View Full Version : Head on Chopping Block :)
somersetbrad
11-8-02, 10:31 PM
OK Everybody I have been babied before so here goes
Just start yelling at me pulling my hair every mean thing you could say about this website....type critism....
I want to make it good for my community so any advise would be much appriciated :)
If I do not start crying after you guys critic this web site then someone was not doing their job :)
with out further delay.....
www.somersetohio.us
Brad,
Other than the use of frames (shudder) and one small code problem I found, the site is ok.
I'm not a big fan of frames, but for most of your pages they are working pretty good. I, personally, would not put the forum into the frameset though It makes me feel "cramped" having the forum locked into that frame. Also, there could be some users that would like to bookmark just the forum section for repeat visits, and in the frameset they can't do that. You might consider opening your forum into a new window so they could bookmark it seperately.
Your classifieds page has no closing </head> tag, nor does it have an opening <body> tag.
Just my "For What It's Worth"
somersetbrad
11-8-02, 11:04 PM
do you think I would be better off turning it into a PHP nuke site??
Rember my town needs it to be reallly user friendly :)
somersetbrad
11-8-02, 11:09 PM
Thanks JJ
if you do not mind me asking .. why do you not like frames??
alphadesk
11-8-02, 11:13 PM
Brad,
Let me add a few things and maybe we can make you cry :(
You may want to add border="0" to your image logo code to get rid of the broken blue line.
I am all American, but maybe one flag instead of so many. It takes up valuable limited space in the menu frame. Also maybe bring the font down one size and bold.
On the search page a couple of the links just take you to the Search website. I'd kick them from the list. Excite was one.
At some point your links started opening in its own browser without the menu frame. Might check that.
Are you sniffling yet ;)
somersetbrad
11-8-02, 11:16 PM
That is what I aM talking about !!!
Way to slap me around a bit Alphadesk :)
I think I even had a tear come to my eye on that one :)
What do you think about the PHP nuke template instead of the frames..??
;)
ahh. . someone that is prepared for the consequences.. I like that <EG> Take all w/a grain of salt.. mine is just one opinion ;)
First off.. layout, page balance & choice of information is good. definately a solid base here to work from. As you have that down pretty well.. I'll get nit-picky:
Good color choices in general.. blues & whites typically give a professional feel (which is why so many biz sites use 'em) Is 'professional' the feel you want for this site? (meaning business-ey). I personally would envision a more 'homey/comfortable' feel, shades of redish-browns & beige.. again.. that may just be me.
Why the frames? This not only causes problems with indexing in search engines, but also w/users that want to bookmark a page. Given the content of the site.. I'd HIGHLY suggest loosing the frames so your users can quickly get to the page(s) they want to view when they come back.
I would use a style sheet to set your font colors..and while I was at it.. change the font to arial,helvetica (easier read).
The photographs need some sort of border so they either 'pop' a bit from the page.. or blend in some. 20 seconds of editing on each will add a TON to your site ;)
In the main area of the page where you state what you are offering on this site.. add your links there also (your user is already there reading.. make it easy for them to wander around your site instead of looking over to the navigation and trying to find what they want).
The copyright font is WAY small.. I can barely read it on my computer...
I would HIGHLY suggest a contact us script instead of emails addy's on the pages (keep the spam bots at bay).
Font size on your news page is tiny.. easy on me.. hard on older eyes (as this is a community page.. you'll have many ages viewing).
On one of your read more pages, you may want to align="right" (or left) your hillary murdoch picture.. that way the text will flow to the side of it instead of creating the gap.
To your forums.. I'd suggest adding 'garage & yard sales', special events, etc vs. just the 'important info'.
Northern Local School District Link didn't work..
General comments:
again.. you've got a very solid base going for some very useful community pages. I'd look a little bit more into the 'feel' you want to give your users as right now it seems a bit sterile to me, lacking that feeling (for lack of a better word) to make me want to stay and come back often.
Cohesiveness: The changes in font sizes, font type, font color throughout the site. I'd suggest a linked style sheet to use on all pages for a nice clean transistion between areas. The areas that utilize cgi can have the style sheets added to them also (if you want to do this, feel free to PM me if you get to that point & can't figure out how).
