Reviewed by: Obiter Dictum

Hehe, my first time being reviewed!
Reviewed by: Obiter Dictum
Date of Review: April 11 2008
Type of Review: Content-only Review
Original Review: Obiter Dictum - Zwinkyness
My comments are centered, bold and italic. You can’t really miss them.

Firstly, I would like to point out that the text below the title “Review” is not written by me, apart from my comments (specified as mentioned above), but by the wonderful owner of Obiter Dictum. She was kind enough to be the first one to review Zwinkyness. I found her review very thorough, in-depth and meaningful: she really knows what she is talking about and she’s not afraid to write over five pages just to give someone a decent review. Hereby, I advise everyone who is in need of a decent review for their website, to submit to Obiter Dictum, it is definately worth the wait.

Review

Looks like there’s a lot to get into here! Your blog posts are long and at first glance they don’t seem to be about random uninteresting tid bits. I’m not going to read all your currently displayed blogs, but I’ve sort of skimmed them and I can see that if I wanted to take the deeper time to read them I’d probably learn a lot about you in a short amount of time. You write very well with acceptable spelling and grammar (always a plus) and your posts are detailed with your thoughts and ideas.
There is a lot of information in your sidebar and footer. I like the ability to change the font size. I am okay with asides (or Twitters, or whatever you want to call them) and you’re not showing too many, but I would put the blurb about you before the asides. You should put sidebar content in order of importance - if possible, I’d even put the about snippet first or right after the font size changer.

I have been thinking about putting my “about information” above the asides, but I figured that, since that information is probably not going to change as much as my sideblog will, people skimming through my website quickly, will easier notice the updates if they don’t actually have to scroll down to read them. However, if you think along the order of importance, then the “about information” should come first, as you said. I’m not really out of this one yet – I will change the order of them, for now, but I might switch back in the future. Also, for aesthetic reasons (the font size changer looks absolutely horrendous when put further down the page), I will keep him at the top for now, but I will change the order of the sideblog and personal information.

It’s always interesting to me the about details people choose to put in their sidebars. Some people just list of some interests, some people define themselves with descriptive words. You’ve done a bit of both, though I’m still not 100% sure how I feel about the “random words” thing being chosen over an actual paragraph that sums up some basic facts. Some errors - You aren’t “17th” years of age - you’re either “in your 17th year” or “17 years of age.” Your “author” link leads to your blog, the page I’m on, and I’m not sure why.

The link is fixed (I hope), it should lead to my Fanfiction.net account now. I also wrote a paragraph rather than just give you short facts. I think it turned out rather long, but I already shortened it quite a bit – I can’t imagine making it any shorter. I had also been thinking about the idea of writing a paragraph rather than just giving some random words, but I never really got to it.

Your recent posts list does not need to be in the sidebar and the footer. Pick one and stick to it. Your sidebar has too much information, so I’d go with the footer if it’s absolutely necessary. I’d also either nix tags or categories. You don’t need both. (I may be wrong on this. I personally prefer one or the other, though I know a lot of people like to have both. Just stating my opinion, however.) The archives by month also become unnecessary. A simple link to an archives page displaying the available months would suffice.

I agree that my sidebar has too much information. However, the footer was intended for me to list my library – which I was going to create (recently read books, favourites, maybe some pictures, etc) – however, the WP Plugin had some errors that I could not fix, therefore I tossed the idea until a foolproof plugin of Now-Reading would come out. I’m not going to change this yet, in case I manage to get the plugin working, but I don’t manage within a month, I’ll set the recent posts and comments to the footer. On the other hand, I am planning on keeping both tags and categories. It is easier and more convenient to have both of them, not only for me, but also for the visitors. If one wants to search something regarding WordPress in general on my blog, clicking the category is quite alright. But if someone wants to know something about a WP Plugin specifically, than he would have to click a tag. I think the most convenient search and find system is to have both, but I can understand your point of view. I’m also going to keep the archives. They might seem unnecessary now, but if my blog turns five years old and someone wants to know something that happened about four years ago, it would be more convenient for the person to search quickly through the sidebar than browse 20 or so archives pages. I am still thinking about this though, and planning to read some articles to help me determine how convenient it is to have the archives both in the sidebar and on a separate page.

The subscribe header says “Subscribe2;” is that intentional?

No, that is the plugin name I forgot to change. It is fixed now.

As for the footer, you should open “about_text.txt” file in the theme folder to edit the footer text. The instructions are right there on the footer for everyone to see that you haven’t done that yet.

I was planning on doing that whilst I was installing the Now-Reading plugin. However, I will do it now. Thank you for pointing it out to me; now I’m planning on making a spot for my latest photography or artwork there. This will happen in the near future, meanwhile I have put some text there, explaining what will soon appear in that exact spot.

