(Rated by 9 people, viewed by 234 people)
tormentosa.org has 9 Reviews
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![[img: avatar]](/avatars/Greykitty.gif)
Greykitty gave it
on 15th Dec 2008 and said:1280 x 1024 resolution
First impression is good, everything is organised neatly. The only draw back is that your layout is very dull. Even the pink looks like it's faded and lacking in color saturation. I remember a layout you had up maybe a couple weeks ago that was really cute and had more color and life to it. I would suggest going back to something like that.
There's not a whole lot that really draws the visitor in with mostly all greys. It does fit grey weather but I still think you could add more color to it or maybe a couple images. Maybe you could set your links in a storm cloud or something and add a few blues in there but still keep your pink umbrella over by the site name and give the pink more saturation. Just a thought.Your content is nice, plenty of info about you and the site. It'd be kinda nice if you would put a short description on your links page for each link just so the visitor has a rough idea of what he/she is going to be visiting.
Overall it's a nice site, and you have interesting blogs, I just find the layout just a bit too dull. I still find the previous layout superior to this one.
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tormentosa's Response:
Thanks for your review.
I'm thinking of having a brighter pink instead of the one I'm using now. It's too light and almost unnoticeable. I really like my current layout, so I don't think I'll be changing much besides the colors a bit. I want it to keep simple so I can concentrate on the content rather than the looks.Thanks for the useful tips!
styleICON gave it
on 22nd Nov 2008 and said:My first impression of you site was that it was a really neat an organized website. Thats what I like about sites like yours because sites likes yours are easy to navigate around. But my only problem was th color scheme. It was kind of dull. Sorry I didn't give much advice because I am new to this whole website thing.
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![[img: avatar]](/avatars/artspeak.jpg)
artspeak gave it
on 22nd Nov 2008 and said:Honestly,
A) You keep your site clean and organized on the front...
B) Inside your site, your content is extremely long and when it gets long, it gets boring. Shorten up your bio page, you seem to put your whole life in it. Trust me, it's not a good idea either. Short and simple because you don't want to want to stray your visitors.
C) Your blog was interesting and very straight forward. You didn't use "oh em gee" whatsoever.
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tormentosa's Response:
Thanks for your review.
I am sorry to bore you with my long content.
"Inside your site, your content is extremely long and when it gets long, it gets boring. Shorten up your bio page, you seem to put your whole life in it. Trust me, it's not a good idea either. Short and simple because you don't want to want to stray your visitors."
Do you have any ideas of how I could give the same information in shorter paragraphs, or should I just not give that information at all? Could I lay it out differently? Because since there's quite some text, I've separated it in "sections" or areas with links so the visitor can choose what to read or not reading it at all. If you have better ideas, I'd be happy to hear them.
Lexxi gave it
on 19th Nov 2008 and said:Hiya!
First Impression: I've been to your site several times before so this is really not a first impression! Upon entering your site, I noticed that you recently changed your layout. Quite frankly, this layout is nice, but I enjoyed your previous layout much more.
Layout: The colors flow well and it is easy on the eyes. I just have to say that I am in love with your umbrella logo. It's cute and professional. You text is readable, which I'm very thankful for! I'm not really feeling the hover on the navigation. It doesn't flow like the rest of the layout since when I hover it, it moves the navigation down. Maybe just ditch the hover all together? It'll be more consistent with the simplistic style you are going for.
Coding: Your site passed the XHTML and CSS validation. Your CSS is very organized, albeit extremely long.
Content:
Blog: I am first greeted with the Top 5 Love Songs entry. When I look at blogs I usually skip over those entries because so many blogs have lists that I'm never really interested in. It seems like out of the 5 entries that I saw, most of them were lists. I was really interested in the "How to Burn Fats More Efficiently" article. It was very informative and could appeal to a bigger audience then some of your lists. I hope to see more articles like that. Also, in your about page you stated that you liked shopping and liked being trendy. Maybe you can write some articles about the latest fashions or fashion tips? Just a note: That's merely my opinion and won't count against you on this review, since it's your personal blog and you should be free to write what you want.About Page- Thank you for separating your sections into links! It makes me, the visitor, have the option of choosing what I want to see and what I'd rather skip. Maybe a suggestion would be putting a "back to top" link at the bottom since some of the pages can be quite long. Your intro is very interesting. I know you've stated that your not a native English speaker. I'd like to applaud you for owning an English website and writing surprisingly well. There are some parts, though, that I didn't quite understand. First one, "My style is trendy with two sides." It sounds very odd when you say it like that. Maybe change it to "I like being trendy and I usually have two distinct styles" or something like that. Also, "I like to think of myself as "tough", cause yeah, I'm into bullsh**." I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. Are you trying to say that you have a tough persona? In any case, maybe you should look into that sentence. Other then that, your about page is informative and you share a lot of interesting information about yourself.
