E.T. review now up at Retro-Active Reviews.

[PaulEMoz]

I'm sure there are at least a few people interested in this, as E.T. is one of the most "discussed" games of all time. Our review of E.T. is now up at Retro-Active Reviews. The link to the main page is in my signature, and the link to the review is on the main page.

 

Let's see what you think....

[sku_u]

I'm really liking your site. Keep the reviews coming.

[+Random Terrain]

Here's what I think, things that might help:

 

The little side review things would be easier to read if they were in plain text instead of in image form and they would also be easier to read if the text in them was left-aligned. I didn't look at your source code, but either the width and height of your images are not defined or the width and height of your tables/cells are not defined (or both). This page might help:

 

http://www.randomterrain.com/webdesign/width.html

 

 

Your E.T. banner thingy at the top of the page is a little hard to read. You might want to lighten up the words a bit. There is an image of a guy on the right side farther down the page that is very dark and hard to see. If that's not done on purpose, you might want to adjust the brightness.

 

On your main page, you have text in tables/cells and you have chosen to keep the borders. If you're going to have borders, you should increase the cell-padding so the text isn't right up against the edge (so it's easier to read). If you don't know what cell-padding is, here's a page I found using Google about this subject:

 

http://www.windeatt.f2s.com/it/web/7c_ex2.html

[PaulEMoz]

Thanks a lot for the comments, all feedback is helpful, as I am still learning.

 

Here's what I think, things that might help:

 

The little side review things would be easier to read if they were in plain text instead of in image form and they would also be easier to read if the text in them was left-aligned. I didn't look at your source code, but either the width and height of your images are not defined or the width and height of your tables/cells are not defined (or both).

 

Not quite sure what you mean here. Do you mean each individual's review? If so, I know that having them in text instead of images would certainly be a space saver, however I haven't figured that out in HTML yet. I cut and paste their reviews into the image box, and space them as best I can to make them reasonably aligned. As for heights and widths, each review is split into segments, and each segment is a separate table, and each table has a defined width, but not height, meaning that each table is as "high" as the biggest image it contains. Also, I noticed that the bottom table was aligned "right" instead of "center", so I've fixed that.

 

 

Your E.T. banner thingy at the top of the page is a little hard to read. You might want to lighten up the words a bit. There is an image of a guy on the right side farther down the page that is very dark and hard to see. If that's not done on purpose, you might want to adjust the brightness.

 

Thanks for pointing that out. It turns out I didn't upload the correct banner thingy. That should be better now! As for the image of the guy (IceCold, who posts on these forums!), well, it's the only image of him that I've got! You're right though, upon second glance it could do with being lightened.

 

On your main page, you have text in tables/cells and you have chosen to keep the borders. If you're going to have borders, you should increase the cell-padding so the text isn't right up against the edge (so it's easier to read).

 

Yeah. I'm still not quite sure how I want those cells/tables to look. I do intend to change things fairly regularly, so once I find a look I like, I'll implement it. I'll probably get rid of the borders, or at least make them thinner.

 

Thanks again for the comments, very helpful. I'm learning all the time!

[Paul Slocum]

I like the reviews, but...

 

"The web site you are trying to access has exceeded its allocated data transfer."

[Thomas Jentzsch]

"The web site you are trying to access has exceeded its allocated data transfer."

Hm, still works for me.

[+Random Terrain]

PaulEMoz, I use Namo WebEditor and it cuts down on the time it takes to do things and makes working on pages a lot easier and fun. You can read more about it about half way down on the following page under "My Favorite WYSIWYG Web Editor":

 

http://www.randomterrain.com/webdesign/index.html

 

 

If you have around $12 a month to spend on a web site, the Yahoo Business Starter Plan is pretty good and you won't get those bandwidth exceeded messages unless you plan to use more than 20GB of bandwidth a month which is unlikely:

 

http://website.yahoo.com/

[khryssun]

Nice review Paul,

I know it's uncommon but E.T. is one of my favorite games

[Godzilla]

said it before, say it again, always liked 2600 et. :-)

[+Random Terrain]

PaulEMoz, I've visited your site a few times in the last couple of days and about three times out of five, your site is not available because you ran out of bandwidth. Most hobbies cost a little money, so as soon as you can, you might want to throw in a few dollars so your site won't be down so much.

 

As I said in one of my posts above, I spend around $12 a month on my hobby web site and I think it's worth it. Many people spend a lot more than that each month on other hobbies and almost no one gets to see the results, but when you have a hobby web site, hundreds of people around the world get to see what you have done every day. Unless there is a rare server problem, my web site is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I get thousands of hits a day (between 450 to 950 unique visitors a day) and I only use a small amount of my monthly bandwidth allotment, so there's plenty of room to grow. Think about it, it's worth it.

[PaulEMoz]

@cavelevel: I will unquestionably be switching hosts at some point in the future. I started this off purely to teach myself a bit about creating a website, but on a subject I was interested in.

 

At the moment, there is a possibility that I will be able to get free hosting from one of a few emulation websites, so I'm waiting on that right now. In the event that doesn't come off though, I will definitely move to something else on my own.

[dougy76]

said it before, say it again, always liked 2600 et. :-)

 

Ditto for me.

[+Random Terrain]

At the moment, there is a possibility that I will be able to get free hosting from one of a few emulation websites, so I'm waiting on that right now.

 

That would be cool if you can get it for free, but if you find out that you have to pay, try to find a place that lets you pay monthly so you can leave quickly if you have any problems. As I said in another post, so far I love my Yahoo Business Starter Plan because I can pay once a month instead of in a big expensive chunk, I have 50MB of space (more than enough for me), 20GB of bandwidth a month, and my own domain name. Having your own domain name is great.