Name: Claire
Site: Minuit-Soleil
Review completed on: 24/09/07
SPLASH PAGE
No splash.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Helllooo. I thought I'd take some time out from combatting masculine, solidly built psychic grannies and actually write a review for my own review site. Wonders will never cease! Anyway, with a queue of 67 people waiting I can't waste my time dillydallying with small talk and excuses, let's get on with this.
Big Momma's in the house, and I'm not just talking about the 2003 picture on PSG: Historically. This header image of yours is a little on the large side, missy. It's not big LyKe WhOa, but it's big enough to warrant a mention in this review.
LAYOUT
Skyline photos always rock. I like the one you've used of New Orleans, but I'm not too keen on the brushwork you've applied to it. The green circles look like coffee cup rings and the cursive font you've used for your site title looks excessively grand and doesn't seem to fit in very well with the picture. I'd still go with a cursive font, but one that is a little 'tamer' than the one you're currently using.
The colours you've chosen associate with the image well and your layout is centrally aligned, resulting in smiles all round! That is if we forget about 800 x 600 users, which we obviously cannot do. As Amanda mentioned to Sandra in her review, 800 x 600 users are people too, and as people visiting your site it's important to cater for them. It'd definitely pay to check out Amanda's write up on lack of cross-resolution compatibility and the ideal widths for non-fixed layouts such as your own.
The size of your image (in PNG no less) was a bitch to load on my dialup modem. It 'weighs in' at 521 KB - could be worse but all the same the size can be reduced as a means of catering to your visitors on slower connections. The personal sites that I visit take less than ten seconds to load. I ran your header image through Photoshop and by selecting "Save for web" I easily got the size down from 521 KB to 68 KB. Marvelous! Click here to view and use your new image!
CONTENT
Claire
This section doesn't look particularly appealing. I was expecting to be greeted by a write up about yourself from the get go, but all I'm seeing here is a small amount of links and a contact form. Ah well, I guess I'll have to make do with what little I've been presented with.
Ask and answer - um, righto then. No comment.
Basic Info should have been placed first in this section. You've listed all your links alphabetically instead of in order of relevance which is what you should have done.
Nice pics here, lovely eye colour you have. You've started off this page well by including some quick fire facts about yourself, but later on you launch into a hyperactive spiel about some movies you made for a school assignment. I'd even go as far as saying that half the text here consists of you waffling about these movies. Perhaps a separate page could have been created instead?
Bitch List - I thought this might be some uber exciting whinge fest but unfortunately this is just a random list of nicknames you have for all your friends, with a token nickname for Denzel Washington in there too. Yeea---aah. The fact that "Keeley" is known as "Stuffed Bitch, Forgetful Bitch, Duck Bitch II" and that "Sara" is "Sara - Screeching Bat Noise Bitch, Unicorn Bitch" is supposed to better my life how? Silly content like this would be better suited to your Myspace profile.
Inside Jokes are exactly what the title suggests - inside jokes that no one outside the circle can easily comprehend. I suppose the fact that no one else cares also comes into it somewhere.
From Wikipedia:
An in-joke or inside joke is a joke whose humour is clear only to those people who are "inside" a group that would allow them to have some prior knowledge (not known by the whole population) that makes the joke humourous.So everyone who reads this page that wasn't involved with the joke will be temporarily left with the thought of "WTF?"
A desperate grab for content if ever there was one.
Your iPod survey is generic as fuck. I've seen this appear on Myspace bulletins countless times and it certainly has no place on a "me" page at a personal site.
Pictures of me - you say that you "concur that these pictures look weird". Well, I concur with other dialup users in saying that your pictures barely loaded at all, due to the fact that you've included shitloads on the same page. Why? The three images that did load were reasonably large in size, with no attempt at thumbnailing them whatsoever. Think presentation, think accessibility, think about those on a slower connection.
Top 100 Favorites is generic at best. Besides, you've only listed 90 things, making the title of your page redundant. This page is so very American...the average New Zealander for example would have no idea what "Snapple", "Jolly Ranchers" or "Sour Straws" are. Please x 100 don't email me with an essay type history about each of these because I'm not actually interested, I'm just commenting on the fact that some non-Americans may not know what these are.
Visitor
This is almost as bare as my ass on the day I was born. There are too many brushes here, and brushes bore me. Forgive the fact that I therefore won't be writing an essay style commentary on them then, I'm tired enough as it is. To be honest with you the brushes that are displayed on the first page don't exactly indicate to me that the brushes on the following pages will be particularly stunning. From what I can see these brushes are made out of random teenage scribbles and doodlings...so cliche.
Ummm....hold up, hold up. You're saying these brushes were made by you, and you've even linked to a Creative Commons page and the whole shebang. I've recognised one of your brushes, one that I myself have used on a previous layout a couple of years ago. This brush was instantly recognisable - photographic memories for the win!
I rotated the pin so that it would fit over my iFrame in a certain way, but it's still the same brush. I got it from DeviantArt in late 2004.
This discovery sparked my interest somewhat so I decided to have a look through the rest of your brushes, and unfortunately I was less than impressed. The majority of your brushes are extremely basic - what a waste of time it was on your part for bothering to make these in the first place. Squiggles, lines, dots, circles...in the very small amount of time it would take to download these brushes I could have simply drawn a squiggle myself.
