Obiter Dictum

Content Only Review of Dancing in the Rain
Date Submitted: January 20
Date Completed: July 15

Content

Aesthetically your site is just a tad bit blinding to me; you asked for a content-only review so I’m not going to comment too much on the design, but as I have to read the words somehow, you should know a few things. The yellow on the brown would be fine for your links in the sidebar if the white wasn’t so bright under your content. I feel like I am straining to read some things, and that’s never good if you want people to continually visit your website! Issues arise with the yellow links (on the brown, but also below the content in your footer navigation), pink on pink, and that splash of pink in your “about” blurb that looks sickening with the yellow (again, the yellow), but also makes the black hard to discern. Otherwise, the font size is big enough and the fonts are readable. (Except when you mouseover the links in the sidebar; there you seem to have decided to throw readability out the door. What’s with the dark brown on dark gray? Bad choice.)

I’m going to start with your sidebar because, despite the fact that your content is on the brightest color shown in your page, your sidebar still manages to draw my eyes immediately. Let’s analyze why: First of all, it’s busy. Too busy. Is it necessary to have all that? And can’t you style the Google search bar to match the sidebar colors, rather than having a random white box among all the pink, yellow, and brown? Secondly, your tags stand out more than your subject lines in the blog, so when I landed on your page I was immediately drawn to those. Is that what you want? My suggestion is either to move them further down the page or make them smaller.

So you have lots of things going on in your sidebar. I don’t even know where to begin. It’s a nice wide one, which I suppose suits your purpose well as you have some things that apparently need to be wide (your tags, again, stand out more than anything else) and some things that apparently need to be squished just to fit in there.

I know that a lot of websites will tell you to put fun little activities on your site (such as polls) to keep visitors coming and whatever, but all I interpret from “What Color Should My Site Have?” is that you are totally ready to add another to your already confusing conglomerate of colors. Even if that’s not the case, is it really necessary to squish this poll in your sidebar? If you’re going to keep it, though, I’d like to point out that the header says “Polls,” even though there’s only one. Also when you click the link to go to the polls archive page, you get an error (more on your error page later).

You have your navigation now in three different parts of the site - the header, footer, and sidebar. Whoa, whoa. I know you’re eager to get people around, but it’s really not necessary to do that. And if you’re going for overkill, might I suggest creating a left-hand sidebar just for another set of navigation links? Because that would totally even out your website.

Your rotations section has a ton of holes. I don’t know if this is because you’re still displaying code for inactive rotations or because your coding is off. When I view the source, it seems to be the former. Clean it up a bit. You could save some space and visual impairment. Also, if you’re at all given the option of a non-blinky rotation link button, go with that one. You can’t control what other people’s buttons will look like, and trying to minimize the blinkiness will do you a lot of good. It would be better to have a thin, skinny non-blinky thing next to a flashy blinky thing, rather than a ton of blinky things assaulting your visitors’ eyes from all corners. As for the position, I would suggest first cleaning up the code a bit, and second putting this below all your sidebar content, giving it the space of the sidebar width. Less squishy that way.

Miscellaneous points so I can move on: Your “subscribe via email” box looks pretty out of place; not sure why - probably because your sidebar draws so much attention that I haven’t even gotten to your blog yet so I don’t know what I’m subscribing to. Also, I assume that “They Talk Much” means top commenters? What’s wrong with just saying “top commenters?” For a few minutes I couldn’t figure out why these links were separate from your blogroll. Other visitors might also wonder.

On to your blog. Okay. This is a personal preference, I realize, but one of the things that annoys me a lot is blogs that have “Read the Rest of the Entry” on every post. Especially when, after you click the link, there are less than 100 words under there. I could understand if it was a super long post that went into a lot of descriptive detail about something, but most of your posts are relatively short. Why the cut? What’s wrong with displaying your words in full, rather than forcing your visitors to go that extra step to read the rest? And it’s not like you even tease them into clicking the link, no, it’s just there, as if to say, “sorry guys, I accidentally pushed the button to make a cut, and I’m too lazy to take back this action.” For example, your “Unrequested Site Reviews” blog post has one measley sentence after the cut. I thought for sure it was going to be much longer given the length of text before the cut. Disappointed.

