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Review for Anime Cosmo
I don’t think that websites should have more than three skins. The logic behind skins is that if one person doesn’t like one skin, they have another to choose from (for example, if they don’t like dark tones, they choose a light-colored skin). So it follows that the skins should be quite different from one another—which is where I get three from. With three skins, you should be able to appeal to everyone who visits your site. So why does your site have seven?
Information
Site: Anime Cosmo
Type: Fan-Related
Owner: Kagura & Staff
Reviewed By: Megumi
Date Received: 06/30/06
Date Completed: 12/21/06
Preview
Presentation
Splash Page
Using sheepskins to display your skins is a cute idea, but it’s impractical for actually displaying previews (and off-topic to boot, unless these sheep are from a particular animé). Your previews don’t do their jobs of actually previewing the layouts adequately—it’s hard to tell which skin is “perfect for me” when I’m given a limited picture of each layout. (What am I suppoed to gather from your “Superstar” preview, which is a white background with three blue stars?) It would be more practical to give the visitor a screencap of each layout. That way, if they liked centered layouts, they would know to avoid Angelwings. If they had a phoebia of scrolling, they could avoid Superstar.
You don’t seem to have given much thought to organization. Your “pick a skin” and “requirements” headers (which are different sizes; I don’t see why) are haphazardly organized around the themes previews, and you’ve stuck a hit banner, of all things, and a webring advertisement on the bottom. What do you expect first-time visitors to get from seeing your hits, anyway? (I’m wondering why you used a period instead of a comma to display 141,286. You sure didn’t recieve 141.286 hits.) If you’re really interested in your hits, wouldn’t it be more logical to have it on your “main page”, the one the portal leads to?
I suggest reading this article. It contains a list of common splash page snafus, many of which fit yours like a glove.
Furthermore, nothing in your splash page lets me know that this is an animé fansite. You’re trying to dazzle me with your many skins á la graphics site.
Layout(s)
There are SEVEN different layouts. They are there so that people can choose a layout based on their personal preferences, browser, etc. So please, if you are reviewing or looking over the site for an award, choose the one that YOU like best. You may not like the others, but that is exactly why there are multiple ones to choose from. The one you don’t like (or that doesn’t look as good on your computer) might be just perfect for someone else. Thanks. :)[sic]
Have you considered that the reason some people prefer one layout over another is not because they have different tastes, but because one layout is “uglier” or less functional than another? In deference to your wishes, I’m only going to review one, but just keep that in mind for future reviews.
Angelwings
Aesthetics
I’ll be blunt. I don’t like this layout. Because the background, content and navigation are all solid shades of purple, the visitor’s focus is instantly drawn to Emo Kid. The navigation and content look like they were added as an afterthought.
The positioning within Emo Kid is awkward as well. The flower/disco strobe behind her doesn’t work well with the rectangular background she is set against. The swirls, also, look amateurish and gaudy.
The way you display your updates is efficient, but not, well, pretty. A patterned background, an interesting header…think of some way to provide interest in a block of solid purple.
I’m not liking your navigation hover images. They extend only as wide as the link but, to continue the boxy theme, I think that they should stretch all the way across the navigation container.
And I’m sorry if this comes out wrong, but dude, Emo Kid’s hair is stuck in her bra.
Wardrobe malfunction aside, what I meant to say was, your color scheme doesn’t look so good. It’s solid purple! With such a monochramatic color scheme, it’s hard to find the main focal point of the layout.
When you get dressed in the morning, has anyone ever told you not to mix a pattern with a pattern, or a solid with a solid? (Another rule of thumb is to not mix colors that are too close in shade.) The reasoning behind this is because it either looks too busy or too plain. That said, your layout fails this test miserably. Solid light purple, solid purple. The text of Anime Cosmo, even: analogous purple with a white outer-glow. It’s not such a good look.
And since a picture is worth a thousand words, here is the Fanta Diagram of Reason and Logic:
It’s centered! It has somewhat contrasting colors! The main image has been squashed. As a reviewee you may call my opinions subjective, and not representative of the general “animé” community. However, any webdesigner or community member worth their salt will tell you that composition, color scheme, and logic are the among the most important aspects of a functioning design. You layout doesn’t have any of these things.
