Name: Sakura
Site: Sweet Patronus
Review completed on: 18/09/06
SPLASH PAGE
No splash
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
I hate to say it, but the appearance of your site is quite awful. And I can't believe there's a paragraph begging for donations at the top of your blog! Donations for what? You need to give something in order to receive, and girl you just ain't givin' right now.
LAYOUT
No disrespect to Lee Dong Gun, but the images you've used on your layout look choppy, and of a low quality in general. The image of Lee in a suit in particular, has jagged edges and fuzzy white stuff around the outline as well as in other scattered parts of this layout, almost as if you spilt ground up cocaine! I'm just being silly here, but what I'm trying to get through to you is that it really doesn't look the greatest. Your body background is also rather poor - it looks like a series of pixels that have been zoomed in on dozens on times, creating a very tacky look all round. Your sidebar only adds increased support to my prior statement - it looks like you've crammed in a whole websites' worth of information here, link buttons strewn higgledy-piggledy, some not even loading, all in all a total state of disorganised chaos. No one should have to scroll down for years just to read a truckload of sidebar information - a lot of these links can be stored elsewhere. I also find it rude that you are begging for Paypal donations when you are doing nothing at the moment that is deserving of funds from your visitors. In my opinion it is wrong to engage in acts of internet begging in the first place, regardless of what you have to offer. But this...this absolutely takes the cake. It's like someone setting up a page of flickering gifs against a neon background, marquee banners aplenty, and asking for money over it. I advise you to spend a while 'cleaning up' your layout - make sure your images are clean cut and sharp, minus the cocaine. Drastically minimise the amount of content your sidebar holds - only the bare essentials should be housed here.
CONTENT
Me
I'm not keen on how you've arranged your content links, aligned to the extreme right. Aligning them to the centre could work out better here. As it is now, it looks queer because your sidebar text is aligned to the left, with your content aligned to the right. Strange-o.
About Me - you've provided a decent amount of information here, even though you've resorted to using lists to relay such facts. You have left out two very important facts though - your age and where you're from. It can't be that you don't want this information exposed, because you've pretty much said everything else. Judging from your name and some of your favourite stores, are you from Singapore? Great country, I look forward to returning there at some stage. I was quite bemused by a great big gigantic declaration that you are a 'web programming God' at the bottom of this page. I guess we all have our different interpretations of what God is...
Quiz Results - no no no no no. I know this is probably some desperate grab for content but there are other methods of substantiating what you have to offer, and you don't have to sink into the murky mire of humongous quiz graphics and detailed explanations pasted from random quiz sites. Please drag yourself out of said swamp soon, or it may be too late!
My Quiz - so, a black serif font against that dark background o'yours, that really works. Not! How can anyone see this with ease? When you put this page up did you think it looked fine or something? Change the font colour to the colour you've used on all the previous pages.
Listed At - no broken images here unlike on your sidebar, and all buttons have been arranged tidily in their respective categories. This was good to see!
My Compositions - I had to wonder what this was at first, but this page seems to contain two of your own written works. Great!
"Freaky Motherly Teacher" - I didn't particularly understand this but I'm guessing you're young and English is not your native tongue, so I'm going to waive all the errors. From what I could make out, you've got an extremely weird teacher on your hands. It's really awkward being targetted by teachers. I was targetted by a freaky teacher once and I ended up hitting her, because she was picking on me for no reason, in other words she couldn't handle that I was right and she was wrong, and her teaching methods were defunct. If you continue to feel freaked out by this teacher then you really should talk to your school principal or your form dean about it. They won't tell the teacher what you said, and they may be able to give you some needed advice.
"Should Teachers Blog?" - this was very well written, Sakura! Niiice. I have never really thought about teachers blogging, but you've raised some very good points.
You
Oh, only two links here, "Free hosts" and "Types of blogs". Sod the opinions and free graphics! You could really do with adding to this page, share some of your graphics with others (actually you'd better not do that at the moment, maybe later!), opinions, you know? Things like that. I can't see how a visitor could find a list of freeservers very appealing, nor a breakdown of the different types of online blogs.
"Different types of blogs" - I can see you've put in a considerable amount of effort here, but really, why? What does it matter? I'm sure people are already aware that political blogs contain political issues, a personal blog is a personal blog etc etc. Your table width exceeds the given width of your iframe, which made viewing this table a tad uncomfortable.
Site / WWW
"Affiliates" - one of your affiliate buttons is broken, but I can't give you the name of the site because when I click the image icon it goes to your site. Remember that broken images shows a lack of care and maintenance to your site, as well as a lack of professionalism when it comes to organisation.
"Links" - there is a multitude of links here, and they all load in your iframe! Be sure to change your target to "new" in your coding, so that your visitors are not trapped in a perpetual state of iFrame damnation. In other words, it's pretty much hell being trapped in iFrames when you want to break free. And stuff. Yeah.
"Link Us" - Girl, you have a truckload of codes here but half of them aren't even loading! Broken images are so horrible...fix please?
"Past Layouts" - argh, these are taking an eternity to load. I propose a smoko - I'll be right back.
* * *
Hi. Still loading I see! Well, I'm going to make a cup of Earl Grey then, but if they haven't loaded when I get back, it'll be Last Chance Saloon time...
Hi again. Well, I'm having trouble seeing the information about each layout because you've done the whole 'black text on dark background' thing again, but I can just make it out...hey, some of these layouts aren't too bad. Not sure what's going on with Version 3: "Violin Music" though, it looks like you've tossed on a bunch of decaying leopard fur onto the image or something. The Hermione one looks quite nice.
"Important Dates" - black on near-black just doesn't go! Change the font to the white/mauve colour you've used earlier. Have you not checked this page or something, because surely if you had you would see that it is virtually unreadable.
"Awards" - congratulations. Just consider making these awards thumbnailed, as some of them are quite large and they exceed the width you've given your iframe.
SUMMARY
Every successful website has had a considerable amount of effort put into it, and to be honest I've rarely seen this effort from you. I enjoyed your two compositions, but apart from that you really didn't have anything to offer to the average visitor. There are several areas that I think you need to focus on - presentation perhaps being the first and foremost. Tidy things up a bit, work to make your site appear more organised and then get to work on adding some more content. I'm suggesting that you work on the content second because you need to make sure your site is easily viewable first. Give the visitors a reason to stay longer - a tidier looking website with an increased amount of content. I wish you luck in bettering your website - persistance is everything, and if you are serious about having a high quality site then I have no doubt that this will become an eventuality for Sweet Patronus.
