“I love my host” is also quite an old type of graphic…
The blinkies are not very appealing. I don’t ike how they’re animated as it’s quite distracting. I really wouldn’t like seeing these on someone’s website.
The glitters section is full of animated graphics. These are definitely nice graphics, but they’re just not something desirable on a website. Maybe on MySpace – well, I’m not familiar with MySpace… but if these are for MySpace, you should place them in the MySpace section.
I don’t have much more to say about the MySpace graphics section. They’re similar to the content in the glitters.
You should be crediting the scripts you’ve used for those games in the fun section. “Quizes” should be Quizzes.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen cliques. Having all these on separate pages is a bit of a waste. I think they could be put on the same page under different headings.
The opinions section is fairly interactive and encourages visitors to provide an opinion – good stuff.
The cursors aren’t bad; I like the arrows because they’re quite simple.
“Emotions” should really be Emoticons.
There’s not much one can say about colour schemes. These colours are really quite bright; it would be nice to see a bit more variety with some dark colours, perhaps.
There’s nothing on the fonts page – “coming soon”.
Most of the reads are not your own; it’s best you write your own instead of just displaying others’ work, even with their permission. It’s more original that way.
The basic BB code tutorial isn’t really necessary. On forums they generally have some information on how to use it. I am sure that if you remove the asterisks, it will be fine and still display the way you want it to.
I don’t see the “Basic HTML” tutorial as a tutorial. It doesn’t really teach, and it would not be able to be understood by someone who doesn’t know any HTML. If you are going to teach it in a tutorial, start from the very basics.
“Basic CSS” is “coming soon”.
The “no right click” and “scrollbars” tutorials are “coming soon”. I recommend you don’t put up these tutorials. Disabling right click or secondary click can cause problems for users especially if they want to change certain settings for your site, in the case that it isn’t usable. It’s not very user friendly. Scrollbars – the same thing. They generally use invalid coding and only work in Internet Explorer. There’s no need to inflict a custom scrollbar on a user; often they are unfamiliar with the concept and may get confused.
The image tricks only work in Internet Explorer; not in other browsers. You should only offer these if they are sure to work as much as possible.
You should credit Response o Matic for using their service in your form. Not everyone will like their service so perhaps this tutorial is not a good idea.
The Paint Shop Pro tutorials aren’t bad. More advanced ones would be great. The image mapping one is “coming soon”.
I don’t agree with the “source code” and “highlighting” sections of your “protecting your site” article. It is very annoying to have a dialog box appear on your screen, especially if you want to do something like open a link in a new window or tab. Visitors can even just turn JavaScript off to overcome this, and they can view your source code in other ways like saving your page or going to “view” and “source code”.
Highlighting also doesn’t help. What if someone wanted to quote your great words? This can also be overcome by turning JavaScript off.
The “other” tutorials are alright.
I have already mentioned this but I must reiterate – you should be using <code> and not <textarea>.
Hannah
You don’t need to capitalise all your interests. This page is well organised but in the last paragraph, the facts about yourself don’t really relate, hence they would be better as a list.
On your gifts page, the gift from Jess doesn’t work. Neither does the second gift from Rachi, or the first two from Mallory. The last one from Mallory also doesn’t work. The first gift from Lien also doesn’t work.
Site
On the ‘about’ page, the following part doesn’t quite make sense:
I never realised how many visitors as I have done, and I really appreciate all the lovely, supportive and constructive comments left on my tagboard!
You might want to edit that; I don’t quite understand what you’re saying there.
You should capitalise your Is on your FAQ page.
Your credits page needs to be updated. You should not just link to websites, but state why you are crediting them. And I’m not sure what content management system (CMS) you use for your blog but you need to credit for that as well.
You do not need to capitalise “direct link” on your disclaimer page.
On your tagboard, room, please, should be room; please.
WWW
Basically some links and affiliates on this page. Your site organisation is really confusing because I completely forgot about the links on the side.
The affiliates, reviews and button wall pages could do with a contact form to apply. Some people are a little bit lazy to open up their email to send something. Try NL-PHPMail.
The plugboard does not work because plugme.net no longer exists.
The forum and directory are separate parts of the site so I won’t go into great detail. The directory hasn’t been updated for over a year, and I believe the layout is a very old one. I think you need to update it.
The help page linked at the top of your layout is handy!
Originality & Creativity
You had some creative content on your site, but you also had a lot of generic content, and “reads” that were just copied. You should stick with original graphics and content made by you.
The glitters and MySpace graphics are really generic; many sites have this sort of content. You could really offer more original content. It gets boring looking at the same type of “MySpace” and “glitter” content.
Organisation & Errors
Organisation was okay. The side links in each section confused me, though.
Many pages were “coming soon” – which didn’t really give me a good impression at all.
Overall Comment
Your site was good on the outside, but after looking at your content I’m quite disappointed. You had a lot of good content but a lot of it seemed old and tacky – like the glitters and dolls.
You also had a lot of content that I didn’t really see as useful. The animations were distracting and not really good “content”.
The numerous “coming soon” pages were also a disappointment.
I suggest giving your site a clean and removing the content that is old. Add more new content and keep things regularly updated. You have a lot of useless content on your website, and I just think you could clean things up a bit.
Definitely work on your coding and perhaps next time, make a few changes in your layout and the navigation options. Also, try and be more original in your graphics and be sure to use legal images. You also need to update and edit your credits page.
You definitely have potential, so good luck.
