Review of Blood To Death

• Site Name: Blood To Death
• Owner Name: Dye
• Date Reviewed: 28 February 2010 (started on 22 February 2010)

Site Name

I really like that your website’s name contains the word “blood”. Like you, I also love both the cute and the morbid. The one problem I have with your site name is that people don’t “blood to death”, they bleed to death. The name is definitely unique though, so no complaints there. Also, traditionally in title case, the word “to” should not be capitalized, and your website’s name would instead be written “Blood to Death”. That’s how I would write it if it were up to me.

Layout

I like the “clean” look of your layout. The fact that it is grayscale comes across as rather classy to me, which is nice. I also really like the rollovers you have on the main navigation. Did you draw that illustration of Yotsuba yourself?

My only complaint is how the little graphic in your footer that says “the affiliates” is below the list of affiliates. That’s weird to me; I think it would make more sense to the visitor if it were to be above the links. It took me some thinking the first time to realize that “the affiliates” was referring to the set of links above the graphic.

I would advise against image-mapping your navigation like you have, because some people do turn images off when they browse the internet on slow connections. Without images, how will they navigate your site?

Cross-Browser Compatibility

Your layout looks generally the same across the major browsers (Internet Explorer 8, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera), but there are minor issues that vary by browser.

In Internet Explorer, each bullet in an unordered list appears twice, as in the following screenshot:

Additionally, in Internet Explorer, when I hover over “site”, “services”, or “content”, the rest of the content on the page is pushed downward, as seen in the following screenshot:

Finally, in Google Chrome and Safari, the rollovers on your main navigation do not work at all. Everything is fine in Mozilla Firefox and Opera.

Coding

Your coding is valid in both HTML 4.01 Transitional and CSS level 3. Good job!

Content

Site: I don’t understand why there is a link to the homepage of your website here, when there is already one in your main navigation at the top of every page. I think it’s unneeded and just likely to cause a bit of confusion. Part of me thought I might find some information about the site if I clicked that link.

It might also be nice to have one of the pages appear right away when someone clicks “about”, instead of just going to another list of pages. The more clicks that are required, the less user-friendly a page tends to be. If I were you, I would have “site” link either to the page about the domain history or to the page about yourself, the owner. Then, you could have the links across the top or at the bottom of the page. An example of what I mean can be found if you click website in my navigation.

Additionally, I find the page that appears after I click “about” to be very confusing. With so many links on that page as well, I initially forgot that I had come from another page full of links, the “site” page. Since there are so many pages linked from about, I suggest making “about” another link on the main navigation, or some other similar remedy.

These endless lists of links are getting very confusing!

Affiliation: know your alive should be know you’re alive

manor should be manner. A manor is a type of house.

Gifts Received: Valentines Day should be Valentine’s Day

Services:

Advertise Your Contest: I like this concept, but I don’t think it makes sense to place the advertisements on this page. If one of your visitors is looking to enter a contest, they aren’t likely to visit your services section looking for some, because they don’t need a service! Even if they do make it as far as services, they will likely think that the link saying “Advertise Your Contest” is only for people who want to advertise, and not full of actual advertisements. The application and rules are fine here, but the ads should be somewhere else more logical.

your participants entries should be your participants’ entries

It’s not really a big deal, but I’m curious as to why all the fields have some text telling the applicant what to type, but the email field does not.

Button Rotation: Where are these buttons rotated? If they are just listed on the button rotation page, that’s not very effective advertising. Like I said before, a visitor looking for another site to visit isn’t going to look in services for it. In fact, people don’t usually tend to look for advertisements on a website, but if they happen to see a button in a rotation on the page they’re on that looks interesting, they might click it. I would rotate these buttons on every page, perhaps in your footer.

OH now I understand that this is a rotation that other people put on THEIR websites. That’s a nice concept. I think you need to make it more clear though, because as you can see, it took me a while to figure out what you meant.

On the code page, manor should be manner.

File Hosting: limit my your space should be limit your space

On this page, your link to Baiorin Designs does not work. Is this page still current?

Permenant Plugs should be Permanent Plugs

Request Graphic Designs: In the application where one is supposed to select which type of graphics he or she wants, “Header Images”, “Separators/Dividers”, and “Desktop Wallpapers” are all written in smaller font. Why?

Website Reviews: I like the idea of your pending page that lists the website you are currently reviewing. However, I think a different name would be more appropriate, since it wasn’t altogether clear to me at first how this page was different than the queue (until I visited the queue). I would suggest calling it something like “Currently Reviewing”, instead of “Pending”.

On the application, I think it would be a good idea to add space for comments, just in case. For example, if I were to apply for a review from your site, I would have difficulty choosing my website’s type, since I think of my website as a “personal blog and resource website”. That could fall under the personal, blog, OR graphic design category! I would want to clarify that in a comment/extra information field.

