Sacred-Nights.com

Review from Sacred-Nights.com.

First Impression

A very eye-pleasing layout, pretty colors, and wonderfully good-sized fonts that I am able to read with ease. However there are some things that struck me odd in your layout and design:

1. I am viewing your website with a 1280 x 800 resolution. At home on my own PC, I viewed your website in an even larger resolution. I tend to resize my browser’s window so I’m able to multi-task on my desktop without having to keep minimizing and restoring the window. Your website is giving me bucket loads of horizontal scrolling when I even minutely resize it. Your background image is 995 pixels in width; This is far too large considering that if I want to ensure that I will enjoy my stay, I’d have to keep my window maximized when viewing your website at all times. My guess for the reason it’s so wide is because of your navigation links, but I’ll discuss this later.
2. You have some lengthy blogs, which is not a bad thing, but when there are seven lengthy blogs on the index page, then we have a problem. It’s quite tedious to keep scrolling; What I would suggest to match your content with the length of your sidebar, is to have two or three entries at the most, displayed on your main page. For example, I happen to be one of those people who likes to see the footer of a web page and I usually scroll with my wheel on my mouse. The length of your index page forced me to click on the scrolling bar and drag it- this is usually a sign to me that the page is too long. Just saying.

Hm. I’ve never seen the number of entries on the index page as a problem unless they ended up being shorter than the sidebar. It wouldn’t be a problem to knock it down, if this is a problem to visitors. I can do that now.

3. The sidebar is quite lengthy as well, and though many of the things I’m going to point out is just purely suggestion, let’s get some things out of the way first. What’s with this twitter nonsense?– there are tons of twitter links everywhere. I visited the twitter website and still failed to understand what this is– as far as I’m concerned, they are external links. I can’t comprehend why your updates is not on your website but on another’s; This doesn’t make sense to me. You’re directing your traffic elsewhere, you want people to stay, not leave. When I clicked on the update links I found myself browsing through the Twitter website a bit, which is not good considering I’ve lost all my focus, concentration, and attention I had drawn to your website. This is now redirected elsewhere.

Twitter is the new cool thing, and I’ve climbed on the bandwagon, too, because it’s fun to update it with what I’m doing (that’s the ‘Twitter’ section of the sidebar) and it works great as a mini-blog for keeping 3till7’s updates (the ‘Updates’ section). It was just easier, when I wanted to implement an updates section of the sidebar, to work with Twitter than something else. I tried looking for a mini-blog plugin for Wordpress and didn’t have any luck. With this one, the updates are only in the sidebar; they’re not regular posts, and they don’t show up in the main blog RSS feed, which is what I wanted. I could get rid of the ‘more?’ links for the two Twitter blogs but I think they should be there for anyone who might be interested in going through a history of 3till7’s updates or what I’ve been into. I could, however, add a “what’s this?” link for those unfamiliar with Twitter.

My suggestion here is when I click on the update itself I visit a page on your website with a list of all the other updates as well. Also for the “Twitter,” section on the sidebar, another suggestion is to remove it altogether.

The section that says “Like the site?” just screams “Shameless Promotion” to me. You already have truckloads of RSS feeds thrown at every corner when you have a quick e-mail subscriber to your website’s feed should I want to subscribe. If I like your website I just bookmark it or subscribe to a feed. While very few people actually add their favorite blogs to StumpleUpon, Technorati, and Del.icio.us, you should remove it from your sidebar, or should you want to, put it on your domain page or elsewhere. I feel this is unnecessary to have in the sidebar.

Maybe people so rarely add sites to Technorati and Del.icio.us because it isn’t made convenient for them. However, I don’t know how often the Technorati and Del.icio.us buttons are used, so they now appear solely on the ‘About 3till7.net’ page (they were there before, but now they’re no longer on the index page, too). However, my top referrer is StumbleUpon. To use StumbleUpon, though, you have to have a browser toolbar plugin, so anyone that StumblesUpon my site will already have that at their hands, so yep, I was able to remove the StumbleUpon button from the index as well.

Which brings to something else… There really are too much RSS feeds, there’s eleven of them on your index page alone. On your sidebar, the Blog, Photos, and Comments RSS are repetitive since they are already mentioned on the footer.

