Review: Pet Shop Girl's Reviews
Review site: PSGR
URL to review: Click
My first review! :D This review took place when I had my third layout up.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Ello ello! You've been waiting since last year, awfully sorry babe. You know how it is...*shuffles feet*
Oh yes, I was reading your latest blog where you stated this:
Well, what an achievement! That's a lot to me too, well done with that. The most I've ever received was 987 I think, but I don't count that because I was getting bombarded with referrals for some sort of traffic hit pyramid scheme bullshit that I knew nothing about. Shit happens. Thankfully it doesn't happen anymore!
Thanks. :D 1247 hits isn't that great for a Myspace graphic site but y'know... :p 987 is awesome for a site consisting of written content, congrats.
"Ooh, My Fab Space got 1247 hits on Wednesday. Woo! I know it's not a lot really, but it is to me."
Well, what an achievement! That's a lot to me too, well done with that. The most I've ever received was 987 I think, but I don't count that because I was getting bombarded with referrals for some sort of traffic hit pyramid scheme bullshit that I knew nothing about. Shit happens. Thankfully it doesn't happen anymore!
LAYOUT
Whenever I'm reviewing a site and I catch my first glimpse of the layout, I either think Hmm, Mmm, or Eww. Actually I don't, but play along with me here. With your layout, I'm on the Hmm boat. Mmmboat, the, the, Hmmboat, biddy ba da doo wop, da da doo. Woahhhh-woah. MmmmHanson. Oh yes that's right, I'm the grandmother of the WPR world and I doubt many readers would have heard of Hanson. Sorry about that, guys. Why hmm? Well, it's all in your colour choices my friend. Pink rocks - of course it does - but yeah...bit of an overdose on the ol' #ff0099 if you get what I mean. Trust me, I've been there.I know what you mean about the pink though, it is pretty whoa. Blinding my visitors was my intention. :p
I know you've drawn the picture (or "vexel," as everyone else would call it) of the girl yourself, because I've already had a quick browse through your content and read the information about the layout. That's fantastic - I couldn't pull anything like this off if I tried. Kudos! The patterns and detail in the background of the image fit in well, too.
Ta very much. *whispers* I messed the hair up a little.
In fact, there is only one problem I can spot with the vexel itself. Check the image below:
You can clearly see the canvas, which should have been covered by the brown hair. Whoops!
Ooh. That's actually a brush I placed on top of the image. If you look at the bottom it's the same sort of thing:
You can clearly see the canvas, which should have been covered by the brown hair. Whoops!
Now about this clashing business. In this case I think it's going to be easier for me to do this in bullet points:
I agree that a lighter colour would look quite a lot better, but I like to make my layouts as different from each other as possible. The one before this was also white and pink (I really grasped the concept of the word 'different' there :p) and the background was indeed white with pink text.
- The dark pink is loud, yes. I think it'd look a lot better if you changed the background of your sidebar and main content area to say, white, or one of the lighter shades of pink that feature in your header image. You could make the text black, or the dark pink colour if you wanted.
- The background of the page itself seems to take the spotlight off your vexel a little. How about making it a lighter colour - follow the shades of pink in the header image, work with them. I've come up with this:
What do you think? Bit naff? Well, it's just an example to give you a bit of an idea of how some of the colours ought to be toned down. Some lighter shades of pink could potentially make this more Mmmworthy instead of Hmmworthy, who knows.
I'm not keen on your text alignment in your blog area as well as your sidebar - as it is now, it's centrally aligned, which doesn't look right to me at all. Left is the way to go, babe! If in doubt, always keep to the left. Also, there is too much contrast between the bright pink background and the white text...this one of the reasons why I changed the background to a lighter pink in the mockup above. The light pink teamed with a standard black font would look ten times better, surely.
Aww, I like centrally aligned text. :p I did try the text aligned to the left, but on a lot of pages the lines are pretty short, and it looks odd to the left. Re. the side bar, left aligned text look better, but the "right now" and buttons look funny there. =/ Lol, I suck.
The smilies in your blog seem to mess up the line height a bit...I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to reduce their size.
I didn't make the smilies, I
Finally, your navigation - this needs to be distinguised more...it doesn't stand out enough. A sexy semantic vertical block navigation could suit.
Completely agree here. I didn't learn how to do that sort of navigation until after I put the layout up. I was too lazy to change it. XD
could suit.
