v-s.net v0.6

Thursday, 8:43 am in Bloglife

So, the other day – after seven years of owning a website and never having done this – I went through and submitted void-star.net to a bunch of review sites.  I don’t really know why.  After all, I hate reviews; I don’t even get my writing beta’d.¹

Actually, maybe I do know why.  Maybe I’m slightly curious as to what people think about my site, sure, but maybe what I’m really interested in doing is hearing their opinions and telling them why they’re wrong.  That’s probably it.  At the very least, it gives me something to write about during NaBloPoMo.

So, with that being said, here is exactly that.  From a review by Crissy, originally at YourSite.nu.  I’d just like to point out before I start that Crissy is 12 years old, according to her bio.  This makes her exactly half my age if it’s true – when I made my first website she would have been fours years old – and if it’s true she’s gotta be, like, the most erudite 12 year old in the universe.  Seriously.

I’m going to do this just by quoting out parts of her review, because it’s my site and I’ll do what I fucking like with it.  But – lest I be accused of taking things out of context – y’all should go read the full review or something first.  Or not; whatever works for you.  And with that disclaimer out of the way…

This layout is so similar to un-ordinary’s layout. I was surprised at the similarity between the two layouts, but I liked yours as it made a whole other twist with the whole ‘graffiti’ person.

I’m a little confused here as to what this ‘un-ordinary’ is.  I can only assume you’re talking about un-orginary.net and… yeah, maybe I can see the similarity.  Maybe.  But I’m just going to put on my innocent hat and say I’ve never heard of said site before so it’s complete coincidence.  That or we both stole our ‘look’ off a third party; totally possible, I don’t remember.  Also, what on earth is a “‘graffiti’ person”?

The pages could easily be on the left side, it was annoying for me to think I was being asked to review only a blog.

Actually no, they couldn’t.  First off I’ve considered hard-coding them into the left but that then makes the sidebar far too long, obscuring Loki/Ulfrun/Miriah.  And second, it’s a failing in the CMS which I’m still uncertain of how to fix.  More on this in a minute.

This isn’t simplicity, it is bland.

I’m crushed.

though it reflects work being put into it, it shows nothing original. The figure to my left is the only real ‘original’ piece here, and even this isn’t quite a new concept.

I’m still crushed!  The whole point of this layout was sort of to showcase a bunch of my most recent and most favouritist art.  You know; which I drew.  Seems like I have failed on that count, but oh well.  To be honest I’m a little bit uncertain of what is meant by “it reflects work being put into it [but] shows nothing original”;² I mean, what do you want?  Hugely over-complicated blend/brushed layouts?  Because I’ve done those in the past and that wasn’t really what I was aiming for here.  I guess the part about this that annoyed me was that this critiscism isn’t exactly constructive; hell, I don’t even really know what you mean.  You’re telling me what you don’t like rather than what doesn’t work or is poorly executed, and unfortunately not only is “what you don’t like” subjective but you’re falling into that failing I see a lot of reviewers fall into by assessing my site based not against what it’s trying to be, but rather what you think it should be.  Confused?  It’s like criticising a horror movie because it doesn’t contain enough romantic comedy.  Incidentally, if you can’t tell the difference you really shouldn’t be doing reviews…

And to be perfectly frank, I’m not really trying to be ‘original’ or ‘complex’.  I’m old enough an cynical enough not to really care about that sort of thing.  What I am going for is functional and hopefully not eye-gougingly ugly.

… I think I’m just still bitter over having my art labelled as ‘unoriginal’.

The white is so annoying, when it could easily be a nice gray or a color similar to the color used for the date in your blog entries

Well, I thought so too at first.  And I went through many iterations of using off-whites, purples, greys and even gradients and patterns.  None of them looked… quite right.  So, in the end, I settled on white because at the very least it’s easy to read against and (as the astute reader may have noticed) I tend to write a fucktonne.

But please, if you find a colour or pattern that looks better, by all means send a screenshot.

I just realized that the color used on the bottom panel where your pages are listed would make an awesome color for a sidebar :)

Except for the fact that, a) it would make the page very purple, and b) the character images would get lost against it.  Actually, believe it or not I did originally start this layout with a purple sidebar, but ditched it for black because it worked better for what I was trying to do.

The ‘navi’, if I can call it that, is very dark, that dark left panel mixed with the light white is just not pulled off right.

