Cat

Hi.

I've just published my new look website. It's the first time I've done this kind of thing and am quite nervous that it's all gone horribly wrong! I've already spotted a problem with the left-hand navigation stretching on the pages which have more content in internet explorer and firefox (it looked fine in dreamweaver, contribute and safari...). Can you guys just give me a general review of the site, and if you come across any problems or can think of ways to fix them, that would be great!

Website is www.rhapsodystringquartet.co.uk


Thanks in advance,

Cat

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Catriona Mackay
www.rhapsodystringquartet.co.uk

mani

The website is looking good, i like the layout, and the text looks very appealing, and seems to have good amount of content, keep up the good work

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Bisje

Hi Cat,

Don't panic , in general the site looks good. The colors are nice, the text is easy to read and the most important of all : you have valuable content.

There are a couple of points where you should work on :

1) Try to work with external CSS files. It will make your code easier to read and you will able to deploy changes to the whole site (not per page) more quickly.
2) You are working with div's and tables...why ? Try experiment with divs and positioning. Forget about tables for the layout. For your problem with the navigation menu--->put your menu in a different div.

Keep working on it. And...if it's the first time...it IS a good begin. If you want to see where I started and want to have a laugh, take a look at this :

http://users.skynet.be/sky78329/ (that's my first )

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jdegerstrom

Hi, Cat,

Your website is excellent! I viewed your old design with the yellow background in the "Wayback Machine", and it was nice a year ago, too.

Your home page has zero code errors. That is rare for a beginner, so congrats!

Nervous? Why? You've done very well, especially if this is all new. You pass what I call my "5 Second Rule" which applies to first impressions of websites or printed material. Visitors will decide to either stay or exit your site (or toss your business card) within 5 seconds of viewing your material.

The display issues could be easily overcome, and future edits made simpler by using external CSS as suggested by Bisje. In addition the site could be converted to XHTML easily, also. Both would help overcome current browser compatibility so it displays well in all major browsers including future versions.

If interested, I will volunteer to convert your home page to XHTML with external CSS and no tables, and as long as you can do copy and paste, you could do the rest of your site. The streamlined code will provide added benefits for SE indexing. Less code allows crawlers to view your real content without being bogged down in bloated code.

In addition, I can provide code for "cloaking" your email address so it is visible to visitors but cannot be harvested by spam bots. Similar to SE crawlers, spam bots crawl the net looking for valid email addresses to compile and sell to spammers which explains much of the unsolicted junk email many site owners are forced to endure.

Taking your site to the next level could be done offline over weeks or months until it is complete and ready for launch. Your current site is a winner, so there's no rush. PM me if interested. By "volunteer", I mean no charge.

Cheers,

Jim

Bisje

Your offer is great Jim, gave you some green for that

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darkstar_tfd

Hi,

Your website looks great , the layout is nice and the colors are great. One thing I think you should do is to leave a bit of space between the large image in the center and the text in the right. You could also try to make the text on the footer a bit more easy to read , but that part is not that important. Is important tough that you have a good content.

jumpenjuhosaphat

I have to side with Bisje on this. You are an incredibly helpful individual, you haven't ceased to amaze me yet. I would add to your reputation, only I have given you reputation recently and I'm only allowed to give any one person rep once in 10 times. But I must say, you deserve it.

So anyone reading this post, please add to jdegerstrom's reputation, he certainly deserves it.

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Bagi Zoltán

I did it about five hours ago He is really valuable for this community

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Cat

Hi,
Just wanted to say a quick public thank-you to Jim for his generous offer - I have taken him up on it (I would be a fool not to!), and look forward to sharing the results with you at some point in the future. Can I please join with Bisje, jumpenjuhosaphat and Bagi Zoltán in encouraging anyone who reads this thread to give jdegerstrom some reputation for this! He really is a great guy.
Thanks to all of you for the great comments, it's really great to get the feedback on my first venture into web-design!
Cat

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Catriona Mackay
www.rhapsodystringquartet.co.uk

jdegerstrom

Hi, Again,

Thank you all for the wonderful comments. I promised Cat a 24-48 hour turnaround, so to keep everyone up to date the revised design was emailed to her moments ago, including a few bonus items like a custom favicon and revised home page graphic. To save typing, here's the email message:

I have emailed a zip file including the complete code for the XHTML with CSS for your home page, a template for DreamWeaver, the external CSS for text control, and javascript files for cloaking your email, plus the revised home page photo and favicon. Once extracted you should be able to view this locally without uploading to the server.

I expect you may need advice for implementing certain text effects or image layouts eventually. Work with this and explore the new look, or email me with any questions. The page is like a picture frame with the top heading, left navigation, and footer unchanged on each page. As you view the code for the unique content area, the simplicity may be apparent and you may be willing to do edits in NotePad.

I took some minor content liberties. I optimized the home page for search engines including the revised title, additional meta code, and the addition of heading"H" tags (H1, H2, H3). I revised the opening text content, also. Besides the title and H tags, your first paragraph offers opportunity to score ranking points with Google and the other majors. This is not the place for "welcome to our website" (which is an unlikely search by potential clients). It is to your advantage to match text content in the first paragraph to what surfers would put in a SE search box. The left and footer navigation each have an added link for your email, so you may be quickly contacted from any page on your site.

I've tested this with all major browsers and each displays the content almost identically. Placement of key elements like the top header and left navigation will be consistent on each page you do. You won't have the stretching problem mentioned in a thread at iWebtool. forums. Next, I compared your existing site to the XHTML version as viewed on a cell phone screen, and there is a visible improvement. Finally, the code validates with zero errors at W3C.

As you become comfortable with the code, you may want to consider removing the DreamWeaver "instance editable" comments. This is extraneous to the function of the page and could have negative impact being crawled by search engines and considered "real" content.

= = = End of Email Sent = = =

As explained to Cat in a PM, I am selective in offering advice because of my current workload, but don't be shy about asking. As time permits I'm willing to help others, but I have a 106 page site redesign that needs attention and 4 other website projects in work, so please be patient if I'm slow to answer.

Cheers,

Jim

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Piezo Tanzi

Really good-looking site.

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