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Site Name: The Forgotten Lair
Owner: Phoenix
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 3rd May 2010 – 9th May 2010

Site Name

It’s not a bad name – definitely suits the .org extension and is not hard to remember. However, I noticed that you mention “TFL” a lot to abbreviate your name – I just thought I’d point out that “TFL” is the abbreviation for the very common network The Fanlistngs which has been around 10 years, so it might cause a little confusion.

Coding and Validation

I know you mentioned to me that your site isn’t HTML valid, but it’s not what I’m after. I won’t be looking through all your pages for bad coding, but I will check the homepage as I assume you use PHP includes and would have more or less the same structure from page to page.

According to the HTML validator your coding has 246 errors and 13 warnings… okay, ouch.

I’m not going to go through EVERY error but I can tell you right now that the main problem is that you’re attempting to validate to XHTML (given by your doctype) yet you still have tags in uppercase. In XHTML, they should be in lowercase.

A lot of the errors are caused by scripts. Now I have to mention it in this section, though it is also an overall comment – a lot of pages on your website take an extremely long time to load. Please consider the fact that some users don’t have Javascript enabled, or don’t have it at all.

Your CSS has 2 errors and 59 warnings. padding: none should be padding: 0.

I would really recommend that you sort through your coding, perhaps find alternatives for the Javascript (for example, PHP scripts), as it would really be worth it. I noticed that you are also doing some freelance design; for this reason I must stress how important semantic markup is.

I left the following for the end of this section as I found it very consistent throughout your website, but it is worth mentioning. You are using <textarea> to display code for various layouts and graphics. Textarea should not be used, because it is intended for user input in form fields (like for contact forms and comments). There is a better and suitable substitute that is <code>. It can also be customised the way you wish. I have a tutorial on displaying code correctly, as does Jem.

Browser Compatibility & Usability

I have looked at the majority of your site in Firefox. It looks the same in Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome. The navigation is pretty obvious.

Your text size is really very small. When I look at it on the tutorials pages, I have to squint to read the blocks of text. Your layout and website is really on a big scale – both content-wise and graphic wise, so I would recommend making your text bigger as it would make everything so much easier to read.

I would also like to suggest a different colour for the links on hover. In the main content area, I want to see what I’m about to click on – making the colour the same as the background doesn’t help.

The width of the layout is really large, meaning that anyone on a small screen resolution might have difficulty reading some text on your website or navigating in general.

Layout

It’s not a bad layout – I like how you’ve included an image on rotation – for such a big website at a glance, I think it keeps users from being too bored of the same image. Some websites have adopted this technique on a more personal level with a personal photo gallery but it works on your website as well.

I’ve tested the search function to make sure it works, and it does – I am impressed, well done.

In the little blurb at the top of your page, I really do not feel that it is necessary to capitalise the first letter of all the types of resources you have.

Content

Site

On the FAQ page Neopet’s should be Neopets’; mistakened should be mistaken.

On the credits page the following links are broken:

• http://animevisions.net/
• http://www.designchronicle.com/memento/
• http://randomc.animeblogger.net/
• http://www.hostultra.com/~infinitfan/goodies_brushes.html
• http://www.itsuji.net/brushes/
• http://www.xiao-star.net/
• http://animeshare.org/
• http://www.imanimetions.net/

On the contact page, it would be a good idea to include an email address in case you cannot be reached via the form.

Graphics

The animations aren’t really that great. Animated graphics can sometimes be very distracting on a webpage.

The first image on this page doesn’t load. All the animations take a very long time to load, though, and having so many on the one page makes loading time even longer.

The icons/avatars are really quite nice and I like the effects you’ve used on them – most of them are really good in quality and effect.

There’s only one hiatus sign – is it really necessary? A lot of these signs/banners aren’t really needed – not many people use pre-made hiatus and welcome signs.

There are two broken images on this page and there is one broken image on this page.

On the two links under “Text Glitter Generator” on the glitters/generators page, the links are the same but the anchor text is different – you could just put the anchor text as “Click Here To Create Your Own Naruto/Bead Glitter Text!”

I really don’t think the glitters and sprites are of good quality. They look a little fuzzy – especially the glitters – and they are pretty tacky compared to everything else on your website.

The stationery is really really nice – I don’t come across these much, and when I do, they’re not very well done. I love how yours are created, with the right opacity and technique. I don’t know why some of the previews have watermark text on them and some don’t, though.

The wallpapers look great; I’ve read from the information about your site that these take you the longest to create – and I can tell you’ve spent a lot of time on them because they really do look good.

Designs

The backgrounds look really tacky and old. I recommend you take them down. Animated graphics can be really distracting, especially as backgrounds. The style of the backgrounds isn’t that great either. I’m sure you know that these aren’t the best graphics either.

I wouldn’t recommend cursors for a website, users don’t really like to have something like that inflicted on them especially when they are used to seeing the default cursor.

The clocks aren’t really necessary. They’re a nice example of script use, but not recommended because again you have acknowledged that they don’t work unless you have Flash. Visitors will have clocks on their computer, there isn’t really a need to put them on a website.

