Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
Review by: Crystal Clear Reviews (now closed)
The following review was completed on June 26, 2004 and is for Version 3: Silent Horror.
Splash Page
Taking a closer look at this page you really have two colors clashing in a
subtle way. The effect you used on your splash image gives you everything from
black to different shades of gray to white. I hope to see this color scheme
throughout your site. I find the text to be too big and you have unnecessary
cliques on this page. Thankfully it is not cluttered with other useless things.
Layout and Main Page
Your layout should not be in a pop up form considering it is so big. I have to
click F11 just so I could see the complete layout without having to scroll. Pop
up layout tend to be smaller so you do not have continue to scroll or because
there is excess space that you feel will not compliment your layout. The overall
format of the layout is poorly designed and not very attractive. It’s too
simple. You have a picture with a light effect and four iframes positioned by
div layers. First off. Most of the secondary iframes you really do not need. You
can have your counter on the splash page which would replace your cliques. The
links would have it’s own page and as well as the site of the month. If it must
have a front page dedication you can put it on the top of your welcome message
or after. That small deduction cut 1/3 of your layout. That way your visitor
does not have to hit the F11 just to see the complete layout. The font that you
used for the title and subtitles is just not working for this layout. It gives
it no personality or extra emphasis on your site or the content within it. It is
just plain and boring. Simple is just not working for this layout. Your title
suggested to me something more creative and different. I can safely say I was
disappointed and the appearance. Now the navigation is not centered right. It
starts off on top of the iframe which is cool but then you have the last two
links just above the boy’s head. I would move over the whole navigation bar so
all of the links are just above the IFRAME. Instead of part of it being on the
head. The border of the iframes appears as if they are devoid of color. They
look very faded. I would suggest instead of saving it as a part of your layout
you just have the iframe produce it’s own border by using this code
[style="border: 0 solid #000040" frameborder="0"] in the code for your iframe.
Of course you will put the appropriate number(s) for whatever size you want to
border to be. That way the color looks fresh and not faded. I suggest using a
whole different font since certain basic scripts never really look to good on
layouts. Try going to www.fontfreak.com to find some fonts that compliment and
go with the theme of your site and/or layout. The font(s) Guevara and Green Fuz
from that site would go nicely with the title of the site since it can give a
grim appeal to it. However I do like layouts that feature fan art and the colors
are not blinding so two kudo points.
Why is everything in bold? It looks so tacky. Sure it is easier to read at
times, but it gets annoying. The size of the font is way to big also. Take it
down a few because it being bold and big is just wasting space and not very
attractive. First off, main pages usually host the most recent update(s) and
give a welcome message introducing what your site is about and the content it
will contain. It seems you do not have that. So I am lost as to what your site
is about. You did have the most recent updates, but I do not know how recent is
recent. You failed to list a date. I suggest you do because as for all I know, this was posted two years ago. Now I think it is nice to post your most recent
rant but you can just provide a link since main pages are not something people
usually stay on. They just look at the recent updates and see what the site is
about if they don’t know and then move on.
Contact
You could have just put this page on the site section. It really does not need
its own place on the navigation bar. Second why do you have the “link me?” here
on this page. Should it not have its own page in the Site section or at least be
listed with the other links. This is not a means of contact so there is no real
use of it being there.
Art
“Click on a Thumbnail to view a larger version, these open a new window” This
should be read “these open in a new window.” The loading for the thumbnails was
fairly quick. But the loading for the actually picture is murder and the
pictures are not that big. You are also saving them as jpegs so they should not
be loading this slowly. The only answer is that you are resizing your photos by
force by putting the width and height for the image in the html code. On the
tenth blend in the description the link “The Big Moments.” The qualities of most
of your blends are very poor and devoid of color. The pictures tend to look much
distorted. Thankfully your blends loaded all in good time. They did not take two
to five minutes to load like your other pictures did. The art is lovely, the
blends do not appeal to me mainly because it is fuzzy and in poor quality and
the design I just don’t like. Overall everything is nice, but you really should
work on the loading, because that is what is killing you. No one wants to wait
five minutes to see a picture load. If I was not reviewing your site I probable
would have clicked off just for the fact that it gets annoying after the second
minute.
Reviews
The reviews were ok. You wrote as if you were speaking so it made it quite
annoying. You should really go through each review and clear up your grammar and
I suggest rewording your paragraphs would be nice. Unbolding and shrinking the
font is something I highly recommend. Most of the reviews said the same thing
and had the same rating. So once it hit the seventh review I was already
predicting what you would rate the movies. The novels and others were better
written. It would be nice to see more reviews in those sections. To list the
countless grammar errors and small misspellings would run me quite a few pages.
So I suggest rewording a lot of what you are saying so it reads in a
professional manner. Because writing how you speak is not always correct and
makes things harder for your visitor. For example on the review for “Freddy vs
Jason” the sentence in the first paragraph (“Letting slide for a second that you
are a big growed up adult) makes little sense, but it is something someone may
say while speaking to a friend. You could write this into something like,
“Letting slide the fact that you are known an adult.”
Rants
First off what is up with the “New Stuff” on the rants? I accepted it on the
first one because I figured you just did not want to create another page and
save it as rant50.html. But to have “New Stuff” on the rants does not make any
sense because those are new stuff for the website. Not just the rant. I suggest
getting rid of the “New Stuff” on the rants and just create a “Past Updates”
page and throw all of those onto that page. It just looks tacky and makes you
appear lazy as a owner because it’s like. Copy/Paste. Copy/Paste. That seems
what you are doing. You just don’t care to take out something that does even
relate to what you are talking about. Re-read your work. That is the most
important thing you should do with this section. Other than that, this is a
great spot for entertainment. Great content here.
Miscellaneous
Now on the Site of the Month page I would have liked to see the button or link
of the site on this page and then a screen cap of the layout and why you chose
this site over others. The link “so can you” on the Misc -> Quiz page leads to
an error page. On the Lyrics page the following link are broken: Sarah. The
sixteenth image from the bottom on the Personality Quiz page is broken. The 100
Word Challenge is unique or at least this is the first time I have ever heard of
it. Guess the Lyric is common and overly done in so many sites so I suggest
maybe adding a twist to it. Something that will make it stand out from everyone
else. For the Short Stories I would suggest having a small summary describing
each story and then a audience rating such as: G, PG, PG-13 and etc. That way
people can avoid reading something they may deem inappropriate. Everything else
is fine besides the fact that there is bad grammar.
Fine Print and Links
Nice to see you gave credits and the appropriate credits to people. The
following link on your Links page is broken: Nina: Parody Advisory. All the
links popped up in a new window and all the links but one worked. So that works.
Verdict:
Final Words
The appearance is poor, the grammar is worse, but the light at the end of the
tunnel is that you do have content. You have a lot of content and for that alone
you get three stars. You could have done a lot with the picture you had. Fan art
for layout is always lovely but I do not feel you took it to the level where it
was attractive. It was way too simple. The navigation ran into the title so it
was way to close together. I would have suggested making the dominant iframe to
be smaller. Improve your grammar and two good ways of doing this is: 1) Re-read
everything and makes sure it makes sense and 2) Do not write as if you are
talking. I suggest experimenting with different effects and styles of design.
You may find out that you can improve your skills more that way. Because looking
at your past layouts you tend to use the same style. Sure that may be a
preference but experimenting with other things my give your site a different
appeal. Overall I liked the site. You only had two major flaws, but the content
is on hit and looking past everything besides grammar. You have a good site.
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