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Site Name: Myuri
Owner: Kylie
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 11th November 2008
Site Name
Myuri is a nice site name, but why on earth are you using a redirection URL? They often experience downtime and people won’t be able to view your site. It’s also not really nice to your host to use one! Having a redirection URL makes your site name easy to remember but in your case I think it’s fine – you don’t have a crazy long one.
Coding and Validation
Your HTML coding is really okay (see here) but you’re missing one absolute important thing! You are missing your doctype.
Doctypes are important. They assist in assuring your coding is smooth and hence your site will not take so long to load. You only have two errors in HTML 4.01 Transitional, so try putting this code as the very first thing in your HTML document:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
You should add that to every page of your website. Also, you have the following snippet of coding in your first page:
<input type="hidden" name="acctid" id="acctid" value="xwn18mo8tghdlp30" />
<input type="hidden" name="formid" id="formid" value="423007" />
<input type="hidden" name="required_vars" id="required_vars" value="name,email,field-e1220813449c646" />
You should not have the blackslashes before your ending tag. That is only used in XHTML. You need to look for anything like that and remove the backslash.
Another thing I notice with your coding (besides your CSS also not being validated).. is that your CSS is embedded! This is a major no-no and causes things to slow down. You need to have your stylesheet in a separate document with a .css extension. This tutorial should tell you how to make an external stylesheet.
You don’t have major problems with your coding, but I notice you use Frontpage or something to create your website – or you probably did in the past. Using programs is not as effective as doing things yourself, because errors can easily be made (as you can see). But if you fix up your CSS and don’t make it embedded, and also become a little more familiar with coding on your own, that would make things better.
Browser Compatibility & Usability
First of all, the splash page: NO. I don’t want to click on a link just to enter your site. It’s quite pointless. I want to see your site straight away, especially if I’m reviewing. Also, your hit counter is pointless. People can just see your enter page, and leave. And it only counts views, not unique views. In fact, I just refreshed your splash page three times, meaning that three of the visits aren’t even valid. So in essence, just remove this page. It’s old-style and not very useful at all.
Your site looks the same in all the common browsers according to Browsershots.org, so congratulations on achieving browser compatibility.
Well, the navigation is pretty obvious. Well done on that one.
Layout
I have to say, that while there have already been a few issues with your site, I am extremely grateful that you are not using iframes. In this day and age they’re pretty much regarded as stoneage.
The layout isn’t bad. The graphic is nice, and the way you’ve added the boxes for the navigation and content is good. I like how they fade out and they’re not just solid. ‘Myuri’ could have been written bigger and in a better font. The edges of the text look too sharp and slightly pixelated. The ellipsis isn’t needed at the end of ‘Myuri’.
The layout is quite wide, which isn’t a good thing for people with smaller browsers who may constantly have to scroll. And the height is annoying because on my screen, I have to scroll down in the main window before I can scroll in your content box. Basically, the layout is a little big which can be annoying for some users.
Your CSS is quite boring. You haven’t used different colours for the bold, italic and underlined text. Even the links don’t change colour. It’s all quite boring. Your scrollbar is coloured – and that’s only in Internet Explorer. It doesn’t look good – the colours are too strong and the black doesn’t look nice. It’s best (and safer) to stick with the default scrollbar.
Also what I notice is the three backslashes before your headings. Really, they’re not necessary. They look out of place and harsh.
Overall your layout is nice, but you could have added more ‘oomph’ into the CSS to make things look more exciting.
Content
On your main page:
Myuri. a great land should be Myuri, a great land
draws some should be draw some
go a head should be go ahead.
You haven’t done it much, but don’t urge people to sign your guestbook. It’s really quite annoying – people don’t want to be attacked with ‘sign my guestbook’ constantly. They may get turned off.
You also don’t really need the ‘to do’ list. It’s like you’re instructing your visitors what to do, in which case you may come across as not very nice. Some of these don’t need to be said, and could be said in the ‘Welcome’ message. Let your visitors feel welcome and free to explore.