In what way?  Some elaboration would be nice, because it looks okay to me; then again, maybe I just like high-contract layouts, or reading huge blocks of text against a black background.  I mean, sure, there are plenty of parts of this layout that I don’t like all that much – what kind of artist would I be if I wasn’t constantly looking for improvements, and all that – but that bit is just not one of them.  Okay, actually I’m not keen on the curve in the side-navi background graphic (it didn’t outline well; damn PhotoShop), but other than that…

Again, the stuff on the left is supposed to be somewhat muted so that prominence is given to the image.  Which I drew.  Myself.  Just in case you were wondering.

As for ‘exits’ I would rename this ‘dailies’ or ‘blogroll’.

Um… no.  Because, a) the word ‘dailies’ used in this context is stupid, and b) it’s not a blogroll on account of not all of the links being blogs.  And, incidentally, why do you think I should do this?  So that I can follow the herd-mentality of whatever is currently cool to name the sections on your site?  And just who was calling who unoriginal again?

One good thing comes from this lower navigation, if you have affiliates they’re not taking up all the space in your sidepanel/sidebar and making it look jammed.

Yes.  I know.  But they’re not ‘affiliates’.  They’re just links.

While there is content [hard to find] it’s not quite organized properly.

Okay, first off; how do you think it should be organised?

And second; yes, this is where I talk about the failing in my CMS.  Yes, the custom pages functionality in sk.log was – to put it mildly – tacked on at a later date.  You can see what I suppose was going to be the ‘intended’ structure of the site at the (super-secret unknown and depreciated) site map.  This structure was inherited from the previous version of sk.log – which really did have galleries and guestbooks and blah blah blah – and while it made sense there as time progressed the thinking about site organisation changed somewhat and yes, now it doesn’t work.  Plus I pulled a lot of this functionality out of the code because it was – to put it mildly – unnecessary bloat.

I’ve been thinking in the last couple of weeks about how I can re-structure the pages functionality to be hierarchical and integrate better, but the (offline) coding is going to take probably 20+ hours to do properly and, really, I don’t have the time to work on it.  So I haven’t done it.

So – while I concede your point about the structure – I still can’t resist making snarky comments.  Incidentally, did I mention I wrote this CMS myself?  Originally.

Though this is an opinion and nothing that should be in a review

Woah.  I think I almost fainted from the irony.

I begin questioning if said website is a fansite

Of course this website is a fansite!  It’s a fansite to me, by me.  Isn’t that what personal domains are for?  Oh, wait…

rather than *insert topic of said website*.

Point made.

is there a form? You state no email address.

Yes, there is.  I’ll give you a cookie if you can find it.  And yes, I try and avoid writing down my email address in public places because of, you know, email scrapers.  I get enough spam as it is; I really don’t need any more.

Other than that; point taken.  I fucking hate writing bios and this one is… old.  I am such a fucking tool.  Change your bio, Dee.

You show your desktop. Wonderful, why? Can you explain what this desktop means?

It means I have a bigger monitor than you.  Hah!  No, seriously; click on it and it describes what’s there and why.  Other than that… it’s a desktop.  What more context do you want?

When you post a desktop screenshot, most tend to put a screenshot of when no applications are open, and you have around three. That’s confusing and not useful.

Uh… ‘not useful’ in what regard?  It’s… a desktop screenshot.  How is that ‘useful’ in any context?  The reason I leave my apps open when I take it – insert wry comment about “most people” and originality here – is so people can see, you know, what I’m doing.  A blank screenshot doesn’t really say very much about me at all, I think.  Whereas a screenshot filled with apps is sort of a (kinda lame, but anyway) slice into my life.  It’s who I am, what I do.  And, to be quite frank, I like peeking at other people’s desktop apps, so I’m going to show you mine.  Personal.  Preference.

I won’t go in depth on each article,as they are opinions or rants, but I will point some things out.

Oh-kay.  Look, to be perfectly honest, this part is the main content of my site; the blog posts.  Stuff like my bio and my links page are just filer.  I mean, I’m going to give you a by on this one since you’re (apparently) only twelve and my average blog post is, yanno, longer than your average novel aimed at twelve year olds, but… just so you know, you know?

Also, on behalf of people with opinions the world over, I take offence to you using that word in a negative context!  I mean, what were you expecting?

Your writing style is very nice

Yes, I know.  But thank you.

