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Site Name: Designing Amateur
Owner: Sophia
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 5th April 2009

Previous reviews:

Smooches-x

Site Name

Hi Sophia! Again. I’d just like to let you know that you’re probably the first one to be reviewed on my new laptop. It might be a good thing, it might be bad; who knows? But I can tell you, your screenshot will look different from other reviews I’ve done.

Man, your site name and URL are long. It’s a nice name, though.

Coding and Validation

Your coding is valid HTML 4.01 Transitional. You have 8 warnings, naturally caused by your FanUpdate entries being coded in XHTML. I notice this is a great improvement from before! You can always switch to XHTML when you’re ready.

Your CSS is valid in CSS3. It isn’t valid in CSS2.1, but those are just very minor div attributes. It isn’t causing massive horror or anything.

I’d also like to add, that when you have fonts like lucida Calligraphy, you need to put them in quotation marks as they have a space in them. This is what you need to do for fonts that have what we call “whitespace”.

Browser Compatibility & Usability

Looking at your site at Browsershots.org, your layout is looking consistent in most browsers.

The layout’s quite compact (personally I’d prefer it a bit wider) so it’s not too bad in smaller resolutions. I would suggest centering it. I’m on a fairly big resolution, and while things look okay, they would look neater centered. OhPanic has a good tutorial on centering layouts.

Your default text is unusually large for such a small layout, but it’s readable, so good thinking!

Your links are pretty easy to differentiate. I don’t like how the style changes on hover, because the text dodges too much. Changing it to just a purple colour is fine.

The navigation is fairly clear but again, don’t change the font style – just the colour. The navigation should be a bit further up the sidebar so I don’t have to scroll to get to it. You might want to try horizontal CSS block navigation.

Layout

Very simple and compact. I love the quirky colours – a unique combination.

The header image is very nice and of good quality. Good effects are used!

The only thing I feel the need to really whinge about is the padding and the divs. You could add padding to the sides of the layout so the text isn’t so squished at the sides – or adding a margin to your text. Just a small one.

I don’t like how the sidebar cuts off – I’d prefer if there was a white background to the divs – which is why using containers to center your layout also has its advantages. The layout will look more uniform.

Content

Owner

Whoa, whoa, whoa? Have you read this aloud, Sophia? You have such a long sentence with no full stops! Look:

Fifteen years ago they named a Muslim brown color girl Sophia, since then she lived in her world of imagination and fake reality, it hasn’t been that hard for her to make her own fake world, the cause is: the real world never welcomed her and never accepted her as a mixed race girl, that came from three amazing races, in which they’re: Arabian, African and Indian race, so life was rough enough to make her own fake world.

That’s so long! Surely you can break it up into a bunch of sentences and use some wonderful semicolons too.

“She” doesn’t need to be capitalised
it risks should be its risks
escape from tragdey should be escaping from tragedy
too lack of age should be of lack of age
middle ages should be Middle Ages
any one should be anyone.

Visitor

Mmm, nice avatars! I can’t quite remember your old site but these are definitely great.
can be at should be can be found at.

You only have one wallpaper, but it’s very pretty! Consider making other sizes as well – larger ones like 1024 by 768, and maybe some widescreen ones. And make more!

I remember the stock photos from your old site. I remember mentioning that they could be improved in quality. More of this stuff would be great, because the photos you take are actually quite original.

I don’t really like how the textures page breaks up into two sections. They would both be okay on the same page under different headings.

The 800 by 600 textures are nice, though I like the last two better.
I really like the 100 by 100 ones, but they would be so much more useful if bigger. More flexible to use, etc. Not everyone uses textures simply for icons!
those should be these.

Rather than saying “they don’t have a certain size” on your patterns page, say “They are of random sizes”.
These are a bit poor in quality. They could be edited and be a very rough base but when you add more try and improve the quality of the photo.

Capitalise “I” on your advertising page!

Ditto for your orders page. And layouts i don’t should be layouts; I don’t.

And your article on 5 rules for web designing. Capitalise “I”!
design, if should be design; if
work, if should be work; if
sites, should be sites.
whats should be what’s
work, i should be work – I
999$ should be $999.

You have great tips!

Tutorials

Though your HTML tutorial goes into more detail than others I’ve seen, it’s still not such a handy tutorial and people are still bound to not understannd how HTML works.

The CSS tutorial isn’t too bad. But you should really go through the things they have to edit, which they might not understand.
in which used should be which is used.

The div tutorial isn’t too bad, but you might want to set things out in steps.

On your PHP includes tutorial:
sure do should be sure does.
Your tutorial is incorrect and has nothing to do with PHP includes. The codes to insert are just copies of the code before and after the content. There is no PHP include anywhere, and your instructions are not very clear.

On your Cutenews tutorial:
ofcourse should be of course.

Site

Fairly good page – please capitalise “I” – but where’s your credits?! You need a credits page, girl!

Originality & Creativity

Definitely more original than before; I can see you’re really trying out new things. I would encourage you to get more in touch with your creative side and keep making those kinds of textures and things.

Also, thank you for removing the celebrity images and making some wonderful textures!

Organisation & Errors

Fairly well organised, nothing to complain about.

Just some grammar/spelling errors. No broken links or images.

Overall Comment

Sophia, you’ve done a great job cleaning your site and making it more friendly! I think you have improved, but your site is still lacking some real ‘oomph’.

Your coding has improved – all your need to work on is adding more content. Also tweak a few things in your layouts, and make sure you have the best content to offer.

I wish you all the best with your progressing site!

Rating

(out of 5)