Final Stop: Combined Review
Combined Review of final-stop.net
Date Submitted: December 3
Date Completed: February 13
Design
Your design is very clean, simple, and with colors that go well together. I’m not sure I would have picked a pink/green combination, but to each his own. Except for the error at the bottom of the page, your website looks fine in both IE and Firefox.
The error is as follows:
Warning: main() [function.main]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Name or service not known in /home/finalst/public_html/wp-content/themes/watermelon/about_text.txt on line 4
Your image, however, doesn’t look like it’s of the best quality; you’ve saved it as .gif. I’d suggest next time going with .png or .jpg if you must. As it is right now, the header image looks grainy and a bit ragged.
As far as loading time goes - your site takes more than a few seconds’ time to load each page. I’m not sure if this is related to the error above or if you just have too much going on, but I’d look into that. It seems you want to have this website open as a community resource, and one important thing to keeping your visitors happy is to allow faster loading times. If that means getting rid of the bulky header image or unnecessary scripts, then it might be a worthy sacrifice for the happiness of your visitors. Personally, because the pages take so long to load, I wouldn’t stick around if I wasn’t here to review.
There isn’t a lot else to comment on as your layout is simple and straight-forward. It’s a little boring; you see the same layout so often these days. There don’t seem to be any creative elements that add a unique touch to this website. However, if the two-column same-old, same-old layout design works for what you have to display, then I guess you should stick to it. I’d try going for something a little different next time, though.
Content
Because your blog entries are so short, I’d suggest displaying more than your three most recent ones. It’ll add a bit more to the first page everyone sees, and if anyone is a first-time visitor they may want to read a few more entries without having to get too involved in the site.
Your updates are far apart and don’t ever seem to have any kind of “theme” to them… Yes, there are categories, but it seems you’re just coming on to say one thing - anyone who is interested in your chocolate covered strawberries would probably want to see more personal posts, and it seems like all of your site-category posts are just small bits of content here and there that you’ve updated. Why not try to think of something more substantial - tutorials, for example, or your thoughts on certain issues?
In other words, if you’re going to have a blog on this website, have a reason for it.
As for your sidebar, the welcome snippet isn’t long enough to justify the “More?” link. In any case, it’s a bit annoying to click on that link and find that it just expands the welcome bar by four lines. When I click “More?” I expect to find a whole page with more information about the webmaster or website. Plus the fact that the “More?” link stays there after I’ve clicked it keeps it out of place. Either replace it with “Less?” or get rid of this feature all together.
Also, “…but counts with some ocassional contributions from Karen” makes no sense. It “counts” with occassional contributions? Maybe you meant to say that it “includes some occassional contributions from Karen.”
About
If you can have subpage navigation, then you can take the welcome message out. It’s only necessary to be visible on the first page. I’d say the same, even, for the categories, but to each his own.
In your about descriptions you use the word “we” a lot, yet at the bottom there appears to only be one “Web miss.” The sidebar said that Karen sometimes contributes, but I wouldn’t think she’d deserve to be part of “we” if she doesn’t deserve an about snippet.
You’re a bit semi-colon happy, and you’re using it wrong. A semi-colon (;) is used to join two sentences. As “final stop and first aid,” “helping other people,” “beginners or experienced,” etc., are not sentences, they should not be preceeded by a semi-colon. You were probably looking for a colon (:) or even just a comma (,).
You may want to link “Digital Guilt” since it hosts your site. There are several things wrong with the the last sentence of that paragraph. It’s choppy and doesn’t read clearly and you’ve placed the link in an awkward position. I would suggest the following:
The only other active site hosted on this account is ZombiesAttack!Designs, a.k.a. ZA!D.
Your “Web miss” paragraph is missing some commas which I’ll let you find… And I’m just curious - what makes music and the beach “basic” but arts and crafts not?
I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised when I found link buttons on the support page and not donation buttons! However, I’d suggest getting rid of the textbox codes and instead using the <code></code> tags. Not only will your visitors be able to see the whole code in front of them, but it’ll also look much nicer on your page.
On your subscribe page, you should include a little text that notes what, exactly, people are subscribing to. Are they getting emails verbatim to the blog updates? Are you going to send out updates to the website only? Why should anyone give you an email address?
Your plugins page has a lot of spelling typos (”pulgin,” “teh”). I won’t go through all of them, but be aware that a second look-through on this page might be helpful.
It’s excellent that you have a comprehensive credits page; however, I’d suggest linking the full names of each resource, instead of an asterisk. It’s as if you don’t want your visitors to go… But you do, don’t you?
Content
I honestly won’t be able to go through all of your content pages because as I said before, the loading time is horrendous. However, I’ll go through a few of each section provided and review the things I do visit.
First of all, I don’t see why you have to have such a huge graphic that says “Content Menu (subpages) is on the sidebar.” It’s on every page except the Tutorials. Your visitor may need a reminder to look to the right, but they don’t need a big graphical one. Some text would be just as fine.
You have some interesting resources which I haven’t stumbled across on other websites. However, for pages like “Test Your Design Knowledge,” I’d suggest a little more text. Credit w3schools for all the quizzes. Show what your score was. Explain a little bit about each test before your visitor clicks on them. Provide something other than just a list of links.