Content: Technically, everything on your website is content. I would rename this section something more specific, like “visitor” or “resources”. However, the way you have qualified this as “content for visitors” in your navigation makes this more okay, I guess. The “for visitors” bit just isn’t as visible as the “content” text, so it’s less intuitive than something like “visitor”.

Articles

Since you have so few articles under each category, why not put them all on the same page under the articles heading? This goes back to what I said earlier about visitors liking less clicks to get to their destination. Fewer clicks can also make it less confusing for the visitor, because it makes it more clear to the visitor what he or she is clicking. The way it is now, a visitor may click “animals” and expect to find an article about animals in general!

Don’t Scold the Cat!: my cat traveler should be my cat Traveler

How to get more visitors: your websites 88×31 buttons should be your website’s 88×31 buttons

This is a good article, but I think you should explain more thoroughly what each way to gain visitors actually is. Explain what it means to exchange links or to affiliate, for example. When writing articles like this, it is helpful to imagine that the person reading it has absolutely no idea what you are talking about, so you have to explain everything.

Avatars

These all look good. Have you been careful to avoid copyright infringement? You should be sure to check the copyright permissions on such images before adapting them. While some levels of copyright allow for derivatives of the work (with credit) to be published on websites such as yours, others (such as MTV) are very strict and do not even allow people to email their photos. This is often something you can find in a website’s terms of use.

Tutorials – HTML

Displaying Code: For this tutorial, I think you should link readers to a code converter such as the one found on Tutorialtastic here. That makes it much easier than actually typing every character code. You may also want to mention why displaying code in this way is more correct than using a textarea.

Server Side Includes: I think many of the concepts in this tutorial could be explained a lot better. Remember, teach as if your visitors have no idea what you’re talking about. Instead of waiting until the end of your first paragraph to tell your readers why they might like to try server side includes, you should open the tutorial this way. The primary purpose of server side includes is not to replace PHP includes, but to allow someone to make a change in one file and have it affect every file in which that file is included, instead of having to edit each and every file. Really sell the concept you’re trying to teach.

Instead of telling the reader to put the coding above the content into a header file, you should tell them instead to put all the coding that they want to appear on every page that comes before the part that will be different on each page into said file. The same general idea goes for the footer file.

You also neglect to mention that when you place this code into header and footer files, you need to delete that code from each page, REPLACING it with those include codes. The way you have written this, someone might think that they are supposed to leave that code on each page and just put the include code at the start of the page. You do not make this clear, and I would not have known if I did not already have a good idea of how to use SSI.

Additionally, you should explain what the include codes you add actually do. Explain that they call on the code saved in the header and footer files. You could also mention that someone could use this same process to do littler things like have a set of links on a group of pages by replacing those links with an include command that calls upon a file containing them.

Frameset Preview Bar: a HTML should be an HTML. I know HTML doesn’t start with a vowel, but if you say it out loud, it begins with a vowel sound. That is why you need “an” instead of “a”.

Custom 404 Error Page: Internet Explorers should be Internet Explorer’s

One thing you have forgotten to consider is what someone should do if they already have a .htaccess file on their server. Most people do, and overwriting it can cause drastic consequences! You should discuss whether you can download and edit the existing .htaccess file, and where to look for it if it does exist.

ASCII Symbols: This is not a tutorial, it is simply a list. You do not teach anything on this page. Why is it under the tutorials category? This is more of a resource than anything.

Banning IP Addresses: Once again, be sure to mention where the .htaccess file might be located on someone’s server. Someone who hasn’t downloaded theirs before might not be aware they have one. You also need to state WHERE in the file you should place the line to block an IP address. Can someone put it anywhere? Should it be at the beginning or end? What about after a certain line?

Plugboard.org Plugboard Design: overided with should be overridden by

You mention the file plug.php in step one, yet it is not actually discussed until step two. Don’t get ahead of yourself; it will confuse your visitors!

own websites button should be own website’s button

Overall Impression

In terms of the organization of your website, I am not impressed. As I discussed before, you really should get rid of the confusing, endless lists of links, and make things much more simple to navigate. Also, like I said, many pages are located in illogical places.

It is difficult to comment on the originality of your website, because a majority of the graphics you modify are not your own. However, what you do with these unoriginal graphics is rather original and well done.

From viewing your website, I get the impression that your graphics skills are far superior to your tutorial-writing abilities. I think you should definitely focus on the graphics aspect of your website and continue to offer superb, high-quality graphics, and let the tutorials go. To be honest, you’re not very good at explaining the steps of your tutorials, and as I was reading yours, I was thinking of other tutorials about the same topics that would be much more useful because of the way they are written.

If you focus on graphics and improve the organization of your website, your website will be one step closer to fulfilling its potential. It is due to this potential that I have chosen to award your website 4.5 out of five doughnuts. There are many areas in which your website can and should improve, but it is well on its way to becoming something great.