Name:Jaki
Site: Jaki Blue.Net
Review completed on: 26/09/05

SPLASH PAGE

No splash n/a

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

I like it! It's so colourful, and so tidily arranged. I think that adding the title "Jakiblue" somewhere would go a long way, as well as adding a layout graphic. Even though you've used an array of bright colours, it still looks a little plain. 7/10

LAYOUT

In truth, it doesnt seem like you have the typical layout that other personal sites have. You know, a graphic at the top of the page with the site title and then the tables underneath. One of the main points about your site is that everything looks so very tidy, and extremely organised. Because of these two factors, it makes your site thoroughly easy to navigate and explore. You've done a great job with the colour choices as well - an interesting mixture of yellow, red, purple, and green, likened to that of lollipops. Your name of the layout, 'Lollipop Land' fits perfectly! Although there is nothing at all wrong with your layout, I really wish that there were some design elements to speak of here - I know you'd be able to come up with something really great! When I mark layouts, ten marks out of the twenty go towards the design, and the remaining ten towards colours, navigation etc, so that will explain your score for this section, as there is no real trace of your designing skills here. Everything else looks excellent, but your colour choosing skills and arrangement skills ache to be backed up by an outstanding design. Even just a mere graphic saying "Jakiblue" could perhaps do the trick.10/20

CONTENT

I was a little surprised when I clicked on the first section and found it was a popup. Because I'm on a Mac, it wasn't a problem for me, but I usually do my reviews on various PC's, and many of these have popup blockers, preventing me from accessing popup pages unless I disable the blocker. I believe many PC users now have such blockers enabled, as a means of combatting popup advertisements. I strongly suggest creating a splash page informing visitors that your site contains popups, otherwise they won't know and there's a chance they won't be able to view your content. Just a friendly notification to enable popups would work wonders. The first two pages of the "Hijinks" section looked like something to do with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole, so I didn't check out those two pages. I'm sure they thoroughly appeal to fans, and as I'm not one, viewing such pages and commenting would be pointless because I feel I'm not qualified to do so. The first page I clicked on was "Mini Reviews", and it popped up from the pop-up! So all in all I have three Jaki Blue pages up at the moment...I think it'd be much better if you made it so that the pages loaded in the same popup window. Although I haven't seen any of the movies you reviewed, I found your short summaries and opinions interesting to read. You write in a way that keeps the visitors' interest levels up, and you don't rabbit on for ages boring everyone to tears. Long reviews are tiresome to read, especially when one hasn't seen the movie in question. In addition, your "Learn to speak like an Aussie" was an enjoyable read, although such words and phrases as "fair go", "loo", "bonnet" and "hood" are not words that are exclusive to Australia. Whether they originated from there or not, I am familiar with British and New Zealanders using the same terms. The "Vox" section only contained one piece of content that was not worth viewing (Buffy-related), I'm assuming more content will be added here later, that will appeal to a wider range of tastes? On the "Ego" page, the caption led me to believe I'd be finding out a wealth of information about yourself - "Everything you ever wanted to know about me...and stuff you didn't!". In actuality, all this section contains is a page about Sites, and Gifts - both of which led to Error 404 pages when clicked - and a page of writing and some pictures. So in effect this is quite the surmise - that is, inferring that this page is about you when in fact the pages don't really touch on you at all. That was disappointing, because so far I haven't really found out anything about you at all, just that you obviously live in Australia and you like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The "Vox" section screams out for even a little fact file page or a survey, so we can find out more about you. It doesn't take a lot of effort to give us even a little snippet of information about yourself, so I strongly suggest taking the time to allow the visitors who enjoy your site to find out more specific details about it's creator. On your "Writings" page, I chose to read your original fiction piece, entitled "Bus Stop". Although it was written in quite a simple form, I found it enthralling and the plot was riveting. I liked it how you cut into the mans' thoughts in italics and provided a little backgrounder as to recent events in his life and his plummeting relationship with his high maintenance girlfriend. The climax was a disappointment for me though, I was expecting something major to happen between the man and the woman. The lead up to the conclusion was dramatic, and I guess I was expecting more. I imagine that you probably chose to take a different direction with this tale though, making it more one of those stories with morals at the end. The moral in this case being not to judge others' by face value - with the woman feeling scared and a little intimidated by the man at the lonely bus stop, just because it was clear he had a few issues at the time. The images of your computer room on the "Pics" page were nice, the room looks cosy and warm. I look forward to seeing pictures of the rest of your house, and perhaps you and your son? You have provided a massive array of links to resources etc in your "Nuture" section, many of which look appealing and worthy of a look - something I definitely plan on doing later. 14/20

SUMMARY

Although my visit to your site was enjoyable, I left feeling that I ought to have got a lot more out of my time there. The majority of content I saw I liked, but still I know next to nothing about you. A reasonable amount of effort has been put into your content but information more relevant to a personal site is needed - starting with at least SOME information about yourself. As far as the appearance of your site goes, I'm a big fan of the tidy, organised look and you've got that down to a tee. The application of more design features is needed though, with the inclusion of some main graphics and such.

OVERALL SCORE: 31/50