Now I’m not sure what you use to display your advertisements (I assume Google AdSense) but I’ve been getting a lot of advertisements reading “Are you single?” and others related to dating. In the case that there are younger users on your site, this might not be so appropriate, so filtering of sorts is in order.

I don’t like the MySpace contact boxes either – MySpace graphics should be made appealing as well; this just looks like you’ve slapped text on an image and I believe you could do better than this.

The MySpace layouts are probably the best MySpace layouts I’ve seen that are well designed and have an image as a focus. I know they’re just thumbnails and I have no way of testing the layouts as I don’t have a MySpace account, but the layouts are simply structured and don’t seem to have problems either. Most of the MySpace layouts I see are a mess, not even organised, and to put it bluntly, don’t make sense. I think you’ve done a great job here, but I really don’t like the tiled background in the two layouts under miscellaneous.

The MySpace banners are really simple. I can’t really say much on them because it’s just text on an image. Not much design skill is involved. I know such is the nature of MySpace graphics, but your MySpace layouts were a hell of a lot better.

Most of the site layouts are well done, but I notice flaws in all of them. Firstly, these are site layouts – you should make sure that they are compatible across different browsers and are easily viewable. For every single one of these layouts, I have not been able to see any of the content on the page without scrolling a great amount. My screen isn’t huge, but it’s not small either. You need to consider visitors who might still be on a resolution of 800 by 600 pixels or so – they would not enjoy looking through a website with one of your layouts, due to the image being so large.

The text on this layout is extremely difficult to read. White on light blue is an awful idea. I also don’t like Bleach and Sasuke; the text on textured background is hard to read.

Additionally, it would be nice to validate the code (to the best of your ability) or tweak it to the standard your current website layout is at!

After looking through this section, I think some of these shouldn’t be classed as “designs” – the banners would fit better under “graphics”, for example.

Resources

On the anime scans page, “Collected By Phoenix Over Time From The Net” need not have each word capitalised apart from your name (else it sounds like a book title or something).

Also, “Links Will Open Up On A New Page. Click Below To Choose The Scan Section You Wish To View” does not need to have each word capitalised.

However I like the way the scans are organised, if I’m correct, you have used a generator for this? I don’t think there will be any broken links or any problems; from a quick check it seems to be okay! Some of the large scans go past the width of my screen though.

I’m glad you made it clear that you aren’t claiming the scans – though you have scanned them and collated them yourself they are not yours and it’s good that you’re making a note of that.

Similarly on the anime screenshot gallery page, “Links Will Open Up On A New Page. Click Below To Choose The Section You Wish To View” does not have to have each word capitalised.

The galleries are okay, also very organised. I recommend you check up on these though, especially in the coding, because I’m getting a Trojan Horse virus warning from visiting this page.

Most of the images have the prefix PDVD – this seems to be the default name, but perhaps putting in a brief description or a unique identifier for the subject of the photo would be more useful for people who could be looking for something specific.

In the navigation, “icon base” should really be “icon bases”. These bases look great though – all cropped well and are of good quality. I downloaded them all to check as well, and they work perfectly fine! I like that you’ve taken the time to do all this.

The fonts are okay – good job for checking that these are allowed to be redistributed. I tend to see lots of websites asking for credit and saying something ridiculous, so this was a nice change. On the font “Ladeaulx” (I’m pretty sure that’s what it is!), should “there words” not be “their words”?

I actually think that with some of the downloads you have, you could include the size of the file. This could be pretty useful. I was shocked to see that one of the brush packs was 5 MB – just wasn’t expecting that. Users will appreciate it more if you show them how big these files are, as some could be on a limited data plan.

The textures look great. I really like the style. The third last texture thumbnail leads to a 404.

I don’t have much to say about the “PNGs” – they shouldn’t technically be called “PNGs”. PNG is an image file extension; you’re better off calling these character cutouts or image cutouts. I don’t find these original – one could easily grab a picture and cut it on their own, also be able to edit it the way you might have. I have seen a lot of “PNGs” around many websites.

I don’t think the HTML tutorials are all that useful. It doesn’t really go through every single step and other issues. For example, image tags in XHTML differ to that of HTML, and your paragraphs are completely incorrect. A paragraph is NOT coded like this:

I am Sam. <p>I like cheese on Fridays. <p>Dogs are great.<p>

Paragraphs are written like this:

<p>I am Sam. </p>
<p>I like cheese on Fridays. </p>
<p>Dogs are great.</p>

You should make a note to remember this; it is an extremely important and very basic piece of knowledge for HTML.

Making text bold should be done with <strong> rather than <b> because it is better for screen readers for the blind and is more semantic.

I would advise against using styling for the scrollbar; it only works in Internet Explorer and is invalid, not to mention, users don’t like to have default elements like the cursor and scrollbar changed. Users are more comfortable around what is familiar to them.

Your graphic tutorials are much better than your HTML ones – I believe these are your strength. You have good design skill and you’ve shared some lovely techniques here. What I would recommend on most of the tutorials is rather than “click here for screenshot”, display the image on the page. It’s a lot easier to follow that way, especially since you have some screenshots on the page already – keeping it consistent is a good idea.

