Review of City in Surrender

• Site Name: City in Surrender
• Site Owner: Sophia
• Date Reviewed: January 2, 2010

Site Name

Thank you for letting me know that you did not choose your domain or website name. However, I do like them both and have no complaints.

Layout

I like the colors in this layout, but the white title is blinding to me. White is typically too bright on dark backgrounds; I suggest trying a different color. I think you have used the pink and green nicely and effectively without them being blinding. Not many people can successfully use such bright colors without them being hard on the eyes.

I’m not sure about how the image running down the side has a description of your site’s purpose near its bottom. This isn’t exactly a problem, but if you want this description to be something people see when they visit your site, I think you should also display it somewhere higher up on the page. Otherwise people will only see it if they scroll down, which they may not do.

I would also suggest moving the image running down the side to the right instead, since English reads from left to right and top to bottom. With the image on the left, a reader will most likely stop after the word “City”, like I did the first time, then look around to find the rest of the website’s name. If the image is on the right, the reader will be more likely to continue on to read “in Surrender” after “City”.

Finally, I would use a larger line-height for your main text, as this will make it easier to read.

Your navigation is centrally-located and easy to find and click. Nice job.

Cross-Browser Compatibility

Your layout appears the same in Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, and Opera. Congratulations!

Coding

Your coding is valid in XHTML 1.0 Transitional. However, there are two errors in your CSS level 2.1, and one warning. These are easy to fix.

In your stylesheet, you say text-decoration: normal twice. Normal is not a text-decoration value. Instead, if you mean for these links to be underlined, you should type text-decoration: underline. If you mean for them to have no decoration, you should type text-decoration: none.

Additionally, the warning reminds you that “family names containing whitespace should be quoted”. The problem it finds is in your h1.areatitle definition in your stylesheet. You say font: 23px bold Verdana when you should say font: bold 23px Verdana. Since the order of your CSS is incorrect here, the validator mistakes bold Verdana for a font name with a space, which is where its whitespace statement is relevant. Just fix this syntax error and you’ll be fine.

Content

Since you are from the UAE, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume your first language is not English. Due to this, I will not point out every one of your grammatical mistakes, since you have made many throughout your website. However, I will still point out any spelling mistakes if I find any, since you seem to be better with spelling.

In terms of grammar, you definitely need to work on your use of commas and periods as well as other punctuation. You should also remember to capitalize names and proper nouns (I believe you know this; proofread your pages!). There are some other issues as well that cannot be as easily categorized. Good luck as you continue to master the English language.

About Me: Perhaps you should put your contact information on a separate page or link to it at the top of the page with a page anchor. This will make it easier for a visitor to find out how to contact you if he or she needs or wants to.

Articles: I am disappointed to find only one article and one poem here. If you are going to have an entire section dedicated to articles, you need to have more! Also, poems are not articles. You could instead call this section “writings”, a title under which both articles and poetry could fit.

Resources:

Graphics

Avatars: All of these avatars look great to me. Have you been careful about avoiding copyright infringement when it comes to using others’ images? I doubt you have taken those photographs yourself. 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.

Since there is only one sentence of text on this page, I will correct it for you. “Feel free to use any where, credit is required” should be “Feel free to use anywhere; credit is required.”

Textures: These textures all look amazing and very useful. I especially love the light textures. However, I do not understand why the third light texture is in the light textures category rather than in a different category. It doesn’t look much like lights to me.

Desktop Wallpapers: These are unique to say the least. Again, be sure to check copyright information on images that are not your own before you use them for things like this.

“Newest are at the bottom, e-mail me @ skittles_demon@live.com for more sizes” should be “Newest are at the bottom. Email me @ skittles_demon@live.com for more sizes.”

Downloads

Premade Layouts: “css” should be “CSS”

In the sidebar of your premade layout, “Etc cetra” should be “Et Cetera”

The one premade layout you offer looks nice, although the white on the layout is rather bright and a larger line-height would be better for readability.

Tutorials

Light Texture Tutorial: All instances of Photoshop CS4 should be capitalized like I have typed it in this sentence. Also, when you specify the size of the document to be opened, you should specify that its units are pixels.

“#0000000″ should be “#000000″

There are many other grammatical errors throughout this tutorial that I will not correct. To do so I would have to rewrite practically the entire thing. However, your writing here is still understandable, so I again give you the benefit of the doubt since English is not your first language.

Website: “Aamanda” should be “Amanda”

“awesomeAshley” should be “awesome Ashley”

“wordpress” should be “WordPress”

The links across the top of this page would be better-organized alphabetically. Additionally, these links should be at the top of each page under the website section. A visitor should not need to press the back button or click on “website” again in order to view your advertising page when he or she is on viewing your credits page, for example.

Credits: “i didn’t put, if your” should be “I didn’t put. If your”

Aww, you credited me! That makes me happy.

Advertising: “plans, you must” should be “plans, so you must”, “plans. You must”, or “plans; you must”

Affiliates: Twitter should be capitalized.

“comments” should be “comment”

Overall Impression

I think your website has great potential, but at the moment it is severely lacking in content. I was disappointed to find so little of everything you offer. Many more people will find your website much more useful if you add more content. This should be one of your top priorities.

Another thing I would suggest is that you should make all external links (links that lead away from your website) open in a new window/tab. To do so you can insert target="_blank" into the link code as follows: <a href="url here" target="_blank"></a>.

Finally, just work on your English! You have a rather good command of the language for someone whose first language is not English, but you still have a lot of improving to do before you are fluent in it, or at least in writing it.

I have chosen to award you 2.5 out of five doughnuts. I believe you have potential, but right now there is such a small amount of content on your site that I can’t bring myself to award you any more points. However, like I said before, the content (especially the graphics) are of a high quality. Keep up the good work and continue to add more content!