Un-Ordinary.net: Combined Review
Combined Review of un-ordinary.net
Date Submitted: November 13
Date Completed: January 21
Design
I was going to try to put off this review until you got your new self set up but since you’re next in line I had to go ahead and do it now. I’d hate to give you all kinds of comments on a layout that you’re about to get rid of anyway, but here goes anyway!
I like what you’ve done here, except for just two things: There’s a lot of space to the right and I don’t understand the bubbly thing going on behind the content. It would be cool if you had some kind of theme going and I personally like to add a little flair here and there, but it draws attention and I don’t quite “get” it. As for the space to the right, either the text could go all the way to the end (padding included, of course) - but that might look sloppier; the layout could be centered - but that might ruin your left sidebar idea (and by the way, I like your sidebar, it’s straight-forward and minimal and fits well with the coloring)… I honestly don’t have any suggestions as far as that big space on the right goes, but I’m sure you have some things in mind by now based on your recent review.
Your site loaded very quickly which, of course, is always lovely, and the colors were well chosen to produce a visually appealing layout. I am a fan of the more “bland” colors - dark blues, purples, etc, so you’ll find a lot of praise from my end if you keep your layout from being too colorful; though of course, as long as colors are chosen well, anything can be pulled off successfully.
Your copyright info under your thumbnails on the portfolio pages is just a little too squished up onto the thumbnails. Try a paragraph break - or better yet, to follow suite with the rest of your website, introduce the info with another header.
There aren’t a lot of problems to speak of so I’ll get on with the content.
Content
Your blog is interesting but the updates are sporadic. I don’t mean that they’re “few and far between,” I mean that you seem to only use the blog when you’ve realized that you haven’t said anything about yourself in a while and should probably mention school life or home life or your thoughts of the day. There’s nothing wrong with this, absolutely nothing, unless of course you want regular visitors who continually enjoy your posts.
You don’t have to update every day for that, you merely have to have posts that connect in some way - your blog, if you choose to use it in this manner, should be the story of your life or at least one aspect of your life. Coming back to say “hello, I’m updating again about something random and unrelated to all of my other updates” is a respectable approach, but as a reviewer I feel inclined to tell you that I’m yearning for more debatable posts and discussion questions because you bring up interesting topics.
Portfolio
Beside the spacing issue (mentioned above under design) these pages look decent. I am not at all a fan of the lightbox effect (or whatever it’s called) and it tends to eat up a lot of time to load but it all depends on preference. Your illustration is very impressive and makes me want to break out some markers and color inside the lines (because this is the most impressive I get when it comes to drawing). I’d like to mention before I forget that the thumbnail on the “Portfolio” page says “Illustration,” whereas the sidebar links to “Drawings.” No need to confuse your visitor!
As far as your flash section goes, I think the point of flash is the interactivity it provides. By giving only screenshots, you defeat the purpose. I’d suggest uploading your flash designs into folders and actually linking to them; no one is going to be impressed by your “flash layout” if they can’t do anything with it. As it stands, all your flash items look like your illustrations.
Again the Portfolio page says “3D Images” while the sidebar says “3D Art” - “Web Design” and “Web Layouts” - “Misc.” and “Miscellaneous.” Consistancy can go a long way, I promise.
Your portfolio is impressive; I would especially like to see more photography. It’s comprehensive and clear that you’ve put a lot of work into it. I do wonder often if people ever add anything to their portfolios once they’re established on the website… Because it’s so much easier to keep things the way they are than to continually add and change elements. Not a comment on your site, of course, but just something that I wonder about.
About Me
It’s clear by the size of this page and the fact that it’s second in the navigation that it’s not the most important part of your site. Some people will tell you that it’s not necessary to have the subsection links in the sidebar as well as on the index page of the section, but I certainly didn’t notice that there were subsections on my first overview of the website. In any case, if you’re going to have the subsections highlighted on the Portfolio page, you should keep it as consistent as possible across the website. Looking ahead, I see that subsections are highlighted again on the Goodies page but again not on the Links page. By putting your subsections in easily viewable thumbnails right off the bat, you’ve trained your visitor to look for them on all the other pages. Thus, content may be missed simply because the visitor doesn’t know to look at the sidebar first.
You have a few comma errors on your opening about page and your summary paragraph sort of gives the feeling that you put a load of facts of yourself in a hat. You then pulled out two or three of those facts and put them on your website. They’re related because they’re about you, but no one can figure out why they’re in a paragraph.
Site-Realted
should be Site Related - two separate words, and one of them is spelled incorrectly.
It’s main purpose is to demonstrate my creative work, an insight into my interests, plus provide a few nifty little resources.
should be “its” main purpose. Every time you write the word “its,” you should think in your mind “does saying it is make sense here?” If it doesn’t, write “its.” If it does, write “it’s.”
Generally this is a wonky statement that doesn’t seem to make sense. Try something like:
Its main purpose is to demonstrate my creative work, provide insight into my interests, and hand out a few nifty little resources.
This statement
I do however know a great deal about CSS and HTML,
needs more commas. Whenever you use the word “however,” some kind of break in the flow needs to be provided. “I do, however, know a great deal…” “However, I do know a great deal…” Whichever way you put it, there has to be a comma.
