Retrodork

First Impression: Well, we've been affiated for a little while now, so before I start going on and on I just want to say no hard feelings kay? I'm going to try and make this a good review but you have to understand that it might be a bit harder seeing as we're affiliated. So first when I see your website I first think the layout isn't too good (I'll get into why later). I scroll down a little and then I see that the coding is very original, I haven't seen anyone code quite like that. I see you like your text to be small which sort of seperates different sites, but in a good way. I'm liking the style you got here.

Content: Affiliate images are interesting, I'm not much of a fan especially if there aren't many in not really good quality. They're okay though, I think you need to either add more or get rid of it. If you like making them then continue because you know what practice makes, right?
Button bases are for the most part, okay, some are quite good. Just like affiliate images this is something I'm not too much of a fan of. For some of them I don't think you've done much besides cropping and adding a border and they really need more work. Some of the recent ones are good though, remember it's okay to take some content away from your site.
The bullets are really good! Good job on these and I recommend you make some more of these. The color pallettes are also good, some of the colors aren't too good, in my opinion but some are very good. Maybe make some more color palletes, there isn't too many here.
The free blends are very interesting! But I got to say, that there weren't too many and the blending isn't amazing. But that's just a snobby reviewer talking, I think you could continue making these and maybe have a few sizes for people to choose from.
Some of these icons are quite good, I find the ones at the bottom of the page are the best, the ones nearer to the front I don't like so much. I think it might be better to put the newer ones at the top (unless you are already doing that), because it would make a better impression and people aren't always bothered to scroll down to the bottom.
You should put the "icon textures" and "full sized textures" on the content page instead of on a seperate page. And then I go on the icon textures page but there are only gradients, so maybe call that page icon gradients until you make some textures. The notepad/paper textures are good, but in my opinion the light ones aren't complete. What I always do (which I think is something very good to do, hint hint, nudge nudge) is when I make light textures I make the light lighter and dark darker, you have to duplicate your layer once or twice and set it to hardlight or overlay or something like that. You don't have to do that but I think it would make them much better, quality is always better than quantity.
Having fonts which weren't made by you is quite a touchy topic, many people are against it, but I am not. Although most of the fonts you have I already have, but you could keep this page and maybe add some more fonts that people don't know about if you wanted to update this page.
That's pretty cool that you have a section for html, not many people have that anymore. I know vejc-design has that stuff but it's good you have it too, seeing as not many others do.
The tutorials are good, I think you should rename the "border" one to "border for your pictures", or something like that because you can also have an attribute in css called "border" for your text, so people may not be too sure of what they're clicking on. On the css tutorial you just say put this code on your site... and put this one on your site, but you need to say what pages to put it in or else people might end up putting them both on one page or not on the right pages. I've looked at a few more tutorials and they look pretty good, but you should try and look some of them over once in awhile to make sure they make sense. And remember for your content, particularly for your graphics - It's okay to get rid of some content once in awhile. I try to make sure all or at least almost all of my content represents how good I am now.

Layout/Coding: Let's start with the actual picture. First of all I think the opacity is too low for this layout, it sort of takes you away from the nice pictures. I also think the layout is a little bit too wide. When you have text as small as yours is it's better to have a smaller layout and the pictures of Hannah Beth are also a little too small for the width of the layout. It's not that bad though, I think the main thing is the opacity. And I also think you could have maybe placed the pictures better, maybe put all three close together and blurred the middle nicely or something, I don't know. It just seems like it wasn't too hard to make I guess. That's good that you credited everyone who you used stuff from, I was wondering who made that brush, it's very popular :) And when I went to see that I also saw that you spelt advertising with two d's so you should change that.
I like your coding, well, I like the css and the text and everything like that. It's very you and the colors are nice as they always have been for as long as I've known your site. I think the color of the links could maybe be a bit darker, or have it go from blue to grey. I also see on your tutorials page and maybe on some other ones there is a certain h something you use (those things from your css that deffine your text), where the text is on the right, it's used where it says "CSS" and "HTML". I think you should maybe center it, because at first I could see anything since I was looking to the left, but maybe I'm crazy :) I think that's about it, good job here, especially with the css, like I said it's very original which counts for a lot.

Updates/Blog: I don't know about updating but I know that you blog quite often which is very good, you're certainly not one of those people who has to do one blog every week which is really good. I don't really see you mention anything you've added to the site so I don't believe you update very much, I think you should update a little bit more if it's possible because it will make your content more interesting and keep people coming. Your blogs are a little short but not too short, I think you should maybe try and give more detail sometimes in what you talk about, when you're talking about something maybe say if you like it and why, just go more in depth. Other than that I think your blogs are really good and they come often which is good so keep it up!

Conclusion: Overall I think you have quite a good website, a lot of growing to do in terms of website making and all. But that's nothing to be ashamed of or annoyed about. When I was your age I only just had a subdomain or maybe even still freewebs, so imagine where you'll be in a year or two. Keep doing what your doing and try and take as much as I said as something to fix but don't take it personal. Just a few big things I think you should try and concentrate on are: Update more often because you will get better with photoshop and other things you practice and it will get people coming back. Clean up your content. When I say clean up your content I mean take off anything you don't think looks good because if it doesn't look good it's better off not there since it will make a better impression. Those are the main ones but there quite a few other things I mentioned in this review which I hope you think about. Good job and keep it up!

Visit Retrodork?
Reviewed on Friday the 13th of June, 2008