Another Fanta-ism of Reason and Logic is that I should be able to read the first update without scrolling. Your “banner” fails you here, also. (Part of the problem is that you have all this, for lack of a better word, crap about the forum and the layouts preceding your updates.)
One of the biggest pitfalls to your layout is that it lacks grace, elegance, and flow. You’re setting yourself up for such description because of the image of the chick, but the follow-through is poor. You’ve got a chunky, rectangular banner, sloppy title text and sloppy content and navigation areas. Bye bye theme!
Navigation
Whoa, whoa. First thing I see in the navigation is a list of styles to choose from. However, if the visitor chooses their style based on their likes and dislikes, and not on whim, don’t you suppose that they would stick with the layout long enough to get past the rest of the content? Therefore, shouldn’t this box be at the bottom.
Next thing is Cosmo Cash. Talk about jumping in with both feet. Supposing that this is the first time I visit your site, do you expect me to know, or care, what Cosmo Cash is before I visit key pages such as your home page and your actual content?
The rest of your navigation follows no particular logic. It doesn’t seem to be organized in order of importance, or in alphabetical order. Proposed navigation:
Site Information (Not "Site Stuff")
- Home (why on earth would anyone want to visit your splash page? I’ve omitted this link.)
- About Us
- Contact Us
- FAQ
- Linkage
- Miscellaneous (Reviews, Staff, Advertise, etc.)
- Terms and Credits
Animé Information
- Animé/Game News
- Articles
- Information and Reviews
- Japan
- Lyrics
- Terminology
Neopets
- Neopets (Neopets…what?)
- Neopets Guild
Media
- AMVs
- Fanart
- Fanfiction
- Galleries
- Lyrics
- Playlists
- ROMs (what are these? CD-roms? Acronym (
<acronym title="">), please.)- Sheet Music
- Web Comic
Visitor Goodies
- eCards
- Recipes (both “AC” and Japanese)
- Site Awards
- Site Reviews
- SOTM
Interact
- …as listed
Graphics
- …as listed
Miscellaneous
- …anything else
Exits
- Forum
- Guestmap
- Our MySpace
This just seems a little more logical to me. The pertinent information is at the top, and the rest of the information is ordered by relevance to what appears to be your site’s purpose: animé. It’s a little less overwhelming.
Coding
I applaud your ambition to use the XHTML Transitional <!DOCTYPE> tag. Nothing seems amiss in the header, but Things Fall Apart inside the <body> tags.
Oh, it validates. But the nature of XHTML depreciates presentational markup—so all of your width="", height="" and border="" attributes, while they still validate (because of the Transitional doctype), are just the things that XHTML is trying to get rid of. Not to mention your inline styling (<div style="">). This is like pretending to break your leg to win the wheelchair olympics, then jumping out of the wheelchair and sprinting to the finish. It’s cheap.
The nature of tables, conversely, is to utilize the presentational markup that the XHTML standard is trying to get rid of. So, logically, when designing in the XHTML doctype, you should make use of the CSS float property. Tutorial. Tutorial. Pretty. Nifty.
Even if you weren’t [trying to] use XHTML, I’d still be on your case about using inline styling. So here I am. You use the following codes repeatedly in your content formatting…
Ex. 1.
<b>Header</b><br />Ex. 2.
<center><div style="width:460px; margin-bottom:30px;"></div>Ex. 3.
<div style="text-align:justify; padding:3px; margin-top:3px; margin-bottom:5px; border-top:1px solid #D3D3D3;"></div>Ex. 4.
<div style="float: right;"></div>
…when you seem able to accomplish the following:
Ex. 1.
<h4>Header<h4>Ex. 2.
<div class="WidthAndMargin"></div>Ex. 3.
<div class="TextAndPadding"></div>Ex. 4.
<div class="FloatRight"></div>
But in case you’re not [able], you would put something like this in your CSS file:
h4 {
font: 12px bold;
margin: 0 0 7px 0;
}
.WidthAndMargin {
width:460px;
margin-bottom:30px;
}.TextAndPadding {
text-align:justify;
padding:3px;
margin-top:3px;
margin-bottom:5px;
border-top:1px solid #D3D3D3;
}.FloatRight {
float: right;
}
Please note my use of Shorthand CSS.
