Saturn

You know, I have come across a bad website or two in my lifetime *points you to the other reviews*, but this one is pretty bad. I am making a screencap of this front page so you can see it and you tell ME what type of impression this makes on somebody and if it makes YOU want to go further into the site.

Capture 1

Now I shall take a capture of this in 1600x1200 as I test ALL sites in high resolution as any site that is coded and designed properly will work in ALL resolutions.

Capture 2

Well I can say I have seen worse for a site in high res, but this one isn't that bad. That doesn't excuse this poorly done splash page, nor does it explain why this person thought that this looks even remotely good.

One last thing to check here, just so I know if this person is crazy or if it is.... ok... it doesn't appear to be built with a Sitebuilder... so I have to wonder what this person's brain thought this was SUPPOSED to look like as it looks like garbage to me rather then a website.

Entering.... and wishing I hadn't.....

You know I have said it before and I will say it again... I DO NOT WANT MUSIC COMING OUT OF MY SPEAKERS WHEN I VIEW A SITE!!! That being said, lemme explain it again... You see, the every day Saturn on this site along with I am pretty sure, the everyday Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, have sound already playing when we view these sites. I mean come on, we have to have SOMETHING to keep us sane when viewing some of these pages. When you have music on a site, it proceeds to play OVER what we are already listening to. And lemme just say that if I am ever wearing headphones while doing one of these reviews and this crap happens, expect me to show up at your door prepared to blow your windows out with sound to show you what I have to go through every time I view a site with music playing on it. I don't care if it goes with the series or not, DON'T do it. If you want music on your site, I suggest installing a Radio Blog so that people can CHOOSE if they want to hear music, AND what they want to listen to.

There is a link on this main page for "Updates"... wouldn't it have worked better to have a better setup then links down the center of the page and have your updates on the main page? I mean I already had to go through a splash page, and then a navigation page, and NOW I can view the updates.... that is a bit annoying to me. Not just that, but I am almost positive that your bandwidth at Geocities is going to run out before I can view it all...

Oh!!! The first update on this page pisses me off to no end. "Next on my to do list is a Profile for Sailor Mercury, also a sprite page for Sailor Moon. I found some great sprites on this site I will make a link soon enough. Now I have to go!^_^" I can almost guarantee where the sprites came from, but that isn't what bothers me. I am tired of seeing my friends sprites on everybody's pages. It is just sad. Most people don't bother to credit anymore, and I love the bastards that direct link. I am glad that this person is planning to place a link, but the better thing to do is to email the author and ask them if you can use SOME of them on your site instead of just grabbing them and such.

Now some people might think that this is extreme, but if you had to deal with a few people that I have had to that steal everything and claim that they learn but they continue to steal, you would know why I feel you should ASK, instead of just taking. *cough*De'Angelo*cough* I mean at least read the rules. I know I am going a bit far, but I am sick of people that can't read rules or people that can't come up with their own content ideas... Now back to the review.

Oh yea! The downloads section! And if you can't tell, I am dripping with sarcasm here. Some very low quality videos! Exactly what I have always wanted.... NEXT!

OH YES!!! GOD YES!!! And no this is not a cheesey porno movie. I have hit the "contests" page.... First off, more music yelling at me, but on top of that, lets dig into this "contest". Frankly, after reading this contest page, I wonder if English is not this person's first language. If it is, I have to make sure to let their school know that they should NOT be floating this person through the system. In case you didn't get what I am saying, this person's English is atrocious to say the least. There are lots of typos here and wow.... I am fluent in bad grammar and typo, but some of this even confuses ME.

The contest itself is just pathetic. "Draw your own character!".... uhm..... right.... But the best part is the prizes. First prize is a page on their website!!! Like Oh My God! *kills herself for the valley girl reference* I know I have always wanted to have my own page on a GEOCITIES SITE OWNED BY SOMEBODY ELSE! I mean why would I want to sign up my own space with Geocities or another better free service when I can have ONE PAGE on somebody else's site?! And even better yet! I get a layout for that page made for me! By the author of this site that makes such lovely layouts of their own that are so great that I can't read the baby pink text on a WHITE background! I have SO got to enter this contest!!! I hope I win because I don't want to pay for a site anymore because I would rather have huge banner adds and loud annoying music on a site that only has 130 hits total instead of the site that I own now that has breeched the 50,000 hit mark! Yes! I must win this contest, my loins dictate as such!!!

