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Review for Obsidian Rhapsody

I remember going to your site once, a long time ago, so while this is not a first impression, it is a fresh one. I remember three things from the last time I visited, though:

1. This is a personal site. (Though your review application told me as much.)
2. You focused more on your writing than your layouts.
3. You review your reviews. Which is intimidating.

So, biased by my three conclusions, here is my “first impression” of your skin, SuZhou:

There are things I like and dislike about most everything. Right now, it’s your layout. I like that your text is easy text is easy to read and you don’t have to scroll or mess around to get to it. I like how your banner isn’t gigantic. I can appreciate how the gray of the image fades into the gray of the background. (The image may have already been like that…I don’t know.)

However, I don’t like the oppresively dark color scheme. I don’t like the placement of the title. I like how you used the colors red, blue and cream throughout the layout, but the dark grey is overwhelming them.

I think it’s a little silly to gather a first impression of a site that’s mainly comprised of writing from its layout, though. So, I read your introduction, and I realize that you never once mention your name, and scrolling down to the updates, you don’t mention your name there either…huh. I don’t know if this is intentional, but if I didn’t know your name already, I might have had to flail around calling you Almost-Not-Teenage-Australasian-Girl for a minute or two. Which might have been disastrous.

Information

Site: Obsidian Rhapsody
Type: Personal
Owner: Amanda
Reviewed By: Megumi & Sanosuke
Date Received: 3/6/06
Date Completed: 7/15/06
Preview

Presentation

Before I start the real review, I have to apologize for the long wait. I have a long, long list of better excuses lined up, I swear, but actually I just didn’t notice your site in the queue until about a week ago. It’s nice to know that you’re in competent hands, isn’t it?

Skin: SuZhou

• Yo dawg, I’m not feeling the thick gray-brown border. When it’s coupled with the dull blue of the background and the dull gray of the content area, the dullness of everything is somehow magnified. I feel, er, droopy. (Sadly, that’s the best way I can describe it.) You’re using the cream color in your headers, but I think that it would look nice as a border color, too, because the border is thick enough to contrast the dullness on either side of it.
• The placement of Obsidian Rhapsody looks a little off to me (though it looks the same in Mozilla, Internet Explorer and Opera). It seems like it should be about half an inch lower, and a smidgen to the right, in that little cranny of gray space between the trees and the building.
• I’m not too crazy about your content headers. The little dots don’t really belong in the layout; there aren’t any dots anywhere else, like in the navigation. If you like the look of the four dots, then the text, one idea would be replacing them with the “dot” that is the window of one of the image’s buildings (in a lighter color):

  

• Really, though, I don’t think the headers are doing much to break up the monotony. Consider the idea of the headers having a background fill in one of the lighter colors of the image, so the visitor can have little gasps of air in between the gray.
• The positions of your h2 and h3 tags are a little odd. Having the h3 indented so much makes it look like it’s, well, straying, and that’s it’s totally different from the header above it. Since both headers are special features of your update format, I think that they should be lined up in the same indentation as the h2 header.
• Another positioning that I don’t like is the position of your “Return to Top” text at the bottom. It’s neither centered, nor right aligned and it looks indecisive. You should either pick the center, or the right, but you can’t have both.
• You have your copyright statement at the bottom of the right navigation column. Since you don’t have a footer, and the page ends a little abruptly, I think the copyright notice really wants to be at the bottom to give the page closure.
• I’m torn about the gray background of the image. I know that glitzy swirly abstract isn’t your “thing” (I also know that it probably wouldn’t look too swell in this situation), but just the gray looks plain. If the picture wasn’t just taken on a gray and cloudy day, would you consider extending it all the way to the top of the page? And if it was, how about a pattern in the background—something thick and bold, but very, very opaque?
• I checked your layout in Opera, Mozilla and Internet Explorer, and it looks the same (which I hope is how it’s supposed to look), so good job. From what I knew of you, though, I wouldn’t have expected anything less.

