MY SITES REVIEWS;

♥ Pending

none at the moment :)

♥ Completed Reviews for Clear Waters

First Impression: 5/5
Linked Me?: 5/5
Splash Page: 0/5
Colour Scheme: 9/10
Navigation: 3/5
Loading Time: 10/10
Originality of Layout: 9/10
Originality of Name: 4/5
Originality of Content: 7/10
Quality of Graphics: 10/10
Broken Images?: 5/5
Spelling/Grammar: 9/10
Attitude of Owner: 8/10
TOTAL: 84/100
GRADE: B
COMMENTS: When I first entered your site, I was completely 'WOWED' by the layout. You linked me and I found it relatively easy to find, thanks for that. You didn't score anything for splash page as there wasn't one - this is such a shame as a simple splash page could've boosted your grade up to an A - you deserve it really. I LOVE the colour scheme; it shows that you've worked hard to create a good-looking site and it's really paid off. The problem with the naivgation is that it really doesn't jump out at me - it should stand out from most of your layout, but its rather small and doesn't appear as important as it really is. However, the navigation is really easy-to-use, and you've got some GREAT content there. T he loading time was absoloutely SUPERB. Fair enough, it may have been down to my Internet connection, but you must have played some part in it. As mentioned, your layout is FANTASTIC. Asuming that you made it yourself, you've done a truely EXCELLENT job - well done! :) The name of your site is quite original, and stands out. You haven't got the hugest amount of content, but what you have got is of a high quality and you've shown great originality, such as the 'Bookmarks.' Again, not a great amount of graphics, but the ones you do have are PERFECT quality - fantastic. :) I did'nt find ANY broken images at this visit - top points there; and your spelling and grammar is of a good quality. Overall, you appear to have an excellent attitude to your site and to web design in general. You were VERY kind to me and not only linked back to me, but made me a button too! Thanks so much! That reflects your efforts and commitment to your site - well done. What I would suggest you add is a simple splash page that matches your layout, and a small updates section somewhere in the right-hand banner. Other than that, you've got all the potential you need to soar! :)

First Impression

HTR wishes to apologize for the amount of time it took to complete this review. Sorry!

Directly after viewing your website for the first time I was annoyed at the positioning and size of your content section. The layout image shouldn’t be larger than the content section when using this type of layout. The image itself was all right but looks as though it would be better suited for a DIV or tables layout, not iframes, but more on that later. Generally, I was off-put when I first viewed your website. There was nothing drawing me in, and the organization was putting me off. As far as first impressions go, I wasn’t [much impressed].

Presentation

The design of the main image in your layout lends itself to a style other than iframes. With a small amount of editing it would look wonderful as a DIV-styled layout. The organization also lends itself to such a style. With the way the content is sorted in the single frame, it’s confusing and a pain to sort through. I didn’t even realize there were sections outside of this main page at first because of the location of the navigation.

I also mentioned in my first impression the size of the content box. It’s simply too small. When compared to the layout image it’s the last thing I look at, and simply looks like it was shoved in last-minute because you didn’t have any place else to put it. I suppose you really didn’t have any place to put it, either, since you’d be hard-pressed to shove an iframe elsewhere on the layout.

First of all, I’d separate the content links from the main content box. They’re barely noticeable and I passed over them at first. If you must keep the iframe in such a position with links and all, I’d move your content links to the top of the frame so it’s the first thing visitors see. I’d also keep the layout, about you, currently, links, and other such sections under the ‘me,’ ‘you,’ ‘site’ links. It would be extremely more organized if it was placed in such a manner.

If this were up to me, I’d swap layout styles so it would be in DIV or tables. Anything the allows you have a main content box for your introduction, and then a sider for your other information—the about you section, the layout information, generally everything put the intro. You could even keep the in-site links there if they’re positioned farther up in the side and in a more obvious place other than buried beneath layout information and the ‘currently’ section. You could probably even keep the ‘currently’ section above it, if they were obvious enough.

You have your pets under the ‘visual’ section under ‘me,’ but you have information there and not just visuals.

Also, you might want to note that under certain sections that one has to click on the words to open a sub-menu, such as in your written pieces. It is, for the most part, not obvious that you have to click to access the listing links.

There’s a bottom scrollbar under ‘quizzes.’ In other words, the one quiz is too large for the iframe. It’s a pain to read and looks bad.

Content

And now for the content. You have the basics of, well, you, which is good and fine. Why do you have a little GIF next to hair color? It looks odd, especially when it’s the only GIF on the page. Why do you have likes and dislikes in your bio when you have a whole page dedicated to them? It’s a little redundant.

I’m also wondering why the thumbnail for your desktop graphic is 100x100. Backgrounds are not perfect squares. Resizing it so retain it’s original shape might be better, or just selecting a 100x100 piece of it to show.

I liked your ‘Goals’ page. It was interesting and not something you see on every personal site. The ‘Surveys’ page is generally unneeded. It’s rare that an average visitor reads them. Hell, I didn’t read them because I’m not up to going through hundreds of questions on someone I barely know. Surveys are good for LiveJournals and places where your friends would read them, not websites—either personal or not. Everything else you have listed for ‘inside’ is typical.

Now, I enjoyed looking as your artwork quite a bit. Your paintings are nicely done, and I love the abstract qualities of them, although the actual image quality of the JPG in the images under ‘etc.’ could be better. It’s especially hard to see the sketches.

