Review #39: Kaytlin Star
Reviewing Kaytlin’s site, Kaytlin Star, in Firefox on Mac OS X Panther
First Impressions
I’m very tempted to only review your layout. This is because you haven’t made an effort to make your navigation work in Firefox (and how hard is it, seriously?), so why should I make an effort to review almost certainly subpar content? But no, you’ve waited long enough.
I’m not sure what your reaction to this review will be, but since you applied for it, I might as well give you what everyone else gets. My first impression is “teenybopper”. It’s not the worst layout ever, but it stands to be improved upon in a major way. I see a right-aligned layout, tiny fonts, non-functioning navigation, and brushes galore. Not to mention this whole summer2008 thing. Yes, that really has something to do with your site. Sure thing.
Hmm… One good thing I’m noticing is the fact that you have good grammar. Capitalisation, punctuation, overall you gots da gud English, which is more than you can say for your mainstream teenybopper site owner. I guess this is worthy of a congratulations, although it’s a little sad that something that should be commonplace now has to be applauded.
Layout
So basically you went crazy downloading brushes, couldn’t decide which to use, and so you used them all? Even if this isn’t the case, it’s what it looks like. Lots of restraint is necessary in the art of design, or else you end up with a teenybopper site. What does lined paper (your background) have to do with flowers, music, lyrics, and random blotch brushes?
Starting with your colour choice, as I usually do, it’s not bad at all. White with some brighter colours can look quite nice, and you’ve picked nice colours, in my opinion. You haven’t picked 3479324 different shades—I can see 3 main colours here, and they work well together. You’ve done a good job of repeating these colours elsewhere in the layout, creating a sense of unity.
However. Once I actually look at the header image, I don’t know what’s going on. Simplicity is so much nicer to look at than random brushes splattered all over. I don’t generally like most brushes anyway, but if you’re going to use them, pick ONE set and use them sparingly. You also don’t need the random star and then the handwriting font over the main header text. It looks way too busy. My head hurts!
Now, there’s also a problem in Firefox with header spillage, as demonstrated by the screenshot below:
Now to your navigation. It’s very squished, and a bit of the header image is underneath it. I’m not sure if that was your intention, but even if it was it looks strange. The nagivation is short, squished, and unnoticeable, and there’s a long line of white space. Also, the hover in Firefox is very messed up—and, testing the layout in Safari, it’s STILL messed up. I’m guessing you use Internet Explorer, and this navigational problem is just one of the many reasons why you should switch to Firefox. Not only is it just a better browser, it’s important to test your site for cross-browser compatibility! Try using the following code instead. It will make your navigation functional and prettier.
#navigate {
width: 100%;
background: #FFFFFF;
height: 50px; }
#navigate ul {
width: 100%;
list-style: none;
font-family: georgia;
}
#navigate li {
display: inline;
}
#navigate li a
{ float: left;
display: block;
width: 24%;
text-align: center;
color: #F0C954;
font-size: 1.3em;
margin: 3px 0 0 0;
padding: 10px 0 0 0;
}
#navigate li a:hover
{ background: #DFFE83;
}
Moving onto your sidebar. It’s a little crowded, and not well-organised. Firstly, you have ads before you have your personal information. It’s my opinion that ads on a personal website are stupid, but if you must have them, they should go at the bottom! Next there’s the generic information about you, which I will go over later. Then I see a messy-looking list of affiliates. The columns don’t look at all organised; why don’t you just display a few in one column, or, better yet, don’t clutter your sidebar with them? After that is a bunch of boring Tweets, which look ugly and further crowd it, and then a tagboard. Tagboards are really just stupid. They allow people to talk about random things on your site; they are just inviting spam; the IP blocking never works; they are the epitome of teenybopper websites. Next is “Junk”. This creates the impression that there’s no point in looking there, when in reality, the RSS feed link is important, as are the credits link and I suppose the link me link. The online counter thing is very teenybopper and completely unnecessary, and the powered by Wordpress link would go better off in a footer. Not that you have one.
Moving swiftly onto the other problems with your layout, of which there are many. Firstly, I already addressed the fact that the background just doesn’t match the rest of the layout. Did you blindfold yourself and pick one at random? Next, the font! Ahh! Georgia does not work as a body font. It’s really hard to read at such proportions, and even if you had picked a font like Verdana (<3), it would still be far too small! I'm also noticing that there's a crack in your layout, which looks bad:
There’s a huge gap between blog entries, as demonstrated below.
