WPR - IP Style
We finally got off our lazy asses and did this WPR review thing we promised we’d do. I (Sarai) went on a little vacation, so it was pushed back a bit, and for that I am not sorry because it was one kick ass vacation and well, now we can get this ball rolling.
The winner was Calmbanana.co.uk! We tried to be both objective and helpful so here goes nothing.
Sarai: Let’s talk first impressions.
Becky: I dislike the hardwood, the layout reminds me of Blix, the text on the header looks like she randomly slapped some font on there and the sidebar looks boring and poorly organized.
The meta info under the title of the entry needs to be smaller and probably a different colour than it is, just to make it stand out a little more. And the green links in the sidebar aren’t contrasty enough for my liking. They look too light to me.
Sarai: I find the lime green on the sidebar hard to read. I think there should be more space between the blog title and the date. The background does not go with the header, it’s a bit distracting actually. The search box needs padding and the menu background needs to be a different color than lime green. Also, the footer needs a little more styling, it’s pretty bland at the moment.
Suggestions?
Becky: I’d recommend she ditch the font in the header, in fact I’d recommend ditching the entire header. It’s far too simple and whilst I think simple is good, this just looks lazy to me and I don’t like it (considering I’m the Queen of Lazy, that really means something).
What bothers me about the font is that it doesn’t appear to be chosen for any reason other than it’s purty and then it was slapped in the most obvious place with the most obvious colour. Typography can be an art and I for one think effort should be put into it. Check out 15 Excellent Examples of Web Typography. Part 1 for some inspiration regarding typography and what you can do with it.
I’d also recommend checking out The Showcase of BIG Typography from Smashing Magazine. Oh and Nice Web Type.com is also a good place to look for inspiration.
The rest of the header doesn’t have any special colouring, no effects and not even a border! Where’s the love? Check out the icon tutorials listed here, here and here.
Add a border, add some colouring, it doesn’t matter what you just need to add something. Right now it looks like you cropped a stock photo from sxc.hu, slapped a font on it and called it a day.
Sarai: I don’t think brown was a good choice of accent color. The background doesn’t match the header, even if it’s wood. Just because tree trunks are made out of wood does not mean that a wooden pattern is appropriate. I would have gone for a blue. Also, the blog title needs a little more space to distinguish it from the date.
Becky: Are you as annoyed by the big gap between the header and the navigation as I am, Sarai?
Sarai: Yes, I am. It looks almost like there was a glitch in the coding.
Becky: For the date beneath the title I’d recommend making the font a bit smaller and lightening the colour a bit to make it look different from the text beneath it.
Sarai: I’m also not too keen on the navigation background color. I would have gone for a blue, or a dark gray.
Becky: Just because green is the most prominent colour in the photo doesn’t mean you have to use it everywhere.
Sarai: I think the spacing between the blog and the sidebar is a little wide. I would enlarge the blog area. I would also decrease the font size of the sidebar and like I said, change the link color. Currently the lime green against the white is not easy on the eyes. To check and see if there is enough contrast, I would take a gander at this article.
This huge border around the content has got to go. It makes the entire layout look unnecessarily wide.
Becky: Right. Padding is good, padding is wise. Too much padding will cause your visitors much pain when they bang their heads against their desks in frustration.
I’d also like to see the visited link colour being changed, it’s far too light a grey for the white background, it makes it harder to see should you need to go back to it.
Sarai: The footer needs to be distinguised a bit from the layout, otherwise it just sits there. I would put a light background on it, lighten the text, and put a little padding on it to tie it all together. Just not green. Or brown.
Becky: Well I’d like to suggest a background colour or at the very least a border along the top. Right now it looks like a slightly misplaced word from the content, and that’s confusing.
Sarai: Okay, should we move on to the content?
Becky: Yeah I’m about ready for that. Let’s start with Writing, shall we?
Sarai: I think this section could be organized just a bit more. Maybe have headings for Articles, Tutorials, and Essays? Just to break it down a bit. At first I thought this section would have short stories and the like.
I don’t understand the mosh pit article. Is this an attempt at humor?
“Things to avoid when creating a website” seems a bit short. I would explain each gripe in more detail, otherwise it just looks like a list with blurbs. Not exactly an article, if you get my drift. I think the Doctype “article” should just be a series of links. Overall, I just think her articles need more meat. At the moment they seem a bit half-assed.
Becky: The Doctype article looks like a half-assed rip off of the ALA article Fix Your Site With the Right DOCTYPE!. She could easily just have included a few links and some text and called it a day.
Sarai: Well, it would have saved me some time. Let’s head on over to the Goodies.
Becky: Blank buttons, hosting and one-liners… well I’m done. Let’s go out for some frosty chocolate milkshakes. I remember blank button templates from when I first started out, I disliked them then and I dislike them now. The one liners are somewhat amusing, but essentially they’re just reads and everyone knows I hate reads. I have no interest in hosting anyone or being hosted so that particular section isn’t something I’d be normally inclined to read.
Sarai: One-liners are pointless. It reminds me of my (very) old article, Internet Trends that Need to Die Part 2. Reads do not qualify as content. Well, good content, that is. “Hosting” should be in the site section. It’s more appropriate.
Becky: On the old sites that offered 10mb of hosting for free on a subdomain, the hosting was usually under the site section, not grouped with the goodies.
Sarai: Right, so Misc.? Oh, this is the Site section. Well, that’s a little misleading.
Becky: That could easily go under the name “Site” or under the About. Speaking of the About page let’s talk about that.
Sarai: Yes, because there’s nothing in this Site section really worth discussing. Oh wait, before I leave, “Link me” — what is going on? I’m pretty sure visitors know how to create a text link? Hmm. Oh wow, I didn’t know toy boxes were still around.
