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Site Name: Jules
Owner: Julianne
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 3rd June 2009
Site Name
Pretty short; no problems remembering it or your URL.
Coding and Validation
Your coding is valid.
Your CSS is valid.
Great job. It saves me a lot of time and gives me a good impression that you care about your coding. I also took a look at your source code and it’s very neat and orderly.
Browser Compatibility & Usability
Browsershots.org tells me your site is generally the same in most browsers.
The navigation is clear and matches with the layout. The hovers on “home”, “owner” and “exits” are a bit light though.
The font size is fine and everything is readable.
The layout width is rather wide. For one of the smallest resolutions, 800 by 600 pixels, it would be a bit too wide and result in a horizontal scrollbar. It’s rare people are on this small resolution but just keep that in mind.
Layout
The colour scheme is very nice and uses quite an array of colours. Generally a lot of colours don’t work too well but you’ve implemented a nice range of shades both pale and bright. The red is a bit too bright for the rest of the layout though. Making it a few shades lighter and less bright would match better, because they stand out quite a lot.
I like the rather abstract look of the header image. I’m not sure exactly what it is but it’s a nice design.
A bit of padding below the navigation and before the content would be better. “Jules” – the heading on the sidebar – is quite close to the navigation above it.
There’s nothing much to complain about with this layout. It has a great use of colours, a nice solid variety of fonts and is very organised.
Content
Visitor
I am not sure about your credits page as I haven’t looked at it yet, but you should credit for the images used on the AIM icons page. It would be better to include them on the page. These aren’t the greatest – I prefer your photography ones. They appear to be of better quality.
Hmm, I’m not entirely sure how album covers work. They look a bit tacky, simply coloured signs with a title. I didn’t realise the bullet point list consisted of links, so you might want to write something like “click the names to expand for content”.
The blank buttons are nice. I definitely notice a difference between your photography and other used graphics already.
The fan art seems to just be a display of work – I don’t really think these images could be used for anything much. The second one looks a bit pixelated on the model’s face. You’ve linked to the credits page here – perhaps on the main visitor page, you could make a note of the credits.
The icon textures are nice and of good quality. You could make a bigger variety of styles too. Ah, I have discovered your little hunt.
I notice you are using JavaScript frequently to organise content on your pages. Be mindful that people’s browsers or systems may not be able to view JavaScript items so they wouldn’t be able to see the content on your site.
You’re using celebrity images for your journal icons. I don’t know if you’re aware but you do need permission from the photographer to use these, unless you are the photographer. Also, using celebrity images is quite generic. I suggest using an open source image site for making icons. The JavaScript is not necessary on this page because there aren’t a lot of icons.
The same goes for the mini blends – try not to use celebrity images. These are quite nice but I really don’t know how “mini blends” can be used. They’re too small for a layout and I can’t really think of how else you could use them.
Gradients aren’t something I regularly use. The ones you have are nice but cook up ones with different colour schemes; these aren’t exactly the most appealing gradients.
The competitions are alright; I just sent in an entry for ‘guess the movie’. You’re using a freeserver script; I recommend something like NL-PHPMail, which is a form mail script.
Your blend competition has the following:
Make a blend of No One At The Moment using any photos you want!
Perhaps if it is closed at the moment… a big “this round closed” at the top of the page would be more understandable.
Obviously you got the love test and mind reader games from a JavaScript website; I don’t see this website in your credits page though!
The hunts game is fairly common – good stuff though. I haven’t seen the word puzzles on a website before – I like how you’ve spiffed this up in your own way with a graphics program!
The blending tutorial is great – well organised with screenshots on the page and not as a link! I think you should update your URL on this though.
Wow; I have never seen anything like your pop art tutorial. This is definitely unique. Thumbs up for this one.
I hope you add to the resources page – this is a good list.
I’m going through your reads. I’m sure you didn’t write some of these yourself. You shouldn’t redistribute these as they are not your work; you should at least be providing credit.
Owner
Very organised, short-and-sweet page. You sure get a lot of awards and gifts!
The JavaScript isn’t necessary on the photos page; you don’t have many photos to display anyway.
Domain
You should capitalise HTML and CSS.
inbetween should be in between
anyways should be anyway.
On your advertising page:
two months, in which should be two months;.
On your affiliate application, the following:
I am not currently accepting anymore affiliates.
Is badly phrased and should be something like:
Currently, I am not accepting any more affiliates.
The credits page is good and has a nice organised list of references. Don’t forget to add where you obtained those JavaScripts.
Link me and past layouts pages are fine.
Exits
Pretty self explanatory.
Originality & Creativity
Definitely some original stuff here and there – that pop art tutorial was genius. You did have a lot of generic content too.
However you definitely show that you’re a creative person. I suggest using your own photography and some legal image sources.
Organisation & Errors
Well organised and no huge errors or broken links spotted.
Overall Comment
You’ve got a great site, Julianne. I enjoyed reviewing it. It was well organised and had a very user-friendly interface.
I suggest getting some sort of commenting system for your updates so people can comment there intead of having to comment all the time. It isn’t necessary but once you start obtaining more comments it’s a good idea.
I also suggest using more original images. Be sure you credit those reads or write your own; it’s not original to distribute other people’s work.
1 Comment so far — leave one?
Julianne says:
Yay I can comment now
Thanks for the review, I found it really helpful. I made some changes as I moved from my subdomain to my domain! I moved my info on my sidebar a bit down so it wasn’t too close to the navigation, I started making more icons (no celebs, and I used open image sources). And I also got rid of some fluff like the fan arts (which might go back up if I ever make a decent amount), the reads (even though I found them interesting, they weren’t mine so it made sense not to keep them).
Oh and I also finally changed the credits on my tutorials. The problem with that was that I didn’t save the .psd versions so instead of just going in and changing the website on my images, I had to redo my tutorials with new images with new credits. Although this time I figured to just write my name just in case I change sites again, or something else happens!
All in all, I did find your suggestions very helpful
Thank you for the review!
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