CONTENT
Me About Me - oh, so Maz is short for Marrian. What a lovely name! Marion/Marian/Marianne...all good. No need for the (throws up) in brackets next to it! I used to have some issues with my name as it goes...mainly because every numbskull and his brother pronounces it wrong. "Rhiann", "Rhianna" and "Rhiann-ON" (it's Rhiann-INN dammit!!) are popular variations. After a few decades one does get sick of seeing people screwing up their faces in confusion, and so I wanted to change my name to Tennille. As in...Neil Tennant...as in, let's move on quickly...I knew someone called Rhiannon, it was pronounced Rhiann-on, with the 'o' like the 'oo' in book. I assumed that's how it was pronounced. :p
Contact / Find Me - a variety of contact methods listed here which is good, but the presentation of these methods leaves a bit to be desired. The headers are all aligned to the left, yet the text underneath them is aligned to the centre. Result - looks a mess! Just align everything to the left and everything will be dandy. I see you're a moderator on a message board called Kawaii Ville - I visited this forum last week via a friends' login, to read some troublemaking messages left by the imbecilic 25 year old from WBB #3. As you probably know, she got pwned big time by your members...yuss!! If I were a forum goer I'd surely join - the members there seem very decent.
I see what you mean about the aligning. That page does need updating actually, as I've joined more message boards (I'm a sucker for them). <advertising mode> Kawaii Ville's awesome, there are a few iffy members but y'know. It's a great forum. </advertising mode>
That whole WBB thing made me laugh so much - from your review to the whole forum crap. XD
Maz - You describe this page as being "A light hearted, in-depth look at Maz's life. In the third person." - a unique idea, I'll give you that. Should make for an interesting read...
...and it was, indeed. No boring ass spelling errors either, which was an added bonus. I'm sorry you had such a tough time with your "friends" throughout your schooling - reading about what you went through makes me glad I was an elective outcast when I was at school! Goodness me. A lot of bullying went on at my schools too, though I was generally left alone because they didn't know what to make of me. Possibly a cross between a snob and a nerd, which I'm still labelled as today funnily enough. I can't understand why you had such a tough time though - from what I've read so far you seem like a great person to know.
Hehe, thanks. ^_^
...and it was, indeed. No boring ass spelling errors either, which was an added bonus. I'm sorry you had such a tough time with your "friends" throughout your schooling - reading about what you went through makes me glad I was an elective outcast when I was at school! Goodness me. A lot of bullying went on at my schools too, though I was generally left alone because they didn't know what to make of me. Possibly a cross between a snob and a nerd, which I'm still labelled as today funnily enough. I can't understand why you had such a tough time though - from what I've read so far you seem like a great person to know.
I was also a cross between a snob (although 'posh' was mainly the word used =/) and a nerd.
At this point she became pretty reliant on the internet, becoming "addicted" almost. She spends a vast amount of hours a day online, much to the disgust of her parents, who have no idea of her websites.
Ohhh, same! My family know I have a site, but they're not interested since it doesn't earn me any money (?!). I'm glad they don't care though, because if they came across PSGR they'd make me delete it for sure. My family give the word strict a new meaning, believe me.
All up, I really enjoyed this page - nice one.
Yeah, my family aren't understanding at all with my fascination with the internet/my PC. They don't mind when I'm doing something for them though. *sigh*
And I totally get you about the strict thing. It's pretty ridiculous.
Playlist - cheers for indicating this opens in a new window. There's not much I can say about a playlist...except for the fact that I noticed something beautiful on there. So beautiful in fact, that it is deserving of an image:
Fantastic!! A true classic from the Boys. They're coming to New Zealand at the end of March as it happens. You have a brilliant taste in music, you really do. Kate Bush...all good. Oh and I see you've got "Bounce 4 Da Reload" on there too...I've got that one! Heh.
Haha, great, isn't it? I downloaded it whilst watching Beauty and the Geek. I like quite a lot of their music, perhaps I'll buy a CD.
Fantastic!! A true classic from the Boys. They're coming to New Zealand at the end of March as it happens. You have a brilliant taste in music, you really do. Kate Bush...all good. Oh and I see you've got "Bounce 4 Da Reload" on there too...I've got that one! Heh.
That's another page that needs updating.
I wouldn't say my taste is that great though, I'm a big Evanescence fan. XD
Opinions - in progress. Like I always say, don't put up the link (or in your case, the title without the link) unless there's something there.
Er, yeah, er *coughs*. I felt the page was a bit bare... :p
Site
About - although this page is pretty straightforward, there is a small suggestion I'd like to make all the same. Check out this:Oh The Irony is just the blog of an 19-year-old girl with nothing better to do. It also houses graphics that you'd usually associate with a blog.
