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Site Name: Spitfyre
Owner: Kinza
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 3rd December 2008
Site Name
Spitfyre is a unique name and it’s short and easy to remember. No complaints here. 
Coding and Validation
When I run your site through the W3C Markup Validation service you have 28 errors.
Firstly, no doctype or character encoding! This is just what you need at the top of EVERY page:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
You have no <html> opening tag! Your body tag is before your head tag! This is all a mess and things should really go like this:
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
A lot of your coding seems to be attempts at XHTML, but your site is best suited to HTML. The following snippet of coding is an example:
...fyre.net/news/img/grin.gif" alt=":D" />
You do not need the trailing backslash before the end of the tag; it’s only done in XHTML. However FanUpdate posts entries in XHTML so that may be the reason. In some images you are also not putting the URL in quotes like “this”. You need those quotes so it can be read properly!
Your CSS has only 3 errors. I’m sure those could be easily fixed if you tweak your CSS.
Browser Compatibility & Usability
According to Browsershots.org your site looks the same in almost all browsers, at least the common ones. However it doesn’t look the same in all screen resolutions.
A centered layout would be better. To achieve a centered look, try using div containers. You can use this tutorial from Tutorialtastic.
The default font is of a good size and colour and can be easily read.
Navigation is clear. I like how links to all pages are shown, it shows you have a sufficient amount of content and is quite unique.
Layout
My first impression is that the layout is quite large but looks a little professional.
The colours are very nice and your CSS is looking pretty good. I like how ‘Spitfyre.net’ is placed boldly at the top of the layout. The brushes are a nice touch but are looking way too harsh – the edges in particular. A light grey colour would have been better than black, and if the edges were smoother it would be better.
I don’t like the width of the layout though, as I mentioned, the layout is large. In many small resolutions it would result in a horizontal scrollbar which is generally undesirable.
I mentioned that CSS is good, but the headers – for instance ‘site’, ‘resources’, ‘other’, etc – are a little too large. The text could be a bit smaller because everything looks like it’s on large-scale.
Your little welcome message isn’t necessary because visitors want to go straight into your site and it’s going to be a little annoying if the message is at the top of every page. I would suggest making the text smaller or sticking it in one of your sidebars if you want to keep it.
I’m not really liking the double sidebars but at least they’re well organised with site content on the left, external links on the right.
I would remove the chatbox because you already have a content management system as your blog and people can leave comments there. The chatbox fills up your right sidebar though, but personally I would move it on a separate page by itself.
I don’t like the && in front of ‘Updates’ in your updates box. We’re not 10-year-olds! The updates are nice there but I don’t like how it scrolls. This could go in the sidebar alternatively, but if you’re keeping it up there I wouldn’t allow it to scroll.
Overall the layout is nice and you’ve done a great job on the navigation.
Content
Site
On the About page you are actually missing the link back to the ‘About’ page! I think it is like this on all pages except the homepage!
Well done on adding the code for the link back buttons; it’s hardly done nowadays. You may want to note the size so people don’t have to check.
All the other pages in this section were fairly well done. Your affiliate rules were straightforward and in your credits you also mentioned what you used, so well done.
Resources
The bookmarks are a really neat and creative idea! It’s a bit of an old idea but it’s nice to see them now because they’re pretty creative.
Color palettes are boring, the same old stuff I’m seeing here; very common on a lot of sites.
These emoticons are very cute and look very neatly lined. Different colours would be good. I particularly like your rounded corner square ones but unfortunately the link is dead.
On your favicons page, Dancefloor leads to a 404, you have possibly forgotten to add http:// in front of the link. The favicons are a little plain.
The fills are not bad but try a spectrum of colours, like maybe some pastel-type colours.
The gradients aren’t bad. They’re pretty well made and the large size is a plus, but some of the colours are too bright like the green. However this one is quite nice. I don’t really like the black or red and orange ones.
The letters are quite nice, add more for variety!
The splats are a nice idea. I’m not sure how some of the colours will look as layout bases but an okay job on them.
The stocks aren’t that good. The first two are quite blurry, and a few of the others are too. A couple of them also don’t load fully; you might want to look into that. The images don’t look very well taken, such as this one. Do you really think someone would use it as a stock image?
The textures are fairly good, don’t really have any more comments.
These PNGs are of copyrighted images; you should credit Neopets by linking to the actual site.
The layouts are all old as they have your old site URL on them, and the colours are harsh and blinding. I don’t think many visitors would use these.
Other
There are some errors in your tutorials:
On your Adding Textures tutorial, credit the image!
On your Making Blends tutorial:
A link to the downloading plugins tutorial would be neat. The images should be clicked for a ‘bigger view’, not a preview.
effects, blurs, Feather should be Effects > Blurs > Feather.
On your Outlines tutorial:
sizes should be size
Your should be You’re
Credit the image as well.
On your Plugins tutorial:
file, I should be file. I
C (Local Disk) should be C:\ (Local Disk)
there, if should be there. If
zipped should be compressed
paint.net should be paint.NET.
On your Glitter tutorial:
image, I’m should be image: I’m.
Credit that base image too.
On your Transparent Blogs tutorial credit the image unless it’s your own.
On your Cursors tutorial:
Paint.net should be Paint.NET
nd should be and.
On your Splatters tutorial:
Paint.net should be Paint.NET
a went should be one went.
On your CBox Ban tutorial:
clcik should be click
‘Message’s should be ‘Messages’.
On your Smilies tutorial:
turn out should be turnout
you smileys should be your smilies.
On your Cluttered to Neat tutorial:
corboard should be corkboard.
Credit the first image; if the second is not your setup, credit that too.
I am not going through all the reads, but I must say, the interviews are a great idea! You might want to put a link to this under services.
All the reads are original which is a plus.
Services
Under ‘For Hire’, ever so should be every so.
All these services are straightforward and are all nice services to offer; they make you come across as a friendly owner.
Originality & Creativity
I saw some creativity in your graphics and your layout and other ideas you had such as the interviews and reads.
You have original ideas and quite an original layout that stands out but a lot of your graphics aren’t of good quality and just seem to be for quantity’s sake.
Organisation & Errors
Well organised in terms of content and navigation but the layout could be organised a bit better.
Some errors particularly in large files like the stock images that didn’t load fully, and the ‘about’ link only being on the homepage!
Overall Comment
Kinza, you’ve got a fairly good and well kept site here. While it seemed that you had a lot of content because your navigation was well spread out, you didn’t have a lot of content generally.
The content was of good variety but unfortunately a lot were not of good quality, particularly the stock images. The layouts you offer are old and this leads me to think that the remainder of your content could be old too.
I suggest adding more newer content because I have the feeling you can do a lot better in your graphic quality.
You’ve got a fairly good site but it could do with a little spicing up! Good luck!