Your interests page needs to be viewed for grammar.
I love drawing in cartoon style, making pixel art, and sometimes experiment with Flash and 3D modeling.
You’ve started out with a lot of “ing”s and ended with no “ing.” Keep it consistent (”drawing,” “making,” “experiment”).
When you click on the “ball-jointed dolls” link, it takes you to an old layout with no information.
Under “favorite musicians,” you should have more than one. Otherwise change “musicians” to the singular.
Your other about content has similar minor grammatical errors - prepositions at the end of sentences (though we all do this), tense changes, commas needed or unnecessarily placed, etc. I won’t go through all of it (unless you’d really like me to - wouldn’t mind) in the interest of avoiding a review filled with smaller details. I want to mention that they are there, and a quick proofread may improve the readability of your site.
Gift Art
I’m reviewing this as its own section because it magically becomes one when I click on the link. The about sidebar disappears and I’m suddenly “sectionless.” I’d suggest either adding “gift art” (or “guest art” - make up your mind) to the top bar and making it a section, or keeping the about sidebar along with the new gift sidebar. It’s clear that you have a lot - enough to split it into years - but unless you’re going to add the link to the top bar, there’s no reason to take away the about navigation from the left.
Goodies
Your sidebar, first of all, is a little out of order according to your thumbnails. “Pixel Patterns” (”Tiled Patterns,” I presume?) should come after “Emoticons.” And, as your sidebar illustrates, there’s no reason for the article/tutorial thumbnails to say “article” and “tutorial” because it’s already obvious this is what they are.
The graphic giveaways are plenty and of good quality, so I have no complaints there.
However, it’s complainable that your goodies list disappears when I click on the tutorial/article links. Like the “gift art,” the web design article magically becomes its own section. There’s plenty of space in your sidebar to include the goodies & other links that were on the goodies page. I can see that they are blog posts; perhaps you’d like to mention that, so when the sidebar navigation disappears entirely your visitor knows they’ll have to push their back button a lot.
Okay, okay, I see what the issue is here. In your sidebar you have the articles linked as “index.php?id=##” whereas on the web issues index (as it were), the articles are linked as “tips.php?id=##”. With the “tips.php” there, the sidebar remains, but it disappears when the “index.php” links are clicked. Something to think about changing.
As for your Cork Texture tutorial, I don’t see why you can’t just have the example images included directly in the page (looks like this: [picture]) rather than making your visitors click the links to view the lightbox which takes a rather long time to load. (Well, not a long time, but the images aren’t large enough to bombard your tutorial page with terrible loading times, so I’m sure your visitors wouldn’t mind the ability to view the result immediately rather than having to click and wait. It’s an extra unnecessary step.) In any case, it’s inconsistent to have the final result shown “like this” while having the steps to get there linked “like this.”
Linkage
Why is it that I can click the “Linkage” item on the top menu while it is active, but I couldn’t do that with any of the other sections? On that note, if your general list of links is going to be an actual section, it should be linked in the sidebar, rather than something that I can only access by clicking the “Linkage” menu item. It’s great that it’s clickable (I think they all should be), but if the others aren’t, this one also shouldn’t be.
Your “contact me” bar on the side also disappears with the linkage page.
As far as your Awards page goes, I think that if you’re going to include quiz results anywhere, they should be in your “about” section. I don’t think they’re relative but they’re sometimes fun, so if you want to include them, stick them in there somewhere. I’m not sure they count as “awards.”
Your credits page looks pretty comprehensive. I wouldn’t be able to tell if you’d left anything out, and that’s always a good quality on a website.
Comprehensive Reflection
I don’t see a lot about your website as a whole. You have a bit on the about page and some in your past layouts portfolio, but nothing that really says a lot about your website. The credits page, as I’ve said, is impeccable, but a personal preference is to see one page dedicated to all sitely things. It’s strange placement for it to be on a page where you probably intended to talk more about yourself. I also saw nothing that explained the current layout (I like those sort of things too).
Overall, your website is easy to browse with semi-decent organization. Except for a few instances of re-labelling (that is, same sections having different names) which can be confusing, and the occasional subsection that randomly became its own section, I was able to get through your website easily and view your content accordingly.
I like the layout and though I couldn’t find suggestions for the white space or an explanation for the bubbles (which, by the way, still draw attention), it is clear based on your portfolio that you’re talented with coding and graphic design and any future layout that you make will probably improve on this one.
While you are revamping and moving, I’d suggest going through your content a bit for errors - grammatical and otherwise - and when you’re finished, take just one more sweep of the site to make sure everything connects. If something is a subsection, it should stay as one; if not, your visitor should be able to easily get back to the previous section. Check all your links before launching. Otherwise, keep up the good work.
21 January 2008
January 28th, 2008 at 2:40 am
Thanks for your review, you’ve given me a lot to think about. I’ll definitely put a lot of thought into my navigation structure.
The text/grammar problems are, I think, that I’m the only one proofreading. So with the new site I’ll write up new descriptions and get people to proofread them too. :)
Thanks again. :)