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Site Name: Smooches-x
Owner: Sophia
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 24th January 2009
Site Name
Smooches-x is annoying; you don’t need an ‘x’ and nor do you need a dash. It makes the whole thing more annoying to type and harder to remember. You should have stuck with ‘smooches’ or something else. You should avoid dashes.
Coding and Validation
Your coding has 26 errors. You have a doctype, which is good, but you’re forgetting your character encoding. This is what you need at the beginning of every document, after your doctype:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" >
Also, with images, you need to provide an alt tag, even if it is blank.
You cannot use the marquee in your doctype as it is deprecated. Try an image slideshow which uses some JavaScript.
Other errors are caused by the scripts you’re using for the Webs button and for your counter. For instance, here:
<a href="http://www.twospots.com/" style="style: none;" alt="web design" title="web design">
the alt and title parts should go.
Your Freewebs sticker is also part of the problem, the script language should be text/JavaScript and not just JavaScript.
With other errors, just make sure your divs are all closed, as well as other tags.
Your CSS has 7 errors. Your CSS is embedded in your coding. You should (well, must) put it in its own file called css.css or something like that, which you can do by opening Notepad, then saving the document as “css.css” (or something.css, including the quotation marks).
Then you will need to use a code on your page to call on the CSS file:
<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”css.css” type=”text/css”>
The errors in your CSS are caused by forgetting hyphens. font size should be font-size, border bottom should be border-bottom, for example.
Under your h1 first letter, similar errors occur.
Browser Compatibility & Usability
According to Browsershots.org your site looks the same in most browsers.
Your layout header is much too big. I have to scroll in order to see any content or even the navigation. You should make it a lot smaller. And how would people with smaller resolutions feel, having to scroll more?
Your navigation is after your affiliates and advertising and it woudl be a wiser idea to have it first thing on the sidebar, or to try semantic CSS block navigation.
Your text should be made a little bigger as it’s a bit hard to read. Consider making your links a significantly different colour from your text too, so they can be easily differentiated.
Layout
The header image, as I mentioned, is too big. Please cut it down. This will also cut down on file size and loading time.
You’re using a celebrity in your layout, and I don’t know if you’re aware but celebrity images are actually illegal. Read this article. Also, it’s not very original, so try using pictures that no one else has!
I don’t like how you’ve slapped ‘Confidence’ on your layout multiple times in different font sizes. Once would have had a better effect and less harsh.
Your content div isn’t long enough and there’s a large gap between it and your sidebar. Even it out so there isn’t a gap.
Your links should also be a different colour on hover. They’re too light; try a darker colour.
You did a great job with the layout otherwise. It’s centered, which is excellent. And you’ve blended the images really well.
Content
Now I notice that your Cutenews has gone funny, hence your homepage is rather empty. This doesn’t mean you can’t blog or make entries! Temporarily use Haloscan! Or, you can still type your updates, but people can’t comment.
It’s never good to have an empty homepage. Also, write properly if you’re writing a message to your visitors. Capitalise your Is and first letters of sentences!
About Me
I understand you’re supporting this ‘Save Gaza’ thing, but there’s no need to put it on your page about yourself.
You really need to edit this page. You have a lot of punctuation mistakes. Capitalise Muslim, Arabian, African, Indian – just to name a few. Capitalise the television shows you like.
And alot should be a lot. Put a space after a full stop or period or comma. Capitalise your Is. It doesn’t look professional when you write like this.
Visitor
On this page you need to capitalise I’ve and MSN and yahoo Messanger should be Yahoo Messenger. Also, programme should be program.
You have top rules in celebrity webdesigning. I think you mean celebrity graphic designing. And also, using celebrity images is illegal. Also, the page is unfinished and I only see two rules. These aren’t bad rules, and you could actually rename this page to just graphic designing – not necessarily celebrity graphics only.
