loser

[ Worst of the Month ]

The award goes to:

House of the Ronins
[ http://members.tripod.com/nekojoi/houseof.htm ]
and [ http://nekojoirwarriors.homestead.com/houseof.html ]

A quick note about this month's review: Kento did his review after Kayura, so therefore Kento did the homestead page while Kayura did the tripod one. Kayura was just too lazy to go back and change her whole review, since the pages are close to the same. So, there will be some discrepancies between the reviews, but hopefully not too many.

Kento-kun
Okay. Putting aside my own personal feelings about Homestead. Yes. I will not be swayed.

Since Kayura is rather [incredibly] thorough with her review, I'll just touch on some points that she left off. One thing I noticed right off the bat -- the image backgrounds on most of the pages are rather busy and, coupled with thin text, make reading what's written difficult. I'd suggest either getting rid of the images altogether or bolding all the text. Also, the pages seem to have little to no uniformity. I realize and accept that people like to experiment with different styles and looks and such, but one of the hallmarks of a good page is a common theme.

This site was definitely done with a site builder -- most likely Homestead's own [which I hear lets you design sites off-line, which is pretty darn nice] -- but there is a lot of unnecessary code here. HTML4 coding still works just fine; there's really no need to be concerned with HTML5.1, so a lot of the tags can be cut out to help reduce loading time. For instance, you can definitely take out the  and  surrounding the IMG SRC commands. There is also some longer, more complicated coding in the TABLE tags, where a simple HEIGHT="#" and WIDTH="#" would do.

Also, since you're using CSS codes to specify your font styles, you can cut out all the FONT tags in the body of the coding. [Since most of the text seems to be Helvetica13, just use the FONT tag when you want the Helvetica18 to be prevalent.]

I much appreciate how the non-uploaded sections of the page are not linked to, but are still there so you can get a sense of what's coming. *thumbs up*

And here comes yet another reminder to the fandom to please keep the YST and RW separate. It can really confuse newcomers who don't know the difference yet, okay?

Overall, I'd just say this page needs work on presentation and fleshing out the content a bit. This site has some good ideas, if a little old -- they just need to be given a fresher outlook. [Make sense?]

Since you asked about a counter service, Joi, I recommend TheCounter.com. I've used their service for quite a few years now and haven't really had any trouble. I'd like to help you with the guestbook problem, but it seems that all the ones I've tried have had some problem with them. I hear Toonzbook is up again, though....

Kayura-chan
Looking at the HTML and the actual page are very different for this site. Looking at the site, the text for Rowen when he talks can not be read. Either change the color of the text to black or something that will show up and be more readable, or change the background. The same applies for the text for links. To change the link part, simply add link="#colorcode" to the <body> tag.

Also, instead of all of the <big> commands, just use the <font size="4"> or so there and make sure to close it off with the </font> instead of a bunch of </big> It just makes the HTML cleaner.

The images are great, but instead of using the height and width commands, try actually resizing them so the loading time is taken down some. I know that you use them for your other pages, so maybe just have two of the same image. It'll take up more of your tripod space, but nothing else other than that.

For the poll, instead of showing the hash marks, just leave the numbers. It makes it a bit more simple and quicker to find the results. Also, since you keep putting in so many spaces, why not try having your whole page in a table. Or just centering the stuff that you have a gizillion spaces. (OK, so it's not quite that many, but hey! I can say what I want!)

Why in the world do you have the end of the counter code at the bottom ofthe page when the counter is at the top? And, why do you have the counter code once again down at the bottom of the page? It doesn't make much since to have it like that. Erase the second code and place the end of the code at the top with the counter.

Since you ran it or made it in Microsoft Front Page the code is rather clean. However, there are some of the things that do need to be fixed. The marquees are fine, just a little thing that some people do avoid, but others like.

Holy moly! It takes forever for the page to reload sometimes. I can't believe it!

Moving on to the other pages....

The Ronin Lounge: the background is OK, a little annoying with the black word stripes, but other than that it OK. Most of the pages are fine, with a few small problems that can be easily fixed. On the loung page, you might want to place a link back to the main page. On the webringpage, you say "Joi: Check out these lovely webrings that I belong to!!!" There's only one webring though.....

The award doesn't show up because it is trying to find a file on your harddrive, not uploaded to your web space.

At least your bishonen page is separate. It doesn't take up space anywhere else unless you actually click on the link. Other than that, again, resize the images in an editor instead of using the height and width commands. It takes up too much time for all of them to load.

Ryo's page: It is nice that you have something about taking other people's images up. And since you accept images from others, it is a good warning. However, this page takes a long time to load. And, you have a link to pages that you say are underconstruction. Why bother to put a link there if it will lead to a page that says underconstruction. Also, since the images are so large, why not just use text links for each of the image pages? And, when you say thumbnail, you should actually have a resized picture on the page not just a height and width command.

Moving on to Cye's backgrounds: The images all look a little funny since you resized them with the height and width commands. And Rowen's wallpaper wasn't resized, so it took up a lot of space.

Sage's Info Booth has the some different information, but some of the same old stuff. AH! Rowen is not a bad cook, he is just depicted as being one in fan-fiction. Please do not place something like that on an info page since it is not correct.

Kento's jokes: The stuff they would never say is pretty funny. The Ronin Look-alikes has been done, and in a much larger quantity. Too bad that page shut down! (WHAAAA!!!!!) The Cold Day in Hell isn't all that funny, but somewhat original. Oh well....

Joi's Room: Again, don't place a link for something that isn't up.

Sasaki Nozomu Music: Ah! You actually have mp3s of the stuff! You should probably recommend that people download something like getright in order to make downloads easier. Other than that, no major problems here.

Another suggestion for the page: Why not try a site map so that people can find things quicker and easier, as well as provide an alternative to long loading pages to find something they don't want.

All in all, the main thing that I would/could suggest is that you resize the images and have two of each to make real thumbnails for quicker loading. That and just fix the few small code errors could make this page much better. Updating often wouldn't hurt either.