Finally after months, critique plz...

[kurniawan]

After months in my spare time, I finally finish upgrading my website ( http://anaknegri.com ). I design it for IE and FF but still have some problems with the appearance in FF, specially the right upper image (the circle one) that render one or 2 pixel below in FF but doing fine in IE.

Sorry it is only available in Indonesian language. Any opinion are welcome mainly about the way it looks and the speed, I feel it is very slow.

Thanks before

[kurniawan]

I got the following unexpected response when trying to retrieve http://anaknegri.com/



A second try produced your page in 16 seconds, and yes it is a bit slow. Lots of stuff on that page (144.37 KB) :)


Your site fails HTML validation (http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fanaknegri.com%2F).

Also, by using a meta refresh , this site ( http://anaknegri.com/ ) will not be listed by Search Engines in the proper manner. It will be listed as http://anaknegri.com/online_hitung.php since in effect, that is what it is.




Thank you for the quick opinion and tips. I'll remove the counter asap. Anyway, can you recommend any live site viewer counter? And how do you measure my website speed?

[kurniawan]

I have removed the counter but still got failed validation, here is the message :

Sorry, I am unable to validate this document because on line 1077, 1080, 1140 it contained one or more bytes that I cannot interpret as utf-8 (in other words, the bytes found are not valid values in the specified Character Encoding). Please check both the content of the file and the character encoding indication.

I've checked the line but nothing unusual. Can anyone give me advice?

[YvetteKuhns]

Any opinion are welcome mainly about the way it looks and the speed, I feel it is very slow.

Your web page would load faster if you put your STYLE attributes in an external CSS file. And you can put your JavaScript in an external JS file. Any source code that is used several times should be in an external file. The pages loaded fairly quickly for me, but they could load faster.

As for appearance, I had to scroll horizontally since I am using 800x600 screen resolution. I don't like visiting sites that say that it is best viewed in a specific resolution. My family prefers our current resolution.

There is a dot pattern behind the logo and a striped background image. They are busy and distracting and pull my eyes away from center of the screen. The lines remind me of the prisms I used to wear on my eyeglasses to train my eyes, until I had eye surgery to correct my vision as a child.

There are so many colors, font styles and font sizes that can be overwhelming. Some of the text colors do not have enough contrast with the background color and seem to blend into the background. My eyes hurt too much to read this website and I am only 38 years old!

I personally don't like the logo. The different letters remind me of a ransom note! Remember how kidnappers would cut letters out of magazines and newspapers instead of writing notes in their own handwriting?

Why do the links keep opening a new browser window? Also, your title tags should contain keyword phrases appropriate for each page's contents.

The website seems to have too many affiliate ads on a page. There is an Amazon banner at the top and again in the bottom left. And an Amazon text link on the right side along with a PowWeb text link. Because I must scroll to read the page, the top banner is ignored. If you place an ad in the center of a page, it is much more likely to be seen. If it is of interest to your target audience, it is more likely to be clicked.

[kurniawan]

Your web page would load faster if you put your STYLE attributes in an external CSS file. And you can put your JavaScript in an external JS file. Any source code that is used several times should be in an external file. The pages loaded fairly quickly for me, but they could load faster.....
There is a dot pattern behind the logo and a striped background image. They are busy and distracting and pull my eyes away from center of the screen. The lines remind me of the prisms I used to wear on my eyeglasses to train my eyes, until I had eye surgery to correct my vision as a child.
.....

Thank you very much for your review, it is very helpful for me. I'll try to re-design some point that you said.
The speed thing, seems to have something to do with the outages in the other posts.

I have some questions though.

CSS Style :
I had a bad experience using external file when the server is down, the appearance looked very messy.
Actually the website is using include() function. I put the CSS code inside an inc file and pick up the proper file. So if you click to other pages it will load another CSS codes in a certain inc file. Is it bad?

Below Left Screen --> Amazon ads
Actually it is only temporary, I will replace it with some contents that is not completed yet.

[YvetteKuhns]

The speed thing, seems to have something to do with the outages in the other posts.

No surprise.

I had a bad experience using external file when the server is down, the appearance looked very messy.

I have seen that on other websites as well as my own.

Actually the website is using include() function. I put the CSS code inside an inc file and pick up the proper file. So if you click to other pages it will load another CSS codes in a certain inc file. Is it bad?


I have seen both methods. Which way is better depends upon its usage. I like using one CSS file, because I can find and edit that one file and the website is instantly updated.

I am currently search engine optimizing a website created by someone else. They used a bunch of little includes files. It looks like different people worked on different parts of the website. The project coordinator used text files to keep notes of any scripts or files used on the website. They overcomplicated the website to force the owners to use them to make updates.

For you, it may be beneficial as long as you don't have too many little files to manage.

Below Left Screen --> Amazon ads
Actually it is only temporary, I will replace it with some contents that is not completed yet.

Good. If you watched television and the commercials were 30 minutes long and you only saw 5 minutes of a movie between commercials, you would stop watching! Or you could take a shower, make dinner, wash dishes, wash laundry and mow the lawn during commercial breaks. :D I already seem to do that, but I sometimes miss the end of a movie.