Falling Snow Reviews

Site Name: Simply Alaura

Date Completed: April 9, 2008

First Impressions

Omigosh. This is going to be a long review.

Enter Page

n/a

Layout/Design

Header and Footer

Your header has cool colors, but other than that, it doesn’t have any good points. It’s too tall and not long enough. You can’t read the text “simply alaura.”

And where’s your footer? You need to add one or else your text looks all funny cut off so suddenly.

Color Choice

The color scheme is almost there. I like the pink, gray, and white, but not the blue. I think the colors in the header really emphasize the pink, maybe you could pick a different color from your header that matches pink? Orange maybe?

Other

Three words: Center and iFrames. You NEED to center your layout! It look terrible all smushed to the side, especially since it’s already small! CENTER IT NOW.

iFrames are okay, but not the best. You should intall cuteNews or WordPress so you can get rid of them - it looks a lot more neater and professional without iFrames.

OMG. Your text. ITS SO SMALL!!!! I can’t read it AT ALL, which proves a problem while reviewing your site. MAKE IT BIGGER.

Your navigation needs some work. Why are the links all next to each other? It makes it really hard to navigate through your site. Make each link on a different line

like

this.

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Site Name: Reverie’s Dreamland

Date Completed: March 8, 2008

First Impressions

When I first entered your site, I immediately noticed that your layout isn’t centered. Tsk, tsk. That’s not good, Lou! I also found four spelling mistakes (on the homepage!!) without even scrolling down. Uh-oh…

Also, when I go to your site, a little bar pops up at the top of my screen and tells me that your site require certain plugins that I don’t have. Do you know what this is?

Enter Page

n/a

Layout/Design

Like I said before, your layout isn’t centered. This equals bad. Please! Center it!!!

I really like your color scheme! That’s a first! Thank you for not making me redesign your entire site…

Your navigation is pretty well organized, I’d switch the “Reviews” section with your main content section. I’d also rearrange the main content navigation - how about Home, Update Archives, Past Layouts, History, Gifts, Linkage, Contact, Credits, then Terms of Usage? Just seems to make more sense to me. Also, when I roll over links on your navigation, the navigations moves up and down a little bit. Any way to fix that?

Your header’s well designed, a little big for my taste though. I would like to see the “Reverie’s Dreamland” text larger than your layout version, just because your site name should always be big so people can tell what the name of your site is.

But I’d like to see a footer. When the navigation just ends abruptly, it looks weird and awkward.

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Site Name: Dancing in the Rain

Date Completed: March 2, 2008

First Impressions

When I first came to your site, I thought it looked strangely like Final Stop. I searched a bit, and found that you use the same template.

I also thought that your site used some, er, … bright colors.

Enter Page

n/a

Layout/Design

Your layout is a template, which is okay, but not the best. I won’t mark you down for it though. I’m guessing that you can customize it, so I will give you some suggestions.

In the color scheme, there’s a bit too much going on. All your colors are pretty bright, and they don’t match perfectly. I mean, you have brown and pink and blue and green, all in one layout! It’s very distracting. I’d pick about three colors, colors that match, and put those in your layout.

If you like the pink, you could keep the two shades of pink you have in there, and black or white.

If you like the green, you could use pale shades of green and blue, plus the blue you have in there.

If you like the blue, you could use the blue you have, a paler/darker shade, and white.
And if you like the brown, you could use what colors you have, but just get rid of the blue outline.

Here are some examples below. Unfortunately, your header was too complicated for me to match it to the color scheme, but you get the basic idea! Also keep in mind that you’d change the text colors to match the color scheme.

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Site: Mystical Garden

Date Completed: December 27, 2007

First Impressions

I had pretty good first impressions of your site. Not loving the enter page, but I did love your bold color choices! I noticed that you have celebrity graphics in your layout, I hope you at least gave credits…

Enter Page

Good. I don’t love enter pages, but yours is clear and clean. Because it’s so clean, I wonder, what’s the point of it? All you have is an enter button to your site. There’s nothing to look at otherwise, so why not just get rid of the enter page all together?

Layout/Design

Your layout is pretty good. I love your bold color choices - it’s very “mystical.” Although you don’t have a lot of variety, you seem to pull off the “blue on blue on blue” really well.

Your header’s okay, though a little large for my taste. I hate having to scroll down to read most of the content. I think that you could crop off a bit of the header toward the bottom. I do wonder why you have Vanessa Hudgens in the header, especially since your site isn’t celebrity related. For your next layout, I’d suggest not using celebrities, mostly for visitor reasons. First of all, people will get confused and think that your site is a celebrity fan site or something. Second of all, a lot of people that I know think that celebrity graphics are, well, an easy way to design a layout. A lot of people would like to see something more unique. I don’t necessarily think this, but I’m just pointing this out to you as a suggestion to attract more visitors.

