Name: Angelina
Site: Angelina15
Review completed on: 01/09/06
SPLASH PAGE
Not a very good start I'm afraid. I'm not a big fan of your background by any means...a scanned in piece of polka-dotted material by the looks of it. What gives?
Here's your site requirements by the way:
What makes you think anyone can read this? Furthermore, do you expect me to believe that you yourself can read this? I don't think so! Oh, we can just adjust the text size in our browsers, right? Correct, but why should we? You should have made the text readable in the first place.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
There's nothing particularly messy about this, but again, your font! If I strain my poor, elite eyes I can manage to read most of the second table of text but the first table? My goodness! Sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph! I have no idea why you think anyone can read this. Do you find some sort of pleasure out of making text wholly illegible and unreadable? How cruel. If Jakob Neilsen, (accessibility / readability king) saw this, he may have a hernia. It is important that we all hail Jakob Neilsen and act in a way that would please him, serving him as the loyal subjects we are.
Here is what Jakob Neilsen would see if he saw your site:
I know, I know. You're not conforming to Neilsens' divine standards. I'm so absolutely completely and utterly concerned for you, you must make your font larger! But - make haste, make haste! I fear that the Romans are coming...battle! Battle! Battle of Readability! The Roman army of Jakob Neilsen, King of Accessibility (let by Rhiannonus Phillipus III) will be victorious over Piczo and his village idiots!
Just a heads up, of course. There's mutterings in the village baby and believe me they aint in your favour.
LAYOUT
You have a scrollbar that scrolls down for an excessive length, exposing a grey Piczo page builder-esque abyss of nothingness. Yeah that's it. Why the scrollbar, hun? There's no need to have all this space exposed. I'm thinking that it's because you've set the height of something too high, but I have no idea. I might have been able to help you but I've never been able to make hide nor hair of generated pagebuilder code, especially when there's superfluous javascripts mixed in for "good" measure. Such is life...
CONTENT
"Autobiography"
Do you know what an autobiography is? I don't think you do. See, this page consists of a drop down menu that is wider than Reese Witherspoons' waist these days, and believe me we're talking wide. Once this drop down menu thingy is selected, three links pop up, none of which contain an autobiography. An autobiography is a lengthy account of your life beginning from birth to the present day, in your own words.
"Basics" - hey, I can read this and the page looks good. Piczo props! Now, all you need to do is make your main page look like this.
"Sexy Stuff" - a seemingly blank page with the same polka dot background used on your splash. Oh, wait - I scrolled down for like five minutes and saw three link back buttons for award sites, two of which were not linked up to the respective sites. If you think buttons are sexy, Freddy Krueger just might be in with a chance, hmm?
Photobooth
Two words, not one. Unless you're Scandinavian. Scandinavians seem to have an obsession with joining together words that do not need to be joined. I know what I'm talking about, I always do. There are dozens upon dozens of photos here, all resized in a puny 96 x 96. Why? At least make them thumbnailed for goodness' sake. Oh yeah that's right, you're batting on the "make sure no one can see jack shit" team, I nearly forgot.
Them
I take it this is a shout out page for your friends. I can barely tell, seeing as you've decided to use a stupendously tiny font, white for the colour, and a pastel striped background. Yeah, because that's really going to work, isn't it. Hell, let's all submit our site to a high-end WPR because we're just soooo ready for that slanderous eventuality.
Etcetera
Okay, so this page is cute. Featuring an animal that looks similar to Disneys' Bambi. Now, Bambi can rock out like no other deer - this is something we all know to be true - but hun, what's the haps with your textorrrr?? Look babe:
Can't read it, can't review it.
SUMMARY
Man, those Romans aren't happy with you Angelina! Although I have to say, I didn't mind your faux autobiography page - presentation wise, of course. Yet it is that very aspect that you need to work on with every other page of your site. Firstly, you need to make sure your text is actually readable. This should go without saying, but apparently not for you, so here I am saying that you need to make your font larger. It is interesting that you picked Petshopgirl's Reviews - one of the more honest, no bullshit review sites around - to get your pagebuilder site reviewed. Well, perhaps you wanted an honest opinion? You've certainly got that and then some, I've told you what you need to work on and hopefully you'll take what I've said and work with it. Sometimes the best advice is the most honest, after all. I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't taken heed of the comments I've received about various things in life. Meanwhile, Jakob Neilsen waits...AND HOPES!!