I don’t see a problem with having a lot of RSS options. They’re along the sidebar so they’re easily apparent to visitors; that’s their main location. I repeat them all in the footer as kind of a summary, so that they’re all collected in one place. I don’t think any of the feeds are superfluous because they each have different niches. The main one is the blog feed, but keeping track of what photos I post or what updates I make to 3till7.net could also be of interest to a visitor. I see no reason to obscure them, and I think it makes sense to have an RSS feed for a section linked nearby that section, such as with the ‘Updates’ section of the sidebar.

“Dailies” is also a bit lengthy, containing over twenty six links. While I don’t mind being on this list on your index page, it’s too long and I think you would agree that this would be more fitting in your “About Me” page ;)

I don’t agree in the least about that, actually. Those links don’t describe me, they don’t lead to pages about me, and they don’t lead to photos of me. They lead to blogs that are interesting to me, sure, but everything I have on this site is interesting to me somehow. By your logic, I should have one big page called ‘About Me’ with the entire contents of my site on it. The length of the Dailies list fluctuates as I find new blogs and decide others aren’t interesting to me anymore; I try to keep it updated as I update my RSS reader’s subscriptions. Since the sidebar is still shorter than the main area, which is a pet peeve of mine, I’m fine with the length of the Dailies link section.

Contents of the layout, graphics, and images

While I brushed up on some of the bad quirks in the “First Impression” section, I’ll be focusing on the other aspects of your layout: font choice, color, background color, color contrasts, and visibility.

Layout

I already said this before, but I can’t say enough on how much it delights me that your font is really big. It’s like “in my face,” and almost impossible to not be able to read it. This is wonderful.

Your font colors meet my “half-sufficient” standard according to Juicy Studio’s Color Contrast Analyzer. I also checked your web page on Vischeck and surprisingly, while I expected your layout to lose it’s cheerful and colorful theme, the only thing that changed was your navigation. This will be discussed later on.

While your layout only consists of two primary colors, being the pink links and semi-black text, it doesn’t make the layout boring. Adding additional colors might make the layout look overdone, so this is done quite nicely. You have quite an eye for color and design.

This about all I can say about your layout. Other than the actual size of your background image dominating how I view the website in terms of browser, you’ve done quite a nice job. You know how to make very attractive layouts and yet maintain accessibility.

Navigation and Usability

The only thing I can find myself really complaining about is your navigation. I’m a reasonable person so I try to look at it through your eyes. If I were trying to find a place to put my navigation, there really wouldn’t be any other place to put it than to put it where you have it now. The only problem here is that your navigation consists of too much links when some of the links can easily be taken out and put into other pages. Let’s run through those now before I go on.

Photos, Creative, and Dreams can all be put into your Portfolio as links. Links can go under your About Me page, since they are a list of your favorite websites. Now you go from eleven links in your navigation to seven, which is much better. This way you can definitely lower the width of your background image by a reasonable portion.

I disagree with that. I send my Portfolio section as a link to possible employers; while I don’t mind if they read in my Dreams section, I don’t see it as a section I want to market to them in particular. Photos? Maybe for some people, but not in my line of work: when I interview for a job, it’s always for a web development or programming position; photography is irrelevant. Creative also contains things that are irrelevant, such as poetry I’ve written. If someone’s looking to hire me to redesign a site for them, they don’t give a damn if I can write poetry. I have been working on a new layout, however, that would link to Photos, Creative, and Dreams in one sub-section, because I realize my list of main links is getting unwieldy.

Now back to mentioning the visibility. Since links would be nearly impossible to see with this background, you choose to use images, which is fine. I felt however, that you should of raised up the contrast because without hovering over them, they blend too much into the background. Another problem with the navigation is that with eleven links squeezed in, there is no breathing room between the links. There is very little space and for a moment “Creative” and “Dreams” I misread for “creative dreams” because of the lack of spacing.

Content

-About Me-
A very well constructed page. You’ve provided more than sufficient amount of information on yourself, and it’s very organized. I’m insanely jealous that you get to go target shooting as I’m a fanatic about guns (don’t get freaked out xD).

-What are you here for?-
A very good idea, I don’t think I’ve seen this implemented anywhere else. I think you should refrain from posting a lot of feeds on the main index though as you have already listed them all here.