Can't think of anything else, good start.. think your town is going to love 'em when they are finalized ;)
-L
well..seems I took a LONG time in my reply.. no one had said anything when I started <G>
And if we're going for tears.. are you crying yet?<G>
-L
somersetbrad
11-8-02, 11:38 PM
Dude. just reading all of that made me have to go blow my nose... sniff sniff...
Ok definatly on the CSS points I agree completly..(Just have not got around to learning how to make them just yet heheh)
Will work on that one.
as far as bigger fonts I run into the problem with people with smaller screens... tell me if I am in flaw here but I always assumed if they had trouble seeingthey would adjust thier monitors res to fix that.. I know I can not make everyone happy... do you think I am better off raising the font size...
and I keep hearing frames are bad hehhe but noone has explained why other than bookmarking and search engine index..
(This site I do not care about being indexed uber high)
bookmarking I would almost rather everyone come in on the same spot and navigate from there.. I have found it saves confusion..
I am still waiting to hear the oppinions on some of this Nuke PHP stuff.....
I am sniffling hehehe but not broken down in tears yethehee
Thanks for the Comments Laurey
both good and bad are much appreiciated...
FYI Alpha ... that is not my code making that border on logo hehhe that is my lack of remebering to change the background on an "AlphaTransparent" Gif (No Pun Intended) before exporting in Fireworks... pull the source for the top frame hehehe
alphadesk
11-8-02, 11:41 PM
What do you think about the PHP nuke template instead of the frames..??
PHP nuke may be a way to go, if you can give it your own feel and and look. It has many things that you seem to want built in.
Now the down side: unless you are a code cracker which I'm not you are pretty much locked in to what you see is what you get.
Upside: PHP nuke is "community" friendly and new modules for PHP nuke pop up all the time to add features.
Oh and Laurey always has a tissue with her if you need it.
somersetbrad
11-8-02, 11:49 PM
Alpha,
Thanks for the overview on PHP nuke..
I am thinking about trying it..
I have fixed the search engine thing you were talking about as well :)
Keep those thrashings comin guys.......
I know we have atleast one just straight up evil critic out there :)
here's a tissue for ya ;)
as far as bigger fonts I run into the problem with people with smaller screens... tell me if I am in flaw here but I always assumed if they had trouble seeingthey would adjust thier monitors res to fix that.. I know I can not make everyone happy... do you think I am better off raising the font size...
the problem you have there though is who is most likely going to have a hard time reading it? The aged. Who is least likely to know how to change their resolution so they can see your webpage? The aged. when designing a site.. you have to keep in mind the intended target audience. With community sites, you have the added bonus of having having to design for a target of 8-88 (give or take a few years either direction). A rule of thumb I try to go with is never do a +/- of more than 1 font size for standard reading.. no more than -2 for copyright.
and I keep hearing frames are bad hehhe but noone has explained why other than bookmarking and search engine index..
(This site I do not care about being indexed uber high)
bookmarking I would almost rather everyone come in on the same spot and navigate from there.. I have found it saves confusion..
those are the reasons right there (as most people nowdays do have browsers that view frames). Again.. you are targeting a broad audience.. frames do not make it easier.
For example: I often ask my grampa to look at my pages.. he is a typical 'new to the internet old guy' as he says (80 years old.. been online about a year and doesn't see the need to go beyond dial-up). If he were to go to your site (assuming it was for his local area obviously), he'd most likely want to bookmark the classifieds & weather. So..let's say he does.. and he comes back.. and he's at the main page.. 'huh.. that's funny'.. so he wanders around.. finds them again.. bookmarks.. comes back a 3rd time.. he's still bumped to the first page. He's now done.. he doesn't want to go through pages to find out that it's going to rain in the afternoon.. he just wants to know... that's why he bookmarked it.
Consider the 'lowest denominator' of your users first & foremost & you'll be ahead of the game.
I am still waiting to hear the oppinions on some of this Nuke PHP stuff.....
I'm not your gal there..
-L
alphadesk
11-8-02, 11:56 PM
muijefr - will be here soon,,will have you balling, but he knows his stuff and when he's finished your brain will be cooking with ideas :D
somersetbrad
11-9-02, 12:02 AM
OK you guys are going to force me into dumping the frames lol now some real tears are forming lol right along with the font size up sniff snifff.........
