My first website finished

Jet · 5 Jun 2006 at 21:40

I doubt any of you remember but I have posted a few times asking for help to get this website onto the internet.

After designing it once in Dreamweaver and again in NetObjects Fusion, I have now managed to get it uploaded. Still don't know why it wouldn't work in Dreamweaver but nevermind. I had to sacrifice some parts too because NetObjects is fairly basic.

The website is for my dads business although he doesn't actually need it. I did it simply to learn web design.

I realise that it isn't perfect and i'd like the opinions of the serious web-designer's, any pointers you may have, mistakes I've made, etc.

All criticism welcomed.

Url: www.mfdl.co.uk

fergie666 · 5 Jun 2006 at 21:44

i'm not a web designer by any means but i like your site !

very easy on the eye and each page loads up like lightning

good job, far better looking than my 1st site lol

blairw · 5 Jun 2006 at 22:14

YOUR FIRST WEBSITE :O
Thats brilliant for a first website mate, kudos to you!

EDIT// The only thing i can suggest is for it to be in the centre of the windows instead of top left - but sitll thats great

iCraig · 5 Jun 2006 at 22:21

Good

Nice Imagery
Clean concise design
Easily readable
Looks professional

Bad

Nice imagery, but too irrelevant. Confuses the audience to what the site is about
Tabled layout. New sites should really be designed using XHTML and CSS, tables were web standards years ago.
Flash animation at the top of the site is pointless, links through to the Adobe Flash download page, but says "Home" even when you're on other pages.
Navigation menu is too small, and lifeless.
Not sure what ">>>>>>>>>>>>" is for next to the main image, looks silly. The image should have the same width as the text areas below.
Copyright text is misplaced in Mozilla Firefox.

A good first try though

paulsheff · 5 Jun 2006 at 22:48

Looks good.

Personally I'd make more room for the navigation so the text doesn't split onto a second line. The colured boxes are cool but the text would look better not bang up against the edge but inline with the larger titles.

Jet · 5 Jun 2006 at 22:52

blairw said:
YOUR FIRST WEBSITE :O
Thats brilliant for a first website mate, kudos to you!

EDIT// The only thing i can suggest is for it to be in the centre of the windows instead of top left - but sitll thats great

Ideally I would have it in the centre but I have no idea how to do that. I designed it to fit a 800x600 page because I read that it is the standard, for now.

iCraig said:
Nice imagery, but too irrelevant. Confuses the audience to what the site is about
Tabled layout. New sites should really be designed using XHTML and CSS, tables were web standards years ago.
Flash animation at the top of the site is pointless, links through to the Adobe Flash download page, but says "Home" even when you're on other pages.
Navigation menu is too small, and lifeless.
Not sure what ">>>>>>>>>>>>" is for next to the main image, looks silly. The image should have the same width as the text areas below.
Copyright text is misplaced in Mozilla Firefox.

The site was originally designed using CSS in Dreamweaver but I couldn't get it uploaded for some reason. NetObjects is a lot more basic and I didn't have a book on how to do CSS in it, which I did for Dreamweaver.

Flash is pointless but I read a whole book to learn flash so I had to incorporate it somehow

Navigation menu, again, looked better in Dreamweaver. I can't even stop the links being underlined in NetObjects.

Thanks everyone for the comments.

robc123 · 5 Jun 2006 at 22:57

iCraig said:
Bad

Nice imagery, but too irrelevant. Confuses the audience to what the site is about

Tabled layout. New sites should really be designed using XHTML and CSS, tables were web standards years ago.

Flash animation at the top of the site is pointless, links through to the Adobe Flash download page, but says "Home" even when you're on other pages.

Navigation menu is too small, and lifeless.

Not sure what ">>>>>>>>>>>>" is for next to the main image, looks silly. The image should have the same width as the text areas below.

Copyright text is misplaced in Mozilla Firefox.

A good first try though

Obviously the >>>>> is just some random code he has put into the design. I doubt many people would have build a site as good as that on their first go. I cant even build a site that good now

Beansprout · 5 Jun 2006 at 23:05

Only looked briefly but things that come to mind are clean, sophisticated, lonely menu, perhaps slightly pale.

Stonkingly good attempt for a first site, though!

iCraig · 5 Jun 2006 at 23:11

robc123 said:
I doubt many people would have build a site as good as that on their first go. I cant even build a site that good now

Indeed many could not, and we've all said what a good first website it is. But I'm still going to give him positive and negative comments, how else is he going to improve without constructive critisism?

