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aeveling
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work-in-progress website - please criticise - 1/11/2008 5:15:19
I'm at the bottom of the web building learning curve but I'm now sufficiently satisfied with my work-in-progress website to put it on the net. At the moment it's just an online portfolio that I can direct potential customers to but I would eventually like to optimize it for search engines. I can't do any HTML and ideally I'd like to stay that way as I'd like to keep the building process simple if possible.
I'd like to introduce more curves into the graphics as the site looks very rectangular and boring. Is it possible to round off corners in FP 2003 on tables, frames etc or do I need something like CSS. Or do I need to create and import a graphic from something like photoshop?
Many thanks, Andrew.
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aeveling
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RE: work-in-progress website - please criticise - 1/11/2008 5:17:03
oops, forgot the link http://waterdesign.co.uk
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Tailslide
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RE: work-in-progress website - please criticise - 1/11/2008 5:41:16
Hi There
Well you know - it's simple, clean and does the job - some of the fonts are very large but it makes a change from me having to squint at the screen. Oh but those photos are lovely.... mmmmm 
Personally I wouldn't have used frames as it means that people will have trouble bookmarking a page within your site - plus they're just unnecessary for the site. But there you go, that's me - fussy!
You mention adding curves. Ok so this is my personal opinion on this one - I'd avoid them.
Don't take this the wrong way as it's not meant to be insulting - but if you're not reasonably good at web design/graphics then I find that adding in curves and other similar elements can actually make a site look really amateur.
My general advice to people who aren't designers and have no interest in getting into it a bit more is - keep it simple.
Honestly - what you've got looks clean and simple, as though it's supposed to be clean and simple rather than because it's all you can manage at the moment - if you see what I mean!! If you start adding curves in all over the place then it can get technically difficult and that's when it starts going wrong, in particular cross-browser.
To get these things working cross-browser will take effort and therefore time (which I'm guessing you don't have a lot of!). I believe FrontPage does "do" curves or shapes - but they only work in IE to my knowledge and they're pretty ugly even there. You'd really want to do the curves in a graphics programme and then import them into either the markup or preferably into a stylesheet as background images. But again - more time to learn that!
(If you absolutely have to do the curve thing then make sure you download Firefox, Opera, plus probably Tredeosoft standalone older IE packages if you have IE7 - make sure as you go along that everything looks ok in these browsers)
Edit: just looking again at your site - I sort of expected that where it says "Consultancy, Design, Construction" on the main part of the page would be links taking me to more details about those services -- same goes for the services under the photo on the main page. Also - on your contact page, the contact details go a bit skew-wiff at 800px wide browser width - you might want to fiddle with that so that it's legible at that width.
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"My strategy is so simple an idiot could have devised it"
Little Blue Plane Web Design | Blood, Sweat & Rust - A Land Rover restoration project
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d a v e
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RE: work-in-progress website - please criticise - 1/11/2008 6:28:05
i would avoid using frames too! they're gits to bookmark or print the right bits and there's just not much point in them anymore.
"can't do any HTML and ideally I'd like to stay that way as I'd like to keep the building process simple if possible." :) you'll find that the less you know the more complicated things can be - if you don't know any basic html (never mind css) then how are you going to sort out any problems you encounter? if you want better seo then you need to use proper headings (like <h1> etc and then style them using some basic css. even using some basic css for simply setting page colours, font sizes and other simple elements will make things a lot easier in the long run instead of all those font tags ;)
also when you paste in text then do it into notepad first then take it out from there into FP otherwise you end up with double spaces where you don't need them like in "Eveling's twenty years"
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David Prescott
Gekko web design
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dpf
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RE: work-in-progress website - please criticise - 1/11/2008 6:39:42
quote:
I can't do any HTML and ideally I'd like to stay that way as I'd like to keep the building process simple if possible.
akin to saying I dont know how to calculate angles but I would like to build my own house.
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Dan
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dpf
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RE: work-in-progress website - please criticise - 1/11/2008 11:50:41
quote:
Isn't it me who normally nags?
always
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Dan
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Tailslide
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RE: work-in-progress website - please criticise - 1/11/2008 12:26:32
quote:
ORIGINAL: dpf
quote:
Isn't it me who normally nags?
always
..well alright then... now that we've got that straight!
