New website design

Gary.D

Gary.D

Hoodie
Messages
2,499
Name
Gary Derbridge
Edit My Images
Yes
Ok, I finally have the new website design online.
Its never going to be as good as a professionally made website so please bear that in mind, but can anyone take there time to give me some C&C please?
Thanks in advance.
Gary

Both the website and my blog's URL are in my signature.
 
I'm on a 18mbit connection and yes it's a little slow for me here too. Even just changing pages...

By the looks of things, you're running your website from home??
 
The front page is a bit bland for my liking, plus the pictures took ages to load, had I been a member of the public I'd probably have left due to that alone. In fact, they take a long time to load on every page.

On the homepage I'd have a picture of a bride or b&g for weddings rather than the kids, after all it's brides who are likely to be looking.

In your various galleries none of the thumbnails gave me a bigger picture when clicked, I'm using Safari so don't know if this it works in other browsers.

Sorry if this seems harsh as I'm trying to be constructive, but for me it's a bit too plain and too slow. I'm just looking at it from a non-tog perspective.
 
Hi Gary,

If you have done your own site, I think you should pat yourself on the back. It is a good start and imho only really needs a couple of changes. First off, I think you need a banner/logo image say at 820x120 pixels to match the width of your main frame. I would also put all the "welcome text" into a table with the same width i.e. 820 pixels, likewise with the text in the image categories. Doing these two small things would have a huge impact on initial impressions. Lastly, folks like to see a contact page or at minimum, a telephone number or email address.

I would also remove the 2010 from your copyright at the bottom. Just leave it at 2009 as it could look as though it is about to expire if you know what I mean.

If I was going to be really really picky (:lol:), I would reduce the image file sizes down as it takes a while for the pages to load but hey, here's a hair - split it!!

Good luck with it all :thumbs:
 
CJB64 said:
Hi Gary,

If you have done your own site, I think you should pat yourself on the back. It is a good start and imho only really needs a couple of changes. First off, I think you need a banner/logo image say at 820x120 pixels to match the width of your main frame. I would also put all the "welcome text" into a table with the same width i.e. 820 pixels, likewise with the text in the image categories. Doing these two small things would have a huge impact on initial impressions. Lastly, folks like to see a contact page or at minimum, a telephone number or email address.

I would also remove the 2010 from your copyright at the bottom. Just leave it at 2009 as it could look as though it is about to expire if you know what I mean.

If I was going to be really really picky (:lol:), I would reduce the image file sizes down as it takes a while for the pages to load but hey, here's a hair - split it!!

Good luck with it all :thumbs:
Click to expand...
Thanks for your comments,
Yes it was designed and made by me and my Dad, I designed in dreamweaverm, he re-made it in html code, (what ever its called :D)
We are in the process of compressing the images now, so the loading speed will hopefully drop.
Thanks again
Gary
 
You have a fairly serious aligment issue with the four main images on the home page. They're centred until the window width is greater than about 1100pixels and then they move out of alignment.

Those images are sat in a table and designing without tables is good thing.

Learn how to use <div> tags, and especially make one as a wrapper to keep your site width fixed.

For example:

Use this css:

#wrapper {
width: 900px;
margin: 0px auto;
}

and then this HTML:

<div id="wrapper">

All content goes here

</div>

That will centre your page content nicely in a fixed wrapper of 900 pixels, then you can
use further <div> tags to do more with the layout.

Seriously, get a bit of HTML and CSS under your belt and you'll be glad you spent the time.
 
I know this isn't the design exactly, but I find it quite difficult to read a lot of your text, it would be a lot more readable if you lost about half of the commas! :)
 
Yes slow for me too. You maybe need to reduce the sizes of your images (you should be able to get them down to less than 60Kb.... I guess they are much bigger?

Other than that a nice site.
 
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