As for your writings section, all I’m going to say is if you want people to take you seriously as a writer you should have better spelling and capitalization in your writings. Also, you change tenses a few times. But I’m supposed to be reviewing your website not your writing ability so I’ll hush.

Moving on to your visitors section, I’ll first comment on your layouts. Many seem small content box-wise, and free layouts aren’t normally distributed in such a way. It would be more efficient in they were pre-coded (just the main index page would do), and then set up to be downloaded. That’s how it is normally when free layouts are available. Of course, this is a personal website not a graphical one.

As for the website section under ‘Visitors,’ the website name section is cute, I suppose, but generic. It’s not really needed. The resourceful links are nice but should be under the link section since it’s not really offering anything to your visitors. As for your ‘review’ section, I will never understand it: You have a personal website, not a review website. One or the other, please. I just don’t understand why people try to combine the two. If you want to offer reviews, open a review site, keep it off the person webpages.

‘Make a Bookmark’ is a cute, crafty section, the recipes would be a nice addition if more were added (although it’s a little webzine-ish, not that it’s the bad thing), what I really liked were your sections on Fung Shei and interior design. It’s original and something you enjoy that you’re able to offer to the visitor. Plus it provides actual tips and interesting little notes on room design. More sections like that would be great.

The whole ‘Interact’ section is overdone. Everyone has ‘guess the [fill in the blank]’ pages anymore. They aren’t interesting, they’re repetitive.

Everything in the ‘Fun Stuff’ section as well as ‘Read’ is also overdone. They’re shipped around in emails, community websites, LiveJournal and other personal websites. You can find them anywhere and everywhere, it’s unneeded, overused, and pointless to have them on your own page, too. I’ve seen almost all of them. And ‘Learn Chinese’ always has been, always is, and always will be offensive. I’m not even Chinese--just a linguistics major who has issues with butchering languages and cultures for humor. It’s not cool. Anyway. Back on topic.

Once again under ‘Current Layout’ a thumbnail is awkwardly resized. Instead of putting it all square-like, you should have it retain its original shape. Same goes for the images in past layouts.

What’s the difference between your button wall and links? Besides the obvious lack of buttons, I mean. Keep one or the other. It’s in excess at the moment.

Errors

If I were to list all the grammar and spelling errors I’d be here all night, so I’m not. What I suggest doing, however, is running all your pages through a good spell checker. You have major issues with capitalization, apostrophes, and sometimes spacing.

VISITORS, WEBSITE, RESOURCEFUL LINKS: Make Shift doesn’t exist anymore. Thesaurus.reference.com is not a dictionary but a thesaurus, (dictionary.reference.com is the dictionary).

VISITORS, READS: I think you mean ‘answering machine messages’ not ‘answer phone messages.’

As for the rest of the pages, as I said, run them through a spell checker. It would take me forever to point out the errors by hand.

Coding

Now, you have some major problems with coding. First of all, in your index page, you don’t have an opening or closing ‘HTML’ tag, no closing ‘head’ tag, CSS coding is typically located in the ‘head,’ you also have no closing ‘body’ tag. You have ‘head’ listed twice. I don’t normally see the ‘font’ coding in the ‘body’ tag, either, but it seems to work on IE. As for other browsers, I don’t know. Try to keep your coding in lowercase. You can merge all your CSS. Add quotation marks around all data in the HTML, why do you have a closing ‘center’ tag when there’s no opening one?

Since there isn’t much on the index page, I’ll recode it all. It should look more like this:

<html>
<head>

<title>+ C l e a r W a t e r s +</title>

<style type="text/css">

</style>

</head>
<body background="screamgreen.jpg" bgproperties="fixed">

<iframe src="right.html" name="main" width="380" height="575" border="0" frameborder="0" framespacing="0" style="position:absolute; top:00; left:615;"></iframe>

</body>
</html>

Your coding in the actual iframe is also less than impressive. You leave quotation marks out, forget to close almost every tag, and have the basic coding wrong. Your base coding should, at the very least, look something like the following. (Not including anything started by an array of dashes with an exclamation point. I’m just noting what goes is those areas. So, you remove those tags.)

<html>
<head>
<title>TITLE GOES HERE</title>



</head>
<body>


<p>Now, see how I have a closing paragraph tag? See it? Right to the right? Are you sure? It should be there EVERY TIME. Good.</p>

<p>Also, if you have to add a single space, without a new paragraph, it's smart to use the following tag rather than the regular one, since it denotes closing as well as opening (if that made sense). It's not necessary if you aren't using XHTML, however. The single line break code: <br />
The new line of text would be on the next line like it is when you use the normal 'br' tag for HTML.</p>

<p>I'll leave it that. It's basic, really. You should know this. Maybe you do and you just had an off coding day. It never hurts to be reminded though. End.</p>


</body>
</html>

In short, your coding needs some help. Reviewing some of the websites you have listed in your own ‘resourceful links’ section might be helpful, although I don’t have much good to say about some of them.

Conclusion

I could beat around the bush with this or be frank. I’ll go with the latter. I was not impressed with your website, and I doubt I’ll return. The organization, layout and coding could all be better, as could the content. You had some great base ideas but they get lost in all the extra, pardon my language, crap. I believe you should go back to the base of your website, to the original ideas you have, and try to branch off the sections that aren’t generic, rather then relying on menial things like the so-called ‘reads’ and surveys. You have the start of something good, but it needs to be refined. Don’t spread the website out so much--try to focus in on a few things.

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