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Site Name: Auberginer
Owner: Lisa
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 10th September 2008
Site Name
Couldn’t complain. It’s cute, it’s simple, and definitely unique.
Layout
It’s bright and colourful! I’ve never seen anything like it. Rather a long version name, but I skipped past that because it’s not as important. Though I don’t know if ‘sisters’ was referring to the triplets.. never mind! I love how the text doesn’t overlap over those parts of the layout like the girls in the bottom left corner, and the boy on the sidebar. It makes it look more realistic. Great job! I liked your layout very much, the only problem I had was with the size. The height is a little large.
You use iframes which is a little annoying; you could achieve the same look with php, and it isn’t that hard. As for the height of the layout, because you’re using iframes there’s a lot of scrolling going on, and I sort of disregarded the bottom of your layout.
Your sidebar scrolls too, which is unfortunate as your navigation is in it, and most visitors would navigate straight away and maybe not look at what is further on in your sidebar. Another note on your scrollbar – it’s coloured, and not all browsers support coloured scrollbars so your site may not be what you expect in some browsers.
Your CSS was otherwise fine, the links posed a problem because they could only be differentiated when hovered over. When not on hover, the colour was too close in shade to your main text so it was hard to tell.
Nevertheless, a very good job; the height could have been condensed to compensate for the other tiny problems – but it was definitely a job well done.
Content
Your sidebar had some voting buttons in it, which was a shame I couldn’t see them. I didn’t know what you meant by the colours in the layout either, were these just the main colours?
In this case, I thought that navigation on the layout image itself would have been more effective. I’m also not too fond of the marquee of affiliate buttons; I’ve been seeing it a lot lately and it’s a little distracting. Also, the back/home/up buttons aren’t necessary. ‘Back’ is already integrated in the browser, and ‘home’ is in your sidebar. Refreshing also isn’t necessary.
YOU:
Downloadables were good; well set out. Your Ellie MuPea maker doesn’t work in Firefox, and you should mention this on the page as well as simple instructions to drag and drop.
Your adoptables are wonderful! I loved the tiny animals, the Gelly balloons and the eatables (which should be edibles, as a note). Ditto for your older adoptables. I like how you’ve provided the code.
Your avatars had a bright blue background in Firefox and weren’t in the same alignment as they were in Internet Explorer (which was nicer).
Clocks were set out nicely in both browsers, so perhaps just a little difference in the code. Personally I don’t like clocks that much because they’re not useful; but yours are good and well made.
Emoticons were good, but in your rules you stated ‘not on MSN’. I didn’t think this rule was valid, because if someone used them on MSN you wouldn’t know – they would use them anyway. It is much better to state ‘use ONLY for emoticons on your blog or tagboard’.
Favicons and website material were also good.
As for the reads, be sure to link to where you got the article from if you didn’t write it yourself. Your Neopets page is good but I didn’t know that the links would popup, so put a little icons or symbol to show that, or a note at the top of the page (some people may turn off popups).
Resources – a wide and comprehensive, excellent list!
With your Sims tips and tricks, there was the same problem with your bright blue background.
Going through all your tutorials, they are excellent. All the HTML, and graphics related ones. The iframes one lacks some detail though, and some pages don’t really belong here like the tips and the acronyms, because they aren’t really tutorials.
ME:
This section was practically perfect. I liked how your quilting bee was set out.
SITE:
Trust me, I looked at every page it was basically all good. You had a link on your buttonwall/link exchanges to apply, but not for affiliation; and your contact form only had an option for affiliation.. just a little inconsistent. Everything was nice here, I liked the photo of the auberginer on your ‘about’ page, which led me to comment on your favicon. It’s incredibly cute!
The only problems I had here was with the tagboard, which you’ve already got on your side navigation so it wasn’t necessary to repeat it.
Originality
Originality was great; everything was all you!
Errors
I took a point off for those little browser glitches, that’s all you need to fix – browser compatibility is important!