Skin: Blue Gradients

• The very first thing I notice is the strange positioning of the light-blue content box. It’s flush against the left side of the screen, but the rest of the layout is adequately spaced out. On larger resolutions, the navigation is about a centimeter from the right margin, and the page looks unbalanced.
• The second thing I notice is the color scheme: blue on blue. Using the brighter blue against the navy blue looks, well, strained, like you were trying too hard to vary your color scheme a tiny bit—simply, they just don’t match.
• Having just one color in your layout (I know I just said there were two shades of blue in the bullet above. Humor me.) is always a little risqué—it’s hard to pull off. Here, I don’t think you did…it just looks awkward. I don’t have any logical justification for that statement, either. I just look at your layout and think, “I wish that there was a color besides blue in there.”
• Since the title of this skin is “Blue Gradients” (by the way, there is only one gradient, so how is it “Blue Gradients?”), I propose that you keep the gradient background, but mix up the rest of the colors; pick another color or two and work it into the layout.
• Like I said, there is only one gradient in this layout. Another opportunity to get a gradient in is the navigation. It would continue with the theme—also, a reverse-gradient (the light colors at the bottom, the dark at the top) would contrast the background, which is good.
• Another quibble about the navigation is that all the links turn the same color when you hover over them. If they are in alternating colors now, why don’t they hover accordingly?
• I don’t like your content h1 headers. The bold, sans-serif effect is getting a little old by the first header, overused by the second and just frustrating by the third. I’m not telling you to have 1,572 fonts all over your website, but just a seperate, maybe serif one for your headers would grab more visual interest and distinguish them from the text (it would also contrast the rest of your layout, since, in a really roundabout way, your layout is “sans-serif”…without frills).
• The same comments apply from “SuZhou” about the update headers. (I took a quick peek at your other skins, and they get the hairy eyeball also.)
• Just as there is no left margin, there is no bottom margin, which would help “end” the page.

Skin: Bouquet

• This time, when I see the header that says “Like it?”, I can really say, “Yes!” You did a good job with the colors, I like the mix of fonts, and you successfully incorporated images into the layout, finding a balance between no images (”Blue Gradients”) and a lot of image (”SuZhou”).
• The font color, though, doesn’t match the rest of the layout. You could make it be a semi-dark shade of gray, to match the borders of the images.
• Another color thing: I don’t like how the flowers in the header match the text. Orange or even green would work better.
• And another color thing (Strike three, I’m out): the color of the title, and the content area, is a tiny bit off; it’s a little too pale to match the flowers. Yellow is hard to use as a background color, since readability is an issue, but making it a tiny, tiny bit more orange would follow better.
• Since every seperate piece of the layout gets a box or formatting, why doesn’t copyright statement get one? When it’s in the content area, it seems implied that it refers solely to your content box and nothing else, when really it covers your entire site. (That didn’t really make sense, did it. Alas.) Anyway, it would look more organized to be at the bottom, using the same formatting as the text of Obsidian Rhapsody, but smaller.
• The blockquote-like thing is a little too pink to match; a lighter shade would, though, and be more readable to boot.

Skin: Monochromatic

• I like this skin, too. It’s neat, but not so much that the aesthetics are hindered by it. And, this time, I’m not bothered by the “monochromatic” theme, because I don’t really think it is. There’s black, there’s white, and there’s that magical color, gray.
• A big content area is good. I have nothing against the idea of big content areas. But here, it looks disproportionate; there’s just too much space there. This is mainly because of the placement of the title. It messes up the ‘box’ format of the layout. The way I see it, there your layout is mainly a box, with two rectangles (navigation and content) inside of it. And then we have your title, which on a larger resolution, adds an extra line, which is in the content area’s space. The extra width looks funny. So, if you want to maintain the box shape, make your content the same width as your title.

Coding: All

• I feel like the blind person leading the person with 20-20 vision here, so I don’t know how much leading I’m actually going to do. Some of my “corrections” may even be wrong, which is troubling.
• I don’t understand why you enclose a id="top" within a div tag, since, as it is invisible, what formatting can you apply to it?
• That, I think, is the extent of my leading. I feel like a bad reviewer for not being able to rustle up something else to hassle you about (which may not be in the spirit of reviewing, but there you have it), but I honestly can’t find anything wrong. Good job!

Content

Index

• In your introductory paragraphs, you squish all the “quick links” into the last few sentences of the paragraphs, which makes them look very forced. For example, you could fit “skinned” into any of the preliminary sentences regarding Obsidian Rhapsody; you could use your spending “unquantifiable amounts of time online” as an excuse to contact you. You could make your introduction flow better.
• I don’t understand what you mean by “…position of x^th notch on the bedpost.” My friend got something kinky out of it, though, so the wording may not be quite…optimal.
• I’m not the most Internet-savvy person out there, so your instructions to press alt-9 to view the accessibility statement confused me. Mabye you could say something like, “To visit the accessibility statement, make use of access keys and press alt-9, or use the menu on your left.”
• I have to wonder if your access keys are really “worth it.” Your navigation isn’t unaccessable at all, and you have just enough items that memorizing the different numbers or letters for each page would be difficult, especially for a first-time visitor. Unless my mouse has broken, I would use the navigation.

