I will be reviewing Aris’ website called “The Quaint Nook” — a place for whimsy and wonder.
At first look-through of the website, my thoughts align with the theme Aris has chosen for the website — whimsical, and light-hearted. I like the multicoloured backgrounds and the different shades of purple and blue used. It provides almost an ethereal background to the content. The soul of the content is precise as well; it showcases Aris’ arts and interests well, and provide sufficient information about each of the things she like. The Home Page layout is interesting and eye-catching, because you are able to hover over the pictures on the page and they tell you what the content behind the photo is. I think that’s really interesting and would love to use that for my site as well! Very inspiring.
The title bar includes the Homepage, an Arts page, Book Making page, and an About page, respectively.
The website contains a collection of manga reviews that are short and concise. The reviews are detailed and informative, providing a brief summary of the manga and the author’s opinion on the story, characters, art style, and overall rating. The author also includes relevant images from the manga to illustrate their points. The reviews seem to be a useful resource for manga fans looking for new titles to read. I do believe they are a bit short in length, which can be both a good and a bad thing. It can be a good thing as readers don’t have to read a ton to figure out whether they should read the manga or not, but it also means that they don’t have a lot of information about the book if they want to know more before delving into a book.
The Book Making page includes the book projects Aris has done in the past – the one on the site right now is the Coptic Stitch Binding blogpost. I thought the post was well-written and was beautifully illustrated with real photos Aris took for the project. This gives the post a lot of authenticity, which makes the reader want to attempt this project as well!
By this point I am finding that the website is a little slow to load. It perhaps needs the JetPack plugin on the backend of the website.
The My Arts page includes the illustrations Aris has made. They include a gif, a woman’s drawing, and a character design testing. This shows Aris’ passions, and the reader is sucked into the world of art and drawing. The written content is again on the shorter side, but perhaps that is the goal of the site – to be more illustrative and artsy than be filled with words and articles.
The site layout is simple and easy to navigate. The main page features a menu at the top with categories such as Home, About, Manga Reviews, etc. Each category is clearly labeled, making it easy for users to find what they’re looking for. The main content of the site is presented in a blog-style format, with the most recent posts displayed at the top. Each post is displayed with an image, title, and summary, making it easy for users to browse through the content. The site also includes a search bar, which allows users to search for specific titles or topics. A suggestion for improvement would be to include a more prominent link to the main page on each post to make it easier for users to navigate to other categories of the site. Another thing would be adding an accessibility plugin to the site, which I know Aris is working on as I write this. I also believe changing the font a bit and making it look slightly more professional would help with readability, as sometimes a more casual font can be harder to read.
Overall, I am a fan of Aris’ site and I cannot wait to see what it looks like by the end of the semester!
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