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Review for Skyefairy
I like the colours and the overall layout. I’m not sure whether you drew those wings on the girl or if it was already present on the original image, but it certainly is a good match for your site title. The colours you used are very warm, and there is nothing too drastic. The first thing I am presented with is a very warm welcome, which is nice to see. Overall, everything on the site looks well-organized and welcoming.
Information
Site: Skyefairy
Type: Miscellaneous
Owner: Skye
Reviewed By: Misao
Date Received: 02/01/06
Date Completed: 03/05/06
Preview
Presentation
Your style and format are very crisp and straightforward. The colour scheme is well matched to provide a warm sense of spring and mystery. The layout is very pretty. I like the transparent wings behind the girl in your layout. However, one thing stands out like a sore thumb. Although the light golden orange colour in the column between your navigation and content is also used in the header image, it really stands out due to the difference in hue and brightness. I would replace it with the colour of the left border around your content layer or a lighter shade of the same colour. Here is an example:
A brief introduction is provided at the top as a preview of what the site has to offer with one grammar mistake. “Welcome to Skyefairy.net, a creative arts site containing poetry, stories, art, photography, blends, reads, articles, and more by me and visitors to the site.” Considering that you already implied at the beginning that the site contains the following content, the last part is repetitive.
I like the organization of your updates. Since it appears that you update quite often, and your updates are somewhat lengthy themselves, I would consider displaying just the two most recent updates. So your page doesn’t scroll too far down, and in a way, moves your banner rotation advertising further up where it can be easily seen. All internal and external links on the main page are linked correctly. Although the link to your counter and extreme counter are mainly for you, it still would be a good idea to link them to a new window browser like your other links. I’m not sure if I understand what ‘Daoine’ is but I am guessing ‘Heroine’, links to your affiliates or siblings.
Since you declared your DOCTYPE as W3C HTML 4.01 Transitional, I put it through a validation test, but it failed. The errors found in your HTML are pretty minor, such as an end tag for element “IMG”. Under normal circumstances if you trying to display an image on the web page, you don’t require an end tag. It also appears that you define div id=”content” several times without an end tag. According to the validation test, “If you are using this attribute as a hook for style sheets it may be more appropriate to use classes (which group elements) than id (which are used to identify exactly one element).” For more information about your HTML, go to http://validator.w3.org/
I really like the format of your links in all your sections; the division by authors. It is fast and efficient, especially if I know specifically whom I need. The style you use for your ‘Site’ index is also very informative.
Content
Site - I don’t see the purpose or use of the HOME link, since you already have one in your navigation links. I highly doubt people will go to your Site section for the purpose of returning to your home page. ABOUT: Your site has certainly grown since you started web designing. There is a consistent spelling error with ‘premade’ throughout this page and ’sterotyping’. You misplaced the apostrophe in dont’. Although the content of this page is about the site and yourself, due to the long descriptive paragraphs, it wouldn’t hurt to separate this page into two. “I don’t plan to take that up as a career. I plan to keep web design as a hobby, though.” TERMS OF SERVICE: There is a consistent spelling error with the word ‘veiwing’. Terms seacht and ocht are pretty much the same. The whole idea is that the site is not to be used as a resource. Therefore you can combine the two to read “You may not use any content on this site for personal or commercial use (IE. Photography as stock images). All content including the gallery are displayed for viewer enjoyment, and not for the purpose of a resource.” PAST VERSIONS: I see a distinctive style with your layout designs and I like it. I would like to see a separate archive page on the site, featuring version 13-20.
FAQS: I think you meant to say “Can I submit stories, poems, and even art on your site?” There is no need to capitalize the first letter of each section title (eg. Submit, Blend, Photography). Capitalization is properly used with names (mainly people and places) and the first word in a sentence. You misspell ‘recieved’ in your reply to Kerry’s question. I don’t understand your reasoning of quality layouts with div layer and frame layouts over table layouts. The quality of layouts is in the process of designing and the image quality at which you save it as. The coding with div layer or table has very little to do with tampering the quality. Coding is usually a matter of alignment and formatting. The word ‘peice’ is misspelt in Shinigami’s question about cat and buttered toast, and so is ‘compatable’ in the last FAQ reply. There is a grammar mistake with the following sentence: “I am a member of three forums: Morrowindl, which is me and Jelena’s forum.” The last half should read as “a forum owned by Jelena and myself.”
HOSTING: Rule four is more a requirement than a rule, since it can’t be applied until after the submission is accepted. The beginning of rule seven is the same as rule two without the legal aspects; therefore it can be combined. When you say “Added features include all basic features such as … etc. “, what is etc? Honestly, your applicants will not know which basic features are included with your hosting package so you need to clarify this ahead of time (somewhere higher up on the page) before using etc. CREDITS: ‘Hakunetsu Designs’ is down, probably due to server issues or transferring files to your host. ‘Ablaze Listings’ has moved. FAIRY RING: ‘Whispers’ has moved.