Girl

• In your portal page, there is about 100 pixels of unused space between every “segment”: the menu of internal links, and each of the three sections. Instead of using blank space, you could use a horizontal rule, which you could say has more value for every pixel—50 pixels, including margins and line, would equal 100 pixels of nothingness.
• Dot Pointed:
  • “A quick, this is all you need to know page” has the potential to sound awkward, so I suggest putting “this is all you need to know” in quotations so that it can be easily distinguished as one adjective.
  • If someone were looking for a quick “glimpse” into you, I think that a dot-pointed version of your personality would be more telling. Instead of having things like nationality, birthday and siblings, you could have things like, “When happy/angry/sad, she…” or “Her hobbies include…” because, while this information is interesting enough, it doesn’t give me a picture of you.
• Overview:
  • I am the sort of person who calls Western astrology “that thingy with the animals for every month,” and Eastern astrology “that thingy, you know that thingy that goes with the years?”, so perhaps you could include a tiny bit of information (Eastern astrology—the system that marks the years with animals) for those unfortunate people like myself.
  • You jump around to several different topics in the first paragraph. Since a paragraph is meant to discuss a single idea, I don’t see why you’re talking about your astrology at one sentence and your little brother the next—especially since you talk about him in such detail.
  • It’s easy to spot which subjects you are most passionate about, because you elaborate on them. If you’re not passionate about the topic, you only give it one sentence. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing; it’s just something I noticed. This page is really an overview of things that matter to you.
• Autobiography:
  • I like how the “Early Years” and “Immigration” flow so well; you mention the patriarchal society of China at the beginning, live around it in the middle, and it comes back to haunt you in the end. It’s very well-written. Although, you say that “in retrospect” your early years were the happiest of your life; does that mean that you did not believe this at the time?
  • “…Though we never did anything outrageous, we would cut school, do outrageous things…” I don’t think you have the right wording here. Somehow.
  • You mention in “Primary School” that you “wagged” school. I don’t think that wagged is a universal term, since I sure don’t know what it is.
  • In “Primary School” again, you transition poorly from your boy-noticing, POP-culture-reading phase and smart-girl phase. Were you both at once? How did one affect the other?
  • In “Today,” you talk about your intentions in the last paragraph, but they belong in “My Future.”
  • Also in “Today,” you never mentioned what you majored in in college. I’m assuming it was education? I don’t know all too much about the unit system.
• Personality:
  • I agree that trying to describe your own personality is ultimately futile. But I do like your page. I keep noticing that when you’re writing, you write mostly about what’s important to you. When I read this page, it’s easy to tell what’s important to you; which is maybe why I didn’t like the Dot-Point page.
  • An idea for this page would be to list certain events in your life in which you acted a certain way, or made a certain choice. Which sounds obscure as heck, but hey, actions speak louder than words.
• Random Facts:
  • Actually, I think that this is what I meant above. Yeah, I’m smart.
  • You say that giving birth is an “experience you dread going through,” I remember that you wanted to live independently. Unles it’s a Colin Firth lovechild…
• Former Introductions:
  • This is a very interesting idea. In the past few pages, you’ve done a very good job of communicating your personality to the visitor, in a unique way. I’m really impressed.
• Ask Me a Question:
  • You describe the “Some More Random Things” section as “concentrating on particular stories from my life so far,” (by the way, the “so far” is a given), but “Ask Me A Question” doesn’t concentrate on a particular story. It seems more like just “Another Random Thing.”
  • You use previous/next page links here, and you list the number of questions in the database, but it would be a good idea to add the page the visitor is on, so they have an idea of how many questions are left. Even if they know that there are five questions per page, they might not know that they were on page four, for example, and so had 39 questions—8 pages—left.
  • This page is another good idea. You may not have listed every single detail of your life in the other pages, but the insanely curious can find out here without you adding on, and on, to your pages.
• Card Dealer:
  • Wow. You have a really interesting life. I’m jealous…that’s all I’m going to say.
  • I like how you concluded the page with the repetition of “I know”. (I know there’s a term for it…parallel structure, perhaps.)
• CDs I Own:
  • I’m assuming that when there’s no rating next to the album title, it means that you haven’t rated it yet? If this is the case, maybe you should have another pixel-sign that says “Not Rated.”
  • Since you say that you can change your rating at any time, another idea would be to add the date you rated the album last.
• First Crush:
  • Your life is too interesting. Sheesh. Can I buy it on eBay?
  • At the end, you learn your lesson from the “small incident” with the boy at the service station, but that isn’t true. You learned it from the incident in Grade Two as well. I think that’s the “gist” of the story; it took you so many years to realize this.
• Shanghai Experience:
  • I really like how you included pictures. It breaks up the text, and there is a lot of text. It’s an engaging read, but it is long. However, taking out any text might ruin the overall ‘effect’ of the story. Only the ‘truly devoted’ might read such a long piece, but I think you did a good job.
  • Starting with “$150″ in “Weekends out,” everything is enclosed in an acronym tag.
• Newspaper Article:
  • Cool as it is to have an article written about you, I would’ve like some of your commentary (and how did you feel about that?), or at least an background before reading.
  • You probably didn’t list the newspaper in case someone found out your last name, and copyright definitely isn’t my strong point, so you probably have the rights to this article. I don’t know.
• Speech Therapy:
  • You miss a few apostrophes throughout this page: “my parents insistence,” and “my exaggerated kids eyes.”
  • You tell a one-sided story. Your other pages in this section held the reader’s attention (well, my attention, anyway) because of the lesson you learned at the end; this story doesn’t seem to have such a “profound” moral, and with stories like these, you need to work harder to keep the reader engaged. For example, what did the kids in your class think of you going to speech therapy? Were your parents disappointed? etc. To keep this story from being “flat,” you can include different angles. (I know there’s a term for this, too. Parallax, or something.)
• Photo Gallery:
  • My only problem with this section is that your thumbnails are so small. They take up almost no space, so making them a bit bigger wouldn’t hurt.

