Website Feedback

Discussion in 'Web Development & Web Hosting' started by mistareno, Sep 5, 2006.

  1. mistareno

    mistareno New Member

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    www.renaultnet.org

    G'day,

    I a bit of a novice when it comes to the whole website thing and I am about to redo the site I do for my car club with a CSS.

    It's the only site I've ever done although I have a habit of changing and refining things all the time so the website has evolved over the last 2 years into something that looks and functions ok, even if the code is a mess (in the usual FP style)

    I am seeking advice on how the site can be improved upon so that the improvements can be incorporated into the new design.

    Thanks,

    Richard Vandermeer

    www.renaultnet.org
     
  2. Bluerinse
    Honorary Member

    Bluerinse Exabyte Poster

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    It looks good to me Richard, except for the couple of pages under construction which always irritates me.

    I am no expert, just a dabbler like your good self :biggrin

    Anyone else got any proper developer advice?
     
    Certifications: C&G Electronics - MCSA (W2K) MCSE (W2K)
  3. Casablanca

    Casablanca Nibble Poster

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    Looks great well done!
     
    Certifications: N+ MCP 210 215 216
    WIP: MCP 218
  4. afusco86

    afusco86 Bit Poster

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    I didnt have much time to look at it.
    I'm not a designer, but sure I'm a busy user who knows what he wants...

    Well I like the general look but here's a few things you might want to take care of:

    - it's a 3 column liquid layout nd there's nothing easier to realize in CSS. In addition to be more powerful, you'll realize that it makes it easier to make changes the the whole website, as you could work only on a single CSS sheet for the design.

    - i think you should seriously think about implementing usability&accessibility (use H tags for the headers etc. it's just too much to decribe in here). The site seems to work well in various browsers but this is becoming of a huge concern lately. I'm sure that very soon disbled people will be able to sue designers for this.

    - i cant see the need of having a News desk and What's new panels. I'd fuse them together.

    - i think that the Attention panel, makes user feel a bit uncomfortable. I'd take it away, and make it appear only where sections are not available.

    - the Calendar section might be made as a panel in the home page, it takes a bit of scripting, but it's well worth it.

    - same for the gallery. Users just can't open a new browser window to navigate a gallery (i think in your site they're even 2). Indeed, in this case you don't even need scripting. Css alone can surprise you for that.

    - i like the color scheme very much. If you do switch to CSS, you'll see you'll have plenty of things to add, like shades and stuff, not necessarily time consuming.

    Have a look athttp://www.cssdrive.com and http://www.csszengarden.com/

    There are loads of wesites, but start from there and you'll be fine.

    Well that's it for now, need to ruuuun!!!

    ciao
     
    WIP: A+
  5. Stoney

    Stoney Megabyte Poster

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    Hey misterano,

    The site itself looks really good and has a nice professional feel too it.

    Areas for improvement would include;

    Accessability for visually impaired users (as mentioned already).

    On some pages you use the same font style and icon for the heading of the section as you do for the sub-headings (eg: photo gallery for one). This can be confusing because it makes the heading appear to be a link when actually it is just a heading.

    I would seriously consider looking into using xhtml and CSS to seperate out the page structure and the formatting. I realise you're not a professional web designer but there are huge benefits to be had by using these.

    Firstly you can use CSS to produce table-less layouts which removes all those table, td, tr tags that make up the bulk of your code. Your code becomes cleaner and easier to read (ideal for maintenance) and also the layout is controlled by the CSS page. This reduces the size of your html page and also the CSS page is a cached (only loaded once). This reduces your bandwidth considerably and saves you money.

    With CSS you can update your whole site from one page, eg: You want to change the text-body font across the whole site, you only need access the CSS page, edit it, and the whole site updates.

    Using xhtml also (in some ways) encourages you to develop your site with usabilty and accessability in mind and a lot of the donkey work is done in writing the xhtml and CSS. You will also find that xhtml will work universally in all browsers, although you may need to find work arounds at times.

    Aside from that, the site looks great and it is mainly the behind the scenes stuff that needs working on. I appreciate you may not have the time (or even want) to look into CSS and xhtml but those are areas that I would work on.

    Paul
     
    Certifications: 25 + 50 metre front crawl
    WIP: MCSA - Exam 70-270
  6. mistareno

    mistareno New Member

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    Do you mean have a Calendar section (with the next events for example) on the home page and the same with the Gallery (latest gallery)? I assume that's what you mean?

    As stated in my original post I am about to convert to CSS and am doing a bit of reading and research at the moment.

    I was gonna wait till MS Expression lobbed as hopefully the interface will be familiar.

    I'm sure there are better programs out there but I simply don't have the time to learn how to walk again.

    Thanks for the feedback guys.
     
  7. afusco86

    afusco86 Bit Poster

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    sorry i was in a rush..
    well for the calendar, ye you could have a small panel, a very simple calendar (grid) and for example when you hover your mouse onto each day, you get a pop up with the short description of the event and maybe a link to the whole description.. actually you don't need scripting for this.. it's exactly the same concept as the gallery.. or you can have it in its own page.. there are just about infinite options with CSS, it's all up to your imagination... and the cool thing is that it's all so easy and once you done it, apporting changes is a matter of minutes..

    the MS application seems to be a good piece of software, but it'll take long to get a decent version i think.. i mite be wrong but after fiascos like Frontpage MS will have to work really hard to get deigners' trust... why not give a try to Style Master Pro or similar? it's just impressively potent and easy to use.. and obviously the code you get is totally valid


    good luck with it and careful.. it's addictive:oops:
     
    WIP: A+

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