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"My strategy is so simple an idiot could have devised it"
Little Blue Plane Web Design | Blood, Sweat & Rust - A Land Rover restoration project
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aeveling
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RE: work-in-progress website - please criticise - 1/11/2008 14:29:03
Thanks for the feedback everybody, I'm a little wiser now.
The website is primarily for potential clients who have been referred to us by my previous clients. They tend to be busy people and my feeling is they prefer big, bold and to the point with websites and advertising etc., hence the bias towards images.
I have sent the new website details to previous and potential clients and the feedback has been very good.
SEO is not a priority so, for now, I'll carry on learning and maybe get a pro to sort it out if I can't find the time to learn HTML.
Andrew.
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aeveling
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RE: work-in-progress website - please criticise - 1/12/2008 6:05:44
"SEO? Who mentioned SEO? SEO is entirely up to you, do it or not, your choice."
- Dave mentioned seo.
We are not a Limited Liability Company therefore our company details are business address and VAT number which I've added. Is there anything else I've missed?
Re: DDA - where can I find DDA info on building websites? can't see anything on their website.
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d a v e
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RE: work-in-progress website - please criticise - 1/12/2008 6:38:44
you started it "At the moment it's just an online portfolio that I can direct potential customers to but I would eventually like to optimize it for search engines." :)
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David Prescott
Gekko web design
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Tailslide
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RE: work-in-progress website - please criticise - 1/12/2008 6:42:47
quote:
ORIGINAL: aeveling
Re: DDA - where can I find DDA info on building websites? can't see anything on their website.
Here's some more information for you: http://www.out-law.com/page-330
In the same way that UK businesses have to ensure that they make reasonable adjustments to ensure that their physical premises are accessible to the disabled - the same goes for websites.
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"My strategy is so simple an idiot could have devised it"
Little Blue Plane Web Design | Blood, Sweat & Rust - A Land Rover restoration project
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designerNOTdev
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RE: work-in-progress website - please criticise - 1/19/2008 20:30:40
quote:
http://waterdesign.co.uk
Illl keep my comments to the aesthetic Andrew (as Im not a great advocate for the whole standards and accessability thing).
Basically your images are waaay to big for any dialup customers. Your main image though a little larger than 300px sq is almost 200k!!!!! and your thumbnails are 30k+ a piece. Very very heavy. Get to work in PS or get a copy of JpegCompressor and cut the size down dramatically.
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aeveling
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RE: work-in-progress website - please criticise - 1/21/2008 14:15:50
OK,
so far I've only been reducing the pixel size of the images.
Should I also be reducing the pixels per inch? At the moment they range from 250 - 300. What should they be before image quality suffers?
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pinkfluffybunny
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RE: work-in-progress website - please criticise - 1/29/2008 15:40:43
Ouch - the homepage takes 54 seconds to load at 56K.
Your image is 187496 kbs.
Your meta tags are well - missing
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-gb">
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 6.0">
<meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<title>Home</title>
there's no text to describe what the sites about on the home page. The home page is to get you indexed, uh oh.
this may help, I'm still adding to it..... http://www.netzonefl.com/OnlineWebMarketing.htm
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aeveling
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RE: work-in-progress website - please criticise - 1/30/2008 2:33:51
Thanks.
I've reduced the homepage image using photoshop's Save for web function.
It's gone from 187496 kbs to 27469 kbs with no noticeable loss of quality!!
There are 60 or so more images to fix this way. I'd better put the kettle on...
If I get the meta tags/descriptive text fixed could I just do the home page for now or should I get the whole site done?
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rallyn
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RE: work-in-progress website - please criticise - 4/7/2008 20:01:26
I am in school for internet application programming, so I am new at this, but..
I like the simplicity of the site. Some simple CSS could be used to add some styling elements of your site. Simple underlining or font color changes when you put your mouse over links would be great.
For your portfolio, there is a neat javascript framework called lightbox that would give more of a slideshow look to the images. Or there's smoothgallery which also may make looking at the images a little easier. It is nice that you have included many images to look at.
Some images on the services page may break up the text and make it easier to read.
Great work.
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