<table class="topside" border="0" width="134" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr><td class="navheader">Site Stuff</td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://tsukiyo.org/Anime/index.html">Splash Page</a><br />
<a href="http://www.tsukiyo.org/Anime/homeinclude.php">Home</a><br />
<a href="http://www.tsukiyo.org/Forum/index.php" target="_blank">Forum</a><br />
<a href="http://www.tsukiyo.org/Anime/contact.php">Contact Us</a><br />
<a href="http://tsukiyo.org/Anime/advertise.php">Advertise</a><br />
<a href="http://tsukiyo.org/Anime/affies.php">Affiliates</a><br />
<a href="http://www.tsukiyo.org/Anime/sitestuff.php">Sitely</a><br />
</td></tr>
</table>
Not so nice, huh? Another gold star in the face of cleaner markup is the use of lists:
<h1>Heading</h1>
<ul>
<li>...</li>
<li>...</li>
<li>...</li>
</ul>
The presentational attributes of the previous example would be stored in the <ul> and <h1> tags, or if necessary, a <div> container around the whole piece.
In short, you should validate your coding because you are truly interested in cleaning up your presentational markup and conforming to a Web standard. Not because that w3schools validation banner is a trophy you want in your cabinet.
Content
Here at Anime Cosmo, we serve only the finest of anime and game related information and media. Be sure to browse through our menu to the left, and enjoy your stay.
You may serve me the finest animé and game information, but you aren’t scoring high in the common sense department. Man, your navigation[s] are on the right.
The common visitor’s appraisal of a website comes from the visitor-friendliness of it. By “visitor-friendliness,” I don’t mean games, articles and what-have-you; I mean navigability, efficiency, and the clarity of your content. Many of your pages don’t meet that criteria, so I’ll be addressing that heavily.
Cosmo Cash
On that note, your “Cosmo Cash” section is unwieldly and an awkward use of your space. I suggest combining “Cosmo Cash” and “Earn CC,” because one naturally leads to the other. Linking to each page of the section at the bottom of every page is redundant, considering that you have them as easily available navigation links.
The format of “Earn CC,” by the way, is a little clumsy. Instead of having extra space between what seems to be the general categories of money-earning, why not use a header for each one (”Graphics,” “Contests,” etc.)? Using a table to seperate the action and the description would also help; the color of the italics is hard to distinguish.
The really ungainly part of this section is the “CC Bank.” If I had an account, I wouldn’t be interested in seeing other members’ Cosmo Cash. It would be more flexible and easy to update if you created a membership database in PHP that stored members and their information. Each member could have their own, dynamic page (assuming that you include the login/password as well).
Site Stuff
Linking to your splash page is pointless. You already have your skins listed in the navigaiton, and I doubt that one would come back to your splash page to look at your top five referrers.
Your contact page has visibility issues. You should bold the labels of labels like “Email:” and “AIM ID:” so that they’re separated from the actual value. Also, your form is pitifully small; why not stretch them out to take up your ample space? Like so:
“Advertise” doesn’t explain very much. I think that the “Information” header should come first. In it should be included: WHO you’re offering the service for (the visitors); WHAT the service is; and HOW they can pay you. Little things like that can seem obvious, but they aren’t.
The rules in “Affiliation” are ridiculous. “We are looking for very nice layouts and plenty of content.” I could have a beautiful, painstakingly detailed layout and thirty pages with two sentences on each, and that would fulfill your requirements, no? Or I could have a sad little layout and five pages of beautiful, paintstakingly detailed content. Which would you rather accept?
It’s a little…sad that you have a page called “Sitely” in your “Site Stuff” section. Whoa, curveball! It’s also misleading that you link to so many pages within this—they also seem more like “Site Stuff” than any of the “stuff” in the navigation. But I like the setup of this page, and the pages inside are written clearly.
Info
It’s interesting that you have a blog setup for “Animé/Game News.” But instead of having five entries per page with about a paragraph of each displayed, I’d narrow it to two or three entries with more text displayed. That way it’s easier to get the “gist” of the article before clicking “Read More.”