Site
Updates aren’t needed. People don’t usually look at these. And the extra subpage is annoying – the only link on it is ‘November’.
Your awards and reviews should be on separate pages. There’s too many and your scrollbar is already shrinking. Consider reorganising this section, and place a review on a page, or use menus that ‘hide’ the content until it is clicked.
On your Inspirations page:
breathe should be breath
website’s should be websites
sometime should be some time.
All your affiliate button links would be better off the same size, or you could just make them all text links. It’s a lot easier that way.
Your link button sizes are not the same as the ones you state. Your apparently 88 by 31 pixel one is actually 93 by 36, while your apparent 200 by 40 one is actually 205 by 405.
Well done for including the site map, it’s quite useful. You have a link on your main page but it’s best if you put it in your welcome message so it can be seen easily without scrolling.
Myuri
I don’t see the point of the picture on your ‘About Me’ page. I don’t know what it relates to or if it is a picture taken by you or something.
A very basic page. Your ‘the website’ section here is simply a reiteration of your homepage. I suggest you remove one of them.
I’ll be honest with you, I’m not reading through all your stories. This is because I obviously can’t tell you how to write – that’s just nuts. But I have briefly skimmed through to make sure all the pages are there. Your writing is great. I think you should have the chapters open up in the same window though, and in the content box.
I don’t think you need the comments here as well! It is unnecessary to have to many places to comment. One would be fine.
You have a dead image after Eurandala on your ‘The Country/Map’ page (why does your link say ‘Country’ yet your heading on the actual page says ‘map’?).
Fun
A creative quiz you have here, but making it by using a form with selections and such – would be more interactive. You have a creative idea behind this by using Myuri characters but you should make an introductory paragraph about it!
Your Myuri Roleplay is a separate site so it won’t be reviewed.
The graphics – I don’t understand why they are under ‘gifts’. The graphics are okay. They’re not really of good quality and I’m seeing this – Monotype Corsiva I believe – font.. that is overused on your site. Try other fonts for variety.
Fan Fiction is a blank page.
Your blog is a separate part of your site so it won’t be reviewed – but I should tell you that Haloscan is a better commenting system than Freewebs, the one you appear to be using.
Contact
Chat is self explanatory. I don’t think you need the Guestbook. It’s just like a second comment board or chat board, unless you actually use the cbox for chatting. A lot of people don’t do that anymore.
Contact form is also self explanatory.
Originality & Creativity
Originality is excellent – nothing is better than your own story! I think you could be more creative in your layout though, I get easily bored of it.
Organisation & Errors
A few errors I did mention, and your coding wasn’t up to scratch. Organisation was okay. You need to organise pages like your awards and reviews. And a few of your pages have different titles to the links you named. In terms of navigation, things were okay.
Overall Comment
Kylie, when I first saw your site, I was truly expecting it to be empty and quite boring. You have turned that around a fair bit for me. The good thing is, that you write really well. Especially for an 11-year-old. I know age is no darn excuse, but sometimes if you’re that good, you gotta be praised. Especially when you write your own stories.
While I think your writing is great and can see it’s your forte, you need to jazz up that layout a little. Try more creative layouts, or use a layout with better colours to choose from. Try different fonts and colours – that kind of thing. Visitors want to be impressed by your layout, and I wasn’t.
Another thing you failed to do was to provide a credits page. You need to credit all websites or people who have assisted you. The programs you use, the graphics if you didn’t make them yourself, anything like that. You have noted sites that have inspired you, that’s a start!
My suggestions would be to obviously keep writing, to add a credits page, and make your layout a bit more approachable. Work on your coding a bit and make something in your layout stand out, because your layout looks way too generic.
And for goodness’ sake, remove the splash page!
Best of luck with your site.
1 Comment so far — leave one?
Jorja says:
Sorry, I had to refresh myself with what you said when you reviewed Kylie.
I think I’m going to have to be pretty harsh. 
Talk to you on MSN tomorrow.
Heh.
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