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Site Name: Cassus Ventulus
Owner: Zoe
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 24th May 2010

Site Name

It’s a bit hard to get the hang of in terms of remembering and spelling but I like the ring to it.

Coding and Validation

According to the HTML validator your coding is valid, and your CSS validates to CSS3. It’s nice to see that your coding is clean and neat; I recall that last time I had a look at your old site I believe the coding was in need of some work. Good job.

I would recommend you use an external stylesheet for your CSS. It will load slightly faster and will often make layout changes easier.

Browser Compatibility & Usability

Your website is looking consistent in Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome. The dropshadow on the text does not appear in Internet Explorer, though.

The navigation is clear and easy to spot, but I would completely avoid using the images for this altogether. At least you’re not using an image map which is much harder for users to navigate when they have images turned off, or for the the blind using screen readers. However, I really do commend you on using the alt attribute properly!

The layout being aligned to the right looks terrible when your layout is so uniform. I will go into this later on when I discuss your layout.

Layout

I must say I am not a huge fan of this layout. It has thrown me off because of the layout being aligned to the right. When you have a layout as uniform and with an obvious structure like yours, it does not look very neat at all. A layout like this would be better off centered.

Pulling off a layout aligned to the right can be difficult. If you have a blend extending to the left or the layout trails across the length of the screen, by all means. Tilted Halo currently has a layout that is aligned to the right and this is an example of a good right-aligned layout. The image fades off, the main content (which is to be read through and consistently looked at) isn’t off to the far right where one has to turn their head to its full extent.

Another reason I don’t like this layout is because it looks a little messy. I really don’t like the bright blue background, to begin with. It’s a nice blue but the dropshadow text you have and the light colours of text on it is very hard to read.

The navigation is clear, but I really do not like the font you used. The font is quite tacky – the capital letters stand out so much more than the rest of the letters; in this case it would have benefited you and looked better if the navigation was all in lowercase. The font choice was poor. I understand you were trying to go for a somewhat bold look but this font should not be overused in both the navigation and the site name.

The image in the header is very blurry. I assume it’s a cat, but it is really hard to see. A clearer photograph would have been more appropriate.

Content

I’m not a fan of the taglines under the sidebar – a simple one-lined heading would do, unless you’re going to make the taglines really small.

Zee

On this page Shepard should be Shepherd.

I know you like to use smilies, but I believe you have overused them. It is hard to focus on the actual content and meaning of your writing when there are so many smilies – one after every sentence, almost:

Ember: Present Holly’s identical quadruplet (There were four, I only own two! xD), minus the white spot. xD
Muffy: Past Gray tabby cat. Died at age 17. Human years. Old.
Athena: Future German Shepard! xD

On your random facts page boardgame should be board game.

Designs

On this page credit it should be credit is.

I notice that throughout your whole website you are using my blue arrow bullets yet you haven’t credited me at all. If you want people to credit you, make sure you credit other people.

The inspiration graphics are okay. You need to give credit for the image you used and what appears to be a brush on the image. Even if they were both made by you, you need to state this. I think you could have put in more thought into the text you used. The font is nice but it isn’t a good choice. Sometimes it is best to go for simpler fonts rather than decorative ones that can look tacky.

The favicons are okay but are really simple. On this page, you are displaying your code incorrectly. You do not use textarea for displaying code. Textarea was designed as input for forms, not for displaying code. code and pre should be used for displaying code, and more is discussed in this tutorial on displaying code.

On the signatures page, not everyone would understand “siggie” and “avvie” as abbreviations. I understand that these are just taglines but it is in your best interests to make the taglines a bit more meaningful for visitors.

I like these signatures a lot better than the graphics I have seen so far. They are simple and you’ve left quite a lot of whitespace around text, making them very bold and welcoming. I think the clouds one could do with less snowflakes and graphics, and the tropical one without the noise on the graphic (it would have spoken for itself with the bold colours anyway). I do like the style of these signatures – because they are not overdone like the “inspiration” graphics I saw earlier. As I mentioned, sometimes simple is best.

The desktop backgrounds are large, and when you create a thumbnail for a large image, it is not always the best idea to resize the image with HTML when you want to make a really small thumbnail in comparison to that image. If you had more on this page, they would take a lot longer to load because the whole image would have to load. Next time, resize the background and save it as a separate image for the thumbnail.

That said, the bulk of these backgrounds, like your signatures, are bold, simple and work well. I really don’t like the first one – the green is too blinding and there’s too much going on. For a desktop wallpaper, you don’t want too much going on especially when people put icons on their desktop and other things. This background is pretty creative, but the orange overlay needs to be reduced in opacity so we can see a bit more of the cat.