I very much like the articles you’ve written, or at least most of them. Before I elaborate on that, the left margin of the “Video Games” category is about thirty pixels less than the other categories. Okay, done with presentation.
You contradict some of your “website tips.” For example, “9. Use quality images in your layout. Don’t choose grainy, blurry, or otherwise low quality images to put in your layout.” Look at the girl on your layout. Is that not, if not low-quality, medium quality? And “12. Don’t make the top image in your layout be so big that you have to scroll down to reach the first bit of content.” My resolution is 1152×864, pretty big, and I have to scroll to see your content.
You reduce naming your site to a formula, which I don’t agree with. Creatively shouldn’t be boxed in to a mold that’s meant to improve search engine hits. I’d rather be linked by an affiliate or site in the same genre than found in a search engine. When I use search engines, I’m looking for specific information; when I find that information, I leave the site. It’s a hit, but I’d rather be visited by someone who would really look through my site.
I can’t see anything “kreative” about misspelling a word in your site’s title. It has bad connotations, like “newbie,” “stupid,” and “doesn’t that person own a dictionary?”
In your “Navigation” article, you say that you should put the most important articles in the navigation and have them lead to subpages. So you’re telling me that “Credits” (Under “Sitely” under “Site Stuff”…under your site) are less important than “Advertising”?
Under the “Info/Reviews” page, “Manga Info,” doesn’t have any content in it. Thus, it’s pointless to link it to another page: it’s a “coming soon” page.
An analogy: Cheese is to Switzerland as Animé is to Japan. If you made a site about cheese, would you include the history of Switzerland? By themselves, the information you’re giving me has nothing to do with animé, and unless you somehow link it to animeé, it’s pointless for this type of site. If I don’t know Japanese, and I read your “Vocabulary” page, I’d have to go around saying, “Oh, look, a hana! In a shinrin! Nice tenki we’ve been having, hm?” and I’d sound like an idiot. Furthermore, the words you’ve supplied are “Fangirl Words.” On a hi to hi basis, how often do you find yourself saying things like “Cherry Blossom” and “Full Moon”?
Even if it’s unintended, your articles do contain opinions such as “Website Tips.” Since rants are just slightly more opinionated articles, they should go on the same page, maybe under a subsection. That said, I like them. I don’t always agree, but you state your opinion well.
Shouldn’t “Terms” (in the articles section) and “Terminology” go together?
Your “Basic HTML” tutorial is about as useful as your Japanese vocabulary. If I don’t know a language, random phrases aren’t going to help me! Try reading your tutorial from the point of view of someone who doesn’t know what HTML is. Then tell me it’s “basic.”
In “Webpage Structure,” you don’t explain why we should all use a doctype. Yes, it validates, but why is that important? You’re also teaching bum information when you explain the attributes of the body tag—CSS should be used instead. CSS makes your markup cleaner, which is part of the point of validating your site.
Pray tell the difference between “Easy,” “Fairly Easy,” and “Medium” as levels of difficulty.
Virtual
I don’t get it.
This sort of content is extraneous. You’re an animé site, not a virtual computer game site. I have no idea what Horse SIMs are, either. Your links don’t register in my Horse-SIM-less brain.
Media
Many of your “lyrics” seem to have been directly copied from Anime Lyrics.com. Wouldn’t it be a little easier to just link to that site? You want to have so much content on your site, but a lot of it is redundant.
For “Sheet Music”: you don’t know if you have permission for some of these pieces? If you scanned in a piece of sheet music that you bought, isn’t that a clear indication that it shouldn’t be copied? If you’re ever unsure of the legality of something, just take it down: it’s not worth it.
Fanstuff
- You should bold the labels on the AMVs page to make them stand out.
- The blue borders on the fanart page aren’t very attractive.
- Information like rating and word count would be useful on the fanfiction page.
That is all.
Visitor
- The abbreviation “ACo” isn’t a logical combination of Anime Cosmo. What happened to “AC”?
- Consider the usefulness of your “eCards.” Why, why would I email someone a card that said “Greetings”?
- The legality of your “Recipies” is a little off. If the source is “Unknown,” don’t print it. If the source is Japan-Guide.com, read the disclaimer:
Web site users may download and copy the material for personal, non-commercial use, without the right to resell, redistribute (that includes publishing on a personal web site)
- Consider stretching out your contact forms.
