Unrequested review of blueberriez.com

Reviewed: Nile
Site URL: blueberriez.com

Aw, look, it’s that cute panda thing! I think the company behind the TarePanda™ character (San-x I believe?) must be really generous to give so many people on the web permission to use their images. Unless of course you’re breaking the law and using images you have no rights over? You wouldn’t do that and then put a copyright notice at the bottom of your page, would you?

I love browsing websites designed/created by people so wrapped in their own self-importance; so wrapped up in trying to make themselves look good; that they go and misspell words and don’t even notice. In your introduction “ambedextrous” should be ambidextrous, and do I really need to explain that the first letter of the first word after a full stop (period) should be capitalised?

The general impression I get from the appearance of your website is “unfinished”. Now, I believe that one key factor to a website is the ability to constantly update it and add to it. This, however, doesn’t excuse untidiness such as the lack of padding between your text and images, run-on sentences, smiley abuse, etc. Then there is the blue background which doesn’t really ‘go’ with any other part of your layout, links which are almost impossible to distinguish from the text and little Polaroid-style images which tell me nothing about the website each is linked to.

Why are you seemingly allergic to paragraphs in your weblog? Or rather, why have you butchered the style coding so that paragraphs don’t seem to exist? I don’t know anyone who finds it easy to read long sections of text without some sort of line break every now and again. Talking of butchering coding, I find it incredibly annoying that you’ve hacked about an install of WordPress to suit yourself, but haven’t bothered to leave any credit anywhere?

Moving on to your content… you talk about your hobbies on your About Me page, and go on to say and more, just so many to list, might get boring…lol — I personally find pointless interuptions in the flow of text far more tedious. I’d replace that sentence with “and many more.” <- end of, simple, easy.

I am a published writer, yet not famous yet…oh well, but one day maybe….lol — lol do you think it’s because of your abuse of the acronym lol that is making you “unfamous” lol?

I was born September 13, 1980 — that makes you 25, not 24, a clear demonstration that you’ve not bothered to keep your page up to date. I figured by then that I had wanted to become a writer ..had wanted? meeting a great guy who I married and having a beautiful baby boy, — sounds to me like your great guy had a beautiful baby boy. Physical impossibilities be damned, you’re intelligent with a high IQ. You’re not going to let a little thing like Science get in the way!

Displaying ABCs, “Outlined Biography”, Googlisms, test results etc all went out of fashion about 2 years ago. Well, at least for anyone who has spent more than 30 seconds considering the kind of content they should have. I would say that judging by the pointless pages that aren’t linked because they don’t exist, it’s been about that long (2 years) since you updated this section though.

Visitor… your elite clique seems to be a site for bagpipes, and neither of your other cliques load. I’m too lazy to go through the links to your fanlistings, although I will question exactly how these are supposed to be “visitor” related content? I would say these belong on a “pluggage of my own sites” type page.

I love your Sanrio pixel characters! Sorry, did I say that? What I meant was: I love how you demand a link back for use of these Sanrio characters and yet have not even attempted to credit the original Sanrio creator on this page. Not that it’d make a difference — derivative works are copyright infringements, credit or not.

Some Site Tips — excuse me while I do a Nile: “lol”. Tip #1 can be summed up as “have quizzes, be unique”. How can you publish the results of ridiculous memes on your web space and be unique at the same time? In fact, how exactly are you unique? Tip #2 I agreed with, until you recommended banner advertisements. Advertisements are irritating, irrelevant of the form they appear in. #4 is grossly incorrect. If you build your layout for 800 x 600, anyone will be able to see your site. ..what about those still unfortunately stuck at 640×480, those using PDAs and phone browsers? #5 is unnecessary; I have plenty of visitors and no affiliates. #6 is lol-worthy “pass me a bucket” bollocks: I have enough siblings offline, I don’t want idiots online calling me that. #7 is not even close to correct — I get maybe 1% of my visitors from the listings I’ve joined. #8 is also wrong as drama is the quickest way to get visitors to your web site. #10 is good advice but wrong at the same time; dmoz.org don’t own lots of websites, it’s just a listing. #11.. well, what about following your own advice?