SUBMIT WORKS: You are missing commas in a few of your sentences. For example: If stories are long, try and break it up into sections/chapters. The maximum width of your graphic submissions is not very large. Sometimes when working with a graphic that is 1000px or larger, resizing it so small may tamper with the clarity and quality. I don’t understand what you mean by ‘artistic and family-type’ photos. Does family-type mean family portraits, and the house setting with toys? The second requirement to ‘Articles’ is the same as the first, just worded differently. Considering that you ask for a genre classification such as web-related, environmental, politics, etc., that also means you accept web-related and real-world related articles, as environment and politics fall under real-world situations. BANNER ROTATION: You need to update your own link to ‘White Words’. CONTEST: There is no need to link this page if there is nothing. Viewers don’t need to click on a link to find that it is empty with directions to view the rest of the website. Just cross or strike out the link until you have a new contest.
Poems - I did not read every single poem, but I did check to make sure that they are properly linked. This section is surely large! You must have your work done for you when you revamped the whole site. You might want to put the poems through spell check with Microsoft Word. Occasionally I stumble upon a spelling error like “gaurdian” in ‘Kiss The Sky’ written by you. There is an alignment issue with ‘Endless Storm’ written by Elysium, ‘Silent Angel’ written by Sanjna, and ‘Sometimes’ by Sarah. The poem starts halfway down the page. There is a small margin issue with the index page to poems by Lexi. The PHP includes are directed to the wrong path on the index page for Snobunny and all her poems.
Stories - Same thing with the above category, I did not read every single story. I am greatly touched by your ‘Hope for Angel Wings’ and ‘Moonlit War’. Some of your own un-finished stories are really long. Although it is not my call, it would probably be easier to access and read if you make an index page with links to each chapter. I couldn’t possibly read all of one story in one sitting. By having the index page, it would allow me to return to where I left off the next day without having to look for it by scrolling. The use of internal links (with ‘back to top’ links after each chapter) would be another idea.
Art - I like your ‘Art Chick’! It’s so cute! The rest of your sketches and artwork are amazing and wonderfully drawn! So are all the other artists’ works! They’re all so beautiful! How thing I find missing on all this sections (and the above two) are information about the author/artist and a method of contact such as email. Although some of them may want to stay low-key, I would want to personally email a few of these artists telling them how beautiful their art is and how much I’ve enjoyed them.
Photos - Is there a set number of thumbnails on a page? None of the pages look too crowded yet, but it might be when you add more to your own collection. It is not a requirement but an alt or title tag from the thumbnail with a photo description; title or category (trees, people, lake, etc.) is helpful. Even if you decide not to do so, an alt tag must be specified for valid HTML 4.01 Transitional.
Blends - Very nice collection. They are all done very nicely, especially the colorization. There is nothing mislinked.
Reads - These are funny to read. It is nice every once in a while to encounter one of these jokes or humorous stories. It is a great way to laugh. On your ‘Children and Church’ page, you’re missing an end quotation to “Oh, that’s Pontius - the pilot. The following sentence in ‘GM vs Gates’ should read as “…we would all be driving 25 dollar cars that has 1,000 miles to the gallon” and “Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable…” The word “appologies” is spelt wrong on the page about ‘Iraq’. I personally really enjoy reading ‘Why Women Are Crabby’ and ‘Women’.
Hosting - I did not realize that there are three ways to get to this page: 1) From your ‘Site’ page; 2) From your navigation field; and 3) On the right column beneath ‘Interact/Misc’. I understand the possible need for it in your ‘Site’ page, but why would you have two of them on every single page, in the same column, one above and one below? The whole idea of the ‘Interact/Misc’ section can be simply taken out. There is no point to it because those two links can be easily located in the appropriate sections. You can also consider providing the ’submit’ link at the bottom of the index page to art, poems, stories, photos, and blends.
Final Statement
I am certainly awed by the amount of content you have on your site, both creative artwork and stories, and the extra read and articles. I have definitely enjoyed my stay. Not only are the artwork, poetry, stories and blend all done very artistically and beautifully, at the same time, I am entertained and humoured. There is a nice even mixture of the two. You put much effort into Skyefairy and it is clearly shown through the entire site.
One Comment to “Skyefairy”
Skyefairy Says:
March 6th, 2006 at 9:35 amThank you for the review; I really appreciate it. Most of the typos you mentioned were from old additions. I also type fast, so misspelling would occur. I’ll go back and fix those. I sped through the revamp, wanting to get it done, so that is probably the reason some of the alignments and PHP includes paths were wrong. *sigh*
To clear a few things up that you weren’t sure on, yes, I did add the wings in. Nela provided a wonderful dragonfly wing brush that I used. I edited it so that it would fit with her figure and added coloring; I think it turned out rather well because most visitors think it is in the actual image (one girl emailed me wanting to know where I got my fairy picture of me taken–even though it is not me in the picture).
Daoine is Irish Gaelic for “folk,” and is sometimes more specifically used for “fairy folk” or “good people,” another term used in reference to fairies.
I’ve tried adding artist bios and contact information and the like, but there are many reasons that it has never been added. For one, I’ve lost many of their contact information over time. Also, whenever I do email, nobody responds. As I have 30-40 submitters at the moment on my site, a large quantity would be missing profiles if I were to start it. What I usually do, is if someone emails me letting me know that they loved one of the artists’ work, I will forward it along to that person if I still have their email.
The interact section used to have three links: the two you saw and contest. The hosting was there first before I added it to the main navigation recently.
Thanks again for the review. Spring break just started, so I’ll be working on fixing all of the items mentioned this week. ~.o