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Site Name: Rogued
Owner: Sophie
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 22nd November 2008
Site Name
The name Rogued is original. It’s short and easy to remember as well.
Coding and Validation
When I run your site through the W3C Markup Validation service I cannot validate your website because you have a question mark symbol in your footer, which interferes with the utf-8 encoding. I assume that you wanted a copyright sign, and you should type © to get that character rather than typing it in from, say, a Word document.
I run your coding through the validator after manually deleting that character and you have about 80 errors!
You do not need the <head> tag, as you already have the XHTML head tag here:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
Also, with your meta tags, a few of them are capitalised, like “META”. In XHTML, commands must be in lowercase! And a few of these are missing the trailing backslash, so:
<META name="keywords" content="rogued, rogued.info, sophie, blog, tutorials, reviews">
should be:
<meta name="keywords" content="rogued, rogued.info, sophie, blog, tutorials, reviews" />
I’ll go through the other errors in a list:
- You are also missing the trailing backslash where you call on your CSS.
- You didn’t end your
<head>and you just went straight to your body tag. - On your header image, you have no
alttag. All images in XHTML must have this, even if it is blank. You also have no trailing backslash. - You have
<center>to center your ads. This piece of coding is deprecated and cannot be used; you should center this using your CSS file by includingtext-align:center; - What is
<style type="text/css"></STYLE>doing in your coding? Eek!
Okay, instead of using a Javascript for your ads, try this PHP code:
<?
$imagevar=rand(1,2); //ALWAYS CHANGE THE LAST NUMBER TO THE LAST NUMBER YOU HAVE ABOVE AS THE $IMAGEVAR VARIABLEif($imagevar==1)
{
print '';
}
else if($imagevar==2)
{
print '
}
?>
To add more buttons, just copy the four “else if” lines and change the number accordingly.
- All your
<br>should be<br / >– you have a LOT of these that are causing errors. You need that trailing backslash. - Don’t ever use
<center>! Instead, modify it using CSS, like I mentioned above.
Your CSS is not validated (check here) because you have forgotten some } in your CSS! Go through and check that, otherwise you’ll keep getting parsing errors.
Browser Compatibility & Usability
Your site looks great in most browsers according to Browsershots.org so well done on that!
Navigation is clear but the text could be bigger. Try block navigation.
The main text is a nice size and easy to read.
Layout
It’s centered – very well done. The header image isn’t too big which is a plus.
I like how the header has a somewhat ‘grungy’ look with the chopped image sections and pixelated sections, which really suits the name ‘Rogued’. This is teamed with lovely floral brushes which make a striking but eye-catching contrast. The colours of the brushes are chosen to compliment the makeup and appearance of Christina Aguilera in the header image.
The background is a gradient which is nice, and goes well with the sections of greyscale in the header. ‘Rogued.info’ is in a nice font and is added well.
The CSS is excellent, and colours are taken from the header. The red-pink and blue with the hints of grey in the layout overall work very well.
This layout was very pleasing. I didn’t really like the use of a celebrity graphic (as it’s actually illegal) though.
Content
Error: My link in the sidebar is named ‘Eunice’ not ‘Georgina’.
Owner
This page was done well with a nice amount of information. Consider putting your favourites in a list and centering the fanlisting icons.
Content
The affiliate images aren’t really useful, people can make their own and the trend is pretty much dying. No one deserves to be linked with tiny squares.
I like how you’ve included the code for the backgrounds. Also, your diagonal backgrounds are nice but some of the gradient ones are too bright. Nice job on them though.
Bullets – simple but cute.
The button bases are really quite nice; I really like the texture ones.
I don’t see the point of colour palettes. People should be able to pick their own colours and things; these are sort of useless.
The icon bases are all pretty much the same and all celebrity images. You should make icons instead of just the bases – people can crop images themselves.
These mini blends are tiny. I don’t know what anyone could do with them. You’re better off making a layout.
PNG’s should be PNGs. I don’t even know why these are called “PNGs”. A PNG is a file format like any other image file format, eg. JPG.
I can see you spent a lot of time on these but they’re useless. People should be able to make this kind of stuff on their own – you’re just cutting images for people; it’s a waste of time 
The image effects would be good with an example. I’m sure most of these only work in Internet Explorer.
Link effects would be good with an example, and the miscellaneous codes where possible.
You need a line break after “Icon Gradients”. And on the page you should have some previews. I don’t want to download something just to see it.
I downloded the first one and it’s quite nice. You should display them instead of having them in zip files for download.
Ah, the reviews. Finally something original. You have question marks instead of apostrophes. Open up your document in Notepad and rewrite them – Word sometimes turns things into ‘smart quotes’.
Domain
Your rules for advertising and affiliates are fair and straightforward. I have noticed that up to this point your grammar, spelling and punctuation have been flawless.
I like how your History is like a timeline. It looks very organised! Though, having a domain doesn’t increase popularity. 
Your hosting rules are very fair as well. I like how you’ve included in the form to show how much knowledge you have if you’re applying.
You don’t have many link buttons, aww. But you could specify the size being 88 by 31 pixels.
Your past layouts look pretty amazing but I do like your current one best.
All other pages were fine here.
Reviews
I won’t be looking into this section for obvious reasons, but it’s organised well.
Tutorials
While the Cutenews tutorials would be helpful, they’re not necessary as they are in the script’s documentation, and Cutenews is a holey script that can be injected with malicious PHP. You wouldn’t want to encourage its use, I don’t think.
The FanUpdate tutorial is not bad.
Your other tutorials are okay, but WHAT is this doing in your button rotation script?:
<style type="text/css">
</STYLE>
It shouldn’t be there! And well, scripts aren’t always the way to go. They cause things to load longer.
You also have some question marks in your tutorials instead of apostrophes.
Originality & Creativity
I saw creativity in your layout but around your site I didn’t see much originality. All of your graphics were celebrity-oriented which is in violation of copyright law. Your site would be better without them, if you used a legal source like Stock Xchng or Freefoto.com.
Organisation & Errors
Hardly any, congratulations! Your grammar was excellent, and I didn’t find broken links.
I like how your links were in alphabetical order.
Overall Comment
Sophie, you’ve got a strong site and one that seems very professional, but you need to work on your coding in particular.
Your grammar was no problem and neither was spelling or punctuation.
You need to move away from the illegal celebrity graphics and use more original or at least, legal graphics. You have good graphic skill but your site would be better without them.
Consider making free layouts or something similar that visitors are more likely to use. Keep up the good work!
