Staff

Past Staff

Review for Tafanino Designs

This has got to be the slowest loading site in the world… and I’m sure it’s not my computer because I’m also browsing other sites at the same time [due to the long wait I have to endure at yours] and they load in a milisecond. Sometimes, the layout doesn’t even load at all and I have to refresh a few times. At this time, I’m not quite sure why this happens. Please also note that most of this review was written before you changed your layout.

Information

Site: Tafanino Designs
Type: Resource
Owner: Gigi
Reviewed By: Sanosuke
Date Received: 10/19/06
Date Completed: month/date/year
Preview

Presentation

Your coding really one big mess… I don’t even know how you could possibly put up with working with that every day. Here is a list of tutorials on CSS. I highly suggest you read the tutorials listed as CSS Basic I, CSS Basic II, and CSS Basic III. Instead of putting font face="Verdana" size="2", you can use one simple default code instead. [Along with other nifty features as well. It would greatly decrease the size of your coding, and also make your site take less time to load.] Along with that, you need to define a default text, and you can do that with CSS as well.

The “Link”/”Text” indications on your navigation are extremely pointless. You don’t indicate what’s a link and what’s text on your content, so why do it in your navigation? Your link and text should be different enough so people can tell on their own. Indicating on the navigation which one is a link and which is a text is just a waste of space.

Edit: You’ve changed your layout, and I’m not going to waste my time reviewing your old one. I’ll just point out a few things on your new one:

I like this new orange layout a lot better, but I’m not in love with the vertical stripes in the navigation; anything that is a background shouldn’t have such sharp changes in color. If you want a gradient of sorts, making it into an actual gradient would work better than stripes.
Your cutenews comments are still the same as before, with the red.
Again, I recommend the CSS implimentations. The new font that you’ve specified is a lot nicer than the Times New Roman-looking font you had on your previous layout though.

Content

Index

I’ve only spent about two minutes on your site, and I’m already confused. The key is to be consistant throughout. In your introduction alone, you call your site Tafanino and Tafanino Designs. Choose one [is the “Designs” part of the name or is it not?] and stick with it.

Credits

Out of all the pages you could’ve left out, credits is probably the worst one. It is in my opinion that the credits page is one of the most important pages, without it, you’re ’stealing’.

Edit: This is written after you changed your layout. I see now that you have a Resources page up, but it’s useless. You need to link to all the sites on that list, not simply list them.

Past Layouts

Technically, layout #3 isn’t a “past layout”. Perhaps renaming the page to “layout archive” or something of that sort might be more appropriate.

Again, I advise you to give credits. Where did you get the images, brushes, textures, etc. for the layouts? Also, instead of “:: Layout 00#” for the header of each, use that space for the name of the layout.

“Friendship last forever” –> “Friendship Lasts Forever”

Terms of Use

I find it ironic that you’re writing so much demanding respect from others when you yourself have not credited anyone.

Since this page pertains to more than just the premade layouts, I suggest moving it higher up on the navigation to under the “Tafanino” header instead.

Layouts

Your counters don’t seem to work on any of your pages. Your view/download links don’t work either.

I don’t recommend only giving screenshots of the layouts. As someone who loves browsing graphics sites, I like having the ability to browse the layout in it’s entirety. Visitors typically like to know how the links work, what it looks like up front, what footers are present/nonexistant, etc. Not to mention, nobody knows whether or not the layout works in their browser, and nobody’s going to download a layout just to check and see if it works in a browser.

You have a thing with “u” and changing it to a “y”. Naryto is supposed to be “Naruto”
N/A isn’t a series. It could be a Misc. Series, or it could be “generic”, or anything. But “N/A” shouldn’t be used to describe a series. [??? Isn’t a series either.]
Your Tables layouts’ view open in the current window while your DIV layouts’ view open in a new one; pick one and stick to it.

Avatars

I like how you’ve given credits for your avatars. The first avatar on the list isn’t working though.

Templates

Your templates page says “Here are some table layouts offered…” you might want to change that. Also, linking buttons aren’t technically templates, they’re just blank buttons.

PNGs

None of these work either. You really don’t need the “Type: PNG” on these pages considering if I clicked on the “PNG” page, I’d probably know that these are all PNGs. I would also suggest switching the “PNG 00#” in the header with the actual series name instead. The more important part is the series, not the ID number.

#005’s series is “Ai Yori Aoshi”

Patterns

Note the patterns on such sites as Squidfingers, Colorfilter and Hybrid Genesis. Note how intricate they are. Your patterns are nothing more than a little image repeated over and over. Have you ever tried using those patterns for a background on a site?

Link/Contact

You can combine your link exchanges and link back pages into one and name it “Linkage”.

When giving your URL, you have to give the http:// in front of it as well. “Link to reviews.frozen-rain.net” doesn’t do much because if you insert that in an actual link, it doesn’t work. As is with your Forum link. You linked without the http:// and that link is broken.
“To have your link here, or to link exchange, Send me your Name, Site’s URL and E-mail” –> “To link exchange, send me your Name, Site URL, and Email.”
Clicks counter doesn’t work, neither do the links.

Affiliates

The page “apply” should be named to “Affiliation”, not “Affiliate” as “affiliate” is a noun while “affiliation” is a verb.

“Your site should be Graphics related, If you have an anime site or a blog so I’d prefer to have a link exchange.” –> “Your site should be graphics related. If you have an anime site or a blog, I’d prefer to link exchange instead.”
“It should be age appropriate and for all ages.” –> “It should be appropriate for all ages.”
“Stay in contact with me through writing in my comments, don’t apply for just Hits.” –> “Stay in touch with me through commenting on my site. Don’t apply just for hits.”
“Your Layout should be made by you or your staff, No Broken-lines and Hiatus sites.” –> I think you meant “no broken links”
“If you find that your site agrees with those rules so please complete the following spaces” –> “If you find that your site fits all the requirements, please complete the following form.”
“Feel free to apply if your site is really nice, with great contents !! If I replied with a message asking for a link exchange, so I’m sorry but I don’t accept you as an affiliate !! You can try back later when you make new changes.” –> As a rule, people usually think their sites are really nice with great content. Thus, saying that was pointless. “If I reply with a message asking for link exchange instead, I’m sorry but I didn’t feel you filled the requirements for affiliation. You can try to reapply when you’ve made changes on your site.”

Final Statement

The places that contained writing [and there’s not much] were riddled with grammar mistakes. You capitalize in the wrong places, mess up tenses, and add words that don’t belong. I’ve corrected most of your grammar to the best of my ability, but you should reread everything and go over your content. Some might argue that grammar and spelling aren’t important parts of the site; but if you’re going to communicate with people, you want to make sure they can understand you. Not to mention, bad grammar would make you seem less professional, especially since you’re running a site that’s providing other people with something.

I also found your site incredibly hypocritical. You claim that people need to link you and credit you, and yet you don’t do the same in return; your link exchange links don’t work and you don’t even have a credits page.

Go back, check your links and pages and write up the credits page. I wish you the best of luck on your site.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 17th, 2007 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Graphics/Resource. 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 “Tafanino Designs”

Gigi Says:
February 20th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Thank you for reviewing my site, I will try to do my best to make it better. About the credits, I didn’t upload the page because I changed my layout and I needed to change the links so I decided to leave it to the end. but then I decided to change my layout. so IM sorry to all people whom I didn’t credit. Also about all the links not working, my host moved servers so I lost my fclick file and I couldn’t make it again because of my exams.

Anyway, Thank you so much and I will try to do my best
[[ BTW: I linked to everyone in my credit’s page and all the links are back ]]