Please review my renovated site

	Home Register Search Help Login

Sponsors

Hosting from $3.99 per month!

Shopping Cart Software
Ecommerce software integrated into Frontpage, Dreamweaver and Golive templates. No monthly fees and available in ASP and PHP versions. dd

Website Templates
We also have a wide selection of Dreamweaver, Expression Web and Frontpage templates as well as webmaster tools and CSS layouts.

Frontpage website templates
Creative Website Templates for FrontPage, Dreamweaver, Flash, SwishMax

Search Forums

Recent Posts

Todays Posts
Most Active posts
Posts since last visit
My Recent Posts
Mark posts read

Please review my renovated site

View related threads: (in this forum | in all forums)

Logged in as: Guest

Users viewing this topic: none

Printable Version

All Forums >> Web Development >> Site Critiques >> Please review my renovated site

Page: [1]


Starhugger Posts: 538 Joined: 4/12/2005 Status: offline	Please review my renovated site - 5/19/2005 1:03:53 I already have a website up, but have been working on a new appearance and trying to improve the navigation and such. I think I'm ready to roll it out! (crossing fingers) It has taken soooo much longer to do than I thought! Ain't it the way... I'm especially interested to find out if the layout looks wonky on your machine/browser/resolution/etc. (especially anyone on a MAC, please!) Feedback on the aesthetics, navigation, etc. are most welcome. I have AdSense dispursed throughout, although I find that in this test location it only shows the first of two or three that I might have on the page. However, any comments about the colours of the ads with the page's colours (or just the page colours on their own) are also welcome. I'm aiming for a light, bright, cheerful, "interesting" look. Here's the "new and improved" site: http://www.evolvingdoor.ca/testonly/ And if you're curious about comparing it to the old one... http://www.evolvingdoor.ca/ Thanks in advance! Starhugger


Tailslide Posts: 6364 Joined: 5/10/2005 From: Out here on the raggedy edge Status: offline	RE: Please review my renovated site - 5/19/2005 3:19:17 Now you know what I'm going to say don't you. You need a valid doc type. You appear to be using XHTML (which is good) but if you don't tell the browser that you're doing that then it takes a guess and may well get it wrong as the "default" that browsers often try for is HTML 4.01. Read this article for more on the topic http://www.alistapart.com/articles/doctype/ That aside. Most of your pages have the content centered, but a couple of them have the content shifted over to the left. I'd fix the doc type problem first and then try to fix this. On one page I found, the navigation had disappeared - you might want to check that it appears on every page. Download speed: you need to get your pages optimised as they're taking between 38 and 45 seconds to download for a 56kbps modem - some of those header images are 50k. Google ads: If you're going to have these then you should probably put them in the same place on each page and give them the same "look" on each page. My personal preference on your site would be to have them at the bottom of the content rather than competing with it on the side. Colours etc: it's bright and colourful which is suitable for the subject matter. I personally don't like italics, I find them hard to read. I also am not fond (sorry) of the curvy What's New - it looks like Word Art. A project for the future perhaps would be to find graphics to fit the subject matter but are also stylistically linked. I'm still not sure what some of the graphics actually are! The zodiac circular charts are very good and clear. Loads better than the old site - much much easier to read - not much to fix either, just simple stuff. _____________________________ Little Blue Plane Web Design \| Land Rover project (in reply to Starhugger)


Nicole Posts: 2854 Joined: 9/15/2004 From: Nambucca / Kempsey, Australia Status: offline	RE: Please review my renovated site - 5/19/2005 5:05:52 Hi Star, I agree with everything that tailslide has said, it's nice and clean, neat, tidy, colourful and easy to read and navigate. There are, however, some things which i think could improve your site. Firstly, have you tried not putting a border around those tables? I see tables like that on so many sites and i begin to wonder whether the designers experimented with them at all and just happened to all decide on the same look. I don't believe it will mess up the neatness of the site if you removed them, it may be worth a try. The other thing is that there seemed to be a lot of space at the top of the opening page. It seems to me that you're repeating an image that's already there by having 2 logos so close to each other. If you somehow incorporated "The Evolving Door....to a new perspective" in the banner logo and moved the slogan "Astrology for the spirit, heart and mind" to just underneath the banner, you'd see everything move up the page by about 1/3 of the screen which would bring more of your content to "above the fold". Anyway, nice site! Nicole _____________________________ (in reply to Starhugger)

Starhugger

Posts: 538
Joined: 4/12/2005
Status: offline

RE: Please review my renovated site - 5/19/2005 23:38:48

quote:

ORIGINAL: Tailslide

Now you know what I'm going to say don't you.

