03/08/2003
This is a review of glazecovered.diaryland.com.
Content - 29/65pts.
[-]Execution - 10/35pts. I wasn't really going to expect much, even as I began your diary. Your most recent entry whines about your dull, boring life, with excessive expletives. Oh, boy. This sort of beginning means that instead of making amusing and interesting observations about life, you will skip merrily from one idea to the next, feigning your emotions as you go. And because you feign your emotions, your entries will be muddled. I was proved correct quickly! In you 100 Things feature, you said, "I am kinda anti-social," followed immediately by, "But mostly I am dumb-blonde-cheerleader-kind of girl." You can't be both. It'll be dull reading if you try and fail, which I am sure you will.
Your entries are indeed muddled. They sound affected. You try to be deep and meaningful sometimes, like on this page, but really, you end up sounding silly and, well, affected. You wrote, "I want to step into the flames, I want to spend my life getting in and out of the fire. I wouldn't mind dying in the flames, as long as the life I lived was interesting. Life is short as it is, but boring takes out all the fun out of it." I was supposed to be impressed and moved, but I rolled my eyes.
It seems like you want to be an angry, mal-adjusted teenager. But really, you're quite ordinary. You're as well-adjusted as most people your age. But you try to be something you're not in your journal, and it comes off poorly. You said you wanted to be a writer. I suggest you try to write truth, try to write what is actually inside you, and give up this desire to be unhappy and cool.
The entry about suicide? Throw that advice at yourself, only instead of "suicide," put "affectation." It's getting you nowhere. You're theatrical. You update with nothing to say, and then you fake it. You can write honestly, I'm sure. You seemed to be honest on this page. Try that more often.
[-]Grammar/Mechanics - 8/10pts. This mostly left nothing to be desired. You misspelled some words.
[-]Readability - 7/10pts. It wasn't so hard to read your diary, but it was difficult to maintain attention for the reasons I've already discussed.
[-]Style - 4/10pts. You said you want to be a writer. I think I'm judging you more harshly because you said that. You write very much like every other teenager does, which means, in other words, that you don't really have a distinctive or impressive style. And on top of that, your writing has too many affectations.
Layout - 13/20pts.
[-]Aesthetics - 4/10pts. I used to like this layout, with all the pretty boxes, but the more I stare at it, the less I like it. There are fundamental problems with it, and I think you should consider switching templates. The main reason I think this is that I don't think it reflects your personality. Or your affected personality, rather. You want to be a theatrical teenager? Go darker, not happy pinks and reds.
Also, I didn't like how the table cells in the navigation bar change colors as I hover on the links. As a general rule, either one changes the color of the link or one highlights the link. Never both. (Your site does both). Additionally, on longer pages, the boxes are larger (like on your 100 Things page or your archive pages), and it is not attractive.
If you decide not to switch templates, you should align your text to the top of the table. Your shorter entries end up in the middle of the table, and I think that looks strange. Do this by finding this tag: <td bgcolor="white" width="500" height="300"> and adding valign="top" to it.
I don't like most "extras" people put on their journals. I hate "Currently I feel." You had it on "vulnerable" the entire time, and that upside down face made me want to throw things.
And GAH, I can't stand it when people post poetry and it skips lines. Gah! Double-gah! All you have to do is uncheck the box at Diaryland that says, "automatically insert html paragraph breaks," and between every line that you DON'T want double spaced, put <br>. To skip a line, put <br><br>. Simple enough. To fix a page you've already made, take off the <p>blah, blah, blah, this is your text</p> you'll see around each line. Then, put ONE <br> at the end of each line.
Or, you could just not post poetry at all.
[-]Navigability - 4/5pts. In the archive page, putting the old months in one line like that is ugly and annoying.
[-]Legibility - 5/5pts. No problem here.
Contact - 5/5pts. Lots and lots.
Updates - 4/5pts. You had less than fifteen entries in September. You were just getting into the swing of things, maybe. Anyway.
Errors - 3/5pts. The scrollbar in your guestbook is orange, not the marroon of your regular entries. The scrollbar in your archives is the default gray. I would suggest changing all of your scrollbars to the default gray because the orange and maroon ones don't really match the diary. You can do this by removing the scrollbar attributes you should see at the top of your template.
Total - 54/100pts. Final verdict - bad. Hope the review'll help you improve your diary.
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