Review from Glass Heart Reviews
Site - gatheringclouds.net/
Owner - Lauren
Score - 70/105
Reviewer - Miranda
- Splash 03/05
You have the normal splash links to things like reviews (thank you), listings, and nominations, but nothing with requirements! Especially if you have a splash page, you should have requirements.
- First Impression (10+8)/2=09/15
Splash (10/15) - Even though I don't usually like splash pages, I have to admit that when I saw yours my thought was "oooh pretty" and that's always a good thing. I applaud you for using a larger image - a lot of sites I've been to lately either don't have an image at all or it's really little so it seems like such a waste of space, ya know? Good job.
Layout (8/15) - I like the colors and I like the images you used - beautiful. My browser (Firefox) gave me a message saying that it blocked a popup though, so that's not a good thing. I checked in IE and got the same thing after my browser wigged out (it kept refreshing and flashing. I tried it several times and each time it did the same)... pretty scary. Had my original browser been IE the score would have probably been lower, but I really hate IE and know it's insanely buggy so I rarely use it and therefor didn't first see your site in it :P.
- Navigation 03/05
Very easy to understand and use. My only problem is the lack of back links through the website, forcing me to rely on the back button of the browser.
- Organization 13/15
Pretty organized, except for a few things mentioned here and there through the rest of the review.
- Graphics 10/10
You can tell you've put a lot of time into your graphics. I like the soft look of the blend for your layout and the colors you chose. Great work, keep it up.
- Content 07/10
All in all, you've got a pretty good start. There are a lot of things I'd like to see in the future (and I do plan on checking in!) and I'll go into a little more detail below.
The Girl - A few pages with a lot of information, but nothing that really leaves me feeling like I've gotten to know you any better. What's your birthday? What's your favorite color? Those aren't original but are things that people generally like to know. I'm pretty disappointed that you don't have more info about yourself in your me section - that's what it's for hon! Let us know your opinions, what your childhood was like... anything that lets us into your head and life and helps us to better know you.
Blog - While it's good you consider your blog a part of your content (from the way some people use theirs you're left with the idea that it's a place for typing lessons) I don't really see the need to have it in this section since it's linked already on the main menu bar. Nothing wrong with it though.
Bumper Stickers - These are cute. I don't feel I really know you much better after having looked through them though. Did you make these yourself or did you get them from other websites? If you made them yourself, I'd add them to the visitor section so people who are more geared toward visitor content would find them easier. If you didn't make them you should probably link the source or sources to 1) give the creators credit and 2) give visitors a way to find them and look through to see if there are others they'd like to have themselves.
Quizzes - The only problem with quizzes is that, when you're linking the image off of their server, sometimes they disappear, leaving you with an image that won't load and a dead link. Go through them periodically to weed out the ones that no longer work. I'd also suggest breaking them up into a few smaller pages for people with slower connections so they won't take so long to load.
Favorites - A great group of lists here! My only suggestion here is to not double-space each item in the lists. Personal preference.
Writings - Eeek! Well, it's great that you write. Since it opens as a separate site, though, it should open in a new window and have something saying that it will do so. I'd recommend linking it under projects on your menu bar. If you want it as part as your personal site, set it up as a part of this site by making it follow the same layout. Since it is different, I won't be actually reviewing it (though I will be back to read :P)
Awards - Awards for websites should be under the section that tells about the domain. A lot of people group them together with fansigns and holiday cards though, so I won't take off for it (I think it's a personal preference). What I'd do is separate the fansigns from the awards and make different pages for them. Since there are so many I'd do like the quizzes too and break them into smaller pages for those who aren't blessed with high-speed internet.
Handsome faces - This is a cute idea I've not seen yet. Kudos. You've got good taste too ;) More kudos for the page loading fast and no broken images.
My Cds - I've seen this quite a few times. It amazes me how you can go through all your cds and type 'em out like that.
The Friend - I was expecting this to be more of a visitor content section and have left it a bit confused. There are things I'd think would go better under the domain section and not much else for the visitor to do. To me, this is the hardest section to build (it's hard trying to predict what visitors are going to want to see) and it's also a hard one to grade, because different people aim at different audiences. My advice would be to bring in some interactions (even if it's a birthday wall - almost every site has one but they tend to be pretty popular) and maybe contests. Think about what you can do to better help your visitor (I suggest this because you're so nice and seem to be offering so much for other people, with hosting, emails, graphics, fonts... build on that). I'm guessing this is one reason this section is named the way it is, going along the fun/giving theme.
Graphic Request - Well that's very nice of you! Not asking money either? Wow.
Reads - Tons of sites have a reads section, but it's nice to see that yours isn't like every other out there. Alignment is a bit off - the link for the one about WalMart is further over than the others.
Games - While fun and amusing, I think games on another server should be on a links out page, since it's not really your content.
Flash Files - Same as games.
Layouts - Cute! At first I was thinking that these would be better suited on a page for domain history-ish things, but since you've set them up so that other people could use them I think it's a cute/nice/neat-o idea. My only suggestion is to make them open in new windows.
Blend Challenge - Since this is a separate site I'm not going to review it. Personal preference, but I don't think it should be listed under visitor content since it's a different site. If you decide to leave it there, it should open in a new window.
Hosting - It's great that you offer hosting (and I hope you have better luck than I ever did with it) but this should be under the section dealing with domain info or should have its own spot on the navigation, if you want to advertise it more.
Fonts - *HUGS* I love fonts, and you not only have some very cool fonts, but managed to have some I don't have! Hehe I downloaded quite a few.