I also assume that the “Recently Reviewed” content will appear sometime in the future. I saw that you had opened a review website but have not yet performed any reviews.

Yes, I did. Unfortunately, I have not yet received any submits, but I only opened recently anyway. This spot was going to be for my recently reviewed books though, but you gave me an idea. I think I might actually keep it for my recently reviewed websites, as of a way to connecting my personal site to my review site. Hehe.

Zwinkyness

You’re funny! This is surprising since I didn’t really see this sillyness in your blog entries. Perhaps it just wasn’t present in the entries currently on the index, but I hope to see more of it throughout the site. You have a few spelling errors such as “recommand” (you’re commanding me again?) under the “design” heading but instead of going through each one and pointing them out I’ll just recommend a quick spellcheck. It’s clear that your spelling errors are due to typo and lack of proofreading, rather than the inability to spell.

Thank you. I easily type wrong stuff, since I usually try to say too much, too fast. I spellchecked the Zwinkyness-page so far and came across a few errors.

I love your “Zwinky Dictionary!” It’s very cute. Just a few things, though -
“I’m going to Zwinky all night long.
This means either: I am going to have sex all night long, I am going to drink (alcohol) all night long or I am going to dance all night long.
First off, this and the one above it are both missing end quotes. Secondly, when using “either” you’re expected to be comparing two things, not three. Use “any” for three, for example:
“I’m going to Zwinky all night long.”
This means any of the following: I am going to have sex all night long; I am going to drink (alcohol) all night long; or I am going to dance all night long.

Thank you. Fixed now.

Your “reviewed by” paragraphs has an error:
Although I uploaded my website to some review website, no review has actually been finished yet.
Either you’re saying you submitted your website to “some review website,” as if to say the name of the one website to which you submitted is not important enough to mention, or you’re saying you submitted your website to some review websites and forgot the S. I’d also recommend linking the words “contact me” to either a contact page or an email address.

Oh, excuse me. I missed that one too! Hehe. It needs to be ‘some review websites’. But, the entire paragraph is changed now, since I have actually been reviewed! Hehe.

I would just like to say that it’s not until I clicked “The Queen” that I realized that there is subnavigation in your sections. It needs to be in a more prominent position, preferably on a shorter sidebar and you may even want to mention on the main page that there is also subnavigation on the right. Otherwise, it’s completely overlooked.

Thank you. I don’t really know how to fix this problem though. If I change the size of the sidebar, it would have to change constantly on the entire website. I don’t feel like adding a new, shorter sidebar next to the one I already have, since that would shorten the length of content space, which I really don’t want to happen. However, I have mentioned it on the main page now and hope that it doesn’t become overlooked.

Terms of Service. Don’t assume that everyone has a “red X” in the upper righthand corner of their screen. It may seem trivial to point this out, but it seems silly to have a terms of service if you’re not going to take the effort to be correct with it. Also it seems a bit rash to threaten to ban someone for not following your terms of service - how many people have you really banned? How many people have “broken” your rules for your website? And if it’s that important to include a list of guidelines for “using” the site, why isn’t this linked directly from the first page? Some spelling errors I won’t dive into because, again, I think it’s due more to typoing than misspelling. Just two things to point out:
6. Please restrain from posting links in your comments directing to +18 sites, graphic violence or other sites that may seem inappropriate for a public lets say 13 and up.
should look more similar to:
6. Please restrain from posting links in your comments that direct to 18+ sites, graphic violence, or other sites that may seem inappropriate for ages 13 and up.
Also,
7. This page can be updated whenever I feel like, so be sure to check it every once in a while, suppose anything has been changed. Thank you very much.
would make more sense as:
7. The Terms of Service may be updated whenever I feel like changing it, so be sure to check it every once in a while supposing anything has been changed. Thank you very much.

Thank you. The errors have been fixed. I disagree with you when you say it is quite ‘harsh’ saying I will banish someone from my website if they don’t follow my Terms of Service. So far, I have not banned a single soul and no one has broken my rules yet. However, I want to state clearly that if I find out that they do manage to spam my website, copy my work, or anything of that matter, I will ban them. I have to admit that I am not a very laid back and relaxed person when it comes to this: I would like copyright infringement to stop. Forever. This is my way of pointing out that I don’t want this to happen: so far, it hasn’t, but if someone does break my rules, I will be able to show him my TOS and say: you did something wrong. Therefore, you will get banned. I understand that it might seem harsh to you, but I’m quite firm on this one.