- Consider the annoyance of having a “code word.” If the applicant didn’t follow your rules, what would you realistically do to them? Sue them over editing the award?
- Oh, c’mon, in “Site Reviews,” if you chose to write “NS” instead of a grade, wouldn’t everyone know that they failed? How many people would choose not to be reviewed?
Graphics
I wouldn’t use an adoptable/Kao-Ani with Anime Cosmo written at the bottom in bold, outlined text, thank you very much. I can find better adoptables at sites that don’t require me to link back. I mean, for something so small, it’s just mean to make people link to you.
Cut out a printable nametag, write your name on it, safety-pin it to your shirt, and wear it all day. And then you may keep this section.
Is there a foreseeable use for these “Sparkle Images”? What would I do with one?
Your wallpapers are all right: nothing more and nothing less. Compared to other, specialized graphics sites, they’re inferior. You’re trying to do so much with these graphics, but is it worth it when I can find better stuff elsewhere?
Actually, all of your graphics are just all right. There’s no “omg” factor; I don’t see the point of keeping a section that doesn’t wow your visitors.
Interact
The idea of an “Anime Zoo” is engaging, but what exactly does “If you steal this idea, you WILL be sorry” mean? You haven’t copyrighted the idea. I could steal it if I wanted to and there would be nothing you could do about it. Don’t threaten when you can’t follow through.
Shoot, you have so much entertainment, but should a visitor really be coming to your site to be mindlessly entertained? Shouldn’t they come to read your content? Gags like these shouldn’t produce the bulk of your hits; your hits should come from visitors eager to read what you have to say.
Final Statement
You have way, way too much content.
More content than is possible to keep up. So much content that your website falls into the “quantity over quality” cliché. Perhaps it was the Toys-R-Us commericial that kept playing over my radio whilst I reviewed, but your site irked me. Other than your articles, none of your content is great. It’s very bland.
Try trimming your site to what it needs to be a successful animeé site and get rid of the rest. Peel of the layers of junk that are clogging up your content and you may find that you have a useful, well-written site.
PS: Sorry for the amount of time it took to compete this review. School and finals were calling.
2 Comments to “Anime Cosmo”
Kagura Says:
December 28th, 2006 at 4:57 pmFirstly, there is no need to be rude. I asked for opinions and suggestions, not rudeness. I am perfectly okay with constructive criticism (as it helps me to improve), but barely veiled disdain is not what anyone is asking for.
The sheep are from a game called Harvest Moon, and there is Harvest Moon content in the site.
I have seven skins because people use ALL seven. If my feedback and tracking shows me that certain skins are not being used much at all, I will take them down. Until that time, why should I take down skins that people like and are using often?
As for the counter at the splash page, it actually counts the hits to ANY page on the entire site. That is why it is not on the home page. It is on every page, but it only shows up on the splash page.
The link back to the splash page is there because a link back to the page where the webring code is located is required by webrings. I am in the process of moving all the webring codes to their own page (which means changing every webring link; that is what is taking a while). One that is completed, the link to the splash page will be removed.
In fact, the whole splash page has been needing to undergo changes for a while. I do agree with you on that. I had redone the whole page and was ready to upload it, but then there were some issues with the forum which took precidence. Once those issues were sorted out, some new things were added to it which may make the skins (and splash page) obsolete anyway. So until I am 100% sure of what is going on, I am not going to bother with redoing the splash page.
Anime Cosmo is not just for Anime. It is about anime, gaming (including virtual games, so the virtual section is completely appropriate), manga, and Japanese culture (especially as pertains to anime, manga, and gaming). The site started with a forum that contained all of these things, and the actual website portion of it grew out of that.
Yes, if the history of Switzerland was important to understanding cheese, then I would include it. Since I don’t know much about cheese, I cannot say whether or not it is important. I do know about anime, video games, and manga. I do know that the history, culture, and language of Japan is VERY important to fully understanding anime, manga, and many video games. The reason many of the “fangirl” words are in the Japanese section is because they get used a lot in anime, manga, and video game circles (A lot of the younger people on our forum, which there are many of, use these terms quite frequently. So explaining what these “fangirl” worlds are is a great help to those who are new or come to the forum for one of the non-Japanese based aspects of the forum, such as the virtual games). Someone new to these circles would be very confused when people do start talking like that.
