Website critique.

[Energize]

I've been asked by the owner to help advise some changes to the company website. Quite frankly I think it looks like something from the 90's but I can't quite put my finger on what all the problems are here, colour scheme, font size and the number of bullet points can be improved as well as a couple of bugs, unfortunately it was created with one of those diy website creation sites.

 

[Energize]

Do you think the flash video should go as well?

I've moved the logo to the top right and significantly reduced the size of the images and the font size.

 

[Energize]

Yeah I think it would be better doing it from scratch, however believe it or not that is a brand new website created by the owner (actually an improvement on the previous one!), and I'm not sure how well that would go down.

With wordpress is it easier for me to setup php on my pc or just use a web host to try it out?

 

[Energize]

What do you think about the guestbook and "tell a friend" pages, get rid? I don't think I've seen a guestbook for a long time.

You know I've just been looking at the code and realised what a train wreck it is!

 

[Energize]

Never, but when I look at the site a few people have used the guestbook commenting "the website looks amazing".

 

[Energize]

This what you've been working on?

Yes, well partly.

I just realised that the login page is not ssl!

 

[Energize]

My advice, advise them to employ a Web Designer.

Oh how I've tried.

The document layout doesn't make much sense - h2 for the first title, then a h1... plus most of the layout is done with tables. As said, the images are pretty bad quality. The prices page could really do with a bit more colour to break up the table...

It looks a bit weird with the massive horse banner at the top, then the logo. And the top navigation bar doesn't match the bottom.

I've removed the horrible navigation at the bottom, moved the logo to the top left, shrunk the images, I'll probably get some stock images where appropriate. Replaced the generated code with my own.

 

[Energize]

What php server do you recommend using? I've been using tomcat for jsp, but don't know what the standard is for php.

 

[Energize]

It's terrible. I think you should have went with an open source web platform such as Joomla. Did you just make it using Dreamweaver and HTML/CSS or something?
Also Apache for PHP, you'll probably want the latest. 5.6

The person who made it created it using create.net, which from what I can tell automatically generates the code.

What's the name of the apache project?

 

[Energize]

So far I've just been editing the content in notepad++ and running it from apache tomcat on my windows pc.

Are there any free php hosts that I could put the site on while I'm developing it?

 

[Energize]

Out of interest how much would it typically cost to have a brand new website like this created if I managed to convince them?

E-commerce, need customers to be able to buy goods and services.
Online booking system, tied to the above I guess, need people to be able to book services in advance for a specific time & day and pay for them by credit card.
The ability for customers to buy different levels of membership which affect the price and availability of aforementioned services.
Calendar of upcoming events.
Image gallery of events and general crap happening around the place.
The relevant pages already on the website, made good.

I think that actual "design", as in unique from scratch is out of their price league at the moment.

 

[Energize]

Is it necessary to hire a separate coder and designer if we're just talking about using wordpress templates?

 

[Energize]

Ok, I've installed xampp, which directory do I put wordpress in?

 

[Energize]

Ok, thanks, I've got it up now. Are there any themes that you can recommend that would be suitable? I have looked at a few black one column themes but they seem designed for blogs rather than websites like this.

 

[Energize]

Epione 1.3
Modularity Lite 1.3

First couple of ones that stood out on the page I was looking at.

For some reason when I switch to visual editing mode some of the content I entered in code view disappears, infuriating to say the least.

 

[Energize]

Honestly I find it easier developing by code then visual editors.

I was just entering some of the unordered lists from this page and then they disappeared when I switched to visual mode.

 

[Energize]

Yeah but it's a bit of a hassle not just being able to paste the code in.

 

[Energize]

right..well there you go then. try pasting code then saving post in html mode, and then go back to post in visual mode. If it disappears you ain't done it right!

I paste it in html mode the page works just fine when I update and preview it, but every time I switch to visual mode it gets removed.

why don't you use the built in twentyeleven theme? Go to appearance>theme options choose dark colour scheme, and then change default layout to one column no sidebar???

I'll try that.

 

[Energize]

Ok, I've put on the twenty eleven theme, and it looks ok at the moment but the width of the page is absurdly small, 690 pixels.

EDIT - Is it really necessary to use the visual editor? It's torturous, I move a picture and text goes flying over the place, can't get stuff to align properly. Reminds me of using the gui builder in the netbeans ide, every time I see mention of visual builders in programming user interfaces it seems there is universal condemnation of them in favour of hard coding.

 

[Energize]

Just use HTML?

That's what I planned to do originally, but then I have people telling me there's no need to code when there's wysiwyg. If it just comes down to personal preference then I'd rather stick with hard coding.