-Techy-
My boyfriend is a programmer himself and while he doesn’t have time to teach me C++, I was hoping to at least learn a thing or two from your “Techy” section. After all, it does say that you offer tutorials, but the two that you have available for C++ programming seems more aimed towards those who already know the basics of the language. I’m just offering a suggestion as to maybe adding some tutorials for newbies like me? It would be good start for this section. Other than that, this section is very impressive, you sure know a lot about several different languages. I think it’s wonderful you take the time to share it with others, and the quality of the content is unquestionable.

The lack of C++ tutorials is just laziness on my part. I’ve since had to get back into it for some classes of mine, so I’ve had to re-familiarize myself with it, and could now write a few tutorials, I imagine.

This page is quite long though, so anchors, followed by a “Return to Top” after each individual section would do wonders here.

Ah! I see you do reviews, wouldn’t mind you reviewing my website in about two weeks (when I put up my new layout!) ;)

You have a ton of quality content pages, which are clear and concise, and have no spelling or grammatical errors.

-About 3till7.net-

I test it in Firefox, Safari, IE 6, and Opera.

Do you mean “tested”? Have you tested it in IE7? Might want to update that little bit.

No, I said “test” because it’s something I do every time I release a new layout. It’s an ongoing process.

Aha!

This is the current default theme. I wouldn’t suggest using it with a resolution under 1024×768 because there will be a sideways scrollbar.

So you already knew of this problem, why didn’t you try to fix it?

Two reasons: 3.29% of my users have an 800×600 resolution, and while the site isn’t at its prettiest for them, reducing the layout width wasn’t a big priority because the remaining users all used a resolution > 800×600. (Thank you, Google Analytics.) The site still functions for those using an 800×600 resolution, but I no longer design with it in mind. 1024×768 is the base size that I start with for a layout because I know the majority of my visitors use that or larger. As long as I keep the layout usable for those using smaller resolutions, I’m not concerned.

Coding

Your CSS is invalid with four errors. Your XHTML was invalid as well with one errors. You forgot to add an end tag </p>

I processed all your RSS feeds through the Feed Validator (I have a lot of time on my hands don’t I?) and while they were all valid, many of them had some warnings. I personally wouldn’t worry too much about it, they’re just warnings, but if you’re a perfectionist, I’m just letting you know

Punctuation and other little errors

While I was peering through all pages waiting for something to correct, I couldn’t find any! Flawless.

Accessibility, Compatibility, and Section 508 Guidelines

Ah, and we come here at last. I can see some attempts you’ve made in tackling accessibility. You’ve got perfect-sized fonts, a site map, and “Return to Top” as well. To further educate you on the matter, head straight over to diveintoaccessibility.org to read more about it.

I’ve disabled your stylesheet and viewed your web page. While everything was pretty much semantic, the navigation was sort, “I don’t know.. doesn’t quite look right..” sort of deal. It may be those images- be sure to keep in mind how they changed in the visibility check I conducted earlier. Also, while your website is compatible with Firefox and IE7, in Explorer the hover effect on your navigation doesn’t quite apply. The hover itself is displayed when the page first loads, and I have to say I like it this way because the navigation looks more clear and bright and not so much blended into the background.

That’s due to IE’s lack of support for the CSS opacity property, which is how those hovers function. I have I think 60% opacity on the image links initially, then it goes to 100% on hover.

Overall summary of opinion

Whoa.. I’m here already? Well, to conclude this review… whew.. what to say? With the exception of some minor things to improve on, your website is definitely on my list of “top few websites that Trisha visits frequently.” To be on such a list is almost near impossible, so you know you’ve a special website on your hands. I’m very impressed with the effort you put into your website and that’s easily proven with your quality content. Your website has been around for (7?) years I believe, so your experience throughout the years is incredible and I’m sure that if I apply myself to read your “techy” section, I can learn quite a lot of new things. I’d say this more than proves you’ve mastered the basic principles, hands down.

Your layout is very stunning, quite unique, demonstrates your creativity and personality, but that width is very bothersome so keep that in mind for future layouts! You’ve nailed color contrasts, and you obviously know what you’re doing. Good luck with the website. I’m sorry if I provided “few” things to improve on but I see little fault in your website, no matter how much I tried to find it!

An overall useful review, and I definitely appreciate the length and depth of it. I’m making some changes now based on it and a few will come about with my next layout. I definitely recommend getting your site reviewed by her because of the effort she put into the review.