Becky: Yeah if you can’t link someone then you’re a dumbass and should leave the internet right now.
Sarai: Or read a tutorial. The rest of the page is alright, it covers the basics. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Becky: The Web History, to be quite honest, is boring. It starts off telling me that Rachael first used a computer at the tender age of five and the program may or may not have had a tomato in it. Yawn. V of Violent Acres is someone who can take a little bit of nothing and turn it into something. Take a page from her book.
For me the paragraphs are far too short and not descriptive enough. I would really prefer to see something meatier that tells a story instead of merely relating it to the visitor. And that’s really the vibe I get from this site. Rachael is simply relating boring old information to the visitor that she doesn’t find interesting.
Sarai: I think “Bands I’ve Seen Live” would be interesting if there were some pictures involved. Otherwise, who really cares?
The Archives page looks a little cluttered, but I think that’s just because her lists need a little more padding. The tag cloud below is just a mess. Either you have tags or you have categories. I don’t see the point of having both.
Becky: It’s called content for the sake of content, Sarai. I don’t care what bands (if you can call Simple Plan a band) she’s going to go see, I agree that pictures would be nice. It’d actually make it interesting.
Ooh! You know what would be fun? If she wrote bits and pieces about interesting things she’s seen at concerts. Moshing retards (like Mosh Girl), fights, things like that.
Sarai: I agree. Much more interesting than a How To Not Die In One article.
Becky: I don’t think she needs all those recent entries in the sidebar. I mean honestly, throw in two or three and stick a link to the archives so they can browse more. What I think would be nice is if you were to create an archive page where each blog is listed in a certain order (up to you) and the link was placed at the bottom of Latest Blog Entries. That way the visitor can still browse the entries by title, date or what have you and you can declutter the sidebar.
Sarai: Try to write articles that aren’t so common around the net nowadays. It’s a lot tougher but worth it in the end. Also, totally random, but it bothers me that Uncategorized is capitalized and the others are not.
Becky: Quite right Sarai Shanaynay Queen. I’ve been watching her blog for the past few weeks and I’ve noticed that the topics are old tired topics that no one cares about. The same can be said of her content, I say unless you have a new spin on things just leave it well enough alone. Write something that’s more unique and interesting than the average “how to layout” tutorials everyone has.
Sarai: Or the Internet Pet Peeves. Or how you create your layout. We’ve seen that.
Becky: You also seem a bit afraid to ruffle feathers and stray from the typical how to’s and articles that have been around for years. Don’t censor yourself because you’re scared of what people will say about you. You don’t have to start a site like this one, but if you’re not blogging about a certain topic because you’re scared, well then you aren’t that interesting and I“m going somewhere else so bai.
Sarai: I think that about covers it. Anything on the coding?
Becky: Oh right. There’s 1 error in the html and that’s because you don’t have an alt (I’d recommend you use alt’s because when images don’t load it’s annoying to not be able to see what the hell it was).
As for the CSS. Well Sarai gimme your weave cause you’re going in.
Sarai: Oh for fuck’s sake.
Becky: I see no less than 4 background properties (and no background-color property, tsk tsk). Considering that most of your code is clean and appears well structured I’m surprised that you aren’t condensing your properties to save on space. Check out CSS Tidy.
Sarai: Everything’s pretty basic here. Things like bottom: 0; are not really needed. Or font-weight: normal; unless your default text is bold or italicized.
My only pet peeve is that you don’t space after your : and I guess that just boils down to personal preference, so I won’t harp on about that.
Becky: Yeah it’s just little things here and there that, if continued, could bloat your code up. Good coding practices now will benefit you in the future.
Sarai: Plus it loads everything faster.
Becky: Also because you use Wordpress it might be in your best interest to modify your plugins now. The internal stylesheets can really bloat your site up, right now I see you only have one, but because Wordpress is such a piece of shit the plugins are usually just as bloated and shitty.
Sarai: Let’s talk about why we did this review the way we did. Basically, quality is better than quantity. Just because you type 12 paragraphs worth of review does not mean it’s all helpful or even revelant. We didn’t use a point systems either, because honestly? They suck.
Becky: Fuck points systems, they’re useless and I can’t stand them. We do have a star rating system, but that’s just randomly chosen based on either the site or the IP article and how entertaining or horrible we found the website.
Also we like to have fun when we write things, it’s not just a job for us that we drag our feet to do.
Sarai: We also provided resources because well, those help. And we just don’t talk out of our asses, because that defeats the entire purpose of helping.
Becky: Well Sarai sometimes does, but my ass is completely silent thank you very much.
Sarai: You know what. I’m trying to be professional.
Becky: Oh yeah like you’re Miss Professionalism. And I’m Miss Universe.
Sarai: What. Ever. The point is our WPR-style is quality over quantity/pointlessness. The end.
Becky: Whatever, Miss Professionalism. Well g’bye guys, I have to go open a few supermarkets and malls.
Sarai: I gotta go burn every Aqua cd in existence. Bye!
Thank you very much, ladies, for taking the time to have a go at reviewing me. You definitely did start off helpful and objective, and although you did slip into “normal” IP mode a few times, there’s not a lot here that I disagree with.
I have a million and one things to say in response to the review, but I don’t want to fill up this (tiny) textbox with my baffling so I’ll just put it up on my site under “reviews” and then let you have the link if that’s okay…?
Thanks again. :)
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It’s a great review, brief and detailed at the same time (I don’t know how that works but it just is). I almost forgot that you guys offered to write WPRs and thought it was going to be a full-blow bitch thing on Rachel. :P
Throughout the whole reading I have my site open too and was just thinking of the comments that could’ve applied to me too.
Rilla · Nov 22, 04:01 AM · · Permalink