Review 004: True Magic

Review 004: True Magic
True Magic
Version 005
Owner: Hondai
Site URL: Visit?

First impression: What a boring layout!

Layout: The process probably took about 10 seconds: find picture, paste on some random pattern, erase edges of the picture, slap on site’s name, add light layer for navigation, and code! Wow, a monkey can do that too. Where’s the effort? Where’s the creativity? The edges are not even erased well enough. You can still see the edge.

The space between the content and navigation is too close together, which makes it very distracting.

The colors are such a mess. The yellow does not fit at all, especially for the text. It is too bright! You can barely read it. The hover links color hurts too. This whole layout makes me want to cry.

Coding: I guess you didn’t really code it since you sliced it from Adobe ImageReady. Oh… As the arguments always go, tables should not be used for layouts; instead use CSS. I can’t really comment on the layout coding. So, I will comment on your CSS.

body
{
font-family:Arial, Helvetica;
c

You need a third font-family and after that you need to add “sans-serif”. It allows the browser to select a similar font if the primary one is not available to the user. Eh.. nothing else in the coding.

Content:
Pages skipped: Staff Members, Tagboard

Contact - why just bold “contact”? Link them to your email address.

Site History - Blobs of text! Run before they eat you! It would be easier for the visitors to read your history if you split it up in paragraphs. Please be nice to visitors, after all you want them to keep visiting your site, right?

Terms of use – Why isn’t the “All resourses” terms be at the very top, since it is general? You want to start with general terms and then go into specifics.

Linkages - Why do you put it near the top? It’s like you’re already pushing them out of your site before they even fully visited it? You want that to be last! Hell, it could even be integrated into your TrueMagic section.

• Affiliate information – should be affiliates, since you do have more than one.
• Apply? – confusing because it’s the Link Exchange page. Why do you have the applying for affiliates here? Makes no sense whatsoever. Put it with your affiliate information page.
• Link to True Magic – Make it easier on yourself and your visitors, put your link TrueMagic buttons with the link exchange. Why do people always separate these sections? To make your navigation longer? Why?!

Avatars - they aren’t amazing, but they aren’t terribly bad. The stars on the Full Moon wo Sagashite ones are ugly. You should put padding within the avatars – makes the page look nicer and not crowded.

Signatures - This should be a request page. You’re asking people for avatars and/or signatures. It’s very misleading since it was supposed to be a “signatures” page. I was expecting some ugly signatures.

Wallpapers - For the love of God, please use REAL thumbnails. It makes loading much faster. Sure, it adds extra few seconds to your work, but hell, it’s better and doesn’t make you look stupid.

Designs - Again, please use REAL thumbnails!!! The designs look okay. The earlier Div layers layout look ugly, but you can see improvement in the 2009 ones.. well, kind of. The layouts look better than your own site’s layout.

Brushes - Why do you have this page when there’s nothing at all? A total waste of space.

Icon bases - I never saw the point in icon bases. They are lame. Again, padding between the avatars would make it easier on the eyes.

Transparent PNG – real thumbnails! They look okay (see, something positive!)

Textures - It would be so much easier to have just put “Large Textures” and “Icon Textures” on the navigation rather than linking them from a general page. The textures look useable but many of the large ones look like crap.

Errors: I can’t deal with the large blobs of text. It hurts my eyes too much. Also, the text on the background pattern is so hard to see. It is too difficult to point out errors.

Overall: Your site is “meh”. There is lots of improvements that can be made, especially in your layout. You want to attract the visitors, not scare them away. I believe you can improve if you wanted to. Seriously, I saw your domain and its layout looks ten times much better than the whole entire site – and that’s just the layout itself!