In your scan extraction tutorial, about the close should be about to close;most important part should be most important parts.

Another tip – consider left-handed users in your tutorials. I use a left-handed mouse and the “right click” function is the left click for me. You could mention “left click on a left-handed mouse” or “secondary click”.

In “The Breakdown” (Do’s and Do Not’s is incorrect punctuation and you’re better off saying Dos and Don’ts):

never before seen in a Gundam wallpaper before

You need not repeat the word “before”; just use it once. You also do not need to repeat “Click The Thumbnails To FULLVIEW” – just mention it once at the beginning of the guide, considering you have many thumbnails. On this tutorial as well, you should update the URL tag on the images, as they display your old site URL.

I like the tutorial on rendering a Pocky stick; that’s very unique.

Multimedia
There are a lot of reviews in the anime reviews section (should be “anime reviews” not “anime review”). Since they are pretty short individually, this might have been your reason for not putting them on separate pages? Nevertheless I think there should be some form of navigation on this page. I know using Ctrl + F is easy, but if you had a list of links – by using anchor links you could drop down to parts of the page. You could link to each review on the page like this. It’s pretty basic and I would suggest you do that, and include a “back to top” link too.

Otherwise, I would suggest that you at least have pages for each letter – animes beginning with A, B, C, and so on. It would definitely give a better sense of organisation that the mess it looks like now. It’s organised – I know – but it’s just way too much to have on the one page.

I mean… it’s 49 pages pasted in Microsoft Word. That’s got to be reason to organise them somehow, right?

The ringtones are nice – I think it’s nice that you offer them, but a lot of phones today allow for any mp3 file to be used as a ringtone, so there would be a chance that these could be found elsewhere in full. That said, I don’t think these are that unique or useful, even though they are nice to offer.

By now I’ve noticed that you have a lot of content on your website, of course, but when you create thumbnails for images, do not simply resize the image with HTML code. I’m referring to your fanart page. The images take a long time to load in full, and though they are small on the page, they can be hindering for anyone with a slow internet connection. For thumbnails you should crop the original image in the right size and use the image separately. Sometimes due to loading time, the browser can lock up and freeze or the request for the image loading might even time out. If people want to see images in full they will most likely click on it. It is using up a lot of bandwidth (both for you and the user) if you simply resize images through HTML.

Also, on your textures page earlier, you did make separate images for the thumbnails there.

Now I’m not sure who submits these images – are they members of your forums or boards or something similar? It might be useful to mention on the pages, or to link to their profiles.

I personally don’t think it’s a good idea to offer music (mp3s) on your website. No doubt it’s very popular and a lot of people might come across music here, but it isn’t a good idea to redistribute music on your website that isn’t yours. It can often be found elsewhere on the web, and it’s best to be on the safe side of the law if it isn’t done. These are provided through Megaupload but I think most of these songs could be found via a search engine. Again this would fall under the category of content that isn’t quite original – I like that you have an entire network of content but I feel that it takes the focus off some of your great designs that you have made yourself.

I’m not quite sure what the screenshots mean, so an explanation on the page of what they actually are might help. I see they’re mostly to do with your site. I don’t really like the screenshots relating to hacking/banning and thieves. To be honest it seems immature to display publicly on your website, and I’m sure you would only want to document what is good.
“October 20, 2008″ and “JULY 6, 2006″ have images that don’t load.

Networks
Not much I can say about this section; most are external links.

Originality & Creativity

You have a lot of content on your website and your website has been going for many years, but I think there is a lot of work that can be removed as it lacks creativity – this being the banners, signs, signatures, glitters… Other pieces of content on your website are very well done, like the site layouts and the wallpapers.

I am confident that you know your strong points. It’s a matter of getting in there and doing something about it.

Additionally, I personally think that there is little originality in have such an anime-themed website, primarily because you will be pulling from image sources and rarely any of the original images would be yours. Please correct me if I am wrong. But I can imagine it would take a long time for one to draw and perfect an anime character.

Organisation & Errors

Your site is fairly well organised – all pages are in appropriate sections (though I think some of the “designs” would better fit under “graphics”)… but I think that the pages themselves could be more organised.

There are a few pages with dead links or images – I did my best to check all of them but it’s possible I missed some.

Overall Comment

I don’t have too much to say overall as I’ve said it throughout the course of this review. You have a website with both good, and bad, content. There’s some that’s just too “old” and tacky and takes the focus of what is the best about your website – things like the wallpapers and site layouts, and the textures and brushes.

Quality is not quantity, which I’m sure you’re aware of. I think that your site needs a big cleanup (in retrospect). Remove old content, organise pages like the anime reviews… and so on. Some of it is already organised, but it’s just a matter of working on that and removing what is old and no longer useful.

Please try to consider the user more throughout the designing of your pages. Not just from the skeleton of code, but think about loading time – your site is very image-heavy and reducing the number of images, and scripts, on a page, could help. This web page analyser is useful to show you how a page’s loading time is hindered and what can be done to improve it.

Rating

(out of 5)