Your disclaimer is necessary to read, not necessarily to read. You’re submitting your email address (presumably), not your emailadress.
Even though all of your other pages have a nice blurb about the page, your “credits and resources” page does not - makes it look comparatively empty. I’d put something about it there. I know you have some plugins installed but I can’t tell what they are from this page, neither can I tell what anything is on this page. It looks less like a credits/resources list and more like a list of links. It wouldn’t make sense to have two pages with links, so I’m thinking it’s just not formatted in a way that would immediately give away the fact that these people aren’t necessarily friends. You have the right idea going with “Sarah (alittlelessordinary.com)” and “Dive Into Accessibility.” I’d probably suggest making the link titles more like “Dive Into Accessibility (Article)” and “Alittlelessordinary.com (X Plugin).”

This page is actually an example of a plugin going wrong, and not being entirely installed the way I would prefer. This page was supposed to be an entire list of my resources, listed alphabetically, but for some reason, my affiliates were listed in here too. I have now deleted the plugin I used to create this page, and have updated it manually. It does not show alphabetically now, but at least it does not show links that should not be there. I also made sure descriptions were added to the links. I hope this page makes more sense now.

The Queen

Ah, so I see on this page you do have a list of links in the main content and not just in the sidebar! I’d suggest making this “shortcuts” thing a standard across your website. However, there are some things on your “shortcuts” list that aren’t on your sidebar. You probably want those to have the same links.

Technically, I wanted to replace the shortcuts on the page itself by those in the sidebar. I think they just take up space and make a gap in between the real content of the page. I’m going to delete them for now, and mention on the page itself that the subnavigation can be found in the sidebar. Since it’s also managed there by a widget/plugin, it is a lot easier for me to update pages that way (automatically) than having to do it manually all the time.

I can see by reading this page that you’re very proud of your home (and by the way, I really love the bit about Belgium), you’re funny, you strive to be well-spoken with proper sentence structure (always a plus!), and you really like fantasy books. I hope that’s the impression you were trying to give off because it’s what I’ve gathered!
Browsing further, I wanted to visit the links in the shortcuts that aren’t on the sidebar and I see now why they aren’t on the sidebar - they’re parented by your “about-me” slug, but they aren’t pages that actually exist. Either create them or get rid of the links!

I’m going to get rid of them, as I stated before, and just add ‘Subnavigation can be found on the sidebar’ on the page. And thank you for the compliments in your previous paragraph.

Your “in depth” information just seems to be your results from a bunch of profile/personality pages. That’s fine, but you may want to mention it in a blurb above the quicklinks, because I expected to see something you wrote (and I was a bit impressed that you’d written so much) only to find out I was reading generic statements based on your personality types. Some people don’t like to read those.

Well, since I’m not exactly an expert when it comes to researching aura colours or explaining the meaning of a birthstone, I looked those up on the internet. I will add this to the top of the page, so visitors who are not interested in those things, can go back if they prefer. Also, I’m planning on writing my own profile soon, describing my own personality or how I think I am like, and some other things. I do agree that people might like to read something like that more than generic answers.

Your internet history says that the year 2000 was seven years ago. If you’re not going to update it with every coming year, you may want to reword it. I love that you link your old sites and the website that got you into web design! A lot of people are extremely ashamed of what they’ve done in the past, and of those they’ve admired in the past, and it’s nice to see someone fully willing to admit their building blocks for a change. I do think it’s funny that most of your old sites are on hiatus, though.

Hehe, yes. I have this emotional problem with ‘closing down a website’, so I prefer putting them on an eternal hiatus to ease my comfort. I never realised it took much courage to put up old websites or layouts on the world wide web though; I know I have come a long way from when I was a HTML-newbie to now and I’m proud of that. In my opinion, it is nothing to feel ashamed of to show your progress. But thank you very much for the compliment anyway!

I’d just like to say that some reviewers suggest you write more on your “favorites” lists, ie, a sentence or two explaining why you like something, what got you into it, why it’s important that you’re mentioning it, etc etc. I’d just like to say that I like the short, sweet, simple lists displaying what someone likes and letting that be the end of it. Your “personal favorite” page is perfect just the way it is.

I share this opinion with you. Thanks.

The Sims II

The only Sim game I’ve ever played was Sim City 2000 so I can’t give a lot of comment in this area except to say that it looks very empty and you could probably add more. From what I know about Sim players, it’s addictive. Suggestion: Other players may want to see profiles or life stories on your Sims? Your kitchens article is very in depth and it seems helpful. More of those would probably be awesome for your visitors who find this stuff interesting. Also, at the bottom of your Primrose page, it says to “click here” to download the house, but there’s no link.

I took down the house since there were some security issues with it. I’m not planning on uploading it again, until I get these errors fixed, so the link has been removed until further notice. In the near future, I’m planning on writing some more tutorials for the Sims II, since I enjoy doing that. I’m not sure if my visitors would be interested in the life stories of my Sims, but it seems to be a good idea, if I could find the effort to do it.