You should link the blog titles the entries themselves. Permalinks ftw. Your bolded and italicised text is too bright. I personally hate it when the font and the colour changes when text is bolded or italicised, because it always looks like a link to me. It’s best just to leave it how it is.
I believe it’s now time to touch on the fact that your layout isn’t centered. It doesn’t look nice or cute or creative; it just looks ugly. There’s a huge gap to the left, and it’s disconcerting when I first load your site. I’m used to everything being centrally-aligned, and my eyes automatically fall to the center, just like everyone else’s.
Lastly (design-wise, at least), having a footer would be a good idea. Footers help finish layouts off, and you can store useful links like Sitemap, Powered By, Credits, and Host on it, as well as copyright information. An effective footer can make a design so much nicer.
I’m going to briefly touch on your coding. I’m seeing Javascript for “gradual image highlight”, which is definitely teenybopper and definitely unnecessary. Now, what is this?
Ugh. Tables? No way. Tables display data, not full webpages. This is semantically incorrect, and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, just think logically! Would you make a chart and write a story in it? I don’t think so, so why would you display a web page in tables? Furthermore, it’s not XHTML valid to have your tags in capital letters: instead of using Now, since it’s impossible for me to click on your links in Firefox, I’m forced to view your source so I can see the link URL and then copy and paste the URLs into the address bar. If I had to go to these lengths to view your content as an average visitor, you can be sure I just wouldn’t bother. Seriously—if you don’t care enough about me to make your content accessible, I don’t care about your content. I also notice that your navigation is in a strange order. I want to learn about you first, then look at your visitor content, and then read about the domain. So please to be changing the order? Before I delve into your actual content, I just wanted to note that the blurb on your sidebar isn’t helping your score. Full sentences, please? Why not change it to something like this: “My name is Kaytlin and I was born on April 10th, 1995. I have brown hair and hazel-green eyes. I’m a perfectionist, a Twilighter, and Southern at heart. I read really fast and love music, and I’m a little bit out there.” That’s just so much easier to read! I see you have a lot of content here. To be perfectly blunt, it looks boring and completely generic at first glance. However, it remains to be seen if this is indeed the case. Website Layouts—Celebrity blends, yawn. I guess it’s almost required that I link you to Jem’s article on coyright violation. If you really don’t care about that, although I’m personally on the side that you should care, why don’t you consider the fact that celebrity layouts don’t stand out at all and are completely boring? Blends—Oh, quintessential teenybopper. What exactly do you use a blend for and why are they always plastered with celebrities who I don’t know? This is pointless content, not very high quality, and WHY OH WHY do they have to open in a new tab? I would like to control where they open myself, plzkthx. Icons—All copyrighted material, of course. I will admit that I have used icons that are copyrighted images (for shame), but at least they looked nice. The same can’t be said for yours, unfortunately. Backgrounds—Okay, no. Not nice. If you were offering high-quality backgrounds, I might go for this, but these are not aesthetically-pleasing. Also, the textareas, besides not being the correct way of displaying code, are unnecessary and also full of horrible coding. I think I know how to set a background to my site (using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), by the way, not HTML). Blinkies—Right. What’s the point, again? Blank Buttons—O noez. These are okay; nothing hideous, nothing copyrighted, but they’re pretty boring, and I certainly wouldn’t use them myself. Affiliate Images—Okay, seriously, I’ve never understood these. Yeah, sure, I’ll blindly click on a linked image without knowing where I’m going. Sure. That makes a whole lot of sense. Free Brushes—These take forever to load! And, um… they weren’t worth it. These brushes are totally generic and I can’t think of a good use for them. I mean, yes I know what brushes are for, but would these be used on a nice layout? No. Free Programs—You didn’t make these programs, therefore this page can be deemed filler content. If you gave each program a full review, that would be different. But as it is… nope. Bad. Cropped Pictures—Yeah, okay, I totally couldn’t crop ugly celebrity images myself. Premade CSS—LOL at the terminology. I’m sure these are horrible, judging from your other graphics, and I’m sure the coding is disgusting. My advice to you: don’t put these up if you don’t know what you’re doing! All your Neopets stuff is… well, Neopets. I thought that site had gone the way of the dinosaurs? Tutorials—Oh dear god! So many generic tutorials! And since you don’t really know anything about coding… no. Seriously. Pointless content, please to take it down naow. Writing—Password protected? Why link it, then? To be honest, I’m quite disappointed. I was