That said, I’m not going to read all your blog posts because I feel it’s way too much effort to have to click that link every time. Anyway, you’re pretty eloquent in your writing and you definitely seem to have a lot of good ideas. I’d only suggest that you expand upon your posts and write more article-like blogs. Your personal posts are about even with your ‘opinion’ type of posts and that’s really excellent! You don’t fall into that whole “went to the store with Sally and OMG Josh was there!” thing, which is always good to see on websites. You talk about things that your visitors can relate to (favorite movies, TV shows if they watch them, etc). Keep it up. Others might complain of an impersonal vibe, but I think that writing reviews and thoughts is more personal than writing about random people.

Overall my main complaints about the first impressions here: Sidebar is too busy, and draws too much attention. Blog is well done but underdeveloped and uses too many cuts. Expand on your ideas and you’ll probably feel a lot more accomplished (in addition to gaining more interest from your readers). Otherwise, your English/grammar is pretty great (with a few mistakes here and there, but we all make those), you’re interesting, and there is certainly potential here.

21 Girl

Er, still trying to figure out why this section is titled “21 Girl” and not just “Girl.” Was it “20 Girl” before you turned 21? It’s new, but uniqueness isn’t always necessarily good. That would be like saying mixing apples, strawberries, Oreos, and cardboard would make an excellent drink. It’s different! No one’s done it before! But would you drink it?

I want to stop here before I continue and tell you that your title bar says “girl | Dancing in the Rain.” First of all, the section is “21 Girl,” not “Girl.” Secondly, why isn’t it capitalized?

Your “about me” is a random assortment of facts that don’t really say very much about you. This is a problem on most personal websites. It’s revised every so often but it always says the same thing: Here is a bunch of random things about me which don’t really tell you anything about me at all. There’s no coherency - nothing connects with your last statement - so as far as I know you’re just a completely random person who spurts out random bits of information everywhere she goes. Maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s true of everyone on the Internet who doesn’t have a properly developed about page.

As far as this goes:

If you are creative in any way, I’m sure I’ll like you, but if you aren’t open-minded, you should go and visit other sites. Maybe Barbie.com .

I am not sure what creativity has to do with open-mindedness. I know a lot of people who are totally close-minded to TONS of things, but who can create such vibrant, excessively beautiful things that I would never have thought up. They’re creative with their lives and their ideas. Yet… Close-minded. So perhaps you’d want to explain a bit further on this point. Also, there’s a space after the .com in Barbie.com, and if you’re seriously suggesting that people leave your site because they’re not open-minded, you should probably link it.

Your “basics” are also lacking, making this a very uncomprehensive and practically useless page. Your sidebar says that your visitor can go here to “know you better,” but I still don’t feel like I know you at all. Your blog posts tell me more about you than this page does.

Romania

I love it when people have sections dedicated to their places of residence! Especially if it’s a place I’ve never been. Did you take the photographs? If so, they are lovely (if not, they are still lovely :p). You would probably benefit from a small section displaying some of your best photography - perhaps it is something you could tack on to your “about” page. Share your passions. (If you didn’t take those photos, your watermark should not be on them.)

You’re very open about your views on your home, as evidenced by the blog post you’ve linked here. It would be interesting to see more of your thoughts concerning your country, as it is clear from the comments you received that your visitors enjoyed it. You’re giving a glimpse into a country and life that most people would never otherwise get - take advantage of that, and use it to improve your website. My life? It’s pretty much just like everyone else’s. We all hate Bush. *shrug*

This page is overall a good idea, but I’d suggest expanding on it, perhaps by writing and linking more blog posts, photographs, or fun facts. Spacing would also greatly benefit this page. Right now, everything is squished. Perhaps try listing with HTML code; ie:

<ol>
<li>It’s a Southeastern European country. The neighbors are: Hungary, Ukraine, Republic of Moldova, Bulgaria and Serbia.</li>
<li>It’s cheap to make movies here, so this is why lots of Hollywood-stars started to come here and make high-quality films on low prices.</li>
<li>We have four seasons (summer, autumn, winter and spring).</li>
<li>We have the Black Sea, which has a dark color. We learned at school why it’s dark, but I don’t know how to translate. I can tell you that is not because people wash their legs in it :laugh:. We also have mountains, rivers, lakes, mounds and so on.</li>
<li>The video of Evanescence’s song “Bring Me to Life” was made here.</li>
<li>An actress from here, Monica Dean, appeared in Lost.</li>
<li>Do you know that movie with Borat in Kazakhstan? The movie was actually made in Romania.</li>
<li>Have you saw the horror-movie named Pulse with Kristen Bell, Ian Somerhalder and Christina Milian? Yeah, that was made in Romania too.</li>
<li>”Besame Sin Miedo,” the new song of RBD is made in Romania.</li>
<li>Guess from where comes Dracula? From Transilvania which is in… Romania.</li>
</ol>

As you can see, I’ve also taken this opportunity to point out a few mistakes (spacing errors, punctuation, etc). My list corrects them.