Writings

• Articles:
  • Since these are samples of your work at the time they were published, as well as being articles, I won’t critique them. However, I have to wonder about that word, “mainly,” in “mainly written for English assignments.” Considering that there are only three items, “mainly” is too broad.
  • The topics for your articles are original (in the case of the first, and the last to an extent) and eye-opening (in the case of the second). I had known about honor killings, but the examples were chilling; I’m sure it raised awareness in many people. So thank you for providing the article.
• Creative/Fanfiction:
  • I am one person that you would not want as your beta reader. That said, I’m a label reader, and I’m looking for a label other than the title of the story/fanfic/drabble (and the series, if applicable). A rating, a summary, a word count would be good to know before plunging into the story.
• I very much like your blurb about the “Opinions” section. You’re direct and not wishy-washy; you say that these are simply “your opinions” and not the great truths of the world, which I’ve frequently seen. And it ties these articles back to you, so they’re not just random articles but relate to you and your site. …Sorry, I’m just very moved by this paragraph. Excuse me while I go off to sob in my corner.
• Blogging:
  • As much as I agree with you (vehemently, in fact!), the organization of this piece is not very good. First off, you say that this is a rant about “a specific type of blogger,” yet you go on to name two.
  • Secondly, your criticism of them isn’t uniformly organized. Sometimes you name a feature of the blogger, then snark at it; sometimes you just list the attributes of the blog and insert subtle words here and there to discredit those attributes. (Not that they need any help from you.)
  • Before you go on to criticize the bloggers, I think that you should put your criteria for a good blog at the top of the page (instead of at the bottom). This will help the visitor understand more logically why you dislike these kinds of bloggers; they don’t fit your sane, sensible criteria. Then, you should list point-by-point the features of the two types of blogs, and rebuttal each one also point-by-point, backing them up with your criteria. That way, you can stand atop your pillar of almighty blogger logic and shout down at the multitudes who oppose you. Or something like that.
• Fasians:
  • Unprofessional as this may be, I have something to add. Fasians use honorifics (-chan, -san etc.) like crazy. And mispronounce them.
  • Anyway, I like this article. You have a reason for attacking these people, and if a Fasian read this they might be shamed into, er, non-Fasian-ing.
• Lindsay Lohan:
  • You’re very good at choosing points the reader can really get into, and using similar examples. I read your article, I remember Mean Girls, and I think, “She looked cute in Mean Girls. She should go back to that look.” I feel like saying, “Hear, hear.”
  • Although, the second paragraph, you go back on your point about the hair color. If you’re trying to say that Lindsay shouldn’t dye her hair, and that red looked good on her, don’t undermine your point by suggesting a better shade of brown. Stay true to your opinion.
• Raunch Culture:
  • I’m agreeing with all your articles so far, but as usual, I have some bones to pick.
  • For one, the example of Paris Hilton starts out as a solid point, but then comes dangerously close to being a common potshot about her lack of talent/reliance on her father. The last sentence is off-topic.
  • If the root of self-confidence is inside ourselves, where does Paris get the confidence to party and wear skimpy clothes? To me, anyway, she gets confidence from her money and her looks. I don’t know if the “raunch culture” issue is so much about confidence as it is about the right mind-set, and the self-absorbance.
• Political Correctness:
  • Actually, I have no complaints whatsoever with this article. (And not just because I completely agree.) The organization is done well, the example is solid, and the article is persuasive. So, props for you.
• Puritans:
  • Not judging people based on their opinions is good. Unfortunately, it’s so easy to become hypocritical. You said, in the “Raunch Culture” article, that anyone who believed in the Nicole Richie standard of feminism “needed to get their heads examined.” That’s some blatant judging right there.
  • It’s also quite easy to step on toes, and I admire you for voicing your opinion. It would be quite easy for someone to say, “Oh, but you’re judging them,” so make sure you have a counter-argument. This reminds me of the First Amendment to the American Constitution; you can have freedom, but not at the expense of another person’s freedom.
• Sex:
  • You’re open and honest about everything, and it makes most of your articles hard to rebut. One of the few things that detriments these articles is when you dip into the gray area off being off-topic. For example, your second-to-last paragraph, while it relates to sex, strays a tad too far into the female-male rights department. It’s not an unimportant issue, but it’s not on the same track as pre-martial sex.

