TheCandyman
Technical User
I'm working on a contacted website design. Any suggestions or comments?
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Website Suggestions
- Thread starter TheCandyman
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Your server may be down - I'm getting no response at the moment
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If you want the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first.
'If we're supposed to work in Hex, why have we only got A fingers?'
Drive a Steam Roller
Steam Engine Prints
Get a better server? 
Non-contactable for me too.
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<honk>*:O)</honk>
Tyres: Mine's a pint of the black stuff.
Mike: You can't drink a pint of Bovril.
Non-contactable for me too.
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Tyres: Mine's a pint of the black stuff.
Mike: You can't drink a pint of Bovril.
traingamer
Programmer
I can load the page, but not completely. Your server seems to be having major issues.
Greg
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. Kierkegaard
Greg
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. Kierkegaard
I'm not sure what these other people are running into (maybe their computers are democratic
Anyway I can see it just fine and everything loads.
I'll give you the advice that these kind folks here gave me when I started checking my website to make sure it works good. First run it through it gives you all the good suggestions on what is an error and what are warnings...
The only thing I saw (and i am by no means a website guru) is that the picture that is loading on the top loads everytime with every page and seems to take up some time... Not exactly sure how you have this all setup as for some reason the site won't allow me to view the page source.
Are you using CSS Style Sheets?
The only thing that caught my eye as displeasing was the picture page. (I have problems with this too that I am trying to work out...)
Just my two cents...
Tom C
Anyway I can see it just fine and everything loads.
I'll give you the advice that these kind folks here gave me when I started checking my website to make sure it works good. First run it through it gives you all the good suggestions on what is an error and what are warnings...
The only thing I saw (and i am by no means a website guru) is that the picture that is loading on the top loads everytime with every page and seems to take up some time... Not exactly sure how you have this all setup as for some reason the site won't allow me to view the page source.
Are you using CSS Style Sheets?
The only thing that caught my eye as displeasing was the picture page. (I have problems with this too that I am trying to work out...)
Just my two cents...
Tom C
Yeah it's back up now.
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Tek-Tips Forums is Member Supported. Click Here to donate
<honk>*:O)</honk>
Tyres: Mine's a pint of the black stuff.
Mike: You can't drink a pint of Bovril.
--
Tek-Tips Forums is Member Supported. Click Here to donate
<honk>*:O)</honk>
Tyres: Mine's a pint of the black stuff.
Mike: You can't drink a pint of Bovril.
traingamer
Programmer
Many of the parts of your site are blocked by my employer - it thinks (probably correctly) that hopto dot org is a source of spyware.
Try hosting your backgrounds on a relible host or on the site itself.
Greg
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. Kierkegaard
Try hosting your backgrounds on a relible host or on the site itself.
Greg
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. Kierkegaard
Server down again?
___________________________________________________________
If you want the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first.
'If we're supposed to work in Hex, why have we only got A fingers?'
Drive a Steam Roller
Steam Engine Prints
___________________________________________________________
If you want the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first.
'If we're supposed to work in Hex, why have we only got A fingers?'
Drive a Steam Roller
Steam Engine Prints
Can I get "is the server down" for a $100, Alex?
//Jeopardy reference...
//wonders if anyone would have gotten that if I did not say it
_____________________________
Just Imagine.
//Jeopardy reference...
//wonders if anyone would have gotten that if I did not say it
_____________________________
Just Imagine.
- Thread starter
- #10
TheCandyman
Technical User
Sorry for the slow reply. I don't think i have every gotten this many replys on a thread, I'll need the server to hang a little more
tjcusick - I use Firefox with the HTML Tidy add-on which shows the html code is clean, but still a good suggestion to use that link. I also changed the expire time to a day, so it shouldn't have to download the images each time(i think).
traingamer - try it again, it should load now without the temp workaround you were seeing.
GUJUm0deL - Your correct! What category would you like to choose now?
tjcusick - I use Firefox with the HTML Tidy add-on which shows the html code is clean, but still a good suggestion to use that link. I also changed the expire time to a day, so it shouldn't have to download the images each time(i think).
traingamer - try it again, it should load now without the temp workaround you were seeing.
GUJUm0deL - Your correct! What category would you like to choose now?
Server now OK, but seems quite intermittent.
