Do You Like Do It In Texas

[jrblindman]

We've been up going on our second year. The site is about Texas (experiences, events, nature, traval and so forth). I would appreciate your critique.

http://www.seeyouintexas.com

[Kitchensink108]

Hmm... I have really odd feelings about this site. It's novice, that's an obvious fact. But for some strange reason it seems to work. Normally I complain about how banners aren't made very well and, as in your case, images are placed without being integrated too well (referring to the eagle). Also, as a general rule, giant bevels are a really bad idea. However, the effect created with the bevel and the eagle is rather interesting. And while the "banner" text ("Do it in Texas") is completely unstyled and is sitting on a flat single-color background, it's really not *that* bad.

I'll make a (what may become lengthy) list of small suggestions:
-Personally, I'd prefer it if the text area (right column) wasn't so wide. It *might* look better if the entire page was kept as a fixed width under 800px.

-I'd add some padding (maybe 20px) to separate the right-column's text from the left-column's border.

-The nav bar would be a good place to add some more styling without messing up the rest of the layout.

-You might consider not using standard colors (like "blue" and "red"). They tend to be bright. Sometimes it looks better if you use a slightly darker hue (maroon/navy) for text and either a darker or lighter hue for backgrounds.

-Do...something...with the "Do it in Texas/SeeYouInTexas.com" text in the upperleft. Maybe just make it bold or something.

-If you want the eagle on the front page, I suggest putting it (or some image in that location) on all the pages.

-I don't understand the content beneath the navigation. To me it just seems like random phrases. Also, I don't like the "send page to a friend" button. IMO, you should just get rid of it, but judge this on if you think your visitors will actually use it.

-On the "West of the Pecos" page, you have some images. HighBridge.jpg is, for example, 2576x1920 pixels and 852kb. You definitely need to go into an image editing program, shrink the picture and re-save it. If you're not going to display the image at its full size on a page, then the user is downloading (in this case a significant) extraneous data.

-I don't like standard blue underlined links, but that's just me. Some people like them. Google's developers seem to like them. I just don't.

-Your site map will look better aligned to the left rather than centered.

-You have a very large amount of whitespace at the bottom of your pages. On the sitemap, you also have whitespace at the top.

-The "Of Local Interest" link on localinterest.html goes to a file on your computer.

-Some pages have "Feedback Forum/Site Map/Interesting Stuff" links in the nav while others don't. Keep the nav consistent across all the pages.

-Don't use spaces in filenames (I'm looking specifically at spring bloom.html)

-spring bloom.html has a large blue box on the right side. I suggest getting rid of it.

-Hunting.html has a paragraph of bolded text, which is annoying to read. It also has "click here" links beneath the nav, which in general you shouldn't use (just drop the "click here" part).

-At least one of your pages has the page title "template."

-I suggest labeling the pages clearer. AKA, if I click "Texas Coast," say "Texas Coast" at the top of the page or else it's hard for me to remember what link I just followed.

-Some pages have home page links and sitemap links at the bottom of the page. If you have them in your leftnav, then this is redundant.

-Your main page has a gray border around it while most (or all) other pages don't.

That's all I'll give for now. For some of those, I pointed out a specific page though the problem may well appear in other places as well, so watch for that.

[jrblindman]

I really appreciate your feedback. I have already started making some changes on my index page and on Texas Facts, Links, and West of the Pecos. I plan to go through each page, rethinking, and editing. This will be time consuming. Also, looking at the code on my index page, I cannot believe how much I found that was extraneous. I deleted a huge amount from previous Mozilla editing I suppose.

I hope other forum members will post a reply and I hope you will look at the index page again. Thanks so much.

[NEAHS]

I just noticed that in the first paragraph, second sentence: "Take a spring or vacation at Padre Island or Big Bend National Park. Debbie and I returned from Acuna Mexico the second week in March and are revising the Acuna link."
That there maybe a word missing after "Take a spring".

[jrblindman]

I built this one today. I kind of like it, but of course I built it. Please give any suggestions especially about the colors or image placement. I thank all who view.

http://www.seeyouintexas.com/sheffield.html

[Kitchensink108]

I say revert to the old layout.

[entrecon]

When you are designing a site in a topic area where there is competition, you should try to measure yourself against them a little.
I woud look at these three:
http://www.traveltex.com/
http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/
http://tourtexas.com/

I am not saying to copy them, but if you want to compete with these sites, your design should be at a similar level.