Archives- Not much to say about this page, since it is what it is. You are very organized! This page has not only the latest entries, it puts things by category and date. Thanks for making it so much easier for a visitor to find an entry. Another suggestion: Maybe you should add a search bar at the bottom of the page? It will not change the look of your layout and it will make it even easier for a visitor who wants to find an entry but doesn't remember the date or is not sure which category it belongs in.
Domain- I like how you have your previous layouts displayed. I enjoy looking at how websites have progressed over the months/years. I think it's great that you credit everything you've used. You even give credit to Textpad and Photoshop, which is nice because people sometimes forget that without these programs, their layouts might not look as good as they do.
Links- Not much to say except maybe separating the "Favorite Website" links into columns since it is getting a bit long.
Conclusion:
Your site is beautiful and as you might have noticed, most of my suggestions are really minor things. I hope this review has helped you and sorry if I seemed nitpicky. It's hard to not get nitpicky when a site is already good as is! 5/5Using Firefox on Windows | Report This?
tormentosa's Response:
Thank you for your review!
I've implemented some of your suggestions and I think it's better now. Thank you for taking the time to review my site and giving me such a thorough review!
![[img: avatar]](/avatars/Susanna.png)
Susanna gave it
on 18th Nov 2008 and said:Hello!
First of all, I absolutely love the design of your site. I think you have the colours perfect (I can only imagine the disastrous consequences if the pink was darker or the brown lighter - eek!), I adore your links with the hover effect that are very cute, and the fact that the site is immediately clutter free is a great big thumbs up from me!
Immediately looking at the layout, there were two things I didn't actually notice at first; the sort of pattern or shape behind your site name, as the first, I think you could make a little lighter to stand out more, and the second was that you haven't got a straight edge between the header and the content, it's sort of ridged. I think the ridges could be a little bigger and more pronounced.
"About"
I like this page, particularly the fact that you have organised it with the basic list at the top, however on the list I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to make the "Name:" and "Location:" parts stand out a bit more, maybe by making the the pink colour or something? Just to seperate the question and answers a little.One bit that confused me was this:
"my hair is short of a reddish brown color."
Is this supposed to say your hair is sort of a reddish brown color, or that you hair is, in fact, short?
Other than that, I really like your About page!
"Archives"
There's not much to say here. It's well organised, and the only thing I can express is a little disappointment in the fact you don't use tags, but as I see in a previous review, it costs you money to get that so meh, I can't complain I wouldn't pay either!"Domain"
Again, this page is very well written, and I was astounded to hear that English isn't your mother tongue - well done for having barely any typos! The organisation of this page is, again, great. The only thing that annoys me slightly is that on your list of plugins, they aren't actually links but they are the same colour and style as your links. other than that, it's pretty perfect!"Links"
This page is great, and you have so many favourite websites! Maybe you could break up this list a little bit by saying why that site is one of your favourites? Even if you didn't want to do that for all of them, you could just do it for your top five or something??Overall
Overall I'm very impressed with your site. I adore your layout, as I've said, and I think you've put ten days work to good use making it. I couldn't be much happier with your site! :)UPDATED 18 Nov 08:
Hello!First of all, I absolutely love the design of your site. I think you have the colours perfect (I can only imagine the disastrous consequences if the pink was darker or the brown lighter - eek!), I adore your links with the hover effect that are very cute, and the fact that the site is immediately clutter free is a great big thumbs up from me!
Immediately looking at the layout, there were two things I didn't actually notice at first; the sort of pattern or shape behind your site name, as the first, I think you could make a little lighter to stand out more, and the second was that you haven't got a straight edge between the header and the content, it's sort of ridged. I think the ridges could be a little bigger and more pronounced.