Reviews

• You have the title of the book and the author displayed for each item, but not the rating you gave the book. If I weren’t looking for a specific book/movie, I would be most interested in seeing your top and bottom picks, but I would have to look through every review to find them.
• Anyway, I’ll review two reviews from each of your sections:
  • Clarice Bean Spells Trouble: Another thing I think you should include is the page count of the story. You say that this book is appropriate for seven-year-olds, but you quote something from page 153! Next, you give away the ending in your “summary.” If I were planning to buy this book and I read your review, I wouldn’t want to buy it anymore since I would already know what happened! Finally, you don’t explain your rating: all signs point to excellent in your conclusion, but you gave it 3/5 stars. Why was that?
  • Goodnight Mr. Tom: Almost all of the same comments as above apply. You give away major plot twists; you give it a rating of 4/5 without a reason why it didn’t get 5/5. I believe that these reviews are meant for people who have never read the book (because someone who had already read the book would only find the last paragraph useful, and ignore the summary), but you’re spoiling the book for them. So I really don’t know who your target audience is.
  • Night of Many Dreams: There is almost no review at all on this page. You say that Gail Tsukiyama is a brilliant author, you give a plot summary and you rate the book 4/5. Your “reviews” are less reviews than plot summaries. Albeit nicely written plot summaries.
  • 2007: This review is a little better, because you didn’t give away the ending. Plus, you included your opinion of the book, although yet again, you gave it 4/5…I think a good idea for these reviews would be a T-chart, with pros on one side and cons on the other. That way, the visitor isn’t left guessing if the book has a colony of silverfish in the back cover, or something.
  • The Da Vinci Code: …And this review is wonderful. You didn’t give a plot summary, you critiqued plot, pace and acting, your rating was understandable.
  • Over the Hedge: This is another good, solid review, although you gave away the ending again. I like your focus on characterization and its affect on the movie. Also, you tell us what to expect (moral values) without providing every plot detail, so there can be some element of suspense by the time the visitor sees the movie.
  • Female Chauvinist Pigs: These past two sections (Nonfiction, Movies) are making a good impression. This review is no exception. With non-fiction, it’s a teensy bit harder to give away the plot, and listing the topics explored is perfectly fine. You reviewed Levy’s style in the first paragraph, interest the reader in the next three, and review some more in the final paragraph. This review is concise (essay format brownie points!) and useful.
  • Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy: You focus solely on the plot in this review, hailing it as “excellent,” but you give the book a 3/5. I’m thinking that there’s something you’re not telling us. Reviewing aspects like writing style, pace and dialogue would be welcome additions. Or else I’ll just go with the silverfish theory.