In the header I’d also suggest making “Mystical Garden” more noticeable, so people can see the name of your site.

The rest of your layout is pretty much fine. I’d just suggest making your links have a rollover effect, like changing color. Right now, it’s kind of confusing to me because it’s hard to tell which words are links.

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Site: Final Stop

Date Completed: December 21, 2007

First Impressions

I’ve never been to your site before, and have to say - the first impression was a pretty good one! I liked your layout (finally, something interesting!).

Enter Page

n/a

Layout/Design

I love your layout, and it gave me a really good impression of you designing skills! That, is, until I saw it was a premade layout. Not to worry, I don’t take points off for this, as I’m using a premade (but customized) layout at the moment until I can figure out WordPress. I still have faith in your design skills though - you did a great job customizing it! I love the colors.

I do think it’s a little cluttered though - there’s a lot of information in the main box, sidebar, and footer. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I think that you could divide your information into subpages to avoid looking messy. I’d get rid of the “Content” section of your sidebar, and move it to the main navigation tabs. While quickly browsing through your site, I couldn’t find the content for a while! If I were you, I’d definitely move it where visitors can see it. I’d call the tab “Visitor” or “Goodies.” Scratch the top five downloads. You don’t need them on your sidebar. They’re okay to have there, but they’re better off off the sidebar. Now, move the link button (to your site) to the bottom of the sidebar. See the footer? I’d just put copyright and meta data on the footer. I’d move the recent posts and comments to the side bar.

Now that your sidebar’s all cleared up, lets look at the footer. Yikes! Those statistics and meta data look messy! Do you really need a link to login on your footer? Aren’t you (and occasionally) Karen going to be the only people who login? Get rid of that, and that big blue Saturn-like button that links to your statistics page. If you want people to be able to see all your statistics, put a text link in place of this button. It looks a lot neater.

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Site: Ink Dreamer

Date Completed: December 1, 2007

First Impressions

Lily, your site is the slowest loading site out of my lineup of daily visits. It took 17 seconds to load (Time it. 17 seconds is longer than it seems…), whereas, for example, Clem’s site took 1 second. Any idea why yours takes so long?

Enter Page

n/a

Layout/Design

Your layout is pretty good. I don’t really like how the side navigation goes further up than the header. It looks a little awkward, and it also makes the dangling flower have to dangle even further. I think that you should either cut off the side navigation where the header starts, or move the header up. I know that other people like the navigation and header like it is, so this is just my opinion.

Your color scheme is okay. The gray and red (or is it orange?) look good together. But it’s a little plain. I liked the old flower hover effect over the navigation! It made your layout more interesting.

Speaking of flowers, your dangling flower looks weird, like it dangles too much. But, you don’t have to get rid of it! I think that your welcome message, the one below the flower, would look really cool next to it. That way there’s not so much blank space.

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Site Name: Spirit Wish

Date Completed: November 23, 2007

First Impressions

When I first came to your site, I was confused for a brief moment. Your navigation bar was in the center of your layout for about a second! I was also a little disappointed - I was hoping your layout would look like your favicon, which is really cool! But, it didn’t. That would be a good choice for your next layout (hint hint).

Enter Page

N/A (Good choice!)

Layout/Design

Your layout is kind of boring. While your color scheme is okay (American flag colors! ), I wasn’t overly impressed with your layout. I’d like to see a full length header in place of the sign in the left corner. What is that red text next to “Spirit Wish?” Does it say something?

Blue, red, and white look good together, but I think you have too much white. A pale blue would look good as the page’s background.

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Site: Clemwalrusness

Date Completed: November 21, 2007

Clem - I just want to start out by saying something important. I read Mari’s review of your site, and while reviewing your site myself, I was very surprised to see that you didn’t make the changes that Mari suggested - even the little grammar or spelling errors. Have you just not gotten to them yet? I hope you’ll get to them soon - Mari gave excellent suggestions!

First Impressions:

Hmm… this will be hard for me since I’ve visited your site so many times, but I’ll give it a shot. When I first enter your site, I see…. blue. Lots and lots of blue. More on that in the layout section…

Enter Page

THANK GOD you don’t have one! You got rid of that along with the iFrames. Good call… they’re SO last year.

Layout/Design

Header and Footer

Your header is okay, but it’s fairly boring. If you enlarged and centered “Clemwalrusness” that’d both improve the header and make sure your visitors know the name of your site.

I would like to see the footer be a different color. Since it’s the same color as your main section’s background, it just makes your layout look more crowded.

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