Is she an undertaker? I ask because it all looks very dark and gloomy. The background picture is probably too big (around 66K) to avoid people clicking off the site if they are on dial-up.
Home page - you need to review use of commas in the first paragraph.
The funny little picture gallery is quite bizarre, as the thumbnails give little idea about the full picture, and since the whole image is downloaded in any case there seems to be little point in the clips. Best-case dial-up will take around a minute to show the gallery page.
___________________________________________________________
If you want the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first.
'If we're supposed to work in Hex, why have we only got A fingers?'
Drive a Steam Roller
Steam Engine Prints
- Thread starter
- #12
TheCandyman
Technical User
Johnwm - I was thinking of ditching the small thumbnail gallery and just list the pictures they requested. I have worried about the size of the images so I'll have to see if i can compress them smaller but still keep them clear. Great suggestions!
Seems to me a pretty nice effort for a fairly simple, straightforward site - nothing much "wrong" with it as such, althought the image thumnail "slider-out" does seem to have images that are slightly wider than the page which looks a bit iffy =).
Perhaps, in a future version, or if you had more time, it might be an idea to have things like her manifesto, when and where she is appearing/able to be met and her blog/campaign diary - ie to give people more of a reason to bookmark and return rather than just go once?
Perhaps, in a future version, or if you had more time, it might be an idea to have things like her manifesto, when and where she is appearing/able to be met and her blog/campaign diary - ie to give people more of a reason to bookmark and return rather than just go once?
Site loaded (yeay!)
My feedback:
[ol]
[li]Nice color schema and easy to use navigation menu[/li]
[li]I'd look to replacing the image with another more cheerful and brighter picture. The current image gives a gloomy eerie feel[/li]
[li]In the pictures section, when you expand the image it goes outside the layout. Maybe you can use a CSS based image gallery viewer. It would load the image on top of the page using pure CSS (no popup window or anything)[/li]
[li]I'd much rather use a contact form as opposed to losting the e-mail. You open yourself open to spam. Besides, this approach the user to remember the e-mail, then open their mail app (outlook, hotmail, gmail, etc) and send the mail.[/li]
[li]For the "I want to help" section, click the submit button and got an error: Cannot run the FrontPage Server Extensions on this page: "[/li]
[/ol]
Hope this helps.
_____________________________
Just Imagine.
My feedback:
[ol]
[li]Nice color schema and easy to use navigation menu[/li]
[li]I'd look to replacing the image with another more cheerful and brighter picture. The current image gives a gloomy eerie feel[/li]
[li]In the pictures section, when you expand the image it goes outside the layout. Maybe you can use a CSS based image gallery viewer. It would load the image on top of the page using pure CSS (no popup window or anything)[/li]
[li]I'd much rather use a contact form as opposed to losting the e-mail. You open yourself open to spam. Besides, this approach the user to remember the e-mail, then open their mail app (outlook, hotmail, gmail, etc) and send the mail.[/li]
[li]For the "I want to help" section, click the submit button and got an error: Cannot run the FrontPage Server Extensions on this page: "[/li]
[/ol]
Hope this helps.
_____________________________
Just Imagine.
To me, and I'm definitely no expert, it seems the site loads slowly for such a simple site, and I am connecting from work over at least a T1 line - not exactly sure what we have, but I do know it ain't on our end. ![[wink]](/data/assets/smilies/wink.gif "[wink] [wink]")
For that, you could try a different web host, possibly, if you have the time.
Another idea to speed it up is to compress the images to smaller sizes, so that things will load faster. Even if you've got separate images for the buttons and such. I know when I built our church website, the button images were slowing down loading times a little, so I compressed the images. If you don't have Adobe Photoshop to use, you can also use Google's Picassa 2. I use it all the time to shrink images from my digital camera - it's real simple and strait forward, and I've not noticed any problems with image quality. I have used another program in the past (freeware) that DID cause image degradation in compressing it.
On the image gallery, if this is a live site, I would make sure to not have "text text text text..." under pictures. It's best to just remove it if you don't know what to put - just put spaces if you have to. Again, on the gallery page, make those images smaller!