Words of the Wise about Review Sites ..boy am I looking forward to reading this. There are a lot of review sites online. Some are weary and think about having their site reviewed, yet are afraid of being mulled to a pulp. Eh? Some review sites think about having their site reviewed? That doesn’t make sense.

I find it amusing that you have to justify your opinion at the top of your page with your complete Internet history, how long you’ve been designing, etc. I don’t know why you bother, because it just makes you look arrogant. Age is a factor in reviewing and so check the staff member’s website. ..no it’s not. I have a reviewer at my review site who’s been giving reviews since she was 12, and the quality of her coding is far superior to yours. For shame those that criticize for a high score when their site beams with talent!!! ..eh? Splash is optional and all review sites should allow the “About” section or “Me” section suffice as a splash ..what has an about page got to do with a splash page?

although all review sites are free (well, except for linking back), you should not wait any more than 10 days (week and a half) for your review. ..hahaha. Just because it’s trendy to change your layout every 10 days, doesn’t mean that reviewers should be forced to review in that period of time. I don’t know about your reviews, but mine are longer than 3 sentences and take anything from several hours to several days to complete — with a job, family, a partner and other real things to deal with, I know which I consider to be more important.

Reviewer Tips — am I expecting to see this full of hypocrisy? Yes. Can you honestly critique another when your site is in a horrible shape? — can you honestly give advice on websites when yours is out of date, providing false advice or fails to demonstrate the tips you’re recommending?

To be a reviewer is to become a webmaster/ webmistress first. ..not really. Anyone is entitled to an opinion, it’s just whether or not it’s justifiable that’s important. Learn tables, and seriously learn the basics. HAH! Or, you could learn about standards, divs and CSS layouts. Maybe you have seen a lot of sites? That means nothing when you cannot code a site properly. ..says the person with invalid code. Originality. […] This category is many review sites is a ridiculous part of the rubric. ..it’s equally as ridiculous for shitty elite cliques, no?

I could care less ..you couldn’t care less, you mean? which is caused from the reviewer’s experience. ..eh? In years to come, these guidelines will still be relevant ..don’t kid yourself.

Your HTML tutorials are crap. You mentioned on your reviewer tips page that reviewers should explain how to solve problems, and yet your attempts at tutorials just list a bit of code. They don’t explain anything or guide newbies, and you’re using <textarea>s to display code, which is complete misuse of the tag.

The Site section is blah — typical generic crap, as is Services, Listed and Joined. Oh look, the end of the content.

For someone who is such an expert on websites I’m surprised your code is so amateur. There’s the alt attribute in your body tag, despite the fact that <body> shouldn’t have an alt attribute. Elements customised with inline style could be given a class (for elements with the same styling that appear more than once) or an id (for unique elements) and then customised via your stylesheet. Your list of navigation would be better marked up as exactly that — a list.. all of these things simply to bring your code up to HTML 4.01 standards. WordPress is valid XHTML by default, so I’ve no idea why you’ve “downgraded” to HTML.

To be honest, there’s nothing overly wrong with your website. Okay, you’re breaking the law by creating images based of material protected by copyright, you haven’t updated your personal section in almost two years, and your coding is hardly great. Still, the website is of reasonable quality, there’s an attempt at content and your design is cross-browser compatible.

It’s you that’s the problem. Your entire site REEKS of “I’m so better than you”. You refuse to shut up about how intelligent you supposedly are and how great your writing is, yet I see countless grammatical errors, sentences that don’t make sense or that run on and on. Paragraphs that shouldn’t be paragraphs, punctuation errors, superfluous chat-speak style acronyms and crap. Your arrogant attitude is far more off-putting than any coding errors, and yet is the easiest to fix. Give it a thought.