jagf — Fri, 09 Nov 2001 23:28:43 +0000

Doesn't look like you want much feedback on your design but are rather looking for increased hits. If I was interested in your service, your lack of layout and time commitment in the design would make me wonder about your intentions and doesn't make me fully embrace your pitch. Some may reason that the ideas you're pitching can't be working that well either if you don't have enough cashflow to afford a ???????.com domain or similar high quality domain.

On the good side, the text is laid out well in short paragraphs that don't span the whole width of the page.

disaster-master seems to have explained it right

Tor-Andre — Fri, 09 Nov 2001 15:45:44 +0000

I have changed webhotel and that ment that the company I have bought the domain name had to change DNS. So after my opinion this should be correct.

disaster-master — Fri, 09 Nov 2001 15:10:48 +0000

Since no one has takcled your name server question I will give it a shot. Maybe someone has a better explaination.

Your should get your name server or DNS # from whoever is going to host your site. For example if you purchased your domain name from Network Solutions and are going to use XYZ (example) to host your site then you will have to ask XYZ what their name servers are and then tell Network Solutions these DNS numbers so that they can change them.

You will have two DNS #'s, a primary and secondary, and they will look something like this:

NS.YOURSERVER.COM
NS2.YOURSERVER.COM

You should also get two IP addresses and they will look like this:

209.88.34.120
209.88.34.130

I hope I explained that correctly. If I didn't someone will correct me I'm sure.

Busy — Thu, 08 Nov 2001 20:35:32 +0000

Think of your web site as a newspaper, or magazine
when you see bold text you know its a heading, or something important, if everything is bold people can think its to much and move on, as Megan said people in general are lazy.
In newspapers and magazines most people tend to skip past the adverts as they stand out to be them, your site is kind of an advert but you have to make it feel (and look) as if its not.
Try get your point across in as few words as possible (something I should do on these critiques ) dont cut out key information, but seperate unneeded stuff.

make your first page inviting enough for people to want to look/read more, dont try throw it all on one page and hope they read it all. again like newspapers if the heading or first sentence (or paragraph) hasnt caught the readers attention, they will move on, unless they're bored, waiting for a plane or something and read every word of it.

bold and italics should only really be used for important stuff, headings, quotes etc

Much better

Tor-Andre — Thu, 08 Nov 2001 20:15:25 +0000

Loose the bold. But you might keep it if it's headlines.

You should have three more meta tags;

oh yeah

madmat — Thu, 08 Nov 2001 19:46:55 +0000

I also purchased a domain name and they keep asking me for my name server. What are they taking about? This is my first domain name ever. Is it the address to my website, or is it the name of my FTP host site. I have no clue.

madmat — Thu, 08 Nov 2001 19:41:14 +0000

Hey megan and every one else helping me,

I took those tags from a parent SFI webpage. They allow this 100% but ONLY to promote sfi so i didnt break any rules as far as I can tell. I have made some of the changes you guys have suggested. My main question is to bold or not to bold. This discusion seems to be split 50/50 some are saying to make it bold making it easier to read which makes sense to me. But the other half of you say not to make it bold there bye creating a more professional look. I dont know I have had my girlfriend and another look at it and they both opted for the bold, but I still wonder?
You guys are GREAT MADMAT

Megan — Thu, 08 Nov 2001 14:23:45 +0000

I agree with the others about the longer banner part. I also think that you should do something different with those buttons in the top left corner. They look like they were taken from another site. Were they? You shouldn't do that - it's copyright infringement. The problem is that they don't really have the same look as the rest of the site - different colour schemes is the main problem.

I'm also finding that this is a little bit text heavy. Too much text is bad because it scares people off. Remember how I said that web surfers are lazy. We don't want to read much either. It doesn't help that the text is a little on the large side. I would move the Gery Carson bio to another page and just link it, and also the blurb about "traffic is king". Then maybe get rid of that right column, make the left one wider and your content area will be bigger as well. Either that or keep the left, make the left and right sides equal width, and move some links into the left side. Narrow columns like that shouldn't be used for large amounts text content.

Much, much better!

Don't be afraid to have some space

Tor-Andre — Thu, 08 Nov 2001 09:24:05 +0000

My opinion is that your text is too close to the edges of the tables. You should have atleast 1 or 2 mm "air" before/infront of the text. If you look at the bottom of the left coloumn you see that you have different space here and on the text abowe.

You should try having all text with the space in front of "More to come soon ...". Then it will be easier to see, easier to read and so on. Try it and see the difference.

The Webmistress — Thu, 08 Nov 2001 09:15:36 +0000

It's looking much better and I agree with Busy that perhaps it would look even better by having a longer narrower banner type logo across the top then all three columns coming off that. I notice that you are using layers, my advise would be to use tables as layers can be unpredictable and they are causing a horizontal scroll bar at 800*600 for me in IE5.