Oh man this is terrible hehee
OK I need to suck it up
Time for a complete site make over ehhehhe
can we have a vote on the nuke PHP thing hehehe
all in favor of me doing the PHP Nuke thing say Yes hehe and all against say no hehehe
I really hope the nos outway the Yeses but I am not in this to make it easy for myself hehe I am in it to makethis an awesome site hehe
One other thing guysmy town is putting this Domain name under the city limits signs on all of the outskirts coming in :)
I have worked really hard to give this site some serious exposure.. there will be a newspaper article comin out in about a week in the county newspaper and the town is running T.V. Commercials about it too :)
somersetbrad
11-9-02, 12:05 AM
Alpha is this where I eat my words about being mean in the critism?? :)
Brad,
Just to respond to your comment about font size
tell me if I am in flaw here but I always assumed if they had trouble seeingthey would adjust thier monitors res to fix that
If I land on a site that has fonts so small or colors such that it's too hard to read the content.... I don't bother adjusting my settings for that site, I just forget that it even exists and I make sure not to return.
You can not "assume" that people will change things to fit your design, you have to try to design for your audience. Now if you know that all of your audience is under 30 and all have 20/20 eyesight, then just leave your font size alone.
Just my "For What It's Worth"
somersetbrad
11-9-02, 12:46 AM
Wow JJ that was a low blow.....
I hoped you all learned from that one.. real skill right there...
JJ brought up something about my site..
that has proven to drive away visitors forever..
Now JJ has effectivly pushed me into a corner of tears and there is absolutly no amount of ignoring nor advasive action I can do about...
My Hat goes off to you Sir..
JJ the font size will be fixed :) with a CSS sheet after I am done with it ;)
archangel321
11-9-02, 12:55 AM
Hello,
I like the site.
I have to agree with the no frames, the font and flags posts.
Now PHP-Nuke.
You have a few weeks until major local promotion, so unless you have a PHP coder familiar with the PHP-Nuke CMS, you may want to hold off.
I highly recommend PHP-Nuke, but, unless you have time to go through and recode or hack and slash the code, it will take some time to learn. You seem to have the HTML down well enough and that is a definate plus to Customize PHP-Nuke and give it a personal feeling.
I only learned about the MySQL CMSystems about 5 months ago and have only started using them a few months, I love them and am now starting to build (Hack and Slash) Modules and Blocks for my own site based on current Mods and Blocks.
I am using PHP-Nuke 6.0 and have hard coded and redid alot of the Mods and blocks to more of my likeing and am no way an expert coder, though, I believe that once you become familar with the coding you may not go back to creating static HTML pages again.
My opinion only, of course.
Love your site and have left with a very patriotic feeling.
sniff sniff (holding back tears of gratitude for baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and Chevrolets) ;-)
PEACE ALL
Archangel Artifacts, Inc.
somersetbrad
11-9-02, 01:06 AM
archangel321
Thanks for the Compliments...
and you eval on PHP nuke
I am going to have to take a close look at it once I get the finished product up I do not want to scare people by changing the look on them and confusing them.
If I do PHP nUke I think I will just put in the crunch time now hehehhe
No tears on that post but was great hearing the compliments again thanks :)
somersetbrad
11-9-02, 02:11 AM
I am still waiting for the muijefrnator to slaughter me hehehe
;l
I seem to have slipped through the cracks :)
hehe.. maybe he thinks you've had enough???<G>
somersetbrad
11-9-02, 11:51 AM
L maybe so :)
RE: I don't bother adjusting my settings for that site, I just forget that it even exists and I make sure not to return
got my juices flowing. Remember this is just 1 in 200,000,000 surfers. If your site just makes 1% of the internet happy that's 2,000,000 surfers. A nice base.
I think you are not happy with your site and that's good. Change is important if it's more than cosmetic but the cosmetics are also important once your major changes have been developed. I think your the only one able to determine what PHP is to you and why you might use it. To me PHP sites are nothing but a big H. Little column left, big column center, little column right. Stupid links on the left, stupid links on the right or rate this site, and a chat forum link in the middle that never gets used. But enough about the better parts of PHP.
