Website help

[Poster Of U]

Ladies and Gents,
I have been working on my website for a while and I have kinda stalled, can you give me some advice, what to leave alone, what to change. Maybe some cool sites that might give me some ideas. I have been doing the website in Frontpage so my knowledge on web design is kinda limited.
Thank you all for the help

www.PosterOfu.com (http://www.posterofu.com/)

[tim]

Quick thoughts, remember i'm not a graphic designer but I work in the internet area:
- Change the title of the page from "index". Ditto for "home" on 2nd page.
- I don't like the collage of tiny pictures on the front page much.
- Boring fonts on top of front page.
- Lists of invisible keywords count against you on search engines. Put them in meta tags instead.
- "Optimised for ..." isn't necessary.
- Left menu bar fonts are a bit hard to read.
- "Newly posted" list on front page should be links to the pic.
- Don't use popups (ie "click here before you buy prints"). I don't even read popups, I block them.
- Email addresses look best all lower case IMHO.
- "Photographs" list page is in a boring font, and the whole page is ugly. Maybe use thumbnails of images alongside the links.

Hope these help with ideas to make it better :)

[pdrow]

Hello,
I think you are a little wordy on your why you do this page. Honestly, I quit reading and had to go back to make myself get through it. Use bullet points - it makes it easier to see. Personally, I don't like how it opens a new window each time you click on a thumbnail. Also, please go up on your prices! I would hate for one of my clients to see your page and compare my prices. Are you just using the prices from the photo lab?
Good Luck with your site.
pam

[lancea]

Looks pretty good. I actually think the "splash" page which you get at the start is nice. It's the homepage that needs work to make it look professional. I'm no designer either (but have web project managment experience), but the homepage is something that forms an impression as it's the one that we all return to. I agree with the others about the fonts and the amount of text. Both the text and menu is difficult to read. You could also look at a more "refined" or subtle background. Perhaps just a lighter grey. Maybe it's just the font that makes the grey look bad here because it looks okay on the other "grey" pages.

Hope that doesn't sound too critical - it really is just the homepage that I don't like!

[Mernya]

I'm a web developer, so take my advice as being overkill and overly critical.

1. Get rid of the splash page. It offers you no benefit and can effectively kill search engine traffic (if you care). The invisible keywords will not only hurt your search engine placement, they will blacklist you. The 'optimized for' is a waste. The majority of users are on 1024 or bigger.
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm

2. Learn the basics of CSS. Looks like your editor is sticking all your styles inline and combining them with deprecated font tags. If you use a single CSS document that all the pages link to, then if you want to make changes to the site as a whole, you only change the CSS file.
3. Use the right tags for the job. If something is a header, it should be an <h1> tag or. Newly posted should be an <h2> tag.

4. Your display font on the left nav is a little hard to read. Size may help. Its use on the top is fine, but I can read the tagline very well. It doesn't look right to use that with a basic times font that way for everything else.

5. Your home page needs to have something of 'value' on it. Something visually arresting or a reason to come back.

6. Samples page is fine. Popups are fine, but since you are using frames, it would be appropriate to simply load them in the frame because your navigation is still there. Place border='0' in the <img> tag to remove the blue borders. You could also change their color or use CSS to manage their visual style. From a design standpoint, putting them on a black background makes them visually smaller. Personally, I'd consider dropping the frames.

7. Re: Page backgrounds, I'd be a little more consistant on color.

8. Metatag keywords don't do much for search engines aside from Inktomi. Some still use the meta description as the default text on results, but it really doesn't do anything for your ranking.

9. PosterOFu as you have on some of your material looks like Poster O' Fu because of current CamelCase conventions. It's one thing to offset it (in red) like you did in the title, but watch your typography elsewhere.

10. Contacts: Why are there 4? Who does what? Consider a mailer form, too.

11. Format your calendar.

12. Use the Title tag in the Head to appropriately name your page.

[Grimnar]

I recomend learning css as well, god damn that is one great tool to use.
And start look at hotscripts.com for predesigned webshops that you can use. Saves a lot of time, but then again you will need some tweaking.
Second, please leave Frontpage NOW, it will only make you learn less html/css. It makes to much useless code, and is a pain in the a** to edit later on.

[Mernya]

I agree with Grimnar, but maybe for the wrong reasons. I used Frontpage once or twice years ago and it sucked and everything Grimnar said is true, for then. I use Dreamweaver 2004 or do things in raw code whenever possible. However, I need to use Frontpage 2003 with our SharePoint Intranet and things have definitely changed for the better, so, a new version may not be too bad.

But... I like Dreamweaver best.

[Sathi]

I like the shadow of the photographer on the left hand menu bar. Fonts are a little hard to read in the menu though. Do yourself a favor and just learn html, it really is easy. Learn it from the ground up, and have a good handle on what is going on with youir site. Otherwise you will be learning it later sifting through trying to fix something.

[CyberPet]

I'm on a Mac (Mac OS X 10.3.9) using Camino (a Mozilla build) and the font is ugly (bold times). The buttons are hard to read against the dark background. Inconsistance with background colors... either you stick with black (which is hard to read, even with yellow, white or red text), inconsistance with text colors.

