Pluto

Breakdown of site 45/100

Welcome and site Identity 4
- The splash page was all right, a bit...different, but all right. The main welcome page looks a bit cluttered with....things. It's not really as ordered as it could be, and I've seen this same organisation for some time now. It's kind of...boring. It does look kind of nice but still, it's not orderly as it could be. What's up with the 2003 Fan fiction awards thingie? It's 2005 already.

Navigation 4
- A cluttered looking image map around a nice picture (which really should be blended into the background of the page). There are so many ways this could be improved, such as having div layers rather than tables, and the image blended into the background of the page rather than stuck in the middle. It all adds to the clutter of the page.

Content of Interest 5
- There looks to be a lot of interesting stuff, but the pages all lack continuity and that spinning Sailor Moon logo at the bottom of the pages makes me feel ill after a while. I can't even look at it full on right now. Having light coloured text on a light background makes it near impossible to see the different links (Multimedia Japanese mp3s page for example) and the pictures should really be blended. As it is, they stick out and the cut off edges look really...amateur.

There is a neat profile page, done with corresponding hearts and symbols etc. for each of the senshi, the other characters and the family characters etc. Tis rather a shame that again, the page is completely inconsistent with the rest of the site, as are they all. Consistency is the way to go, it's good practice, and just plain looks better.

Tiled backgrounds just don't work. It looks very amateur, like a Geocities site, and the fonts just don't do anything for me either. Get something classy, honey, not cheesy. Remember, the background isn't meant to overshadow the content. It's there to complement it.

Please learn to spell the villains' names right. Nephlyte? Please, that is the badly dubbed/fansubbed name and NOT his real name. His name is Nephrite. And Malachite is spelled wrong as well. As is Jadeite. Please, please, spell them properly. In the quiz, the blossom is the spelled wrong as well. I can't spell it properly either without looking at it but still, it again, makes your site look amateur with the misspellings.

An interesting cosplay gallery, fan fiction archive, and fan art pages. These are all pretty nice, but again the continuity is not there.

Advertising and sponsorship 4
- A few well known affiliates with animated buttons. The animations all clash (to me) but whatever works. Ideally these should be on an individual page, like the Sitey page, or the links page. The links page, on closer inspection is so badly done, it's amazing anyone can find anything. The background totally overshadows the content, which is haphazardly presented and all over the place. The text links should be at the top, the buttons and banners in corresponding size gradients from small to large under the text links, rather than just put wherever.

Self-promotion 6
- Plenty of self-promotion going on, with fan fiction awards (even if it's out of date), a forum and an archive.

Filler 3
- A lot of interesting content, but a lot of filler content as well which kind of kills the site. Poorly done organisation and site design doesn't help either.

White-space 3
- Not much use of white-space on the site at all. It's all cluttered up with badly organised information with inconsistent layout and badly done graphics. Not very easy on the eyes.

Other 2
- Problem with the site constantly going up and down. The server is very slow. Continuity was generally lacking throughout the entire site and the character names being misspelled didn't help. The links are badly targeted. Ideally they should open in their own windows to enable the user to continue browsing the main site. It doesn't encourage the visitor to come back to the site as it is now. The links directory is absolutely appalling. The links are so small as to be invisible. All around poorly done.

Saturn

Alrighty, now that I can actually view this site, I can review it, but before I do, I must highly suggest to the author to look into a new host. This is the second time we have tried to review this site to be fair to the person that submitted it, and both times, the site has gone down before we could review it.

It isn't like the many Geocities sites that we see where the bandwidth exceeds hourly, but rather it is just going down as a whole with no reason as to why. This does not make for a good website, and I hope this website is worth it, but looking at the splash page I have to wonder....

This splash page looks like somebody ATTEMPTED something, but just didn't quite get there. We have all see the artbook image of Hotaru and ChibiUsa with the umbrellas, but this person though it would look great if they put them back to back and such, which is fine.... except the umbrellas do NOT line up with each other at the bottom and I tink the author overlooked this. Also the edges of this image are very rough and the original image that they cut this from to begin with seems to not have been scanned very well as there are some slight white streaks in Hotaru's dress. (If you are going to use images for a site's design, stick with high quality, they will give you a much better result.)

On top of all of this, they went with one of the stock tile backgrounds that you can find on almost any free host that is supposed to look like rain I guess, but it really just looks like a blue tiled background to me. This person also has the page requirements and I am confused as to why Netscape is listed, yet it is marked out. That is rather pointless to put if the site isn't supported in Netscape. However I feel that if you are going to make a site, you should TRY to have it supported in most browsers, and as the only one listed here is IE, I have to wonder about this person's skills, or lack there of.