Ahem. Moving on.

Just stay away from the "Sailor Moon Another Story 2". You will need a dictionary to translate what "Sailor Moon Anoth er Spory 3" is....

Horray! Finally something that is great! A monthly poll! And this one is about what I think of this site! You can bet what my response will be. My only question is who did this person bribe to get two votes that say the site is "Excellent"? Remind me to bribe them to vote for me in the next presidential election.

If you don't to wait over five minutes for it to load on a broadband connection, don't touch the "Chat".... There was a time when Bravenet had a purpose, but in this day and age there are MUCH better things out there to use... Please, somebody hold my hand, for I have sinned by not looking at where that link led before I clicked it.... *hangs head in shame*

*snicker* A guestbook. Wow, I wonder what I will put in here XD

Uhm, why the hell is there a "Bravenet" link in this list? Or is it one of those scams that if you lie about it and say that it is so great on your site that they will promise you a yacht and 5 million gold bars? My guess is that either this personal is delusional or they are just gullable... Next link please...

Oh yes! "Senshi Profiles", but the "s" should be omitted as there is only one profile here. It is for Moon and it is poorly done... Not like I expected anything less then poorly done, but well, hey, that is why I am a reviewer and not somebody that makes a site on Geocities. I will state one serious issue with this profile though. SET A MARGIN! The text on the left looks cut off on first glance, but is is actually snuggled up to the left side of my browser because this person didn't set a margin.... Meaning that I am having trouble even reading anything should I want to....

You know I was going to stop harping on this profile, but I gotta... Cause it is REALLY bad. Basically this person has done something good in the fact that they seem to have typed a genuine profile as opposed to using the cookie cutter ones, or ripping off the information from another site... however, as this seems to be about PGSM as opposed to any other incarnations of SM, I am a bit bothered by the fact that this person keeps referring to Mamoru as "Mamo-chan" which was NOT ever used in PGSM. Also, who is "super Queen Beryl"? And what is a "sylver crystal"? And why is there a break of around 500px just to add one last line at the bottom? And what is with the calendar image of Moon? And dammit there is more music!!! And it is REALLY loud this time!!! And even worse then the rest of the midis on this site!!!!

Affiliates... Man this affiliate list looks almost like mine at Studio Kawaii. It is empty (though mine is because of standards reasons) and frankly if somebody affiliates with this, please submit THEIR site for review as it can't be very good to affiliate with garbage like this...

Alright, so I made a resolution at New Years to try to give some comments to the Bad and Ugly sites as to how to make their site better so that I don't come off as too much of a bitchlet, so here is my advice.

Lose the music. If you are going to use music, go with a radio blog. If you want to stick with the white background on the page, then choose an easier font color to read. Fix your typos and grammar mistakes. Not everybody is perfect at grammar, but it needs to at least be readable. Lose the Bravenet as it is nothing but lag central. Make a layout that is consistant and not constantly changing. Come up with some type of FUNCTIONAL layout as currently I am fed up with hitting my back button. Or you could take all these tips, ignore them, bash us, and flame us. It is up to you. Your site is sealed in the Bad column for now, but it is VERY close to the Ugly column because of ALL of the music.... Ditch the midis if you DO decide to go with a Radio Blog.

Uranus

The URL for this site implies that there's hentai here, and I'm glad to see that's not so. The site is, however, only a month and a half old, and much like a newborn baby, it can't quite stand up on its own yet. Judged in that light, I might be forgiving. . . but I'd rather just tear it up!

The splash page says that yesterday is October 23. Maybe it should stay up till next year when it'll be correct again. The graphics are a stacked picture of the PGSM senshi that looks like a deck of cards, and a somewhat freaky PGSM Sailor Jupiter. This belies the fact that the site is more about the anime than PGSM. I'm using "more" in the same way that .00001 is more than 0, because there's not a lot of content on either. All of the text on the site is in barely-readable gray on white, and it's in Comic Sans to boot. I should explain why this font is undesirable. Fonts like Arial and Times New Roman are typical of what one would see in a book or newspaper-they let you notice the words and not the letters. If you're going for something a little more wild, you can look at cursive or angled fonts, but don't use them for long stretches of text. Titles or one-liners only. Comic Sans is neither here nor there. It's too atypical to be a basic font, and text just looks weird in it, and it's too thin and plain for titles. OK, lesson's over, back to the site (that is, after I wait for the Geocities bandwidth restriction is lifted)

