I am new! But can do Basic

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emtohio -> I am new! But can do Basic (2/23/2006 21:12:32)
So what do you think I can do to improve my site. The site does get 80,000 to 92,000 visitors a month. http://www.fieldmedics.com Don't be shy! Gove it to me. Dave

Rocket Boy -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (2/23/2006 22:11:52)
It looks like you are getting a good idea about layout but keeping working on it. Because there are no borders/backgrouns/design elements, it all looks a bit fragmented and 'thrown together'. Try and center it all a llittle bit more.

Mane -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (3/12/2006 21:38:08)
I agree. All those buttons at the top are a bit overwhelming and it takes a while to find the actual content further below.

emtohio -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (3/12/2006 22:33:53)
What do you mean by hard to find the content below? Thanks ' Dave

womble -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (3/13/2006 4:52:27)
Most of the page 'above the fold' is taken up by your nav buttons at the top and ads - your actual content doesn't start until just about the point at the bottom of the screen and you have to scroll down to see any real content. It'd be better if your actual content was more prominent on the page (i.e. in the viewable area without scrolling) to grab the viewer's attention.

Proprietor -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (3/14/2006 1:05:40)
This is a fairly picky point, but the portion of the home page which is visible without scrolling contains a whole whack of buttons that are all identical, which forces me to actually read the buttons the find any given button (for example, if I return fairly regularly to check job postings). In a similar vein, a bunch of identical buttons will tend to cause me to miss much of their content, hence many first-time visitors are likely to miss some of what you are offering, simply because they don't take the time to read each individual button. I also agree with womble about having to scroll down to see much of what you have to offer. You might try packing less into each page, but making more pages, by grouping some of the buttons you use at the top and giving each group a separate 'home' page, including one which is exclusively for the content you link to at the bottom. All in all, however, the site seemed to work fine, was well laid out and navigation was sufficiently logical that I had no problem finding anything I thought to look for. Not bad for an amateur...

emtohio -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (3/14/2006 10:37:25)
Thanks, I understand what you mean about the buttons. Adding more pages may be just as bad since I have almost 2000 already. I also have the Red Cross Contract. let me know what you think. www.nekyredcross.com Thanks, Dave

Proprietor -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (3/14/2006 12:08:23)
I didn't realize you already had almost 2000 pages... If you are aiming to generate a lot of casual traffic, your design has to be almost perfect, because a casual visitor will reach conclusions in a matter of seconds, based on what little he sees in that time. If, however, your primary concern is serving people who actually want some of what you're offering, I think your design is fine, since it is reasonably simple to find what you are offering, and quite simple for anyone returning (i.e. to review job postings, or continue reading a long article). The only suggestion I could make, in that instance, is to track the hits on individual pages, and perhaps bring the most popular pages 'closest to the front' so to speak, and/or give the links to them more prominent placing. With 2000 pages, it's a fairly safe bet that the vast majority of your visitors never see the vast majority of your pages. I'm guessing that you already did something like this when you originally designed the site, but real-world experience with customers is the key to improving that original design. Personally, I believe such continuous improvement in service is much, much more important than technical improvements in performance or purely aesthetic improvements such as new colour schemes. Unless, of course, you're just trying to generate casual traffic by feeding people eye candy... Good luck, Sir.

emtohio -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (3/14/2006 14:26:44)
well the traffic is growing each month. March 2006 I had over 111,000 and Feb 2006 was little over 90,000. The site is becoming popular with the EMS Community. To be honest I can not keep up with allt he requrest for e-mail, job posting, and directory. I wanted to go with DHTML with the menu bar but cant get the bar to stay in one place. And when I do its either in the middle or at the top. I have no idea how to put it into a pixle placement.

Proprietor -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (3/14/2006 17:09:50)
I'm new to managing a web-based business, and have a whole whack of questions I need answered. Most of the questions I have, I need to answer myself, but there's a bunch relating to managing a site with no staff or even support to speak of that I could really use help with. I don't have a great deal of time to learn, because I need to be spending that time earning. I need to learn what I need to learn to earn, and nothing else, right now. Does that describe the situation you're in?

Kitka -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (3/14/2006 19:51:39)
quote: I don't have a great deal of time to learn, because I need to be spending that time earning. For someone with so little time to spare, I wonder how you fitted in making so many wordy posts in the forums in a short space of time [;)] [:D]

Proprietor -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (3/14/2006 20:34:59)
If you'd really like to know, I've allocated a significant chunk of time to learning about web forums, which are new to me. So far, I've discovered that people tend to be even more cynical and mistrustful on line than they are in real life, but intelligent, helpful and even funny once you get past that. Anyway, I need to get back to learning; I have a long way to go, and a short time to get there (sung to the tune of "Smokey and the Bandit" theme song")...

DAK1220 -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (3/17/2006 9:34:21)
This may be excessively picky, but when I move my mouse over the top buttons, some of them change appearance, and some don't. I would tend to assume that this means somethings, but I'm guessing that it really doesn't. (If so, it isn't clear what). So maybe you could go through and either make all of them change, or none of them. Oh, just saw something else. One of the buttons says "EMS Oath" but the page title says "EMT Oath". (Sorry, I have a proofreading addiction that I can't overcome.)