You've somewhat redeemed your aforementioned display of unoriginality with your Pixel Adoptions page. If these were made by you, then very well done - your pixels are great. I love the big flowers and the envelopes especially. Not too sure about your paintbrushes though to be honest, they look like sombreros gone wrong, and the fifth one looks like a cross between a sombrero and a viking hat. Hybrids ftw...maybe.
The third and final item of content here is a transcript from "Scrubs: The Musical". Ooo-kaay...someone obviously had some time on their hands when they created this page. Perhaps in future you could channel your time differently, by coming up with something a little more substantial and original instead of some copyrighted lyrics to an American medical sitcom. Stating the fact that the lyrics are copyrighted to NBC and listing the writers does not give you the right to reproduce them without explicit permission nor does it give you any reprieve for doing so. Granted, you have the Fair Use doctrine that allows one to use a limited amount (eg excerpts) of copyrighted material, but to my understanding, while copying some excerpts would be covered by Fair Use, providing the entire transcript is not. Chances are you could be served with a Cease and Desist order from NBC - and I'm sure you're familiar with these orders seeing as you received one from Jem a couple of weeks ago.
I suggest you remove this content as soon as possible - while you may not necessarily get hassled by the powers that be (lawyers) why would you want to take that chance?
Domain
Apply for Affiliate should be Apply for affiliation or more simply put, Apply to be affiliates. Also on this page, change haitus to hiatus and appropriatly to appropriately.
I think your Behind the Name page could have been written a little better - it shouldn't take four tl;dr paragraphs to explain that minuit soleil means midnight sun. Most of this is just rambling about French textbooks and the fact that you had to wait a while before your Dad came home to grant you permission to buy the domain.
In Credits, change bandwith to bandwidth. I'm sure the zillions of exclamation marks next to 1 and 1 Hosting is not necessary. I see you've listed Swimchick and Outspoken Kate as sites you've learned from. Oh dear.
There's not a lot I can say about your Get hosted page, although I'm surprised you have stated you will not host peoples' images. This stipulation is anal - if you do not have enough space on your account to allow for some images in layouts then you shouldn't be offering your services at all. If a hostee has a billion and one images (or a photo gallery etc) it's right that they use an image host instead, but not for images that are directly involved with the site eg header banners, link back buttons etc.
Good to see you've provided a variety of sizes for your Link Back buttons. Why the Neopets code?
Set skin - your constant use of ^^'s is getting kind of old now.
Your skins are okay, apart from the fact that they're all massive. Look at all the wasted space on the Icecream one! Absolutely ridiculous.
Set Skin
Um, I've already covered this. You're obviously into double ups, which is unfortunate. You've got the link on your navigation as well as under the Domain category...one or the other! I'd personally stick with the one on your main navigation and ditch the other.
Ask Me
How come you haven't incorporated the script into your own site? Surely you could have used a PHP include here - this is what I did for my Q/A page.
Portfolio
Damn, an internal link. Sorry, I mean yay, an artistic showcase full of creative goodness!
Your artwork is coming soon, so until you have some content to show here then remove the link.
Oh, I like your collage graphic from Michigan, and the fact that the photos were all taken by you makes it even easier to enjoy. Your grandfathers boat looks similar to the one of the boats my Gramps owned - Saltshaker. How come there's a "(C) Borderlineinsanity.org" notice slapped across the graphic?
On your Literature page, " Plagorism is ILLEGAL!!!" = Plagiarism is illegal! Again, no need for the superfluous exclamation marks, they only make one come across as immature. You're right though, plagiarism is illegal, so I do hope that you'll practice what you preach and remove the Scrubs transcript.
I've pretty much given up on the idea of reviewing peoples' writing, but I did briefly read some of your memoirs and enjoyed doing so.
Lucky last, Stock Photography. ABSOLUTLY NO DIRECT LINKING!!! = Absolutely no direct linking! You seem to go on about this a lot - you know there are ways to prevent this happening.
Try sticking this in your .htaccess file which is located in the root directory:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://([-a-z0-9]+\.)?minuit-soleil\.net [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpe?g|png)$ - [F,NC,L]
SUMMARY
I came away from your site feeling more than a little let down. I don't come into any review with any preconceptions or expectations, despite the fact that it was widely publisised
a few weeks ago that you stole the code to Jem's skinning tutorial at Tutorialtastic. I remember thinking how noble you were for publicly apologising, that took guts. I thought that perhaps the experience
of getting snapped would have taught you a thing or two, so I was sorely disappointed to discover that your site still contained some objectionable material - particularly the safety pin brush
which I'm positive I've seen before, and of course the blatant copyright violation displayed on the Scrubs musical page. Once again, I think that it would be in your best interests to get
rid of this filler content material immediately. A sixteen year old who aspires to go to Harvard should really know better.
Your adoptable pixels were a delight to view and I think you've done a brilliant job with them. I wouldn't hesitate to adopt some of these for PSGR, and would recommend that anyone looking to adopt some new pixels check out this page.
Ghost Whisperer is on shortly so I'll wrap this up - good luck with Minuit Soleil and I wish you well on your quest for originality and legally obtained content.