Your site is in need or some very serious organization. There are more than one way to do this but you will not be happy with your site until you get your house in order. Using frames might be one method. Using document to document links might also be a method. Or frames and document to document might be used in combination but the data/information/pages must be organized. First let me say a site is not limited to one frame set. A site may have many frame sets. Perhaps a frame set for each major site category. Let me begin by proposing your left hand menu items are the major categories for your site. Place this menu in a thin header frame that will be available to all site navigation (width=100% height=35 or 25 for instance) then develop a frame set for each of these categories. Click a header category and a new frame set appears. Remember, document to document links are for information/pages that require continuity. Frames are for several related short subjects, and/or options, click, click rather than scroll, scroll, scroll. Now that we have a major category header frame we can take the chat forum out of a small frame and use it as a document to document, scrolling environment(but the frame set definition for chat will be a single frame environment/scrolling). The chat user can still click any of your header frame categories. This will get you started but don't forget. You can have sub-categories in you header frame categories.
Sincerely hope this makes you smile.
And I was just going to post, "be careful what you wish for somersetbrad" :) but got to page 2 and muijefr was already here :)
Not a point to the technical aspect of the site, and I didn't check, but does a moderator have to look at each post before it is added to the thread in the board?
Seeing how "excitied" this board can get from time to time, and being as your board is public and sanctioned by the city, I'd be real concerned about some citizen who is really POed, "because the garbage man bangs the cans at 7:00 AM," dumping a big load of garbage into a post which may not be appropriate reading by a 6th grader looking around to see if she was going to get a snow day from school.
Of course this means some kind of human intervention and maintenance of the forum almost "real time".
symo
somersetbrad
11-9-02, 10:04 PM
muijefr
I am very suprised you did not dump all over the frames...
I love the idea about subcatagories.....
I had thought about making a DHTML menu with subcatagories on it just to make the navigation easier.
I myself like the frames for a couple reasons.
1. it gives the website sort of a template and common feel.
2. Those links do not have to reload every time the page is loaded
3. it allows me to add alot of great stuff to the website like the weather page yet still keep people within a click of jumping elswhere on the site.
The subcatagory idea will fix alot of my problems though.
Now the question is do I do it with a DHTML Menu or do i use another frame ?
Any suggestions guys ...
I have a kewl little program that makes 4+ browser compatible DHTML menus..... I had also thought about doing the logo in Flash just to reduce file size.. any thought on that?
somersetbrad
11-9-02, 10:05 PM
symo about the forum...
I have a couple of people helping me moderate it.. I did not want to make it an approval thing because people want to see their post go up in real time.. but it is Semi- Controlled
somersetbrad
11-9-02, 10:54 PM
muijefr
By the Way.....
Believe it or not your post did actually make me smile :)
muijefr
11-10-02, 05:01 PM
Here are the two basic frame sets I am thinking of. The red area is the header/banner menu for your main categories. The green area is for frame navigation/menu. The blue area is menu targets or large scrolling areas. Set 02 is especially tuned for your chat forum: a main category menu/red and the chat scrolling area/blue. You might have several 01 sets: set_01a.html, set_01b.html, set_01c.html, etc. as you might also have several 02 sets. Feel free to ask any questions. If I don't have an answer someone else will (other than I hate frames).
<html>
<head>
<title>Frame Set 01 Index</title>
</head>
<frameset rows="10%,*"
framespacing="0" border="0" frameborder="0">
<frame name="banner" scrolling="no" noresize
src="color_red.html"
>
<frameset cols="20%,*">
<frame name="menu" marginheight="0"
src="color_green.html" scrolling=auto resize
>
<frame name="main" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0"
src="color_blue.html" scrolling=auto resize
>
</frameset>
<noframes>
<body>
<p>This page uses frames, but your browser doesn't support them.</p>
</body>
</noframes>
</frameset>
</html>
http://www.the-ebiz.net/Frames/Index_Set_01.html
<html>
<head>
<title>Frame Set 02 Index</title>
</head>
<frameset rows="10%,*"
framespacing="0" border="0" frameborder="0">
<frame name="banner" scrolling="no" noresize
src="color_red.html"
>
<frameset cols="100%">
<frame name="main" marginheight="0"
src="color_blue.html" scrolling=auto resize
>
</frameset>
<noframes>
<body>
<p>This page uses frames, but your browser doesn't support them.</p>
</body>
</noframes>
</frameset>
</html>
http://www.the-ebiz.net/Frames/Index_Set_02.html
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