DAK1220 -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (3/17/2006 10:01:36)
quote: ORIGINAL: caz No change for me in either FF or IE - apart from a faint white border which appears on click with all of them. Could be your browser settings? How? It does the same for me in both IE and Netscape 8.1.

emtohio -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (3/17/2006 10:17:30)
Yeah not sure why it is doing that. Thank for letting me know.

caz -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (3/17/2006 12:22:06)
Sorry both - I was looking at the wrong page. [:)]

emtohio -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (3/17/2006 12:40:11)
I think I fixed it

DAK1220 -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (3/17/2006 15:00:38)
quote: ORIGINAL: emtohio I think I fixed it Looks that way. None of the buttons change appearance now. What did you do to fix it? (In case I ever see the same situation.) DK

emtohio -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (3/17/2006 16:19:11)
I use a program called Alphabuttons. When I changed the looks and Color of the buttons I just saved over the existing buttons I had already saved. When I inserted them they just replaced the ones already saved by the name. The ones that were just changing were new ones. I guess it just somehow made itself into a mousover when I inserted the new buttons. This time I deleted all the saved buttons and then inserted the news ones. Dave

billoutfrontforum -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (4/1/2006 2:21:25)
I like the buttons. The only thing that had me bumfuzzled was that one page would have a blue theme and then another a brown theme, which sort of took my focus off of the content.

emtohio -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (4/1/2006 10:22:26)
I have close to 3000 pages and it is taking me a while to get to all of them

walrus -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (4/7/2006 18:31:35)
quote: I have close to 3000 pages and it is taking me a while to get to all of them 1. Use a database 2. Use external cascading style sheets You can then update all 3000 pages in 3 minutes.[8\|]

emtohio -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (4/8/2006 2:17:03)
wish I knew how.

walrus -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (4/8/2006 4:21:53)
quote: wish I knew how me too! [:D]

Proprietor -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (4/11/2006 0:19:12)
I thought the walrus was dead; guess I gotta get some new records... I have about 1000 pages, and growing, and CSS's sound like exactly the ticket, but, I'm not just an amateur when it comes to code, I suck, and I can't just get my friend Jennifer to do it for me, like in University... Do you think it would be worth my time to figure out CSS's, or would I be better off waiting till I have someone on staff to do it for me? How long does it take someone to learn the basics, and then apply them to a website with 1000 pages created from about 250 Word files, converted to HTML by the good folks at MS, through Word and FrontPage? Any advice you can offer would be much appreciated, Sir. Mark

jaybee -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (4/11/2006 5:31:45)
The other option if you don't have time to learn and need to be able to update a big site fast is to use a Content Management system. If you have a Unix host then I'd take a look at Joomla. It uses templates and has an admin panel so changing template colours is a doddle, free templates are available through the Joomla forums if you want something different and there are also loads of commercial templates around if you don't mind shelling out a few $. The other good thing about Joomla is, it's free.

walrus -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (4/11/2006 7:16:45)
quote: CSS's sound like exactly the ticket, but, I'm not just an amateur when it comes to code If you have FrontPage then you already have CSS. Pick a theme and you will see. It's not really code like Java it's just a list of formats that apply to all linked pages in one go. It is not something to be cautious about if you just want to change colours or fonts. It just becomes a little more tricky if you want to use it move layouts around. The example above of changing 3000 pages from brown to blue is a classic example of why CSS exists. The database thing however can be very tricky because pages will crash if you get something wrong. To use MS Access, I think you need to be on a windows server to display active server pages, but FrontPage will write all the code for you.

Proprietor -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (4/11/2006 19:13:23)
Thanks, JB I don't anticipate updating the look of the site often enough to make a content management system worthwhile, beyond the basic features built into FrontPage itself. Joomla does sound cheap and easy, however, like my first wife...

jaybee -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (4/11/2006 20:53:36)
quote: ORIGINAL: Proprietor Thanks, JB I don't anticipate updating the look of the site often enough to make a content management system worthwhile, beyond the basic features built into FrontPage itself. Joomla does sound cheap and easy, however, like my first wife... [sm=yikes.gif]

Proprietor -> RE: I am new! But can do Basic (4/13/2006 0:50:57)
Why, thank you, sir... I could just go ahead and try this myself, but you might know, which might save me risking another screw up of my site that will take hours to fix... I colour code the hyperlinks on my site according to the type of document they lead to (diagrams, spread sheets, text files, specific paragraphs, definitions or externally produced content). Given upwards of 5000 hyperlinks in the current version, and another 2000 or so to add before the actual site goes for final configuration and live testing, I'm not keen on redoing each link, one by one... If I apply a style sheet, can I format hyperlink colours with a 'find and replace' type function, so that I don't lose the colour coding that's already been done (in MS Word, originally)?

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