looking forward to this part, because I thought you might have potential as a writer, judging from the fact that you seem to have a decent grasp on the English language. Book Reviews—Funny how I compliment your grammar and then I see this: You’ve read book’s, really? Which is book’s? Oh, you mean BOOKS! As in, books plural, not books singular possessive. Okay. So, these reviews are pretty short, not much to them. You have a lot of run-on sentences and way too many ellipses here. It sounds more like you’re chatting to a friend than writing a review. Why not check out Mari’s review of Enchanted (and her review of HP5) and my book reviews for examples on how good reviews are written? (Not to sound self-impressed or anything. Okay, all sense of hope has disappeared. Looking more closely at your writing, I realize it’s not very good. No, it’s not completely horrible, and yes, you have a basic understanding of the English language, but it leaves a lot to be desired. You’ve written this page as if you’re chatting to a friend, which has its place, but not on the About page of your personal site. I’m also noticing that there’s nothing funny or interesting here. It’s all fact, fact, fact, fact. Also, this page lacks any sort of consistency. There are just facts all over the place, nothing linking any of them. I would help you by giving a suggested rewrite, but since there are just a bunch of random facts here, there’s really nothing I can do. Pictures—Under construction :(, huh? Why link it if there’s nothing on it? Pointless pointless pointless! Fanlistings—Yeah okay. Whatever. My Handwriting—I don’t want to click the thumbnail! Is there a reason that you haven’t just put the photo up? Anyway, yawn, boring, I really do not care about your handwriting in the least and I don’t see why anyone would. Filler content much? Googlisms—More filler content! Seriously, like anyone cares what comes up when you Google your name. Traditional Art—I would recommend making an Art section, instead of dumping this under Owner. It doesn’t really belong. Now, I’m okay with the thumbnails in this instance, but the way you have them set up, you can’t really tell anything about the pictures. I don’t want to blindly click them to see what they are, and neither will your average visitor. The first one doesn’t seem to be traditional art—it looks like it was made on the computer. Next I see an overly-cute Alice Cullen staring at me… not my thing at all. The eyes scare me. Now a decorated page saying “I love Edward Cullen”. Yeah, okay, WHO CARES? This is not art. Bella Swan… hmm… I like her hair, but she has no nose and mouth and her eyes are really cutesy and scary. Same thing with the next one: I like everything about it except the eyes. I guess it’s just me, then, but those eyes haunt my dreams. And lastly, a phoenix. Um… yeah, it’s okay, eyes are weird, whatever. Webdesign History—Oh my god, your tiny Georgia is really catching up with me here! A huge, unbroken paragraph in a tiny serif font. Tell me it isn’t so! Again, a bit too chatty here. Luckily I can actually rewrite this page for you to show you how you should be doing it.
I’ve always been a creative kind of kid; I loved drawing and writing stories. When my older half-sister Rachael showed me Neopets on my mom’s laptop when we were on vacation, I was enthralled. What six year old wouldn’t be? I got to create my own pet! I played Neopets faithfully for a while before showing my friend Celina. She wasn’t as into it as I was at first, but eventually she was addicted too. One school break Celina went off to Chicago and when she came back, she had great news for me. You could change your userlookup, guild, and shop colors! We found great premade sites, like SunnyNeo and NeopetsGuide, and after we made new accounts claiming we were 13, we had the prettiest accounts in Neopets, or so we thought. One day, after looking for a new style for my shop, I decided to click on the little buttons underneath “Affiliates” and saw that there were a whole lot of neopets help sites out there. It never occured to me that you could make your own website before! After I saw “Create your own website at Freewebs.com” at the bottom of one website, I decided to try it. I couldn’t have been more than eight years old. I made an account on Freewebs, and using codes from LissaExplains, I mananged to create a bright green, CSS-devoid layout that I thought was amazing. I called my site Kaytlin’s Site, and made icky banners and animations on Paint. It never occured to me to get a counter or guestbook, so I’m not sure if anyone really ever visited my website. The account still exists, here. I decided, after making Brittany, Alexis, and Alaura websites with templates, that I wanted a template too, because it’d be so much easier that way. I moved my website, and improved slightly in graphic ability, but I was still using Paint. Eventually, I didn’t want a template anymore because I had better coding and graphic abilities now. I made a new site, Kaytlin4e, and finally got a guestbook. I began to improve greatly, but in the long run I didn’t want to stick with Freewebs, so I searched the web for other free hosts. I found Biz.TC, and thought it was a gift from heaven. I created a website on there, Kaytlin.biz.tc, and started getting affiliates again. While on a random site, I