Miscellaneous

• Boys Boys Boys:
  • Oho. I like how, even away from the ‘Personal’ section, everything somehow relates to you.
  • When you say “candidates,” I think pageant. It would be cute if the information about these boys were arranged like a pageant speech (”In his spare time, eighteen-year-old Blah Blah likes long, luxurious beach walks and talking to his flowers. His hobbies include web design, world peace and working on his site, xxx… “)
• Personal Website Owners:
  • This is one of those pages that I had to read and re-read several times in order to “get it.” My questions were something like this: “Why do some people have opinions, and not others? Why are some opinions links going to these random sites? I don’t get it?” I finally did get it, but I still think that a more thorough explanation, and maybe an example, are in order. I also think that saying that you included everyone “noteworthy” is incredibly rude. It seems like you’ve included people you know…which is certainly a less offensive label.
• Wordpress Themes:
  • You think people might get tired of reading about you, so you give them free layouts…to keep them occupied? To make them stay at your site longer? Your site is a personal site, and this kind of section, no matter how small, doesn’t belong. If visitors aren’t interested in reading about you, they wouldn’t have stayed long enough to get to this page. If they are interested in getting a layout, they would go to a graphics site.
  • That said, your ‘Purple and Cyan’ layout is aesthetic enough, but there are minor discrepancies between Internet Explorer and Firefox/Opera.
• Jack E. Reviews
  • I could be consistent and say, This belongs at your review site or I could fall on my sword and say, Hey, this is a pretty nifty idea…and it is a miscellaneous section, after all… (I choose the latter.) Pass on my compliments to your brother for his reviews, which are actually pretty helpful.
• Chinese Characters:
  • This page looks like it belongs in the ‘Personal’ section, since the reason you like these characters are uniquely yours and say something about your personality. It’s quite a nifty idea and quite a nifty page.
  • I like how you included a clear picture of each character, so the reader can follow along.
• Bridget Jones’s Diary:
  • This is another nice touch. It’s miscellaneous, but it’s still Amanda. And it’s funny. You admitted that there is no point to the page, but I’ll admit that it’s amusing to read your observations and go, “Well, isn’t that interesting. Huh.”

