Oh Lovley Review By: Lisa

Visit Lisa @ Oh Lovley

Review

Note:

My computer froze and had to be restarted around 5 times whilst trying to visit this site and review it properly. I would be wary before visiting this site myself, if I were you.

1. Splash Page:

None!

2. First Impressions:

Its very dark and very big. Its too big for me to view it without scrolling horizontally. There are a lot of images and lot going on and the font is very dark and the whole thing is already starting to give me a headache. I mean, there are 2 sidebars I think? That’s an awful lot for the poor viewer to take in! The header image is ginormous! Oh hang on a minute? You didn’t make the layout? Oh deary deary me.

3. Coding:

I never expect perfection from others in coding because I am not perfect myself. Then again, the coding wasn’t by you either so what’s the point in reviewing this either? Just FYI, the tables in your layout are an incorrect way to structure a layout and nobody should be using tables in their layouts. This went out with the stone age. Sorry but with the introduction of CSS there is no need to use tables for a purpose which they were not created for. Use CSS styling or div layers or php includes to achieve the same effect.

4. Layout:

What can I say? You didn’t make it! So what’s the point in reviewing it, when its clearly not even your work!

There is some mistake though, because I don’t think its meant to look like this:

Even though you didn’t make your layout, it is still your responsibility to make sure that it looks as it should.

5. Content:

There is so much going on here I don’t know where to start.

Okay, top left then. Why do you tell your viewers which browser to use? Its your responsibility to cater to the needs of your viewers and not the other way around. If your site won’t work in Safari or whatever, then its up to you to make sure that it does.

What’s the difference between a web-miss, a co-web-miss and a news poster? Surely you all contribute to the site? Aren’t you all just co-owners? None of you seem to be called Courtney. That worries me.

Instead of saying:

Please save to your own server or upload using photobucket, imageshack,etc.

Why don’t you just say:

No direct linking

Its much easier, don’t you think? When your viewer has as much to take in as they do on this site, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to get the point of what you’re saying!

What’s the difference between the quick links and the navigation on top? Surely one will do?! With so much going on you really want to cut back, not add more!

Why do the ‘of the moment’ buttons have to be so big? I mean, with so much going on can’t you have some smaller buttons? Ditto for the ‘we support’ buttons.

Why do you have the ‘we support’ section when you have more about giving thanks on the other side. I agree what all of this is important, but at what cost to your visitors? Having so much on this page makes your loading time an absolute killer. Combined with the repetition of a lot of this, I don’t see why this can’t be on its own subpage that is linked to or something.

There are also two ‘vote for us at’ parts of the two sidebars! Again, this is wasting more space and time. There are more voting type things across the top as well! All the reptition makes for boring viewing for your visitors!

The ads are invasive and take attention away from the rest of the site. The affiliates are hard to view and I don’t know if that really is the best way to display them. Why not rotate their buttons if you don’t have enough space to list them all? Why not do a text link?

There are so many different animated images on the main page, ranging from the avatars for each post, to the vote for me buttons to the i support things and so on and its just too much. You need to cut back on all of this and have things more simplified.

I would structure a single sidebar for your site something like this:

Affiliates
Text links here

Stats
Webmiss: MsBigBad
Co-Webmiss: Jules
News Poster: Nati
Since: Feb. 2006
Layout: Speak! Designs
Hits: 182,459
Shippers-Online: 12 visitors online
Subscribe to our feed!

Link Us
No direct linking!
Image here

Of The Month
88×31 button here
88×31 button here
88×31 button here

Donate
50% for us
50% for charity

link here

We Support
Link here
Link here
Link here
Link here

Vote for us!
Rotating buttons here

Romione Playlist
Image here

Reviewed By
Text links here

Advertise
Randomly rotating images here

Chat Box
In here

Listed
Rotating buttons here

I mean, even that is a HUGELY long sidebar.

thier should be their

1 - Gallery
This is a separate page as far as I can tell so it won’t be part of the review.

2 - Fiction
This also appears to be an external page, so its not going to be part of the review.

3 - Media
Why is the fan video’s page linked even though it just contains a list which is the same as the list below?

The suggestion for the video of the month is merely an email link! Surely you can manage a form?

Unfortunately downloading loads of videos is not part of my internet plan and I don’t feel like wasting my monthly downloads on these. Sorry.

The favourite videos is in essence a link to your youtube favourites. Why include this on its own separate page? Why don’t you, instead, take the time to just add this link to the page of your videos or something like that?

The archives of the videos of the month are pretty self explanatory.

The Graphics/Wallpapers, Icons and Signs are all links to another site. I can’t really include these in my review without including those whole entire other sites in on my review and I don’t think its fair to review all 3 of your sites in one review.

4 - Extras
Why do you have a section which is still under construction linked here? Don’t waste people’s time by having things listed which aren’t actually relevant at all because they are unfinished. Just don’t have the page linked and then when it is finished you can add the link! Its not that hard to work out.

None of the essays are written by you? I suppose its good that you have gotten permission, but its still kind of pointless for me to read them considering they are someone else’s work.

Considering there is only one quiz, why do I have to click a load of times before I actually get to see the darn thing!? I know that you want there to be room incase you do decide to add more quizzes, but until there is more than one, why can’t this be linked from the main page? You could link it from the extras page even, and save everyone a whole lot of navigation. Having subpages hard to get to goes to an accessibility issue as well. You want people to be able to find all the parts of your site. Having to click a million times does not enable this!

The quiz itself has a completely separate colour scheme to the rest of the site and it looks messy because of this. What is wrong with having everything matching? It makes sure that there is a lovely sense of flow going on.