I would like to see some original writing, poems, mini stories, etc.

I just… the mind boggles!  I really, really does.  So, the 10,000+ words of “opinions and rants” aren’t enough for you, huh?  Greedy, aren’t you?  Okay, I admit this one is sort of my own fault because, yeah okay, they’re not that easy to find, but… this enough for you?  Well, to be honest the real ‘meat’ of my creative writing is archived on a subdomain.  It’s not linked because it occasionally contains (gasp) pr0ns and, yanno, my mum visits this blog.  The fandom kids know where to find it.

But all that aside… why do I ‘need’ this stuff?  I mean, sure, I’m a pretty good writer but a lot of people aren’t.  Would you tell them that they should include “original writing, poems [and] mini stories”?  And if so, why?  Why is non-fiction prose content not enough?  I mean, I don’t put poetry in my blog because, a) I don’t like it, and b) I’m terrible at writing it.  Hell, I don’t put my own composed songs in my blog because I have no musical aptitude whatsoever, and I don’t see the point of sharing my lack of talent with the internet.

Or, to put it another way, do you have any of your own art in your blog?  Yeah; thought not.

Collective being joined fanlistings, or websites you own? Ah, websites you own, explaining this would be useful, and using the word ‘network’ rather than ‘collective’ would be best.

Says who?  Kid, one of us is showing our age here; back in my e-days, everyone would’ve known what a ‘collective’ was.  To be perfectly honest, I still think the word ‘collective’ is in use enough for anyone with reasonable intelligence over the age of 15 (sorry, kid, but you’re just not my target audience) should be able to figure out what is going on.  Still, that aside, q.v. previous points about the naming of site sections.

Again, dailies or blogroll.

Again:  Bite me, Captain Conformity.

Now, these are already listed, why a whole page on them?

Actually, they’re not.  Now, I know you’re only (apparently) twelve, but that’s still no excuse not to know the difference between ten and, er, more than ten.  But I’ll sum it up for you; ten random links from my links list appear in the footer of every page.  The ‘Exit’ page, on the other hand, contains all my links.  I do it like this because I am an SEO whore and I like to share my love around.  I’m sure if you were on my links list then you would appreciate the elevated chance for click-throughs as well.

it makes no sense and seems ‘buying for content’ trying to make it appear as if you have more than you actually do.

Uh, I’m sorry what part of seven years' worth of blog posts and sixteen collective sites make you think I need to ‘buy for content’?  Also… what do you even mean by this?  A well-written blog (whether mine is one of not is somewhat moot) should stand up on its own in the content stakes.  Everything else is filler.

Again, you’re reviewing what you expect to see rather than what’s actually here.

The buttons aren’t all aligned correctly, or at least, they’re all lined differently.

… really?  Can I get a screenshot of this?  Because they look fine to me and I’m honestly curious.

As with your other pages, it lacks explanation. I would greatly like if you could explain each of these accounts and how they’re used.

They’re IM account.  I use them for IM.  What more context did you expect?  Though to be honest I admit this page is a little long.  It kinda started out short and then just… grew.  A lot.  Oh well.  Still, this is one of the few pages on my site I actually have evidence that people use (they friend me on Facebook), so it stays.

Incidentally, why this obsession with meaningless fluff ‘context’?  A page of IM accounts is a page of IM accounts.  It doesn’t need any further context; doesn’t need some inane introductory paragraph from me up the top saying “lol these are my im accts pls im me k?!!!”.  This might be shocking, but I do assume my readers are at least reasonably intelligent (everyone else can GTFO) and can figure this stuff out for themselves; they don’t need me spoon-feeding them the obvious all the time.

…Last, you need a domain page. it’s unfair to those who helped you if you don’t credit them. Thought the FAQ acts as this, a bit more info would be appreciated.

What more info are you expecting?  Oh, okay I fess up; I used a background pattern from k10k in the layout.³  And that’s it.  I know this might be somewhat scandalous considering the usual way people put sites together nowadays, but I don’t have an extensive credits pages because I don’t have extensive people to credit.  Again, you’re criticising things you expect to find rather than looking at the actual context of what you’re trying to review.