Sparkle images get used all the time on things like MySpace and other similar sites. I’ve seen our nametags used at conventions, so I know they have a use. If I didn’t think anyone would use them, I would never have put them on the site.
NS does not necessarily mean someone failed. It means they either failed or chose to not receive a score, which some people have. Some people don’t want a grade. They simply want an assessment of their site.
I do not use the abbreviation AC because it is already used by several other anime sites. ACo came about due to a group on our forum that started using it.
As far as search engine hits, we do get a lot who actually do look around at different parts of the site. I have a tracker that shows me where each person goes once they have entered the site. Since the site does get a lot of people who not only go to the page because of a search engine hit but also stay there (and even join the community), I feel it is very important to be search engine friendly.
“In short, you should validate your coding because you are truly interested in cleaning up your presentational markup and conforming to a Web standard. Not because that w3schools validation banner is a trophy you want in your cabinet.”
I AM interested in cleaning up the marking and conforming to a Web standard, which is why I submit my site for reviews. I don’t care about a “trophy”, as you put it. I came for a review to improve my site, which some of your suggestions will help with, not to have rude comments like this slapped in my face. If I was only interested in a trophy and looks, I wouldn’t even submit my site for reviews. Then I could save myself from being bitched at for trying to improve.
“You may serve me the finest animé and game information, but you aren’t scoring high in the common sense department. Man, your navigation[s] are on the right.”
Again, rudeness is not appreciated. This is left over from before the skins when everything WAS at the left. It was an oversight, not lack of common sense. While I appreciate the error being pointed out so that it can be corrected, the manner in which is was pointed out was completely unncessary.
“It would be more flexible and easy to update if you created a membership database in PHP that stored members and their information. Each member could have their own, dynamic page (assuming that you include the login/password as well).”
I would be very interested in doing this. Do you know of any tutorials or scripts for this? What I am really trying to do is link up the forum database of usernames and passwords to the site. I know it can be done, but I have to have a basic login and database in place in order to do so.
“I could have a beautiful, painstakingly detailed layout and thirty pages with two sentences on each, and that would fulfill your requirements, no?”
No because two sentances on each page is hardly a lot of content. Hence the word “CONTENT” rather than the word “PAGES”.
Megumi Says:
January 4th, 2007 at 9:18 pmFirstly, I apologize for any barely veiled disdain. For the most part, it was unintentional. I was low on gas at the time.
“Sparkle images get used all the time on things like MySpace and other similar sites. I’ve seen our nametags used at conventions, so I know they have a use. If I didn’t think anyone would use them, I would never have put them on the site.”
I stand corrected. I’ve never been to a convention, nor Myspace.
“NS does not necessarily mean someone failed. It means they either failed or chose to not receive a score, which some people have. Some people don’t want a grade. They simply want an assessment of their site.”
Yes, but 80% (ish?) of applicants will probably want a grade..plus, if the review was negative, wouldn’t you be able to tell that they failed anyway?
“I AM interested in cleaning up the marking and conforming to a Web standard, which is why I submit my site for reviews. I don’t care about a “trophy”, as you put it. I came for a review to improve my site, which some of your suggestions will help with, not to have rude comments like this slapped in my face. If I was only interested in a trophy and looks, I wouldn’t even submit my site for reviews. Then I could save myself from being bitched at for trying to improve.”
I came by that first conclusion because while your code was valid, it wasn’t in the scope of what W3C is trying to promote: less HTML attributes & values and more CSS. It’s possible that you simply put your code into a validator and used what it told you was correct. Instead, try reading what W3C has to say on XHTML and cleaner markup instead of relying on a review to clean up your code.
“I would be very interested in doing this. Do you know of any tutorials or scripts for this? What I am really trying to do is link up the forum database of usernames and passwords to the site. I know it can be done, but I have to have a basic login and database in place in order to do so.”
It seems like you’re using a script to power your forum - so I wouldn’t know how to link the data to your site. You can try daydreamgraphics.com if you’re interested in a membership tutorial, though.