"About"
I like this page, particularly the fact that you have organised it with the basic list at the top, however on the list I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to make the "Name:" and "Location:" parts stand out a bit more, maybe by making the the pink colour or something? Just to seperate the question and answers a little.One bit that confused me was this:
"my hair is short of a reddish brown color."
Is this supposed to say your hair is sort of a reddish brown color, or that you hair is, in fact, short?
Other than that, I really like your About page!
"Archives"
There's not much to say here. It's well organised, and the only thing I can express is a little disappointment in the fact you don't use tags, but as I see in a previous review, it costs you money to get that so meh, I can't complain I wouldn't pay either!"Domain"
Again, this page is very well written, and I was astounded to hear that English isn't your mother tongue - well done for having barely any typos! The organisation of this page is, again, great. The only thing that annoys me slightly is that on your list of plugins, they aren't actually links but they are the same colour and style as your links. other than that, it's pretty perfect!"Links"
This page is great, and you have so many favourite websites! Maybe you could break up this list a little bit by saying why that site is one of your favourites? Even if you didn't want to do that for all of them, you could just do it for your top five or something??Overall
Overall I'm very impressed with your site. I adore your layout, as I've said, and I think you've put ten days work to good use making it. I couldn't be much happier with your site! :)Using Firefox on Windows | Report This?
![[img: avatar]](/avatars/Diana.jpg)
Diana gave it
on 18th Nov 2008 and said:Hello!
I love your layout. Every thing is simple, but it has enough embellishments to work (e.g. the rollover navigation links). It follows a nice color scheme and is easy to read.
The Sitemap--geez, that's classy. Good job.
On your about page is very nice, especially the style part :) Ooh, and I see you speak Spanish. Interesting. In all this text, I can't find a typo or anything that would give away that English is not your mother tongue. Awesome!
The archives are nice and neat. I see you don't use tags :( Is that because they're messy? I really need to get rid of tags on my site...but they're so quick and easy D:
The site page gives a lot of good information too.
Ooh, network links. I love these. I'm probably going to follow you everywhere, k?
The end of the review :( I'm sorry if this was the least useful review you've ever gotten in the history of your life, but yeah, your site is niceee. One thing that bugged me though--I wish the site name was clickable, because I tried to click it to go back home and felt stupid when I realized it didn't do anything except look pretty ^^
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tormentosa's Response:
Hi Diana!
Well, I don't use tags cause you have to purchase a license from Expression Engine to be able to use their tags module, and that costs around U$ 40 which I can't afford right now since there are always more important things to address.
About the logo not being clickable. Well, I felt a bit stupid by making it clickable when the "home" link is right besides it. :)
Thanks again for taking the time to review my site :)
![[img: avatar]](/avatars/Aisling.jpg)
Aisling gave it
on 18th Nov 2008 and said:This is a very nice design. I mean, I like all of your designs, but this one is exceedingly nice. For one, it kind of has colour! I am so used to greyscale with you, it's nice to see something warm.
This design is very focused on your blog, which is cool. I love the navigation. Navigation that DOES something is the best kind! I like how it bounces along. The little umbrella that has appeared for the last little bit is a nice touch, and a fantastic logo for your site. The name Tormentosa reminds me of a rain storm (for obvious reasons ;)).
The footer is nicely defined, and simple.
I find your site to be perfectly readable and very accessible.
Let's see, your About page. Loving the organization. Shopaholic only has one p. You present yourself nicely. I love how you have different sections for everything. This page is very easy to digest and I like how it focuses on you at the moment, instead of shoving your life story down our throats!
Your Domain page continues in this vein, and is informative without being boring. And your links page is organized.
I enjoy the way your archives are organized. They don't just go BAM! A ZILLION ENTRIES!! They're a nice way to ease into your blog. :)
Aaaand, this review is short. And kind of pointless. Really, I just wanted you to know that I really enjoy your site, and that you should keep it up! I like how you've managed to define a style that is your own, and stays consistent even when you ARE changing it up, and using different colours, etc. That is very admirable. You can certainly tell a Regine made layout, and they are all very elegant and classy and pleasant to look at.
Of course, I second the links A.K. posted before me, they're always nice for standards. :)
Keep up the good work!
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tormentosa's Response:
Hi Aisling!
Thank you for reviewing me and for the nice comments. :) I must say your site was a source of inspiration for me somehow!
I'm gonna check those links both you and A.K. provided me with. Thanks again!