saw that you could download free graphic programs, which I could use to make things that were as good as other sites! I downloaded it and made a new layout and a bunch of graphics right away. Then, after a week, my site was over-run by ads, boxes, and all sorts of things. Turns out Biz.TC only had a week trial of no ads. It was worse than Freewebs! I was in dismay, and very irritated. I took a break from webdesign and started focusing on graphics, working at Celina’s Neopets website, where she had discovered iFrames. I felt the longing for a website soon enough, however, and when I went to visit Celina in June 2007, I created Georgiakayy, and she created LOLZ. We had found yet another free host, WebNG.com, who, at the time, had no ads — forever — and was reliable, and easy for us to understand. Since I was at her house, I had nothing but Paint again, but that was okay with me, and over time my site progressed. I began keeping a blog, and working hard on everything. I even discovered (and figured out how to use) iFrames, CSS, and then external stylesheets! When I returned home, I made graphics for my site using my downloaded program, and eventually Sophie of Retrobubbles.net (site gone now) offered to host me! I didn’t know what FTP was, or anything, but I soon discovered Net2FTP.com was a lot like the interface of WebNG. I kept working at it, and eventually my site was getting tons of visitors! My dad ended up giving me an old CD of Paint Shop Pro 7 that he used to use for work, and I began using that, and progressing even more. Sadly, however, Sophie sent out an email one day explaining that her domain was expiring, and she was getting a new one. I decided that I’d find a different host, because I’d been immensly jealous of other people’s wordpress and cutenews, and wanted that too. It hit me that Celina (who by now had purchased a domain) had Wordpress and hosted people too! I asked her if she’d host me, and she said that of course she would, and I created Kaytlin-Star on the 19th of January, 2008. I figured out how to use Wordpress (eventually, and partially — still working on that a bit), I worked and worked at my site, and then I realized I’d gotten a lot better, and needed to remake a lot of things. I did, and here we are today!
As you can see, I didn’t make too many changes, but I did take out the smileys and chattiness. I think that you’ve written too much here; most people aren’t going to care about every little detail of your web history. Also, I just want to point out that having the adverb ironically in the following sentence is completely pointless: I called my site Kaytlin’s Site, ironically…
In what way is that ironic? If you don't know what the word means, don't use it. Retouch Portfolio—Doesn’t belong in your About section. That aside… wow. How can you think your “retouches” look better? The skin looks fake and weird. They look so much nicer before! Writing—Again, I need a password to enter this page. Contact—This is fine, really. I wish your bolded text wasn’t bright green, because it’s REALLY hard to read, and it would be nice if you linked your other accounts, e.g. “On Twitter: kaytlin“, but there’s not much to say about any contact page. All the stuff at the top is unnecessary. It’s either redundant or it doesn’t matter at all. Why not do a bit of a write-up about the site, something like “Kaytlin Star is my personal site and a blog. It’s a place for me to post my writing and graphics. It’s hosted by iCelina, powered by Wordpress, and was opened on January 19, 2008.” Then you can have links to other pages, or make headings and put some of them on this one. (There’s no need for so many pages!) Credits—Mmhmm, okay. But what’s this? Name—Add this to the main Site page, please? It doesn’t deserve a page of its own! Link Me—If you need to tell someone how to link you (using invalid coding, no less), they shouldn’t have a website. Also, the buttons aren’t very nice. Affiliates—Ahh, the days of affiliates. Such a teenybopper thing to do. Nowadays, people mostly just link sites they like and don’t get offended when the favour isn’t returned. It’s called a blogroll. Awards and Gifts—Teenybopper alert! I guess if these make you proud, keep them up. They’re not doing much for your content, though. Reviewed—Page not found. Contact—You’ve already linked this. And so concludes this lovely little review! I had been putting off starting this review, actually, because based upon my first impression, your website was teenybopper and probably not worth my time. I can see I was right. Your graphics don’t impress me, your coding is horrid, and your layout could use a LOT of improving upon. Your English is better than the average teenybopper’s, but still not perfect, and bar two subpar book reviews, there wasn’t really any writing to review. I give your site a great big TEENYBOPPER stamp and a low score. Good luck on changing absolutely everything—that is, if you’re not the typical butthurt teenybopper who refuses to change (here’s hoping you’re not). No comments yet., you should be using
. You are in dire need of a good tutorial on creating a tableless layout.
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)Owner
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That’s
to you, missy!Summary
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