My 2nd website finished: Comments?

Soldato
Joined
4 Feb 2004
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Écosse
After my first foray into the world of web design with my fathers site for his driving school which I posted about a wee while back:-

www.firstdriving.co.uk

......I have now completed my second site for a friends private investigation business:-

www.indagatio.co.uk

My fathers site was all done using Namo Web Editor.

Since then, I have moved on and am now starting to get to grips with Macromedia Dreamweaver 8, which is what I used to complete www.indagatio.co.uk

I believe the coding is much cleaner compared to my first site effort, but I'll leave that open for comments!!.

I have only just finished it tonight, so havent gone into any SEO stuff yet, will look into that tomorrow.

Just wondered what some of you fellas who took the time to comment on my first effort thought about this one?. All coments welcome, keep in mind I'm a bit of a n00b and its only supposed to be a "basic" site, nothing flashy, obviously.

Still learning the in's and outs of Dreamweaver, its a cracking bit of kit compared to the basics of Namo and I look forward to advancing my skills with it in the future.

So........./opens floodgates...........

Whatdya think?.


/runs.......

P.S. Anyone using AOL will see the old Indagatio website that I knocked up using Microsoft Publisher. Go through Internet Explorer to see the new one as AOL dont update their cache until the next day and I've only just finished this tonight.
 
Hmmm, interesting.

I would advise you to read some of the later tutorials on webdesign. Specifically anything on XHTML, CSS, divs and compliance to standards. Your page doesnt validate as HTML transitional and while that may mean little to you it has issues for site viewers.

http://www.w3schools.com/ XHTML and CSS top left.

Its good that your willing to learn, but be careful of dreamweaver. It shouldnt be used in design view as its sole purpose, you want to understand the code rather than dreamweaver per se. You also want to be learning the standards that will make your websites better as describe above.
 
Not trying to put you don't here but that looks like it rolled out of the late 90's. Try downloading Gimp or Paint.net so you can manipulate some imagery into there, and don't design blind.

Fashion exists on the internet too; there are a million sites out that showcase the current fashions and trends such as www.cssbeauty.com and www.cssremix.com, I'm not saying you can aim for this quality, but bringing it into mind might push the site into the 21st century. :)

What internet sites do you like the look of? use tese as inspiration.
 
Try as best you can to code in something like notepad++. Use the web, books and even ocuk for help. It'll be much better in the long run.

You must think of accessibility issues generall, but when businesses are concerned it's almost a must.
 
I agree with XHTML and CSS for future design.

If you want my brutally honost opionion I don't like it much BUT that being said for a second website ever its better than most, including myself who used to give up after 10 minutes when learning web design.

Im suggesting here use of gradients.

Slightly less 'loud' background colour.

Columns with different information.

Different shades of colours using divs to surround information in different section.

CSS used to make text uniform and consistent.

CSS to make links underline/change colour when mouse over.

Looks at current websites and take ideas from them :)
 
I gave up with your site when I realised i Had to click each button twice for it to navigate to another page.. ie7 vista64

But don't let people be too hard on you, you have to start somewhere and all comments are good ones. Plus if you look at a lot of commercially designed sites they are worse, ie my local bike shop I discovered had a website the other day :eek: what a mess http://www.ufomotorcycles.com/
 
Thanks guys. All points taken onboard.

I know its pretty dire, but as someone said I need to start somewhere.

Be as critical as you like, no offence taken, probably the best way for me to learn.

Will tone down the colour scheme. The tables, how do I make the borders invisible?.

Will start using Dreamweaver in the code/design mode so i can keep an eye on what the coding is doing, never really gave that a thought before.

Thanks for the input, its appreciated. :cool:
 
I think you'd do well to do the tutorial things on w3schools too. As would I. I need to do a site for someone, and a new one for me and I'm way behind on standards and can't remember a great deal of what I used to do anyway :o

It's a lot easier to understand how to do things when you know WHY you're doing it :)

I'm in no place to judge, but just keep on making sites - ask for crits if you like. Whether or not you take them on board is up to you, but don't take the harsh ones to heart. Experiment.

Good luck :)
 
I think yours is miles better than that CSSRemix site:

WordPress

Error establishing a database connection

This either means that the username and password information in your wp-config.php file is incorrect or we can't contact the database server at cssremixdbhost.cssremix.com. This could mean your host's database server is down.

* Are you sure you have the correct username and password?
* Are you sure that you have typed the correct hostname?
* Are you sure that the database server is running?

If you're unsure what these terms mean you should probably contact your host. If you still need help you can always visit the WordPress Support Forums.

lol :)
 
The_KiD said:
I think yours is miles better than that CSSRemix site
*cough* the showcase of very popular web2.0 faddy fashion websites, which are all well and clearly implemented using nice source and good graphics. Not the actual CSS Remix website :p
 
The first driving one, has white boxes down the left hand side, are these meant for links?

Am using Firefox 2, not getting any text.

If in doubt, always test firefox 2 compatibility.
 
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