Site/Web

• About:
  • In the “Vitals,” section, I doubt that a link to yoursite.nu is a critical piece of information.
  • You say you originally came up with the title Bohemian Rhapsody. It’s also the name of a song by Queen; did you think of the words yourself, or get the idea from the song?
  • The analysis of “obsidian” is done nicely, but I’m wondering why you didn’t change “rhapsody.” Does it tie in with the conotation of “obsidian”?
• Site History:
  • I think that the heading, “Site History” is a misnomer here. This is more of your personal history, and how you improved your coding abilities with time.
  • You opened this site in 2004, and you note that you discovered “the personal website” at this time. Which is sort of a half-baked explanation as to why a personal site appealed to you (as opposed to a review, fansite, etc…).
• Former Layouts:
  • The layouts you deemed “noteworthy” were pretty interesting, and helped me see how much you’ve improved, but I’m wondering where the other, less noteworthy layouts fit in.
  • I’m thinking you could have each noteworthy layout as a section, or a time period in your webdesign career, and include the less noteworthy layouts from that “era” in the sections. So, the noteworthy ones would be the standouts from that “group.” (For example, talk about the “Twirls” layout, and have the other three-columned layouts beneath it.)
• Reviews Received:
  • When I hover over “Sunny Side Reviews” in the Completed Reviews section, the title text says, “Awaiting a review.” What’s up with that?
  • Likewise, “Honest Truth Reviews” and “Sunny Side Reviews” in the “Recommended Review Sites” section also have the same problem.
  • Instead of having a seperate heading recommending review sites, why not include a yay/nay column in the table? It would take up less space and give the visitor a quicker idea of the site.
  • I’ve also read some of your comments on the said “recommended” sites, and I’ve noticed that some of these aren’t actually excellent review sites, but more excellent sites to laugh at. It would be nice if you specified in the list in some way. Otherwise, if the first five sites have their submissions closed, and the sixth site just happens to be one of those, “submit here for a good laugh” ones or even “submit here, but ask for so-and-so reviewer only” nobody would really know, would they?
• My Other Sites
• It’s nice that you tell us this page is graphic heavy while we’re on the actual page. I’m sure it’d help.
• The first line to all of your first two descriptions seems lacking. They aren’t even complete sentences. It would be better off connected to the next sentence. For example, your first description: Umb-Rella Reviews, my review site. It’s coded in… can be turned into: Umb-Rella Reviews, my review site, is coded in… that would actually make it a sentence. And Eclectic: My fanlistings collective. It’s coded in… can be changed to My fanlisting collective is coded in or even better, Eclectic, my fanlisting collective, is coded in…
• O-R’s Hostees
  • I doubt you need the “other” in your page title. “Other sites hosted on Obsidian Rhapsody” not only makes the title two-lined and rather unattractive, but it also gives off the impression that there are “other” sites. As in, these aren’t the only sites that are hosted on your domain.
  • If the site is a fan site [Nikolay Davydenko] it might be nice to say who Nikolay is. All that information about how the site is hosted on Obsidian’s server is not needed. Considering this is a hostees page, I think we get the idea already. But who is the site about, what kinds of information is on the site, etc. Same with all the other sites, actually. What’s featured on the personal sites, why should we visit it? As much as I’d like to know about your relationship with your hostees, that won’t make me want to visit them.
  • Because you said it in the previous page, I looked right to the screencap for the link to the site. But what if people didn’t visit your “Other Sites” page and didn’t know where to click? It might be wise to repeat the same thing on this page as well: that images will lead you out to the hosted site.
• Site Survey
  • I’ve heard people say that their site is for them and they don’t care what other people think as long as they’re satisfied. This is probably the first time I’ve seen a personal site that’s asking for people’s opinions so they can be catered better. It’s interesting.
• Guestbook
  • I’m wondering why there’s such a big gap between the top navigation [”Sign the guestbook? | 6 entries | pages”] and the actual entries. There’s this huge blank space that makes the page look awkward.
• Credits
  • Your credits are not consistant. Your first link under “Scripts and tutorials” is listed as: Link - description; the rest in that section is: link for description. And then, even further down the page, under other, you switch to: link - for description. It would be more organised if you listed all links in the same way.
• Links Out
  • What’s the difference between link exchanges and people who have linked you? Aren’t link exchanges, “you link me, I’ll link you”? And thus, can’t they be stuck in the same category?
  • Who’s allowed to apply for link exchanging and who’s not? Or is it invite-only, friends-only, or cool people-only? A set of requirements or some sort of information on link exchanging would be nice.

Essentials

• Disclaimer
  • Your fourth paragraph states that you are “dedicated to the practice of democracy and … strongly believe in the free exchange of ideas.” Yet, is hatemail not a form of “exchanging ideas”? Just a thought.
• Terminology
• This page is interesting, and very helpful. One thing that could be added to the page is the EX abbreviation you use on all your links. I spent a while trying to figure out what it was until I realized it was on all of your links. Some people might not have as much luck figuring it out.
• Themes
  • Same problem here as the hostee page. I knew to click on the screencap because I had already read your “Other Sites” page, but other people might not know. If you took the time to say in your “Other Sites” page that the images also work as links, then you have the time to type that sentence in this page as well.
• Search
  • I entered a random word [which was book] and I got a list of results. The problem is, they all had the same summary: The personal website of an Australasian girl. Chock full with written content, reviews and odds and ends. If I were to pick a page to read based off of that summary, which page should I pick? I’m actually not familiar with coding search engines on sites, but it would be nice if the summary came up as a small blurb from the page, highlighting where the word can be found.

Final Statement

• Megumi: You write lots about what interests you, but sometimes you skimp over important details. Occasionally look over your pages and ask yourself, “If I were a visitor, is there anything else I’d want to know?”. Otherwise, you have a site to be proud of: you kept pages that could easily turn boring (such as your Autobiography) interesting and entertaining, which is a rare thing in personal sites. Trés props!
• Sanosuke: I found the site intriguing. I enjoyed reading your thoughts on various issues. The organization of the site - for the most part - is excellent. It’s not like the personal sites that one usually visits, because while it screams me, me, me like most personal sites should, it also gives the visitor something that would actually keep them at the site.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 15th, 2006 at 7:37 am and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Comment to “Obsidian Rhapsody”

Amanda Says:
July 15th, 2006 at 7:56 am

Thanks for the review ladies. I’ve just quickly skimmed through, will have to go through it in greater detail at a time when my eyelids aren’t closing of their own volition. And…yes, I will be reviewing this review. Prepare to be intimidated.

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