![[smile]](/data/assets/smilies/smile.gif "[smile] [smile]")
--
"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me
For that, you could try a different web host, possibly, if you have the time.Another idea to speed it up is to compress the images to smaller sizes, so that things will load faster. Even if you've got separate images for the buttons and such. I know when I built our church website, the button images were slowing down loading times a little, so I compressed the images. If you don't have Adobe Photoshop to use, you can also use Google's Picassa 2. I use it all the time to shrink images from my digital camera - it's real simple and strait forward, and I've not noticed any problems with image quality. I have used another program in the past (freeware) that DID cause image degradation in compressing it.
On the image gallery, if this is a live site, I would make sure to not have "text text text text..." under pictures. It's best to just remove it if you don't know what to put - just put spaces if you have to. Again, on the gallery page, make those images smaller!
--
"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me
Oh, on the main picture looking a little dark/gloomy, might I suggest seeing if the candidate has a brighter image. I think that it would take a lot of work to make that one much brighter without creating sort of a halo effect around her face/head/hair. Perhaps she has a picture where the lighting was better managed when taken?
--
"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me
--
"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me
I think the other guys have picked up the (few) technical issues (when the site's working, that is). I'll add a few random impressions...
The URL is a bit clunky - electbruschi.com or susanbruschi.com (if available) would be more catchy, and could be re-used in the future for other campaigns.
This bit on the front page:
The "Convention acceptance speech" would look better if it was grouped into paragraphs, rather than having each sentence (or part sentence) on its own line.
The News page would look better if you had a snippet from each article, with a link to the whole thing.
I think the pictures are OK size-wise, but they're all rather formal and posed. A more varied collection of her out and about, doing whatever a selectthingie does would be better, if possible.
Manifesto/blog/campaign schedule would all be good ideas. An area for press releases (assuming she's going to issue some) might also be a good idea.
I realise that many of the above might be outside your power to change, but I thought I'd give you some suggestions anyway.
-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd
The URL is a bit clunky - electbruschi.com or susanbruschi.com (if available) would be more catchy, and could be re-used in the future for other campaigns.
This bit on the front page:
makes it sound like she was the only person on the committee, filling all those posts simultaneously. There must be a better way to get the message across. (Incidentally, wouldn't you have tenure as a selectman, or as one of the selectmen? Being "a selectmen" sounds ungrammatical - but maybe it's right)
The "Convention acceptance speech" would look better if it was grouped into paragraphs, rather than having each sentence (or part sentence) on its own line.
The News page would look better if you had a snippet from each article, with a link to the whole thing.
I think the pictures are OK size-wise, but they're all rather formal and posed. A more varied collection of her out and about, doing whatever a selectthingie does would be better, if possible.
Manifesto/blog/campaign schedule would all be good ideas. An area for press releases (assuming she's going to issue some) might also be a good idea.
I realise that many of the above might be outside your power to change, but I thought I'd give you some suggestions anyway.
-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd
- Thread starter
- #18
TheCandyman
Technical User
I do appreciate all suggestions!
I have requested a better header image and am still waiting on that. I agree it's still a bit dark, and that's after a lot of photoshop work on it.
I did suggest a shorter URL as i think the current might be a little long for most people to easily remember. The client wanted that and only that, so we went with it.
The image gallery does say "text text.." I have asked for this as well and am waiting for content. The site is live but has not been published or printed anywhere so I'm not to worried about it. Good suggestion on some variety of poses though!
I like the idea of hiding the emails and using a form for contact. I started working on that change.
I sent a suggestion about using a blog so we'll see what they say.
Again, i do appreciate all the suggestions. After working on a project so long it's alway nice to see a fresh view.
I have requested a better header image and am still waiting on that. I agree it's still a bit dark, and that's after a lot of photoshop work on it.
I did suggest a shorter URL as i think the current might be a little long for most people to easily remember. The client wanted that and only that, so we went with it.
The image gallery does say "text text.." I have asked for this as well and am waiting for content. The site is live but has not been published or printed anywhere so I'm not to worried about it. Good suggestion on some variety of poses though!
I like the idea of hiding the emails and using a form for contact. I started working on that change.
I sent a suggestion about using a blog so we'll see what they say.
Again, i do appreciate all the suggestions. After working on a project so long it's alway nice to see a fresh view.
Can't you just replace the "text text" in the mean time with spaces? That way if it HAS to have text in that portion, the computer shouldn't care if it's a space or a "t", but the average passer by won't be laughing at how silly it seems.
I wouldn't think that a person running for political office would want something like that on their campaign site.
--
"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me
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TheCandyman
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