PSGR is a solo effort by me, Rhiannon, a 23 year old from New Zealand. There's a lot to explore here, so take a look around and have fun!
Name: Vief
Site: Striped-Socks
Review completed on: 7/11/06
SPLASH PAGE
No splash
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Well first of all, I feel lucky to even be able to access your site! See, I can't actually access your site on my home computer, an Apple iBook. I don't know why, the page just won't load. My friend Raymond who is also on Mac, cannot get to your site either. This is very strange, because I've never heard of such a thing happening before. So it seems that Mac users are at an extreme disadvantage when it comes to viewing Striped-Socks, as in they can't view it at all! So here I am on Windows XP reviewing your site now, and no problems were incurred whatsoever. Only gaining entry to a site via one OS is really queer. Your site should be compatible on any OS...Linux, Mac, Win...I really thought that all sites worked on all OS's until I came across your site. Shows how much I know, right?
LAYOUT
I like it. It's not complicated or particularly detailed, yet it's not boring. Everything balances out nicely, the colours match, it displays correctly, it's all good.
I'm wondering about all the links on your sidebar though - all the external links I mean. You've got a whole tonne of them! I'm thinking that you might want to consider displaying them on their own page, instead of the sidebar. Why? Well, you're wanting to catch your audiences' full attention for a little while, right? Having a multitude of external links on your sidebar serves as a major attention diversion, and someone might click on the link and move on to that particular site, forgetting about yours! Just a thought.
Your blog is quite image heavy, containing many considerably large images. A nightmare for dialup users, I'm sure. I'm on broadband at the moment and even so, your site didn't load instantaneously like most other personal sites would. You should try to either keep the images to a bare minimum, make a separate page for them, or utilise thumbnails. Perhaps that's why I couldn't get into your site, because my home computer is on dialup and my connection would have just timed out. Not good!
CONTENT
Judging from the few actual content links, your site seems to be pretty much blog-related, centred around your blog. That's fine - but I'm just letting you know I don't review blogs, or blog entries in categories or what have you, I'll just be reviewing the links under "Content".
About Me
About Me - This page proved to be an interesting read, you write well. You've managed to avoid boring lists on this page, instead opting to explain yourself in sentences. This is just the way I like it, it's more personalised wouldn't you agree? On the fifth paragraph change politcally to politically. On the second to last paragraph, you say "I have a history with si" - SI needs to be in capital letters, and ideally with a dot in between the S and the I. On the last paragraph, "I have accounts with various website" should be I have accounts with various websites. Obviously these errors here are merely typographical since you stated on this page that you're a punctuation-grammar-spelling freak, so it's just a matter of going through everything you've typed up and proofreading it.
Quickies - a page you've recommended people read if they can't be bothered with the long "About Me" page. While the information here has been presented in a list format, this is acceptable as that is the whole point of having this page up in the first place - a quick rundown of information about yourself. Hence the name Quickies. Duh!
With each fact, I think you should bold the part before the colon, like this for example: obsession :: Chris Dos, Davey Havok and Travis Barker instead of just obsession :: Chris Dos, Davey Havok and Travis Barker. Looks better, doesn't it?
Books - a list of your favourite books in alphabetical order. You should definitely include some reviews here, or if you can't be bothered doing that you could always rate them all out of five stars. You could also link each title to their respective Amazon links as well, in the meantime before you get some reviews up. Reading your personal opinions of each book would make this page more appealing, instead of just a list and nothing else.
Music - the same could be said for this page - all this is is a great big alphabetical list. You must like some of these bands more than others - which ones? You've seen some live - tell us about their concerts. What are your favourite songs from these bands? Elaboration rocks!
Handwriting - on the last line of your intro to this page, change look to looks. Cool handwriting by the way.
Obsessions - I really enjoyed this page because it was so personal. This page contains information and stories as to how you came to idolise Davey Havok, Chris Dos and Travis Barker, complete with an image of each guy. Just one thing though - on the last line of the bit about Travis Barker, change antyhing to anything.
Fanlistings
There's not a hell of a lot I can say about a collection of fanlisting buttons...they're arranged nicely though?! D'oh...
Screencaps
Collections of screencaps from various video clips of the likes of Evanescence, Anti Flag, etc. Is this even legal? I doubt it. I know you've stated that the clips are copyright to the respective artists / recording companies, but unfortunately that's not really good enough, you shouldn't have taken them in the first place because it is considered a violation of copyright. At the end of the day these video stills do not belong to you, so therefore you should not be reproducing them at your own site nor should you be offering them for others to make use of. Sorry if you're getting pissed off because I'm telling you the facts, but that's what they are, facts.
Street art
An interesting array of images in this section, great use of thumbnails. Loading time would have been an absolute bitch otherwise!
SUMMARY
Well, that's the end of the content you have on offer. Your site isn't bad, but this review concluded sooner than I had hoped. This was down to the lack of content your site had to offer, seemingly due to it being a blog-oriented site only, with tonnes of categories but little in the way of non blog-related content. The whole world doesn't revolve around Wordpress - branch out and add some more content that isn't related to your blog! More visitor content is a must...opinions, more of your photography, writings, whatever! Anything goes as long as it's not generic crap (ABC's, Googlisms etc) but you don't strike me as the unoriginal type anyway, so I'm sure whatever you come up with could be quite appealing. You come across as an interesting character with varied interests; and I'm glad I was able to learn a decent amount of information about you. Once you ammend the various errors I've pointed out to you, along with considering some of my layout tips (sidebar links), I truly believe your site will be better than ever. You've got something good going on here, but with the recommended improvements you'll have something great.