Tutorials - Some pretty basic tutorials that I've seen elsewhere (except for the one on alphabetizing your buddy list) but they're good nonetheless :)
Free Email Address - This is very nice of you, and not something you see people doing often... in all my time on the 'net I think I only remember having seen it once. Very nice, but I'd think this would be better suited for the domain section.
Domain - Kudos for what you do have, you've got a great start. I'd like to see this section with a little more content... possibilities: domain info (site history, reasonings behind the name you chose), link exchanges, maybe some affiliates. This would also be a good place to get in another plug for the other sites you run that are on the same domain :) Any hostees you have could be listed here.
Linkage - It's always nice to see someone linking the pages they frequent :)
Belong - Everything you'd expect a belong page to be.
Credits - Kudos. Not everyone has a credits page and they should. It's great that you do.
Past Layouts - Everything you'd expect for this page. Very nice :)
Link Back - It's nice that you have different sizes to choose from along with different styles.
Host - I'd think that this should be listed under the credits section, and should open in a new window.
- Layout 06/10
I really like this blend you've used, and the image at the top of the navigation column. I'd prefer that the columns were closer together, but that's personal opinion. I'm not really liking the multi-colored words on the menu bar - my eyes aren't the greatest and that makes it harder for me to read for me. In Firefox your iframe for your blog/content is over to the side instead of lined up with the image like it is in IE... but that's more of a coding issue and doesn't really bother me as far as the over-all effect of the layout goes. I'm thinking that maybe the navigation column could be a tiny bit smaller (as little as 20px maybe) because there's a lot of extra space to the right of everything in it. That's just me nit-picking. Over-all your layout is wonderful.
- Coding 10/20
Oookay. First, on your splash page your splash content (except the image) are way over to the left. I didn't think much of it until I opened IE and saw that it was centered nicely under the image there. Looking at your source, it's all done in divs and I think you could get away with a simple centering here. I understand you don't want the image to be flush at the top, you can get around that using the <p> and </p> combo, putting your image in one set and your other navigation in another.
Running home.php through a validator brought back over 250 errors. Click here to see 'em all. Not all of these are going to heavily impact the viewability of your site, but there are a few that are pretty major. Firstly, you don't declare a doctype. What this does is tell the browser what language it's going to be reading and how to handle the coding. I'd suggest going with good ol' html 4.1, so this is what you need at the top of every page:
< !DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
Next, on to css. I prefer external stylesheets myself, but there's nothing wrong, as far as I know, with having it in the head of the file like you do. What you should do, though, is combine all your css instead of having it all chopped up like it is, so just one opening for style and one closing for it.
After clicking on the menu and getting into the content my browser wouldn't let me go any further so I had to switch to IE. There were only two links that were clickable in the girl - the first and last. They weren't spaced the same in IE as they had been in Firefox. Looking at your coding for that page... I'm confused. Before the content menu starts you end the body and document with </body> and <html> so that could be part of it. <p> should always be followed by </p> to close the paragraph (though some validators won't nag you about it). My best guess is that everything being after the end of the document, though, is what's making it act all wonky. There shouldn't be anything after <html>
While link transitions are very cute and cool, they're also very buggy. They tend to only work in IE, and even when I was in IE I had difficulty clicking some of the links. Since there's nothing else that I could see that could be causing this problem I'm left to believe that it was the link transitions causing the problem. Very cute though.
It would be great to see you employ targeting in your links. Make outside sites open in a new window! <a href="http://www.rest/of.url" target="_blank">
Now for something that I'm not really sure where to put - it would either be coding or errors so I'm putting it here... right in the middle and score it in both. I mentioned before that when I first went to your site in IE it did that odd flashing thing. When I had to switch over from Firefox to do the rest of my review it did it again, and continued to everytime I'd click to return to home.php - which isn't good. I enlisted a second opinion on this to see if it was something with my computer... The very wonderful Julie agreed to test it for me. She didn't have the problem, but she also didn't get the message about the popup (which I have learned is for radio blog). After a while, though, it got to where I couldn't even load home.php any longer in IE, so it's a good thing I'd finished looking at the other pages before that happened! After quite a bit of discussion on this, the best Julie and I can come up with is that it's something to do with radio blog. I'm running Windows XP with SP2, so it could have something to do with some kind of incompatibility with that or something - I'm very sorry to say that I'm not sure what's causing the error and that I have no idea how to fix it. Since I'm one of those people who can't be around strobe-light like things (and the flash really reminded me of one) I'd just minimize the window until it seemed to stop - until it decided it no longer wanted to work for me. Maybe you can ask around and see if anyone else is having the same problem... and from there we can try to figure out how to fix it better.
- Errors 07/10
The only non-coding related errors you had were on your quizzes page, where not all the images loaded. *pats you on the back* Good work. I took off more points for what I mentioned above with the funky IE thing.
- Bonus 05/05
You get bonus points because you seem so sweet! I've enjoyed poking around your website and think it's great that you're so willing to give people stuff (space, email, graphics). Not many people these days are so willing to give out so much. We could do with more of you around.
- Reviewers Note
I've really enjoyed my time at your site, and look forward to seeing it grow. I do think that there's a lot to work on but your site has tons of potential and I know you'll meet that potential. You've got a very solid base to work on. I hope you take some of my advice and maybe even some of the nit-picking, but remember that all of this is just my opinion - the last thing I want to do is make you feel like you have to make your site to what I want it to be... You seem to be a very creative person and should let that creativity run wild with your website. If there's anything you'd like more information/advice on or you have any questions feel free to ask me. I'm always here to help if you need it too. Keep up the great work sweetie.
Posted by Miranda at March 9, 2005 07:10 AM