Alright, so I am done with the splash and I am now viewing the main page, and it has a badly cut image in the center with an image map in it, plain colored background, and falling snowflakes on the page. This does not look like this is going to be a happy review...

OOOOOO I can see this person doesn't have too much confidence in themself as they have installed an "anti right click script" which is pretty much pointless. Wow, we just had a whole conversation about this the other day, but frankly, it isn't fair to call somebody a thief if they are copying your update to post it here, so lemme paste it here as I know how to get around these pathetic scripts.

"There are only two rules here: [1] no copying, [2] no direct linking, because I'd like to stay original and online."

This is a direct quote from the frong page. Well from looking at the image map, there isn't anything here that is truly original at all. It is your generic categories. What is so original? So far, nothing! So what is this person afraid of being stolen? Considering they most likely stole there stuff from other sites throughout the years. I remember when 5 years online was a real accomplishment, but in the SM world, 5 years ago was back in 2000 when there were thousands of sites online that this person could have taken their stuff from. If you can't tell, I don't expect to really find anything truly original here, and I am pretty sure I will find the same images here that I find on all the veterans sites that were jacked from all the OLD veteren sites that have long since moved on to better things.

Moving on to the first section, which is SO surprising.... can you guess what it is? No!! It isn't images!!! I swear it! *clicks the "images" link*

OOOOOK.. how this site ever stayed online for five years is beyond me, and I am pretty sure that it hasn't. If it has, it most likely wasn't at this address as I have never heard of this site until recently. But lemme explain why this site is bad.

I clicked the first link and was immediately taken to a new page with no back link, and it isn't targeted to a seperate page. Rather it opens in the same browser window with a badly cut image on the left of the Sailorstar versions of the Outers. (For those that call it the bastardized "Eternal" form, it is truly known as the "Sailorstar" form, not "Eternal". "Eternal" was a name that was given to it by fans because it resembled Eternal Sailor Moon's costume.) There are also a bunch of links on the right proudly pronouncing how many images are here. Frankly I doubt that this person bought all the merchandise and spent the time scanning this. I doubt they took time to sit here and make screen captures, but rather just did the average and scavenged their images from all over the internet from sites that say "Please do not take my pictures as I scanned them all myself", and "Please do not put these on your site as they are mine", but this person seems to have taken them anyway.... How nice of them.

Wow! I'm so shocked... I was right. The same images I have seen everywhere else, that are NOT unique to this site at all. Nice job there, and you tell people in your script "Stop! Thief!" Can we say hypocrite? Oh did I mention that all of this opens in the same window again? This time there is the courtesy of a back link, but a badly done one at that. It is the North American SM logo that is spinning, except you can see tht this logo is VERY badly cut, so it looks really grainy.... even while spinning. Needless to say that if I look at this much longer I am going to throw up my lunch, and it might actually match the color of this VERY badly tiled background. Going back.

The multimedia section is a joke. This person openly asks others to host her files as they obviously can't be bothered to host their own. This includes WHOLE episodes! Does anybody see a problem with this? I do.

I am finding it hard to review this page because of the fact that almost all of it is stolen from one place or another as NOTHING is unique in the SM world these days as everybody has stolen all there is to steal. But on top of it, every page opens in the same window with a different badly tiled background. Usually it also has a badly chopped image as well, so I am not going to continue on through those. I am going to trudge through the slop that is the rest of this page and hope that I don't end up clinically braindead from viewing it.

The one thing I do find interesting and humiliating for this site is that they openly have Naoko Takeuchi's address on their site. They fail to let people know that she doesn't speak English (though if you ask Cindra, she would swear that she speaks it secretly and only did so to Cindra *snicker*). They also don't let people know that most of anything that they might try to translate on Babelfish will come off as insulting. This is a HUGE blunder to me and frankly it shows the stupidity of this web author.

I clicked the "Fun" category, which is not to be confused with "Fun Stuff", and I see that this person must be desperate for company as they have taken it upon themself to have a message board AND a chat. Redundant? No, not at all :P

I am now laughing my ass completely off here. I clicked the "For You" link, which is just sad, but this person has a "Free Graphics" category, which cracks me up to no end. Why anybody would want these bad snippets and faded images I will never know. If you want free graphics for your SM website and you want GOOD ones, go to Lycentia, not to this garbage bin of a site. This person can't even figure out how to make a site that looks good, but they are offering graphics... bad graphics at that.... that cracks me up to no end.