Links

This page looks a little plain but gets the point across. There are some spacing errors here as well (sticky spacebar?). Also, instead of writing “contact me at the email from the sidebar,” why not include a form, or for that matter just list the email again? Your visitor might, once again, get distracted by all the business in the sidebar and forget to contact you.

It’s weird that you have a link to Valentine’s Day ecards especially since it’s the middle of July.

All of your “listed” links are in lowercase - if you’re going to capitalize the first letter in the fanlistings links, you should also capitalize the first letter in your listed links (plus it looks better that way). There are also much better ways to format this page - an HTML list, for example (as seen above, except you could use UL for unordered list rather than the OL ordered lists - UL will give you the dots, whereas OL will give you numbers). I’m sure the fanlistings provide buttons from which to link, and though I don’t like seeing too many buttons, it would still be more visually appealing than this. I don’t even want to read through them to see what you’re a fan of, and what’s the point of joining them if you don’t want to show them off?

The Site

This is a very small section. Not much in the way of credits either, I’m noticing. You don’t even seem to have inspiration links anywhere!

There is no reason to have the crossed out “I don’t know where I heard this” immediately followed by the location at which you heard the name. Perhaps it makes sense in your head to edit that out and continue talking, but it’s pointless for your visitor to see it. Deleting this, of course, makes this section seven words shorter. Consider including sections about the current layout, past sites or previous incarnations of this website, whatever related information you will enjoy writing that would improve this section. Visit your blogroll if you don’t know what else to put - I’m sure people have shown tons of different ideas to enhance certain parts of their websites.

Paupergrrl.net is a broken link. You can still mention it (perhaps with a comment that it no longer exists) but there’s no need to link it.

Reviews

Always a good page for reviewers to read! I can get an idea here of what other people thought of your website and whether or not they’ve agreed with any of my points. (Maybe I’m just a sad loner on some of my opinions. :p) It’s great that you have a link to YourSite encouraging your visitors to sign up and submit a review. I am always happy to see people willing to put themselves out there and get reviews and comments on their websites. Makes it easier for me to review someone knowing that they’ll be gracious about it! There are so many people out there who will only accept a review as a “good one” if it’s 100% positive. It’s clear that you have a more realistic view on life.

I hope that if you post it my review doesn’t break your page with its length. My only suggestion is to create a separate page for each review as you gain more and link them all here. Perhaps you should consider making blog posts with the reviews and any comments or defenses you have about them, then linking those posts from here. Reviewers usually appreciate response posts like this (I do, anyway) because there is always a lot to learn about a person’s motivations with his/her website. In any case, as you get more reviews, this page is going to fill up. You’ll need to find a better way to display them.

Past Layouts (2)

Not one, but two past layouts pages? And for some reason the second one comes first… I can see why you’ve divided it; there are a lot of images on this page and some description on each. Might I suggest that instead of dividing it as such, you create one page called “Past Layouts” (no 1 or 2!) and from this single page, direct your traffic to two different pages. Your website is starting to look like a portfolio. That’s fine, but I didn’t get the impression that it was going to be one. (I couldn’t tell you what my impression was, though.)

Version 6 is probably my favorite on this page, but I prefer simple layouts without a lot of stuff going on (as I’m sure you’ve gathered already!). Your layouts generally improve from one to the next, which is good, though I see you went from a straight-forward, uncluttered sidebar straight into this one you have now. It’s certainly better than your first attempts, but a downgrade from the clean layouts you had before it.

Past Layouts (1)

I almost put “Past Layouts (2)” again. See? It’s out of order. Should be the other way around. I even clicked on “Past Layouts (2)” again thinking, obviously, the second one comes after the first one, and since I’ve already reviewed one I must be on #2.

You have an awesome disclaimer on this page. I especially like this part:

These layouts are examples of what you shouldn’t do. Sometimes you can learn from others mistakes. This time you can learn from my mistakes. Blending is fun, but it’s better if you don’t do it with celebrity pictures, or pictures that aren’t made by you.