LOL You know, I had no idea about DOCTYPE until I was looking around the forums after I posted that, and found your messages about it. (honest!)

quote:

You need a valid doc type. You appear to be using XHTML (which is good) but if you don't tell the browser that you're doing that then it takes a guess and may well get it wrong as the "default" that browsers often try for is HTML 4.01. Read this article for more on the topic http://www.alistapart.com/articles/doctype/

Sigh... It seems you have to be an expert in all versions of HTML to know which version you're using and which of the 60,000 statement variations to use. :::wilt::: I don't *suppose* there's a webpage around somewhere that could analyze my code and tell me what version I am using or which DOCTYPE statement to use...? I don't know the difference between the different versions, and most of what I'm finding on this online is a bit over my head. I really appreciate the advice about this, but I'm not sure where to go with it. I just use various commands I've picked up here and there. I'm probably using a mishmash of different features -- just what the browsers love, I'm sure. LOL

Thanks for your help with this!

quote:

That aside. Most of your pages have the content centered, but a couple of them have the content shifted over to the left. I'd fix the doc type problem first and then try to fix this. On one page I found, the navigation had disappeared - you might want to check that it appears on every page.

I was doing some updating when you were probably looking around, so that might have been it. If you see it again, please let me know which page.

Thanks for your other comments too. I appreciate the comment about on-topic graphics, although I want to avoid a stereotyped astrological look. There's more than enough of that out there. Maybe I've gone a bit over the line with some.

I'll keep it in mind.

Starhugger

(in reply to Tailslide)

Starhugger

Posts: 538
Joined: 4/12/2005
Status: offline

RE: Please review my renovated site - 5/19/2005 23:47:00

quote:

ORIGINAL: Nicoleoz

Firstly, have you tried not putting a border around those tables? I see tables like that on so many sites and i begin to wonder whether the designers experimented with them at all and just happened to all decide on the same look. I don't believe it will mess up the neatness of the site if you removed them, it may be worth a try.

Thanks for the feedback Nicole. I'm experimenting with a lighter table border. I prefer to have something to delineate certain areas and make them stand apart. So far I'm having problems with it. I've posted about this in the Beginner Forum.

http://www.frontpagewebmaster.com/m-268749/tm.htm

quote:

The other thing is that there seemed to be a lot of space at the top of the opening page. It seems to me that you're repeating an image that's already there by having 2 logos so close to each other. If you somehow incorporated "The Evolving Door....to a new perspective" in the banner logo...

Yes, I've wondered about that too, so I've done what you suggested. I have more savvy about web graphics now, than when I started the site, so I was able to get the logo looking good. It looked icky before when I had tried.

Thanks for your feedback! Glad you like it.

Starhugger

(in reply to Nicole)