I can't really say much for this site except that it is a true mess. I will be promptly signing the guestbook and running away screaming from this mess. Five years.... yeah.... and I am bigfoot... well maybe I am, you never know ^_^;

But as I promised, I will be working toward giving some advice. The best advice I can give to this site is to scrap what is here, and start over. Stick with a layout instead of randomly changing pages stacked upon pages. Kill the script for right clicking. As it stands, I know that I could get anything on your page if I wanted to, so it isn't going to do you any good for those people that truly want it, or know what they are doing. You also need to get some consistancy in your site. As it stands everything is all over the place and it doesn't do your site ANY justice. You have a good start, but kill the part about wanting to be "unique". You aren't. You are just another SM site on the web, and all your content can easily be found on any number of other sites.

Uranus

Happily back after our extended absense, I can dive right in to another review. Sailor Moon's Wicked Cool Site (I'll be the judge of that) has a splash page with one of those weird lists of requirements or suggestions each seperated by a |. I point this out only because one of them is a crossed out "Netscape." Does this mean that the site doesn't work in the Netscape browser? If so, it's kind of a mean way to say it. Ah, well, I'm an Opera-user, so I'm in neutral territory on this one. Let's go inside.

The homepage has some freaky animations of snowflakes falling, which is annoying on many levels. First, it's covering up the page and it's probably one of the reasons Netscape browsers don't work here, and second, it's reminding me that we're in the dead of winter and I'll probably have to shovel again soon. Also, I think it's worth pointing out that every one of the snowflakes is exaclty like all the others. The main navigation tool is a Princess Serenity pic in the center of the screen, plus there's some links and polls below. A warning if you take the polls: pop-ups abound.

Now, if the dadgummed snowflakes will get out of the way, we'll check out the image archive. A big problem with the subpages is that the home link is a rapidly spinning gif of the North American Sailor Moon logo. It's seizure-inducing. I check out the animated picture gallery and things slow. . .down. . . The twinkling star background probably has something to do with that. There are probably some good pics here, but I'll never know, since it would take forever to see them. But here's one thing I like: there's a whole separate section for transparent pictures. This is beneficial because often it's impossible to tell from thumbnails which are good pics to use for icons and such.

We move on to the info section. Thank goodness. It's been weeks since I've read senshi profiles. I might have forgotten some info. The good news is they're written profiles instead of dollbox stats. The bad news is they're NA-centric (although they mention the Japanese version). Some of them aren't up at all, and some are on an off-site Geocities location which doesn't work for exceeded bandwidth. All of them that are here are hard to read because the backgrounds for these pages are not background pictures. And two nitpicks: It's spelled Artemis, not Artemus; and if you're going to abbreviate the word "Japanese" use "jp," not "jap."

Most of the rest of the site is in the same vein. It's not overly offensive, but by no means Wicked Cool. However, not much work would be needed to make this a very good site. The materials are here, they just need to be channelled correctly. I actually think it might be better if the site were NA-only instead of trying to mix in the original. If the webmistress wants to keep the Sailor Stars pictures, that's one thing, but the constant "Bunny aka Serena aka Usagi" should go. Get better background pictures and tone up the "fun" image more than trying to be an informative site. This would be a great place to kick of your shoes and relax then.

Neptune

Splash page-Cute Manga image of Hotaru and ChibiUsa. Also has it's specs which is good to know. Only real flaw is the image itself. Maybe have it so you can't tell it was cut out-feathered down the middle.

Layout-Well it's still loading-took a few seconds. The snowflaks bother me as it interfers with the site. The site is put around the image map. I suggest having it the other way around. All the information on the sides can be put into it's own little catagory OR if the author wishes to keep it on the main page to have it on the news/updates within a frame set up or an iframe set up. The author did put a 'home' button on each page but it does take away the "easy" option of just clicking on a link on the same page (I know that was confusing...I meant that if the site was in the style of frames or table with the image map on the side then it would be easy to navigate.)

Background-The color is fine it's the falling snowflakes I am having a problem with. It makes the text hard to read since the flakes are falling all over the place. Also each link has a different background. I really liked the solid color of the main page (minus snowflakes) so I think the author should of stuck with that color through out the site.

Content-Site has a lot of content ranging in media, images, info, and fan stuff. When I clicked on the multi link I have here a different background-and no flakes. The image used for the background doesn't repeat but I think seeing the girls twice on each side can be fixed. I must say that the media section is FULL of episodes, music, midis, lyrics and other stuff.

Navigation-This goes with Layout-well the bottom of it. I suggest having either a frame (or iframe) or table style layout with the image map on the side. It just makes it easier for the visitors without having to click on the home button or the back button.

Blinding factor-Nothing here makes me go blind or dizzy. The text used on the pages is a little light depending on the background used. I can still read it without highlighting so that is a plus.

Overall Opinion-Well the site does offer tons of media but I know the author can improve by doing little things to the site. The site has potential to becoming a top notch site if things were done differntly like mentioned above.