Your tutorials are many and as I’ve already said I won’t visit them all; however, I’ll let you know what I think of the Wordpress ones, and you can judge your others based on this.
First of all, there are plenty of spelling typos and grammatical errors - some which I’ve mentioned before (punctuation use), but others as well. If you aren’t confident in your own English to keep your pages grammatically correct, have a friend go through them before you launch your websites. It looks sloppy with all those errors!
Secondly, it’s a bad idea to use the lightbox for your images. It’s something that personally annoys me, but even putting that aside, it’s not helpful to browsing the tutorials. You could have just resized the images so the width matched your content box. Your visitor has eyes, presumably, and doesn’t need a full-size image to function properly. Most eyes can see similarities between two images that are not the same size. Not to mention the awkwardly shaped images do come up looking like this:
I don’t have to tell you how unattractive that looks.
Your tutorials seem helpful for absolute beginners, but do you plan on having any other tutorials? You have a lot of very basic things to say… I know that not everyone knows how to delete the “Hello World” post, so your tutorials would definitely be helpful for those people, but you seem relatively advanced at Wordpress - why not make a tutorial on modifying or creating Wordpress themes? If you really want this to be the “final stop” or a comprehensive resource for designers and websites, then you’ll have to cater to all levels, not just the starters. The pagination tutorial is a start - even non-beginners don’t always get that - but if I were a regular visitor to your website, I’d want to see more.
I won’t be able to visit all of your graphics pages either but I’ll try to get more than just one in… Really, the loading time is ridiculous, and you should look into that!
I like your cute little “new!” badges although I’m not sure why anyone would use something so huge on their website. Consider making smaller images to match; in my experience, people like to have the “new!” icon next to new content, and these are just too large for that!
Your 404 error banners are… interesting, but again, I don’t see why anyone would use them. If someone is creating a 404 page, chances are they can also stick some fancy text that says “404 error, page not found” on their website. You’re not offering anything that someone can’t do; perhaps you should make some that are a lot less basic - more brushes, an edited image, a witty phrase, etc.
The download buttons are also colorful and cute! I have no complaints or suggestions (except maybe to make smaller ones) because you have a variety of options available.
And a final word on your graphics - if you ever want to be taken seriously as a graphics resource center, don’t have glitter-graphics! I’ll admit that some of yours aren’t entirely distracting (the first three, anyway), but just remember that glitter-graphics are usually frowned upon.
I want to make a quick comment on your free layouts. They look pretty ordinary. That’s not a test to your coding skills - I didn’t download and view the coding or anything - but they look generic and as though you put as little effort into them as possible. If the numbers in parentheses indicate how many times each layout has been downloaded, then obviously your visitors disagree, but my suggestion is that when you offer free layouts, put a lot of yourself into them. Don’t offer anything that you wouldn’t use on your website. It shows that you care and are more willing to put in the effort for your visitors. It may just be because they were made a while ago, but as evidenced by your current theme & header, I know you can do a lot better than what you’re offering!
Your other downloads are very colorful but I don’t generally use patterns or gradients so I wouldn’t find them useful. I can’t determine whether they’re “good ones” or not, but I’m sure you put a lot of work into gathering them.
As for your “Free Stuff” content: I think that this whole section would go better under your resources content. Just like with that, all I see are lists of external links. Yes, it’s all free, but it’s also very resourceful! I’d move the hosts and software sections to resources, and change the “Free Stuff” section to just display your free services.
On the services page, you again use “we” a few times where it is questionable. Installations only by one person, but “we” might ask for other things? Interesting.
Contact
Just as a suggestion - I’d include an email address separate from the form. Sometimes forms don’t go through due to server errors. If you make a note of your email address “just in case” the form doesn’t work, your visitors will be able to get in touch with you no matter what.
Comprehensive Reflection
Your design is simple, straight-forward, and easy to follow. Your site is also very organized for how much content you have, and I commend you on that - some people can’t seem to get organization together and end up having a lot of out-of-place or confusing links. Final Stop is clearly a website you’ve put a lot of time and effort into organizing, and it shows.
However, your loading time is significantly slow. I couldn’t even go through the whole website (and I kind of wanted to!), because my patience was growing thin. I can’t imagine that any of your visitors appreciate it, especially since they are probably going to your website for tips on how to improve theirs.
If your intention was to create a resource site for web designers and graphics creators, you succeeded on the beginner’s level. From what I could tell of the tutorials I visited and skimmed through, you offer the very basics. There’s nothing wrong with that, and of course you should only give tutorials on what you know well, but once your visitors master those levels of introduction, they’re going to come back for more. Your tutorials are easy to follow, so your visitors will probably stay loyal, but if you don’t offer higher-level help, they’re eventually going to have to go elsewhere. Just something to keep in mind!
It is clear that you’ve put a lot of effort into this website. On your next redesign, I’d suggest higher quality graphic images, something a little more unique for your design, and a full-site spelling and grammar check. Otherwise, it’s lovely just the way it is, and jam-packed full of interesting resources.
13 February 2008