Tailslide Posts: 6364 Joined: 5/10/2005 From: Out here on the raggedy edge Status: offline	RE: Please review my renovated site - 5/20/2005 5:47:38 quote: ORIGINAL: Starhugger Sigh... It seems you have to be an expert in all versions of HTML to know which version you're using and which of the 60,000 statement variations to use. :::wilt::: I don't suppose there's a webpage around somewhere that could analyze my code and tell me what version I am using or which DOCTYPE statement to use...? XHTML is really just a more precise way of coding than HTML - where HTML will have an opening tag - <p> for instance, then the paragraph of text; then another <p> and another paragraph of text. XHTML will have <p> Paragraph of Text </p> <p>Paragraph of text</p>. So basically it cuts down on the possibility of browsers misunderstanding what you want - you're effectively telling the browser "do this here, now stop doing that." Also all tags are lowercase. It's really a case of deciding which one you want to use and then coding to it. HTML 4.01 Transitional is the baseline - lowest common denominator - chicken in a basket version of code (there is actually a lower one but it's rarely used now). There are also other versions of 4.01 including a Strict flavour. I know you've put this doc type on your site but I believe that isn't the correct one for you as you're code is closer to XHTML than HTML - i.e. you're using closing tags etc - HTML interprets closing tags oddly so you might cause yourself problems. XHTML 1.0 comes in several flavours too. Ideally you want to be using Strict, completely separating off your content and styling with CSS - It'd be a fair bit of work for your site - so I'd recommend looking into doing this in the future rather than immediately as you've obviously already done a lot of work. Along with moving away from Tables towards CSS... XHTML 1.0 Tranisitional is a half-way house between the old HTML and the very precise XHTML strict. It has the structure of Strict but still allows styling such as you currently have on your site. The correct doc type for this would be as follows: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> Then have this underneath it: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en"> This bit is instead of your current <html> tag. It specifies which language you're using (I'm assuming English!). Once you've got those in you can start trying to get it validated at the W3C - don't be disappointed if it fails first time - it's completely normal. Work through the failures that it lists for your page one by one. Revalidate after fixing each one because sometimes if you fix a particular problem that'll clear up everything else on the page! First time I started validating sites it took ages - then it gets faster - now about 80% of the time it validates first time. I'll tell you now there's nothing quite like getting that blue and white "Valid" page for the first time! If you get stuck on something then post it here and we can sort it out. Useful links: alistapart.com Bookmark this site and refer to it often. validator.w3.org Your home for the next few days! freewebmasterhelp.com There are lots of tutorials about XHTML - this is just one I found this morning. htmldog.com For when you want to move on a bit. _____________________________ Little Blue Plane Web Design \| Land Rover project (in reply to Starhugger)


Starhugger Posts: 538 Joined: 4/12/2005 Status: offline	RE: Please review my renovated site - 5/20/2005 17:44:04 Tailslide, thanks for explaining that! You have a very clear way of explaining things. I'll mess around with that. The problem is that many of the end tags are missing, even though some are in there. I expect it's partly because the site was originally created in FP02 and was recently transplanted into FP03, and then a lot of changes were made once it got there. I made some changes in response to some of the suggestions I got here, so if anyone wants to check it out again, please do. Nicole, take a look at the tables, which I finally got working in CSS. Do you think that looks better? (please say yes... LOL) I agree that a simpler table design gives a cleaner look. Thanks again! Starhugger (in reply to Tailslide)


Nicole Posts: 2854 Joined: 9/15/2004 From: Nambucca / Kempsey, Australia Status: offline	RE: Please review my renovated site - 5/20/2005 18:13:31 Hi Star, Yes I like those tables better, but i'm wondering why some of the content is in a smaller font size than the other? i.e. the text under the headings Horoscopes for new moons and astrology articles appears smaller? I also wondered why a couple of the cell headings didn't stretch the full width of the cell before wrapping? i.e. The Low-Down on the Far-Out and New/Full Moon Horoscopes and not The Low-Down on the Far-Out and New/Full Moon Horoscopes and The Low Down on the Far-Out and not The Low Down on the Far-Out. Nicole _____________________________ (in reply to Starhugger)

Starhugger

Posts: 538
Joined: 4/12/2005
Status: offline

RE: Please review my renovated site - 5/20/2005 18:55:26

quote:

ORIGINAL: Nicoleoz

Hi Star,

Yes I like those tables better, but i'm wondering why some of the content is in a smaller font size than the other? i.e. the text under the headings Horoscopes for new moons and astrology articles appears smaller?

??? Oh, you mean the description as opposed to the headings/links? Saving on space, mostly.

All the descriptions should be in 8pt, while the headings are in 10pt. If you don't see that consistently, please let me know which ones seem wonky.

quote:

I also wondered why a couple of the cell headings didn't stretch the full width of the cell before wrapping?

Oh, that's just me being an*l.

I thought they looked better with a line break in those places, if they have to break across a line at all (and I couldn't figure out a way to avoid it).

Thanks again.