You’ve got a nice competition going on that encourages visitors to enter.
inorder should be in order
you get should be You get
cutenews should be Cutenews
installation(optional) should be installation (optional)
i normally dont should be I normally don’t.
It’s unclear when you say “skipping the other orders”. You should say ‘I’ll design you a layout and coding and you will automatically be first in queue’.
The downloads are all external links. Perhaps put an asterisk next to these links so visitors know. It’s nice that you have these but of course they aren’t your own content.
The photography is quite nice. I have never been to Tanzania and don’t know a lot about it, and these photos are definitely unique. The quality could be improved a bit as they’re a bit blurry.
Your heading, Princess salme’s, the princess of Zanzibar & Oman looked a like dresses. does not make sense and it also appears as a link because you possibly forgot to close a lnking tag. On this page, please write with proper grammar and punctuation.
Your textures page has the title ‘photography’. Here you should obviously capitalise I, and programme should be program – consider specifying which program you used.
These look pretty good, except texture2.png which looks a bit pixelated and bad quality.
Your avatars are pretty good and of fairly good quality, but you should try to use images other than celebrity images.
These affiliates buttons are cute! Did you make them yourself? You should state so if you did. If not, then you shouldn’t be redistributing them.
i should be I
aslong should be as long.
These ‘normal graphics’ all use celebrities. Of course they’re made quite well but aren’t so unique. You shouldn’t be using them, as I mentioned.
Your pre-made site layouts are really quite good. I don’t like the effect you’ve made on Katy Perry’s face though. All these layouts are excellent, even though you are using CSS templates. In fact, I’d say that these are probably better than your current layout.
The quotes aren’t bad. I like the first one more than the second one, though. I usually don’t see these as very useful.
theyre should be they’re
pngs should be PNGs.
Your advertising service page is pretty self explanatory. Please notice should be Please note.
Capitalise Cutenews! Though, Cutenews is an unsafe script so I don’t know if you should be encouraging its use. It’s not secure and doesn’t use a database, only a flat file system; that’s why.
It’s nice to offer designs for other people but what if they don’t want to have one of celebrities? This way you have to make things more flexible and ask what your requester wants on it.
You offer reviews too! Do you display them on your site? Do you follow a rubric? This kind of thing is needed. And note that you’re offering your opinion and others may not agree. What are you helping people to improve? Because your coding isn’t exactly up to scratch!
Site
Capitalise HTML. You should just put all credits on one page. But at least you’re writing what you used – images and HTML help. Don’t forget to credit Freewebs and if you used any image hosts like Photobucket.
I don’t know why you need these rules here. You’re better off putting it on the page that the premades and reviews are on, so people will be sure to read them.
This page is very badly written. You need to capitalise first letters of sentences, capitalise I, write in proper sentences and spell things correctly.. so on and so forth. This page is horrible and to be honest, you don’t sound like a 15-year-old at all. I won’t be correcting all your mistakes because you need to read through this page yourself; all these are just careless mistakes.
Originality & Creativity
You have a creative streak and a great way of putting graphics together and designing graphics. However you need to work on optimising them and increasing the quality.
I can’t say I saw many original things on your site. There were many celebrity graphics, which, over time, get boring and monotonous. Your photography was original and it’s something that I’d like to see more of.
Organisation & Errors
Things were pretty organised and there were no broken links, but your pages were carelessly written and you had a lot of spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes which you should fix. It’s not very professional.
Overall Comment
Sophia, you clearly put a lot of effort into your site and your coding isn’t bad. Your graphic design skills are excellent, but you need to work on your content and tweaking your site. Your content is quite boring and unoriginal and I’d like to see the celebrity graphics go. You should do a lot better by expanding your horizons and working with other kinds of graphics.
Please write nicely on your site, not in chatspeak or messily. It doesn’t look very professional.
Add more original content, as mentioned.
I’d like to see improvements to your layout and CSS. Don’t make your headers so large, and use a bit more colour. Like I said, your coded layouts were better than your current layout.
Good luck with your site!
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