Backstaged: Combined Review
Combined Review of Backstaged
Date Submitted: December 7
Date Completed: March 16
Design
Not entirely sure how I feel about this layout. Something is off - might be the dissymmetry of the header image, the color use, or perhaps it’s that the “About Me” link sticks out all the way to the left while the “Domain” link ends very close to the right side of the layout. Maybe it’s all of it.
The layout isn’t bad - it’s not very complicated, more or less easy on the eyes, and it looks perfect in both IE and Firefox. I don’t like what you’ve done with the header/footer images. I’m not sure I get the point of the “eaten out” look - that’s what it looks like to me. It looks like tiny mouths have taken chunks out of your layout. If it fit the theme (postage?) I’d understand a little better. Postage stamps have the riveted edges, but those bumpy lines are around the entire stamp, not just the upper left and lower right corners. It just seems like you threw them in there to avoid having a boxy layout.
Of course, I am one to think of layouts as “concepts” and if every element of the layout doesn’t fit into the idea, then there’s no point of having it there. It’s perfectly fine if you disagree.
As for the colors, there’s nothing entirely wrong with them, but the layout seems too dark. The top navigation is barely noticeable at first glance, and it seems that if you added some spruce of a lighter color -white, for example, or anything other than another shade of purple or grey - that would be a wonderful final touch to the layout overall.
Your postage images are interesting nonetheless. I hope that on your domain page you’ve described the text: “It takes some old to make you young.” That sounds very poetic and I imagine it has an interesting meaning behind it. Though it seems you’ve just thrown some brushes from inobscuro.com (nice crediting, by the way!) onto blocks just for the sake of having images on your layout, it was well done and hopefully not entirely pointless!
I’m not sure if you meant for the navigation links to align weirdly but they do. With my vision on your dark layout it’s hard to tell if they’re actually centered while the layout isn’t, or if the layout is centered while those are askew. Either way, it doesn’t look good. I’d suggest keeping the words within the confines of the layout’s width or at least make it so they don’t pop out so unevenly. If the “n” in “Domain” is out five pixels from the edge of the layout, then the “A” in “About Me” should also be.
I’d also suggest including a “Home” link above with the others so that your visitors can go back to the blog without having to manually erase whatever page they’re on in their browser’s address bar.
It would also be very helpful if your links were a different color. Right now you just have them black and bolded, which means that if you bold any text for emphasis, your visitor may wonder why it’s not a link. I’d suggest changing the color and adding an underline or other style to set it apart.
Content
It looks like you’ve just put this layout up. When I initially sat down to do your review, the site didn’t work, and I suppose this is because you were changing layouts? In any case, I decided to wait to start again at a later date, so I’m lucky I caught you when I did. :)
Your blog post, however, is very short. I’m not going to go back through all your posts but if they’re all as short as this one, you might consider displaying more than one entry at a time. It’ll just give the layout a more “fuller” look and, in my opinion, be much more intriguing to the first-time visitor.
There isn’t a lot of information about you on the index page, which I suppose is okay, but as someone who regularly blog-hops, I find I’m more likely to stay on a website and browse if I learn a bit about the owner on first glance. I could read everyone’s about pages if I wanted to, but I frankly don’t want to unless they’re something pushing me in that direction. I’m willing to bet a lot of other first-time visitors turn away when personal websites don’t have anything, well, personal on the index page. Just a suggestion!
About Me
This page is relatively short but it’s to the point. If your blog was more involved, I’d say that this was fine, but so far this seems less of a personal website and more of a place for you to put down sporadic updates.
You have some unnecessary spaces before and after parentheses. For example,
DOB: 18th October ( makes me a Libra)
Ethnicity: South East Asian ( some people mistaken me with Jewish or Spanish )
should instead be:
DOB: 18th October (makes me a Libra)
Ethnicity: South East Asian (some people mistaken me with Jewish or Spanish)
If you’re going to destroy the language and put spaces before and after the parentheses, fine, but keep it consistent if you do.
I can’t tell yet if English is your first language, but I’m guessing it’s not. I won’t be too hard on your grammatical & spelling errors - I’ll just tell you there’s more than a few. We’re all learning, though. :) For example, the first line should read something similar to:
Let’s say you see someone walking down the street wearing a striped shirt and jeans and never having an interaction with the person next to them. It might be me. I’m quite quiet, but not shy. I’m very outgoing, even though I can’t be loud.