If round one of the caption contest is already closed, why have all the other entries and the image and everything still up? Just have the announcement of the winner, but remove everything below it?! I mean, the contest is over, so what’s the point? Really, seeing as the contest is over and the viewer can’t enter, what is the point in the whole page being here?

The memory game is something that is interesting and original and I like the way that you have made it personalised to fit in with the rest of your site! I like that a lot, infact.

The crossword could also have been good, except unfortunately nothing showed up there. Broken images and empty coming soon pages are really testing on ones temper.

The chess is a cute flash game thing, but that’s all it is. You should probably link where this came from better on this page.

I like the ask Sybill part of the site. I think this is an original touch, although I hope that people don’t take it too seriously.

The love calculator is the oldest and most boring part of the entire site. Every man and his dog (including myself, embarassingly enough) had something lame like this on their sites when they first started. Why have this on here now? You didn’t write the script that creates this or anything. I would recommend that if you insist on having this on your site, that you at least take some time to be bothered to say where the script to do this love calculator came from!

The squeeze the sneak game froze my computer more than the rest of your slow loading flashy javascripty content. You didn’t write this script, it doesn’t work properly, its messy and I don’t see why you have this on the site. Personally, I would just delete it!

My idea of adoptions are cute little pixelated animations that people can ‘adopt’ and put on their site. Your idea of adoptions are scarily large, poorly edited images saying that you have adopted a character from Harry Potter. Why do you have to have a site to use these? What if people want to use them in their siggies for on boards? I know people on boards without sites who still post very regularly. What about them?

My idea of a blinkie is text which blinks or changes or bounces or something. Your idea of a blinkie is normal text with a flashy border. These would have taken around 12 seconds to make so I’m not really sure of their originality here. That said, I really love how you are going on and on and on and on about how everyone must give you a million links back and credit you and not redistribute and all that. It gets so boring for me to read the same empty disclaimers. Here, you have acknowledged that you made thes but not continued this with a whole long spiel about how you think everyone wants to steal from you! Its great!

I think the Rominone playlist thing is an external link? The colour scheme and everything is different and it doesn’t really seem to go with the theme of the rest of the site. I can see why you would use other people’s layouts when I see this page. I mean, there is no coding pretty much, no styling and the graphic is terrible.

The reviews page is also external, so I won’t include that in the review.

5 - Bios
The order of the biographies is interesting to me. I mean, why put JK Rowling in the middle? Wouldn’t she be at the top?! The bios themselves are just cut and pasted from other people’s hard work and you haven’t provided adequate acknowledgement of this. The pages aren’t actually linked at all, you have just typed out their URLs. Sorry, but this isn’t good enough when you are pretty much going to just reproduce someone else’s work.

6 - Site
The guestbook is external so I won’t be reviewing it. Its nice to see that the guestbook is actually a guestbook and not a tagboard!

Why no form to be able to contact you through? It seems strange that you have avoided putting a form up on all of the site. Its not that hard to work out.

The information about the staff is good but I don’t understand a lot of it and the random use of images bothers me as well. What’s a ’ship’ and how can it be your favourite? I don’t get it, and if I don’t get it then chances are that others don’t get it either.

The awards pages are pretty self explanatory.

pade should be page

Your credits aren’t good enough. I was hoping they would be better, sorry. You haven’t once credited the original image sources for all the images you have used all over the site. This just isn’t good enough at all. Sorry, but you need to do a lot better than that.

Your past layouts include a hideous blue border and I see that you have never made your own layouts. That’s disappointing.

For someone who has been online for so long it amazes me that you have never bothered to learn to make your own layouts. The site history is interesting and at least you explained the site name of Love Unchained because I honestly never knew why you would have a Harry Potter site with such a random name. Although, its still random, I now know where it came from!

Oh you list the reviews people have given you?! I wonder if mine will be up there?!

7 - WWW
Why do you have an affiliates page when its already on the sidebar? Don’t double up! Its a waste of time for your viewer!

You like to ramble a lot when you write. There is a good example of this on the Link Us page.

You write:

Would you like to link back to Love Unchained? Well now you can!! Just save the picture you want to your computer. Then upload it to the net on photobucket or any other free pic host (NO HOTLINKING!) and insert it into your website, myspace, xanga, Live Journal…etc.Here is the code you will need to insert any of these pics to your page.

When it would be just as easy to write:

To link back to Love Unchained just use one of these pictures! Remember, no direct linking! You can use the code below!

You offer a lot of different images in shapes and sizes to link you with! Why not make sure that the dimensions of all the images are listed, instead of just the dimensions of some of them?

I don’t understand a lot of your rules for affiliates! What happens if a prospective affiliate goes to the trouble of linking you but you don’t want to affiliate? Isn’t that just a waste of time!? What’s HQ? Apparently a site must be HQ to be a top affiliate? When you say valid, its clear from your messy coding that you don’t mean that the code of the site must be valid? Right? I can see that you can use a form here! Why not use it elsewhere?

6. Conclusion:

Aesthetically there are a few problems. Some are with the layout which you didn’t create, but a lot are to do with just how many different things you have decided to include on every single page. There is a lot going on and a lot to look at and it makes it hard to really be able to focus on any one thing.

Your content is always centred which makes it even harder to read, not to mention the dark text on a dark background and the fact that your site made my computer freeze on more than one occasion.

Your subpages would be easier to browse if you added some extra information to the links instead of just listing them. For example:

Link Here
About the page linked

Link Here
About the page linked

That is the sort of thing I have done on my site just to make sure that it is easier to navigate and more accessible. A lot of the pages are found in the rabbits warren of subpages. If you aren’t prepared to simplify, then at least have a site map so that your viewer can get help if they don’t know where to find something.