Augmented · 5 Jun 2006 at 23:19

Yes, nice job for a first go.

I highly recommended looking at optimising your images - there's currently 239KB of images in the first page :eek:

. You should be aiming at getting that down to the lower end of 30-60KB.

Main offenders are the headings, which should each be at least a 10th of their current size (save as 8-bit PNG, and run through a PNG optimiser):

Code:

Images (12 files)	239 kb
	http://www.mfdl.co.uk/assets/images/aboutus.png	31 kb
	http://www.mfdl.co.uk/assets/images/store.png	30 kb
	http://www.mfdl.co.uk/assets/images/contactus.png	30 kb
	http://www.mfdl.co.uk/assets/images/location.png	29 kb
	http://www.mfdl.co.uk/assets/images/ourteam.png	29 kb
	http://www.mfdl.co.uk/assets/images/Copyright02.png	28 kb

Jet · 6 Jun 2006 at 00:23

Thanks for all the comments, good and bad.

I've re-done the flash thingy so that works now. And i've reduced the image sizes a little, too far and the quality suffers.

I have a question though. When searching for mfdl on Google, it is the first entry but the description is rubbish.

I entered the following into the code:

Code:

<meta name="description" content="Located in North Shields, Michael Fothergill Dental Laboratory specialises in crown and bridge dental technology with a personal touch.">

but it hasn't changed. Any idea why or how I can change it?

Thanks.

iCraig · 6 Jun 2006 at 00:32

Jet said:
I have a question though. When searching for mfdl on Google, it is the first entry but the description is rubbish.

I entered the following into the code:

Code:

<meta name="description" content="Located in North Shields, Michael Fothergill Dental Laboratory specialises in crown and bridge dental technology with a personal touch.">

but it hasn't changed. Any idea why or how I can change it?

Thanks.

Google doesn't work like that I'm afraid, or else we would all look a lot younger and have more hair on our heads.

Optimising your site for search engines is an ongoing task, requiring good relevant copy on your pages, with good document structure.

Keywords and descriptions are fine for a bit of descriptive stuff for Google to pick up, but their impact on your rankings will be extremely minimal, if at all.

Try and get some good quality, reciprocal and relevant links to your site. This will help search engines spider your site more often, and in time index more of your content.

Have a good read up on "SEO" and "Search Engine Optimisation" and start putting some methods into practice. In time, if you do things right, you'll see improvements. But you'll have to be patient.

Jet · 6 Jun 2006 at 00:42

Can I not get this bit to say something meaningful?

Also, do you think the pages look better centered or to the left like before?

Thanks for the advice overall btw.

Beansprout · 6 Jun 2006 at 01:09

iCraig said:
Google doesn't work like that I'm afraid, or else we would all look a lot younger and have more hair on our heads.

For want of better info Google will take meta description tags. I'd guess Google just hasn't updated their index, and I'd also shorten the meta tag:

mfdl provides crown and bridge dental technology with a personal touch

It looks like Google hasn't updated, unless I'm just missing the text they're showing.

Mr_L · 6 Jun 2006 at 09:48

Nothing to say technically as it has all been covered.

For a first website that is pretty good, though. Keep up the good work.

JonD · 6 Jun 2006 at 11:01

That is a fantastic first website!

Well done!

dantonkin · 6 Jun 2006 at 12:49

it's a great attempt for a first time build.

The nav seems to be out fo place though. It's aligned more to the left of the page. Not leve with the header image. (using firefox on a mac)

On another note.

iCraig can you send me some links to work you've done? I've been curious since I started posting in these parts to see what sort of style work you do.

Cheers

Dan

iCraig · 6 Jun 2006 at 13:04

If you have time to chat after 5pm Dan, add me to msn.

metrix800 at hotmail.com.

nin9abadga · 6 Jun 2006 at 13:38

looks good for a first attempt

one major thing though you have no keywords defined? you'll get indexed but under the words you want?

apart from that i'd use more css, you could use it for the headings as opposed to images etc. as well as layout.

good work

nin9a

robjf · 6 Jun 2006 at 13:43

The reason for your description on google being so meaningless, is because of this . As you can see its the cache and when this was actually on your site, it was this google took for your description.