90 minutes later, I'm thinking that maybe Geocities isn't a good host. Only I'm frothing at the mouth and using a lot of curse words to say it. Well, on the theory that I'd better hurry if I want to finish on this pass, let's move right on to content. Now, if I have the choice of a bad font or bad Engliah, please, type in Wingdings for all I care. Sadly, I don't get that choice and I have to deal with bad English in a bad font. Here's your funny quote of the day: "Shoked to find out Zoicite is while striking sailor moon tuxedo mask comes, and covers Sailor Moon. Getting killed. Sailor Moon Starts crying and the sylver crystal comes out." I'd be "shoked" if the writer made it out of high school Composition.

That Sailor Moon profile is the lion's share of the content on the site. There are a few music videos for download but I wouldn't want to tax the bandwidth again by getting them. And there's a contest where I think you win something (a "loyat," whatever that is) if you can understand what the site's trying to say. There's supposed to be an offsite page about Another Story 2, but it 404s.

As I said, the site is young, so it may become a good site in the future, but someone needs to grab the wheel now and stop it from hurtling off the cliff into the abyss of unreadability. One Good Thing it has is that the authour seems to have a nice attitude, if a little bubbly, so maybe she'll keep at it..

Neptune

Splash page....Needs much improvement. The page says it's being worked on so that's good to hear. What's not a good thing to hear is the midi in the background. I suggest the author changes that so visitors will be happy.

Main page-Again with background music. A lot of people don't like hearing music when visiting a site. Just a note on that if you are building a site. Not much is here to choose from. Some of the links don't even work.

Layout-Not really any layout here. Links written in pink which is blinding. I suggest a darker color-can't really go wrong with black with a white background.

Content-Not much. A few things to download but nothing worthy I'm affraid. Profiles is nothing either. Only Sailor Moon is done and I'm confused as to why the profile is that of the Anime and the author chose PGSM Usagi/Moon for pictures. And again there's a midi playing in the background. I have learned from past experiences not to have midis-or other music playing unless you have it in some sort of radio type configuation.

Suggestions to author-I read that your moving things over to where you have 250MB of more space. That's good to hear so here are some pointers that may help you. Don't use midis or any other music files for background music. Many people don't like it and it will decrease your hit count.

Also try a simple layout. There are many sites online that can teach you how to do a frame type layout. If you can't then I suggest using what you have now but use different text. The color you have now is too bright and is hard to read. Also more content will help your site. Meaning more media or information. A good site will have these.

Overall Opinion-well this site needs much improvement but with a little work the author can make this site even better and worth visiting.

Pluto

Breakdown of site 15/100

Welcome and site Identity 1
- Pale pink text on a white background really doesn't work. Blasting odd music is really annoying AND not good practice.

Navigation 2
- Again, pale text on a white background screams out bad practice, not to mention highly annoying and a waste of time. Not to mention the text is so tiny it's almost impossible to read, had I wanted to.

Content of Interest 2
- None whatsoever. 2 videos and a clip aren't exactly much on a website, and a pathetic RPG...well, that pretty much speaks for itself. If you're going to have a website on something, it's usually a good idea to have an idea of what you want to have to hook the visitors in, but as far as I can see, there is nothing at all here that's worth looking at. Except maybe a way out...

Advertising and sponsorship 0
- none (except the usual Geocities adverts)

Self-promotion 2
- A rather sad contest promoting your own SM-type character. Erm, if you want to have contests that people want to join, you gotta offer something better, and make it worth peoples' while to join.

Filler 3
- Too much stuff that isn't really SM related. A chat thing, a poll etc. aren't really that exciting, especially when impossible to read/see.

White-space 3
- There is a good balance of sorts between images, text and white space but the faintness of the text makes it next to impossible to read.

Other 2
- The biggest problem I can see here is lack of proper organisation or content, as well as the HUGE problem of the text colour and size. It doesn't make the visitor want to stay to try and read an impossibly faint/small text and frankly, the lack of content turns one off right away as well. A disappointment all around. The images aren't even changed from their original state. That is just sloppy work.