The Soap Opera That Is Life

Style
Your choice not to use a stock diaryland template is a welcome relief. However, adding a personal touch to the default template provided by the template designers would have supplied extra excitement to your site. As it is, the look is clean and applied consistently throughout and the contrast between text and background is highly visible. Every page is accessible within two clicks from any other page, a good navigational device. Your guestbook doesn't follow the same look and feel as the rest of the site, but as I'm unsure how much control you have over that design, you won't be docked heavily for it.

Substance
Everything goes horribly pear-shaped beyond the design and layout. Your grammar and spelling are atrocious and sometimes hard to follow. For example, in your August 30 post, the first line reads: Today we went to the movies to see my bosses daughter. It took a moment to register that you went to see the movie "My Boss's Daughter". At first I thought you went to the cinemaplex to meet the daughter of the person for whom you work. You capitalize when you shouldn't, don't when you should. You also seem to have confused the usage of the comma and period. Paragraphs are your friends; you may want to acquaint yourself with them.

Eventually, I was able to decipher your cryptic syntax only to discover the bland uninsightfulness that is your content. While the topic itself is not devoid of interest, it reads like a historical account of your day. What is lacking are your thoughts about what was happening. For readers who were not there with you, a simple recollection of events is a hollow experience. What were your thoughts as the events were unfolding? How did they affect you? If you do nothing else with your site, work on the content. Anyone tenacious enough to suffer your disregard for English grammar will appreciate the extra effort.

You also have two broken links in your global navigation: links and rings. Consider fixing or removing them. Broken links are a sign of shoddy design and lead visitors to believe you don't update your site often. You do seem to update regularly, perhaps you can take a moment to update your template too [see beautify for free templates.--JL] .

Suggestions
To recap the previous four paragraphs, check your spelling and grammar, put more thought into your content, fix your broken navigational links. Also, while there is technically nothing wrong with it, consider aligning the entries on your archive page. It's a little hard to read through the list when everything is centered. Perhaps a center-aligned div (about 250 pixels wide) with left-aligned content would aid readability greatly.

C+
If reading it weren't a chore, I'd consider returning.

Jon