Starhugger

(in reply to Nicole)


Nicole Posts: 2854 Joined: 9/15/2004 From: Nambucca / Kempsey, Australia Status: offline	RE: Please review my renovated site - 5/20/2005 19:19:41 re: the line break in the headings. I can understand what you've said, but also feel that you're going to get all sorts of different line breaks at 800x600 anyway, and maybe none al screen res. above 1024x768. The text that I see small than the rest using IE 6 at 1024x768 is: Find out how the current New and Full Moon cycle will affect your Sun Sign! Blue Moons, Taurus and Abundance, The Sun-Moon Cycles, the Language of Astrology, Chiron, Pluto, Uranus, and more! (look up unfamiliar words) All the other text on the opening page is the same size. Nicole p.s. can I really be considered to be born on the cusp of Gemini and Cancer if i was born on June 23? I mean the cut off dates are 21/22 aren't they? I'm also a VERY TYPICAL Cancer from the things i've read. _____________________________ (in reply to Starhugger)

Starhugger

Posts: 538
Joined: 4/12/2005
Status: offline

RE: Please review my renovated site - 5/21/2005 1:40:27

quote:

re: the line break in the headings. I can understand what you've said, but also feel that you're going to get all sorts of different line breaks at 800x600 anyway, and maybe none al screen res. above 1024x768.

Good point! You sold me. I've seen sites like that and they look icky.

quote:

The text that I see small than the rest using IE 6 at 1024x768 is... {snip}

Okay now, that's weird. I took a look at the code and all the lines that should have been small were the ones that drew from the CSS. The ones that actually were displaying as small were ones that still had old "font" code left in (on your screen, that is; on mine it all looks fine). I'm using a slightly higher resolution (1152 x 864) but that shouldn't affect the font size like that, I wouldn't think.

Here's a sample of the (tidied up) HTML and the CSS class. Is it possible that I'm using a font size designation that is incompatible with your browser? Which one are you using?

<p class="ed08bodyital">Check out what's going on in the skies today,
and how you can get the most out of it. Astrological events...as they happen!</p>

.ed08bodyital {
font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;
font-size: 8pt;
font-style: italic;
margin-top:5pt;
margin-bottom:10pt
}

I went through the whole page and made all the text talk to the CSS, took out the residual code, and made sure all the </p>'s were in their proper places. Would you mind taking a look again if you get the chance, Nicole? Thanks!

quote:

p.s. can I really be considered to be born on the cusp of Gemini and Cancer if i was born on June 23? I mean the cut off dates are 21/22 aren't they? I'm also a VERY TYPICAL Cancer from the things i've read.

LOL You may have other planets or points in Cancer. The change-dates vary every year, so I can't tell just from the date. E-me off-list (via my profile) with your birth year, place and time (if you know it) and I'll do a quick check.

Starhugger

(in reply to Nicole)


Nicole Posts: 2854 Joined: 9/15/2004 From: Nambucca / Kempsey, Australia Status: offline	RE: Please review my renovated site - 5/21/2005 2:03:17 The fonts are all the same size now. Looks good! Nicole _____________________________ (in reply to Starhugger)


Starhugger Posts: 538 Joined: 4/12/2005 Status: offline	RE: Please review my renovated site - 5/21/2005 3:10:55 quote: ORIGINAL: Nicoleoz The fonts are all the same size now. Looks good! Nicole Thanks! Does that mean the descriptions are all in 10pt on your screen then? They're supposed to be smaller (size "1") than the headers (size "2"). Sorry to keep asking you, but you're the only one who has mentioned the inconsistencies. I need you to be my "eyes." LOL What browser are you using? Starhugger (in reply to Nicole)


Nicole Posts: 2854 Joined: 9/15/2004 From: Nambucca / Kempsey, Australia Status: offline	RE: Please review my renovated site - 5/21/2005 3:32:15 Yes the descrpitions are smaller than the headings, everything looks fine now! Nicole _____________________________ (in reply to Starhugger)


Starhugger Posts: 538 Joined: 4/12/2005 Status: offline	RE: Please review my renovated site - 5/21/2005 4:08:59 Thanks Nicole! I really appreciate your feedback and help. Starhugger (in reply to Nicole)


Starhugger Posts: 538 Joined: 4/12/2005 Status: offline	RE: Please review my renovated site - 7/9/2005 13:54:40 I came back to this thread to delete the URL test directory I was using at the time, because it no longer exists (I implemented the changes). But for some reason I can't edit my own post. Am I looking right at it but not seeing it? Or does the ability to edit a post time out after a certain amount of time? Or could one of the mods please remove the URL that uses the testonly folder? Thanks. Starhugger (in reply to Starhugger)