My first website finished

[Jet]

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

 

[Jet]

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.

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.

 

[Jet]

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:

<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.

 

[Jet]

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.

 

[Jet]

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)

Cheers

Dan

Hmmm. Not sure why that happened but i'm getting it too. And i'm on a PC with IE6.

I've uploaded again. Any better?

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

I know it doesn't look like I have but I think I do. NetObjects has a section in the Options to enter the keywords and it inserts the text in the /head section automatically. I assume this does it. If it doesn't work I could always manually enter the HTML.

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.

I assume then, that when the Google bot comes back around, it should read by meta description and alter it? How often do they come around?

Thanks for all the comments everyone.