You're selling yourself and your site a little short, aren't you? Spice this up - as it is now it's not very appealing at all, perhaps even offputting! You could change this to something like:
"Oh The Irony is a personal site run by me - Maz, a 19 year old from England. You'll find plenty to do here - there's information about me, tonnes of free graphics, and my portfolio, where you can view samples of my work."
Or something along those lines. I'm sure you could do a better job with the above sentence than I did - it's your site after all.
Credits - nothing much to say about this page. Bullet points next to the links would look good.
Link Oh The Irony? - It's nice that you've made these buttons direct linkable. You've only got one button per size though, you should add more possibly. The additional buttons don't have to be direct linkable.
I had no link buttons or "link me" page for ages. :o I quickly made some one day when I realised the page was missing. But yeah, I need more.
Link Oh The Irony? - It's nice that you've made these buttons direct linkable. You've only got one button per size though, you should add more possibly. The additional buttons don't have to be direct linkable.
'folio
Blends - I'm not too keen on celebrity artwork, but that's just my personal preference. These pictures were fine - good to see you making use of thumbnails as well.
Fanart - Casualty fanart? I love Casualty, which is why I was disappointed when the header to this page read that these were actually Holby City related instead. Holby City may be some kind of spin-off from Casualty, but it ain't Casualty baby.
I eventually stopped the page loading because my browser stated that there were 97 items to load on this page - on a dialup modem here. Perhaps you could break the artwork up into different pages, like a page containing the blends, another for the icons, etc.
OMG! *spaz* I love Casualty - I'm a complete dork. The header says they are "Holby.tv" fanart (which I thought I'd changed). Holby.tv is a Casualty (and Holby City) fan site/forum. They're still Casualty fanart. Holby City doesn't even compare. :p
I didn't realise there were that many images on the page - will definitely change that.
Miscellaneous - the drawings of yourself were brilliant! Really! Amazing likeness.
Vexels - the baby vexel was pretty darn cute...is this your nephew that was mentioned in one of your blogs?
Thanks and thanks. :p Vexels - the baby vexel was pretty darn cute...is this your nephew that was mentioned in one of your blogs?
The baby isn't my nephew, although when I made it my mum said I should have done a family baby. I have three vexels I made on my bedroom wall in clip frames. *blushes* That was her idea.
You
Icons - worthwhile, original icons? Wtf? I should pinch myself, I must surely be dreaming. Niiiice! Your rude icons were particularly funny, especially "Nice one twat" and "Tell someone who gives a rat's ass". Lol!Patterns - this is going to sound really stupid, but errm - what's a PSP /PS pattern exactly? How does one use them?
Textures - good to see a variety of different colours being used here. Add more?
Stock Photos - very nice. Thumbnailed too, good good. The images of the clouds were my favourite.
Lol, it doesn't sound stupid, if you've never used a pattern you won't know what one is. :p I should write a tut or at least describe what they're for at the top of the page.
I do need to add more textures, and photos; I need something to photograph first though.
SUMMARY
I did enjoy stopping by your site, and I daresay I'll return occasionally to read your blogs. Apart from the information about yourself, your content didn't appeal to me much on a personal level - this is because I'm not interested in graphics and the like. However, the graphics you've provided weren't bad at all, and I'm sure they would be of interest to some of your other visitors.
I didn't spot any spelling or grammatical errors throughout your content - great! Either you know how to proof read, or you didn't need to at all. You're a better person than me in that respect then - the rough drafts of my reviews are shocking and they take ages to go through.
*sticks nose in air* I am a genius, doncha know? Well, actually I'm not, I just have a great memory when it comes to remembering my English classes (and what I've come across on the web). Unfortunately, I'm very anal when it comes to spelling and grammar. -_-
As it is now, I see your site as average. Average is not bad as such, but with average there is always room for improvement. In your case I'd say that the overall presentation is something you need to focus on more. Apply more consideration to your colour choices - choose colours that will compliment your vexel, instead of taking the attention away from it. I liked the vexel, but I felt that the surrounding colours tarnished it somewhat. Some fine tuning should also be given to the text alignment - centrally aligned text never looks good. Finally, as mentioned earlier, a more noticeable navigation system is also recommended.
I honestly think that with a few much needed adjustments, your site will look better than ever. Good luck!
No, no. Average isn't bad. It's better than "Maz, you suck, your site sucks. Step away from the computer and get yourself a life."I honestly think that with a few much needed adjustments, your site will look better than ever. Good luck!
'Average' is quite a compliment, for such a small and incomplete site IMO.
Thanks for a great review. It offered critique (I'm a sucker for criticism) and was complimentary without kissing arse.
I will (and have) taken in everything you've said, and will keep it in mind for my next layout (which is up now).
