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Site Name: Fluoresce
Owner: Jorja
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 8th July 2009

Previous reviews:

Ephemeral-Days

Site Name

I like the website name, as much as I do still like your old website name. This one is short and easier to remember, though.

Coding and Validation

Your coding is valid.

Your CSS is valid. There are a few warnings; make sure you don’t the same colours within the navigation specifications. A quick peek and a little fix of the CSS will remove these warnings.

I didn’t look into your coding into detail before but it’s clear that you have good coding; you’ve even used the semantic strong and em elements in place of the more physical b and i.

Browser Compatibility & Usability

Looking at your site at Browsershots.org, your layout is looking consistent in most browsers.

You mentioned the issue with older versions of Internet Explorer; the padding simply needs to be decreased between the sidebar and content divs so that they show up correctly. Also, include alternative fonts in your CSS. Not everyone will have the fonts Garamond or Book Antiqua on their computer so providing alternative fonts would be a good idea, for instance: bold 14pt garamond, "times new roman", arial.

The layout is a good width. The navigation is very clear but could do with a bit of padding underneath. The word “portfolio” touches the edge of the block which appears a bit squished.

The text size could be made just a little bit bigger.

Layout

All your layouts are stunning; they’re very original and creative as you draw them. This one is quite different from your other layouts. It’s definitely very bold and I like how you have chosen the website name to stand out this time, with a smaller featured image.

The colour scheme for this layout is very good. Basic bright colours of purple, green and blue are teamed with subtle shades of grey, creating a toned-down grunge look with the style of the header and background pattern.

It’s nice to see a variety of fonts and colours used in the stylesheet. You could vary the styling a bit as you tend to keep it similar over different layouts. Perhaps it’s because I visit your website often and get used to it, but something different would be a good change.

Padding could be increased on the sides of the layout; the text is very close to the edges.

Overall this a very nice layout; you always have more interesting layouts as you create more.

Content

Owner

On this page, metal/ rock/ punk should be metal/rock/punk. On the sub navigation at the top of the page, the last | isn’t needed.

On the contact page, misuse, spam and should be misuse or spam, and.

Visitor

The pixels look great; I can see you have improved here. The flowers look a bit pixelated and out of shape, though. Try to crop these to the very edges as well; it makes them a lot neater.

On a rather unholy note, reargrgghh. Unfortunately I am having to suffer with slow internet and am waiting quite some time for your photographs to load.

The photographs look more impressive than the last time I reviewed your website. The doodles and scribbles also look new – and they’re very original and I can imagine these being quite versatile.

Although you name the first section with people there are no people in the photographs as of yet. The first image is a bit blurry but the others are fine.

The miscellaneous stock images caught my eye, particularly the one of the iPod. These are quite bright and the variety is excellent.

On the FTP tutorial, you should update the information about Kate being your hostess.

The HTML tutorials are great. Also, with the image section, you can remove the borders with CSS:

img {
border: 0px;
}

On the PHP includes tutorial, you shouldn’t mention that “PHP splits a document” but rather, you can use PHP includes to split a document (without much knowledge of the actual programming language).

The website guide is quite long; longer than I expected. It would be nicer in parts, or perhaps with anchors to take the viewer to certain points within the page.

I’ve noticed you using striked text in pages such as the Guess The Lyrics page and in SSI and PHP tutorials. There isn’t really a point in the text when you’re already mentioning something afterwards, so remove the striked text.

Portfolio

It’s neat that you allow these to open in a pop-up window but it might be a little bit easier to integrate them with your layout. Not all browsers will allow these pop-ups to open without changing some settings first.

I’ve read through the majority of these and obviously won’t review pieces such as your work, so I’ll move on.

About

This section would be better named as “site” or “website” as ‘About’ would generally include the owner pages as well.

I did mention how I liked your affiliate “blurbs” – something quite original. Joanna’s website doesn’t have a button, though.

On the application, you state that you list 11 affiliates in the sidebar. Perhaps change this to “a limited number” as it is bound to change.

Reviews

Obviously not reviewing your reviews section. On the main page, sentances should be sentences, and on the criteria page, scrible should be scribble (for the scoring).

Articles

These are all great, obviously. I enjoyed reading through them all and could read them over and over. I trust that you check them for spelling and grammatical errors as well, as I know you like to keep things well written and clean.

Originality & Creativity

Your website has a lot of original things; your articles are original. Your visitor content also very original, as well as the tutorials.

I find your layouts and designs very creative and original; you have a style that’s very unique.

Organisation & Errors

Well organised; no broken links or images. Just a few spelling errors here and there.

Overall Comment

You’ve got a great original website, Jorja. You’ve improved so much since I’ve gotten to know your website; it’s very impressive.

You always have new content and well written reviews and articles to keep visitors entertained, along with your blogs. Your stock images are quite good so more of those would be great.

Consider converting the reviews pages to integrate them with your layout – that’s my only suggestion. And those tweaks on the layout. Keep up the superb work.

Rating

(out of 5)