![[img: avatar]](/avatars/Clem.gif)
Clem gave it
on 18th Nov 2008 and said:I really like this design. It's simple, easy on the eyes, and makes good use of colours. It's a bit different from your usual style of layout, but that isn't a bad thing at all. If anything, it's nice and refreshing.
Firstly, I really like the colour choice. Brown can be icky, but this is a lovely, deep chocolate brown, which is gorgeous. Pink is always a nice colour to go with brown, and you've chosen just the right shade. It's not too pale, but not hot pink (which would just look bad, tacky, unreadable, etc).
Your header is very simple, but it looks nice. You have the little pink umbrella (your logo, I guess), with a shape behind it (it adds depth and looks nice), and if you look closely there's even a jaggedy edge. If anything, I would suggest making this edge a bit more pronounced, because I didn't even notice it until now.
Your navigation is very cute, but I don't really like how the words move down on hover. Other than that, I really like it - the font is nice, and the icons that appear on hover are really cute!
I like the font you're using in the header, but Arial as a body font is kind of... not so great, especially at the size you're using. Verdana is so much more nice to look at!
Your footer is also very cute, incorporating the jaggedy edges. It's clean and organised and not too big, and the feed icon is absolutely adorable! The only thing I can suggest is making the XHTML/CSS/Subscribe to Feed change on hover. I really like hover. ;)
Two other nitpicky details: I'd love it if you made the titles of your blog posts permalinks, and there isn't any link to your Twitter account, although you've incorporated your updates into the footer.
ABOUT
"for ever trying to get bigger muscles to look as tough as Sarah Connor in Terminator II. Green eyed with shirt brown hair. " *forever, *short"I prefer collecting great basics as skinny jeans and combine them together with fantastic shoes and jackets. " *such as skinny jeans, *combining
Overall a decent page. You've given the basics and then delved a bit deeper with the personality section, and the "factoids" are always nice! I would suggest making your personality show through a bit more - right now it seems like you've given the facts, which is fine, but I'd like to see some humour or, well, any sort of personality showing through in this page. Right now it's a little dry.
ARCHIVES
Any reason that this comes before Domain and Links? I would put it right at the end. I'm guessing you're doing this alphabetically...This page is fine - you've given three different ways to sort the posts, and it's nicely organised. It would be a bit sad if it wasn't; it's an archives page!
DOMAIN
The link to one.com is broken."Tormentosa.org's entire content is managed by Expression Engine and coding is made manually in Textpad." This sentence sounds a bit awwkard; I would rephrase it as "All of the content on Tormentosa.org is managed by Expression Engine, and coding is done manually in Textpad."
This page was the same as the About page; technically fine, but a bit boring.
LINKS
Oh yay, it's a links page! Nothing much to say.So, this marks the end of the review of your website. Overall, it wasn't bad at all, but it wasn't FABULOUS. The design is lovely, of course, but the content was lacking a bit. As I said, there's nothing *technically* wrong with it, but since this is pretty much "just a blog", you need to work hard to make what little content you have sparkle. Inject a bit of personality into your pages and you'll have content that matches the design.
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tormentosa's Response:
Hi,
First of all, thank you for reviewing me! Now, about the navigation and why it moves: I wanted the word and the icon to be right in the middle of the header, both vertically and horizontally. When not on hover, I wanted the link image/word to also be in the middle. I checked how it looked had I only placed the icons above the words, but it looked odd by being too high up against the top of the header. I'll see what I can do, anyway.
Thanks for the tips and suggestions. Definitely much that can be improved. My only problem is that titles as permalinks don't work that way on EE, because of the way EE is built and set up. I might try finding a way to do that, however :)
Thanks again!
![[img: avatar]](/avatars/Anna_Kirstin.gif)
Anna_Kirstin gave it
on 18th Nov 2008 and said:First Impression: My first impression was that everything looks neat and organized - which is very appealing to me. I hate the look of cluttered blogs. The second thing that I noticed was the lack of a traditional side-bar. I'm glad to see that you realized that single-column layouts only really work if you specify a width to keep the text from expanding to the point you can't follow the lines.