Emphasis added to show what was changed. I also deleted some unnecessary commas. It looks like you just forget to put in some of the verbs (as I said, we’re all learning something, and I’m sure no one expects your English to be perfect). It does, however, make it very difficult to read. I had to read your about page a few times just to understand it all.
Your about information is creatively presented. It does seem to just be a random assortment of facts about you. Of course, so are all about pages. We pick and choose what parts of our lives we want to share with the world. However, none of your points seem to connect in any way, and so a few of your paragraphs should instead be one-liners. Either make a bulleted list of these items about you, or string them together, connect them, make real full paragraphs about you.
I see that we learn at the very bottom of the page that you write English, but you don’t have as much confidence in your ability with it as you do with other languages. I hope that you’ll improve, though, because from reading your visitor content I can see that you’d be a pretty good writer if you got the grammar rules down.
Visitor
Just from a glance, there’s more visitor content than there is personal content, so I wonder if the reason you have a website is to get out your writing. That’s fine, of course, but I’d change the “Visitor” header into “Writing.” Nowadays when people see the word “Visitor,” they expect pixels and free layouts, not articles and poems.
Your article on eCliques was sort of interesting. Though I’m well aware of the eCliques around, I don’t think I’ve ever visited a site that laid them out. There are a ton more, of course, but you know that. To puff up this article a bit and make it more fun for the reader, I suggest laying out more examples for each type and outlining the good and bad points of being a part of each group. Though the “Lames” are apparently “killers,” there has to be something adventageous to using a free service and having absolutely no skills. There are pluses and minuses to everything.
The 5 Things article has a clever title though poorly executed. I’d suggest “5 Things that Make Your Site Real Shite.” Taking out that “a” doesn’t harm the idea, but it makes it readable. I just want to say that I love your comment about “l33t speak” and Russian war codes. It certainly made me chuckle. I hope there’s more jest throughout the rest of your website as well. However lovely I find this article, it’s not unique. Add some points that you believe in, personally. Not that I think you wouldn’t put this on your site if you didn’t believe in it, but these are the same points that I see on every website. There has to be something that you don’t like about websites which isn’t mentioned on every other site in the world.
Now, as for your “Fixed or Fluid?” article… the large purple boxes take much away from your text. They’re distracting. It’s fine to have those on the content index pages but to include them also on the articles themselves? Not a good idea. For that matter, because they’re present on this page and not on the other article pages, your site doesn’t match. You should always go for consistency when creating content. The other articles were perfectly readable and fine without the giant purple boxes. Consider bolding the headers and leaving it at that.
Your poetry is lovely and my adoration of mythology puts “Aurora” as my favorite one. I don’t go in for poetry that much so I won’t critique any of yours, but you’re very talented with imagery, description and flow.
Contact Me
I suggest this for everyone: Please include an email address as well as the form. Sometimes forms don’t go through because of any number of errors. If you really want your visitors to be able to contact you, just add an email address below the form, and tell your visitors where the form will take them if it works. That way they’ll know whether or not they should send an email.
Domain
Your website history is concise but well-written. It’s almost like you’ve told a story. I would recommend linking Rachael, your host where she’s mentioned. You link her on the credits page, but why not the domain page also? It’s a nice courtesy. Hosts love that sort of thing. :) I’d also be really curious to see why it’s called “Backstaged,” and as I said at the beginning of this review: what inspired the snippet in your header image?
Comprehensive Reflection
Your design is simple but could use improvement. I don’t recommend a really complicated layout; I like the straight-forwardness of your layout, but I don’t understand some of it, as outlined above. Your content is organized but there isn’t very much of it. Every page loads quickly, your site is more or less visually appealing, and you don’t promise more than you offer.
However, I’d consider putting up more content and going through your website for an extensive grammar and spelling correction search. Even if you recruit a friend to do it for you, it would improve your site just that much more! English-speaking visitors will be very thankful. Sometimes the language hurt my brain while I was reading. With that in mind, though, don’t lose your voice! You’re clever and funny and I’d hate to see that disappear with a few verbs and noun endings.
16 March 2008