Website advice -

Earth[Tera].bin · 22 Jun 2009 at 12:45

I have a job interview very soon, one which I was quite surprised to get if being honest as website design isn't the strongest factor on my C.V. During the interview I have to give a 5 minute presentation on things I would do to improve the current council website. The position is only a seven month placement, but I realise the experience would be pretty beneficial in the long run so I would'nt mind the opportunity.

My initial opinion would be tempted to say the site looks very cluttered, although taking into consideration the amount of services and information the site has to provide I guess this is to be expected. It doesn't validate too well but it does seem to pass some WAI initiatives, with some cautions. Currently I'm looking at other council wesbites to see what the general formula seems to be, content managements systems no doubt, but looking how they have presented the information and links to services.

I'd be interested to hear what others would change about the council website.

iNPUt · 22 Jun 2009 at 13:03

Wow 5 minutes on that, it looks very nice :/.

Small things I can pick out.
1. Online services (main page) has an annoying scroll bar, looks very shabby. Down scroll bar is disabled but showing, and it goes too wide. I think they have enough space to put them all in. [Fail, I just allowed NoScripts and it shows differntly still, scrolling hides the content and people might not know what to do]

2. Boxes not alligned, but thats proberbly needed since differnt content lengths.

Erm good luck wouldnt want to be you, they have probs paid a million £ for that site.

Also:
Text only option is horrible.

gord · 22 Jun 2009 at 13:33

Will you be working for the council?

Ciphon · 22 Jun 2009 at 13:35

When you hover over "Business and Trade" the hole button doesn't change colour, the top line remains white - that could be fixed.

Earth[Tera].bin · 22 Jun 2009 at 14:12

gord said:
Will you be working for the council?

Yeah I would be employed by the council.

Thanks for the posts guys, all points noted.Still looking at other council websites, the Nottingham council website looks quite professional but again too cluttered for my personal taste.

After a little Googling it seems the Nottingham and the Dumfries Council use the same CMS provided by GOSS interactive.

suarve · 22 Jun 2009 at 14:53

Few minor xhtml validation errors. As far as council websites go though, it's very nioce imo, but here are a few minor things I'd mention.

Would personally add a bit of url re-writing E.g. http://www.dumgal.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1119 to http://www.dumgal.gov.uk/cat/housing - makes the whole site seem neater imo.

The print style sheet, make text 100% width of the page.

Compress style sheets and js files.

Think you might be able to imprive the database structure as they seem to be using one table for everything (article id at end of all links) - just a guess.

Style the diary - http://www.dumgal.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1338 the same as the site - seems to be totally seperate at the mo.

Not a huge fan of the scrolling thing in the middle, seems really jumpy when you drag it - can scroll div smoothly using something JQuery.

Could do the weather box better using JQuery.

gord · 22 Jun 2009 at 16:45

Earth[Tera].bin;14335203 said:
Yeah I would be employed by the council.

Then I think they will love it if you make accessibility a key point. Mention the validation techniques like WAI and how you could help develop the site so that more users can access the site appropriately.

Earth[Tera].bin · 22 Jun 2009 at 16:53

Cheers guys, evey bit of help is appreciated.