Overall Layout: The little design behind your header is almost impossible to see on my monitor. It's like only a shade or two lighter than the background color. It's almost frustratingly dark for me, because it took me a while to realize it was there. I thought I saw and then I thought I was imagining it. I remember the design from your past layout and I'm almost certain it's there and I'm not imagining things. I just really had to focus in on it to see it. I would consider lightening it a shade or two more so that it stands out a bit more, but not so much that it distracts from the header image.
The footer is neatly organized. The RSS icon really does look like he's sitting on the toilet. ^^;
Coding: Both XHTML and CSS validate, but that shouldn't surprise you. I have a feeling you already knew that.
Navigation: I really don't care for the fact that the navigational links move down on hover. The images are cute and make sense, but the fact of the moving links are a real distraction. I would recommend not having the links move up and down between normal and hover and just having the images appear over the navigation on hover (without the moving text.) The color you've chosen is easy to see, but could possibly be a little lighter.
Links: Since you're wanting to improve your accessibility I can point you to two great web-resources that I use to help when planning my layouts accessibility wise.
Vischeck.com - allows you to see approximately what your layouts would look like if someone were browsing them with any possible type of color-blindness disability.
Juicy Studio's Colour Contrast Analyzer - let's you put in your background color and your text color and then analyzes them to see if they meet the specified ranges for accessibility as set for by W3's standards for accessibility.
About:
While your font is easy to read, your topic headings blend in with it too much. For instance:Occupation: Student majoring in Sport and Movement Science...
Would be easier to pick out from the paragraphs if it were more like...
"Occupation: Student majoring in Sport and Movement Science..."I would even consider doing it a little bit more like this...
"Occupation:
Student majoring in Sport and Movement Science...."That way it stands out exactly what you are talking about without it running all together.
"Interested in:" is directly up under "Spends time". I didn't recognize this as a separate topic at first.
Physically: "for ever" is one word "forever". You have "shirt" instead of "short" when it comes to your hair color. I hate when I do that - hitting the wrong letter on the keyboard because they're so close together. :)
I would give some more padding between the top of your H2 tags and the ending paragraphs above. It would give it more the feel of being a different section. I would also consider adding some padding between paragraphs. They seem to just run together for me. I feel the same way about your lists, but then I may just be a padding nut-case. I just feel that things are a lot easier to read when they are spaced out.
The links on your favorites are out-links - links that take a visitor off your website. You might want to consider finding a symbol or another way of letting visitors know that those links will take them away from your site. That way they can choose for themselves whether or not they want to leave tormentosa.org or stay and browse some more.
------- Archives --------
When I click "Archives by Category" in your quick-jump-to links, it doesn't do anything. :(Your archives are other wise very organized.
------ Domain -----
I get the same feeling that I do with the about page. It's a feeling like all the content is wanting to fun together and is not very spaced out like it should be. I again suggest that you add some more padding from your h2 tags and the bottom of the above paragraphs to give it a more separate section feel.I think with your line-height being as large as it is, you could do with a little more space between your paragraphs to separate them a little bit more too.
It's interesting to find out that your domain name is Spanish for stormy. I thought it was really the English meaning of torment osa. ^^;
I would link the Norwegian company you bought your domain from by name.
I would also credit the fonts downloaded from dafont by name. If I wanted to have the font in your header because I liked it so much, I wouldn't know where to start looking because I would have nothing but the letters in your header to go off of. If you include the name of the font, I would be able to find it, download it, and use it so much easier.
I would definitely add some padding between your layout images the text from the previous layout above it. I could see some poor moronic visitor getting confused as to which layout belong to what text despite your descriptions and titles. :)
------ Disclaimer -----
'this link' I have serious issues with 'this link' - mainly because I don't know what or where 'this link' is. :) Always give your links a descriptive name. In this case "What is copyright?" I would also find a way to let others know that this link is off-site.Overall: I think you have a nice writing style and a very attractive blog. It's simple and easy to browse. I would just add some more padding to give things a more "separate" not-so-cluttered feel to your text space.
I hope that you find this review helpful. :)
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tormentosa's Response:
Oh thank you very much for your review. These were all very good suggestions and things I missed, like typos and such.
I've been trying to rewrite my about and domain sections a thousand times. I'm very joyful and "silly", laughing all the time, but I don't know how to reflect that on my writing. I am indeed not very good at it, but practice may help :)
I'm gonna fix the padding issues,mostly because the line-height and paragraph settings were kept the same from the last layout which had a much smaller font size.
Thanks again for the review!
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