I notice that you use the same blue and green shades too – it would be nice to see some softer colours. The Poison Ivy one is my favourite. Please make sure you credit for where you got the brushes and resources for these! It is extremely important.

Not much to saw about the tiling backgrounds. However, they are very simple and can be improved. The colours are pretty blinding – I’m sure you wouldn’t really want to use these on your website. Try using less harsh colours.

Written

To be honest there isn’t really a point in the article about smilies. You’re just making a point that some people prefer certain emoticons to others. I think this “article” is quite useless; unless you had another point to make I wouldn’t like this page here.
int he should be in the

I don’t see much point in quite a few of the articles you have here but I guess such is the nature in which you write. I just think they’re unusually short and I did expect to read more.

On the “geek conversation” article, “Well that my friend is a geek conversation!” really needs some commas.

For instance – “Well, that, my friend, is a geek conversation!”

I don’t think you need to number the web worlds. And it would be a nice idea if you expanded this and wrote a bit about all the different networking/game websites here, maybe even reviewed them, instead of just mentioning them.

The web terms are pretty self explanatory; I guess they’re just a novelty thing – it doesn’t provide too much information while being on your website… unless you had a completely full set of over 100 emoticons of the same type, then I wouldn’t class this as very extensive.

On the article about spam, using headings and maybe putting text in blockquotes would really help make this an easier read. You state that you are referred to as “Swifty” on your website but I think this should be changed.
big shiny, “1 message!” should be big, shiny, “1 message!”
only to find, spam should be only to find spam

On the article about allergies:
even better if should be even better, if
pollen irritaion can should be pollen irritation, can
I for one should be I, for one
tomatos should be tomatoes

I think you could put a question mark after “But wouldn’t life be ten times better without allergies”.

I know you don’t appear to like Justin Bieber, but that doesn’t really give you reason to spell his name incorrectly. It’s Bieber!

(Letter “i” before “e” except after “c”, if the rule helps.)

Capitalise “but”. And “Ludacris” only has one “s”.

I like the creativity of the structure of the Percy Jackson song; I actually find it pretty amusing and creative!

Reviews

You say you will grade people on their grammar – mind you, to much is incorrect grammar and should be too much.

On this review, the text is centered; it should be off to the left.

Site

The links at the top of this page should be made more obvious.
it’s history should be its history
unknown sites, that should be unknown sites that

You don’t really say much about your website and who you’re hosted by at this stage, as most of this is just history. Perhaps you could update the page a little?

As I mentioned earlier, please credit me since you are using my bullets.

On the affiliates page, you state “email (zoe.hollowbreeze.com)” – that isn’t quite the format of an email address.

Your credits page is definitely not up to scratch. Surely you had tutorial help, help choosing colours maybe… websites you got brushes and textures from, and so on. Your layout isn’t copyrighted when I know you didn’t make that font. There are many websites you could credit for your resources and I believe many you should credit. Also, if every single image was taken by you, fair enough, but you need to credit for those images too, as well as the graphics program you used (I am sure you used one).

On the awards page, it would be nice to link back to the websites you got the awards from.

Originality & Creativity

The bulk of your website really was original, but I cannot stress this enough: credit your sources!

I think you could work on being more creative, or at least making your designs a little more aesthetically pleasing. Generally your graphic skill needs a bit of work. I suggest looking up some tutorials or using colour schemes, for example from Colour Lovers, to help you design things with better use of colour.

Organisation & Errors

Quite well organised, but there are some small spelling/grammar mistakes you could fix.

Overall Comment

Overall I was disappointed with the quality of graphics and content around your website. It was all unique and I can tell you put in quite a bit of work. But as I mentioned above, your graphic skill needs a bit of work, and those “rants” and articles could be more lengthy and deep. Some of your graphics use colour that is much too bright when you could definitely use some nicer ones, which is why I suggested you look into colour schemes.

And I really dislike the layout being off to the right when it’s not really “designed” in such a way. I think that could definitely be changed. I feel like there’s a great weight on my right side, and as you can see from the screenshot in this review, there is quite a large space to the left which is not too appealing.

However I was pleased with little things like your organisation, your use of dropshadow, your correct coding (I still recommend the CSS be an external stylesheet) and the good use of the alt attribute.

You have some way to go, but I think you’ve done a great job. Please make sure you credit!!

Rating

(out of 5)