It’s even double emphasized for the full effect! I love that you are completely honest with yourself about your past designs. I mean, mine weren’t all that great either, but I still sometimes lie to myself and say they weren’t that bad. You, on the other hand, are putting yours on display as an example of what not to do. Others (myself included) could learn from this kind of dedication.

As per your Version 4 comment - don’t worry, it wasn’t just the “blenders” who thought the left-aligned layout with tiny font was cool. I mean, I was usually all about Iframes anyway (see how silly I was?) but I wasn’t much of a blender. I visited those sites and thought, “oh man, I wish I could do that.”

In any case, it would be neat to see some of your opinions on trends as they come and go. Have you made any blog posts related to that sort of thing? If so, link them on this page! Even if you’re not commenting on your own layouts, at least you’re giving opinions on silly trends that you may have once followed. It’s more fruitful to hear from someone who has experience, rather than from someone who has always been perfect - people are more likely to listen to the former.

Plugboard

Pretty simple page here, no surprises. You say that broken images will be removed, but how often do you remove them? Lots of holes here.

404 Page

Thankfully I wasn’t sent here very much. Actually, I was only sent here once, which is very good! It means you’ve checked through your site for errors. You reference a lot of your blog posts in other posts and pages, and I would have been disappointed to see a bunch of broken links. It only seems to be your poll archive which is inactive.

First of all, your layout changes with your footer navigation now in your sidebar, which leads me to believe you have a coding error somewhere. Just pointing it out!

Secondly, there isn’t a lot going on here. There aren’t any suggestions - you can link related pages, for example, in case someone was looking for something else (Related Posts Plugin for WP). There is no way to get in touch with you to let you know about the error - even your sidebar disappears (which I’m inclined to think is a good thing), but that means the email address isn’t readily available. I’d suggest a form anyway. It requires the least effort from your visitor who may not want to go hunting for a way to tell you that a page doesn’t work.

Last - well, it’s just very plain. I don’t suggest by any means that you busy it up and clutter it with unnecessary information. But imagine if someone landed on a 404 by clicking a link to get to your website; for example, sometimes people will link a miscellaneous blog post erroneously, so it gets their visitors to your site but they’re smack dab in the middle of a 404 page. Did you take this into account? Who’s going to want to continue through to try to find what they’re looking for when they’re greeted with a message that basically says, “you did it wrong, now go away.” Just something to think about.

Comprehensive Reflection

Upon first visiting your site, I was distracted by the sidebar. I think I’ve probably mentioned this enough, but hopefully it’s imprinted on your brain and you’ll consider doing something about it. While I was going through your site, however, the sidebar wasn’t so much of a distraction, once I’d already gone through and seen all the things it had to offer (surprisingly, nothing much - there’s a lot going on, but nothing that held my interest).

A big thing I noticed while browsing is that your site doesn’t seem to have any kind of focus. At all. No, really, what is the point of your site? Is it the blog with its short posts? Is it to talk about yourself, but only a tiny bit? Is it to display your past layouts? I’m starting to think that last one is it. There are two pages dedicated to your past layouts, more content there than anywhere else. Did you enjoy making those pages? Perhaps you should consider making your website into a personal/portfolio site. You could keep the blog, of course, but the main focus would be your creative endeavors - design, photography, etc. At least then it would feel like your site had a purpose. Right now, it just seems like a random assortment of things you wanted to put on the Internet. (Kind of like your about page…)

Nothing wrong with that, of course, but remember in school when your research papers had to have theses, and each paragraph had to have a main idea? What is your website’s thesis, and what is the main idea of each page?

I’d do a once-over (perhaps a twice-over) for spacing and simple grammatical errors. You don’t have anything that blatantly stands out as “wrong.” Your English is very good, but there are still some plurals where there should be singulars and other little mistakes like that. Spacing is the biggest issue, though. Sometimes you need more paragraph breaks.

Overall, however, a very good site with (as I’ve said) a lot of potential. I don’t know how long you’ve had this site as it didn’t note that anywhere in the domain’s about page, but it seems like you haven’t been doing this for too long. If you’ve been blogging and creating websites for 10 years, take this impression into account. It says a lot about your website’s development. If you’re truly new at it, then the comment shouldn’t be taken to heart so readily. It’s a good website, just needs some tweaking here and there.