I like the font of the buttons, just need to tone down either the background or make the buttons brighter. An idea is to use a bright grey background on the main frame and keep the texts in one color and divide the sections with a line or something to break them off, instead of different colors.

It feels like you've build up a pretty good frame, but the inside of it needs more work. Use fonts that are easy to read (Times is not to recommend on black/dark backgrounds, hard to read) and work with contrasts.

[d'homme]

1. Get rid of the splash page. Don't overdue placing "photography" as a key word, itll hurt you more than anything.

2. Hate the page fade.

3. Title each page to what on that page.. so no "home."

4. Don't center whole sentences on a page.

5. I'd use tables instead of frames for the site.

6. I don't get the point of the cropping.htm page. Especially since the pics aren't clickable. Also, why do you need a "sample" page, if you've got pic on the site.

7. What's the purpose of posting a calendar. Suppose someone looks at it and thinks your tied up that day, but your aren't because the calendar hasnt been up dated. If its to show how busy you are, lose it. Remember, people that have money don't need to flash it.

8. Is "Photographs" and "Buy Photographs" the same page?

9. Testimonials? Did you cure somebody of something. Lose it.

10. Be sure to use relevant text. I only see Poster of U in text one time.

I started using FrontPage, use Dreamweaver Studio MX 2004 now.

[Poster Of U]

Thank you so much for all the imput, tonight when I get home from work I will get started with some of your suggestions and I will keep you all posted. When I have a little more time there are some questions I would like to address directly with some of your suggestion.

[PhotosGuy]

On the the cropping.htm page, I'd suggest that you show an original & the same pic with the crop border marked in a color like red so they can see the difference. Or maybe shoot a bit wider so you can crop in for the "full frame" print.

[Poster Of U]

Well I started with some of your suggestions, This is going to be the top frame, I am chaging from 3 to 2 frames. The texted menu with all have hotspots and will appear in the lower frame. More to come, if you have any suggestions on this part let me know.

Thanks a lot.

[Mernya]

Don't worry about making the top a frame. Use an include if at all possible. Depending on where your server is located, you likely have the capability to use PHP or even just SHTML. THat will let you make one file be the top part, and it gets included into the frame. If you change the one file, it will change through your site.Frames really screw up bookmarks and search engines.

Just checked. Your WSP is ipowerweb and yes, they do have PHP support.



instead of naming your files with a .htm, name them .php.
Have just the code to generate your header in a file. You basically just need the table and any script stuff. Call it header.php
On each page of the site where you want it included, type this:
<?php require_once('header.php'); ?>
Lather, Rinse, Repeat if you want to do a footer or other reused elements.
You don't need Home in the bottom. Convention says, make the logo or header graphic a link back home. However, if you still want stuff in a footer (copyright, contact, whatever), the include works great.
When it displays on the page, it will be fine. If you do this and need help, let me know.

[Poster Of U]

I am not so good on the wesite building crap, but from what your saying is I can Have on a page, and a 3X3 table and have the new title/menu bar in the top middle and then have each page open in the middle part of the table and the footer in the bottom. And most important when they change pages the title and footer will not reload it will remain. Speeding up the website and saving time. I mean that is why I use the frames to reduce load times.




Don't worry about making the top a frame. Use an include if at all possible. Depending on where your server is located, you likely have the capability to use PHP or even just SHTML. THat will let you make one file be the top part, and it gets included into the frame. If you change the one file, it will change through your site.Frames really screw up bookmarks and search engines.

Just checked. Your WSP is ipowerweb and yes, they do have PHP support.


instead of naming your files with a .htm, name them .php.
Have just the code to generate your header in a file. You basically just need the table and any script stuff. Call it header.php
On each page of the site where you want it included, type this:
<?php require_once('header.php'); ?>
Lather, Rinse, Repeat if you want to do a footer or other reused elements.
You don't need Home in the bottom. Convention says, make the logo or header graphic a link back home. However, if you still want stuff in a footer (copyright, contact, whatever), the include works great.
When it displays on the page, it will be fine. If you do this and need help, let me know.

[Mernya]

Not open in. .. per se.
What it does is it puts the page together from components. So no, the things do not remain like they do in a frame, they do refresh. However, most people have caching in their browser which stores the images and such. That will make it very fast and effectively seamless. Like frames, if you change an include (what a component is called), then you've changed all the pages.

What it gives you over frames is:
URLs that change, making bookmarks and stuff easier.
Better for search engines
There are other benefits, but those are the biggies.

Try it. If you don't like it, maybe it is appliable somewhere else. If not, no worries.

[Poster Of U]

Guys,
Thanks a lot for all the helpful, imput you all have been great. I have redone my website and uploaded it just now. I would like guys guys to give a once over for me if you don't mind.
Don't mind the fonts, still searching for the right one.
Then samples and photographs pages are are still going to pop ups, I still have not figured out how to get the to open in the same box they are in(any insight would be great) When I say box, the website is in a 1X3 table.
Any other ideas you guys can share is fair game.

www.PosterOFu.com (http://www.PosterOFu.com)

Thank you some much for the help.:)

James

[Poster Of U]

Think I solved the Samples problem