You know, I was actually so curious about this that I went back and looked at your credits page⁴ to see what you ‘expected’ to find.  So, apparently I’m supposed to ‘thank’ PhotoShop, Painter 7, UltraEdit, the PHP online function reference… hold on just one second, why?  How is this crap not filler?  Why does it matter that I use UltraEdit rather than Notepad?  The people who make UltraEdit are not going to get cut up if I don’t thank them in some completely spurious and unnecessary ‘credits’ page.  When I visit someone’s site I don’t think, “Ho snap!  I wonder what text editor they used!” or “Wow, if only I had The Gimp I could make cool layouts like this too!”  And the thing is, I really don’t use those LAWL BLOG 101 tutorial sites; I don’t have to, mostly because I am so old awesome.

See, what you’re doing here is not providing helpful feedback; you’re telling me how to make my site exactly like yours.  That’s not a review.  And – seriously, kid – I don’t want to make my site like yours.  I don’t want a thousand meaningless fluff pages of credits and affiliates applications and separate ‘link me’ pages and waffling about layouts that no-one cares about.  That stuff isn’t ‘content’.  Content is contributing something to the reader that they might not already know, that they might find interesting.  It’s having a personality, and kid, you can’t find that shit no matter how cool an “e-last name” you give yourself or how ‘harsh’ you pretend to be in reviews.

I just went off on a tangent, didn’t I…  Anyway.

Now this ‘lol’ worthy. There is a different figure on IE than on firefox. Hah! Why, may I ask, is this? The rest looks almost the same, except for the faded hand holding a gun in IE. Oh I’m sorry, the image changes in IE???? Horrible. No, no no.

Phew.  Looks like I lucked out and you used IE7, which has a rendering engine similar to Firefox’s.  Well, at least, more similar than IE6’s, which really fucks my site over…

Incidentally, no the image doesn’t change in IE.  The image changes; full stop.  It’s a random rotation between four different characters; my WoW character Ulfrun, Loki, a bobble-head image of Miriah and a UN promo shot of Loki and Miriah together.  The reason it looks like only one character loads per site visit has to to with how your browser’s cache works; if you turned off caching, you’d get a (randomly determined) different picture every time you loaded a page.  And, I’m sorry, but “Horrible. No, no no.” does not belong in a review; especially not without any supporting evidence.  Why don’t you like this idea?  Why do you think it doesn’t work; is it simply your admitted pre-existing bias against sites with skins?

And, seriously, I kinda resent getting marked down half a point in the ‘Browsers’ category for something that is not, in fact, browser-dependant…

Overall…

Overall your review gave me a few lulz, which I can appreciate, and filled in an hour or so while I rebutted it, but as an actual review it’s next-to-useless; which is particularly criminal for something that is just a little over a thousand words in length.

Okay, your point about the structure of the pages is taken – I spent an hour or so last night adding a few hacks to clean it up – and goddamn I need to fix my bio.  But that’s about it, really; the rest is a mish-mash of confused opinions and baseless assertions.  I mean, does it really matter that my links page is called ‘Exits’ and not ‘Blogroll’?  I mean, really?  Give me one good reason why.  Plus, you’re maddeningly inconsistent; criticising me for lack of originality one moment and then for doing things differently the next.  You accuse me of trying to “buy for content” and then deliberately skip over the site’s actual content.  And no, I don’t expect you to ‘review’ every blog post – that’s just silly – but acknowledging that, a) this is a blog, b) therefore, the main content is in the blog, and c) therefore you should review it as a blog and not, I dunno, a free graphics site is the first step you’re going to need to take if you want cynical old cunts like me to take you seriously.  At the moment, it just looks like you’re attempting to copy the structure of the ‘popular’ reviewers just because you think that’s what you should do.  Kid, it’s not; take your own advice and beat your own path.

Overall, I give your review two hearts.  You’ve obviously put in some effort, but your content needs serious work before anyone’s going to start taking you seriously.

1. Well, until recently.   damo_in_japan has been volunteered to be my fandom beta. ^
2. Yanno, apart from my art.  Which I drew.  Did I mention that already? ^
3. This shocking lack of credit has since been rectified.  Pitchforks away, people. ^
4. Incidentally, kid, WordPress has a great SEO-friendly URI interface; I suggest you check it out.  Your site and visitors will thank you, I promise. ^

• Tags » damallama, reviews, reviews of reviews, teh lulz, yoursite.nu
• Comments By » ~nounbeast [h], ~Mat [h], ~Belinda [h], Crissy, Jem, Jack, Louise, Vera
• Mood » amused
• Music » DJ Tripp, "Personal Jesus"