Sitemap

Simple and to the point, although like with a few of your other pages, it looks empty without a little summary blurb at the top.

I know. But I think that putting a blurb on top of the sitemap page, would just make things overcomplicated and keep the visitors away from what they really want to see: a list of all the pages.

No need to have this on the sidebar if you’re going to have a navigation link to it. Look! Another way to reduce the size of your extremely long sidebar. I like the page better because it explains why someone would want to subscribe. As someone who doesn’t enjoy subscribing to things, I find this page to be very convincing… Although once again I see the word “emailadress,” which isn’t actually a word, and it makes me wonder how many other times this has shown up on your website that I’ve overlooked.

I think I wrote emailadress A LOT on the entire site. I’m sorry, I’m not a native English speaker and I tend to make stupid mistakes when I don’t pay attention. Obviously, this was one of the cases. The subscribe is meant to enhance in the near future, suggesting other ways people could subscribe, in case they don’t feel like giving out their information, such as RSS, blah blah. You are right when you say I should make my sidebar smaller. I’ve deleted the subscribe function. At least it’s a wee bit smaller now, but my long paragraph entitled ‘The Queen’ made it longer again anyway.

404 Page

I submitted an error report form for most of the errors I found (there was one that I closed before I realized I could do that :p) so hopefully you fixed those before this review was posted. You have a lot of options for errors though I’m not sure why the last 10 blog posts are available, especially since the last 5 blog posts are in your footer already. It just seems like a feature that you could implement so you did just for the heck of it. Also, what happened to your sidebar?

Well, I recently read an article on A List Apart, stating that removing your sidebar from a 404 page would help confused visitors to find their way back to where they were easier. I don’t know if this is true: but with a sidebar, it might be more complicated for people who are not that used to visiting websites to return from an error page to a working page. I think the page looks ODD without a sidebar, but if experts say it, I feel inclined to follow…Secondly, those last ten posts are mentioned because of the fact that posts are the easiest to mistype, when manually entering an address on a website. Pages are somewhat static, but when searching for new or the latest posts, one might quicker type an error, so with this function it is easier to track back the posts immediately. I have a lot of features on this page, because some visitors might be extremely confused when coming across a 404 page and start to panic – the more ways out they see, the sooner they will feel comfortable again.

Also, in reference to your 404, I’ve just added a new part to all my reviews - 404 pages. It’s a good and a bad thing - good, because you are officially my first 404 page review, bad because the only reason I’ve reviewed it is because I was sent to it by a broken link.

I should try to keep the number of broken links on my website down, I know. But recently time has been in my way and well, you know how it goes. School, homework, etc. I will look into the links this weekend, with the Broken Link Checker (some WordPress plugin). I’m both proud and ashamed to be your first 404 page review. Hehe.

Comprehensive Reflection

Okay! Phew! This is by far my longest content-only review (albeit, it is my only content-only review). You have a TON of content, literally. If I were to put your content into a basket, it would probably overflow and possibly break the basket, because a ton (in weight) is probably too heavy for something made of wheat.
May have been exaggerating there just a bit.
But really, there’s a lot to go through here and even though the Sims sutff is your only real “visitor” content, there’s still a lot to look through as far as site stuff and you stuff goes. By the way, I’m a bit confused now about your Terms of Service. It seems to exist only for your free layouts and giveaways… but where are they? If they’re no longer there, there is no longer a reason for the TOS page.

I already have one, located under the category ‘WordPress Themes.’ However, a real stand-alone visitor page for it will come as soon as possible. A second theme, CSS template and WP Theme now, is on its way. It’s actually being valided as we speak. That’s where the TOS is for.

The only thing that concerns me with your content is that there seems to be a lot more about your website than about you. One could argue that the blog provides enough day-to-day information so that the about content doesn’t need to be so full, but your blog isn’t anywhere near day-to-day. This website strikes me as one that focuses a lot on, well, itself, and less on you.

You made a very good point there. But I do see Zwinkyness as a part of myself, so I don’t really mind too much. I’m confused as with what more I should add about myself: I am planning on adding my own, self-written profile, but apart from that I would not know what more to add. I have been thinking about an anecdotes thing, telling anecdotes of certain periods of my life to my reader, but I always thought that would be boring. You managed to kind of change my opinion, maybe I should add that after all.

Overall, a very well thought-out website. I can tell you’ve put a lot of effort into it, but it could definitely survive a spellcheck.

I know that my number one flaw is spelling and I totally HATE that because I can spell perfectly well in Dutch, but always manage to make some sort of mistake in English! Anyway, thank you very much for the excellent review: I thought it was very thorough, in-depth and informational, just the sort of review I was looking for.

Zwinkyness