Website Review and Suggestions

**CSS4Life** · 10-04-2007, 01:58 PM

Hi guys. I'm doing a complete redesign on my current hosting web site by hand and I'd like people to review this. The links aren't working or anything - I just want lots of advice on how to go forward with this.

Here's the redesign address:

http://whymhost.co.uk/redesign/

Thanks in advance,
Whym

**TEB** · 10-04-2007, 02:03 PM

Little confused here, the first link is your current site. The second link is just the address, not the resdesign?

Anyway, I think your old design lacks any type of appeal, the colors are to dark and mellow. Theres no real design and its hard to read the content. The links and things like that are organized fine, just the content below the navbar is white, small, and all together.

Its not to bad, just needs a touch up. Content and links seem to be in order, they just need to be more appealing.

**CSS4Life** · 10-04-2007, 02:12 PM

OK let me clarify. The first link I gave is my current site - I haven't yet completed the redesign so it's not on the main domain. It was created by a WYSIWYG editor and produced horrible markup so I'm redesigning by hand with XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS.

The second link, as I said, is the redesign. It looks relatively similar at the moment - I want to know what I should be adding (i.e. ideas for a header?) and what styles to change/add.

**TEB** · 10-04-2007, 02:20 PM

For your redesign, I would first say lightening it up a little. As I said before, its dark and gloomy.

On the re-design, I think your banner needs to have some type of seniority over your navbar, or have something that separates them. Organize it more.

Try experimenting with some different colors other than maroone and gray it looks like, your text needs to be bigger, and it needs to stand out more.

For example, on the homepage, your packages need to be better organized and more information needs to be given instead of having an order now link.

**CSS4Life** · 10-04-2007, 02:23 PM

Ok I'll add a "find out more" link which will go to the FAQ page (this will be the same as the content on the FAQ page).

Thanks for the review. I'll tweak around with the colours

**navyfalcon** · 10-04-2007, 03:40 PM

1. I was unaware that an internet hosting was for a local area only ??
2. What "WYSIWYG" editor did you use ???
3. for the programs, what methods of payment do you accept ??
4. hand coding, why ?? are you using a text editor ??
5. may want to try a free HTML, CSS, Script editor that doesn't give bad code and can validate such as Alleycode, AceHTML, 1st Page and validate with CSE HTML Validator (is also an editor) or firefox firebug. They also serve as a text editor with added functions.

Your layout is great, some work on the dropdowns (navigation) and site color (background and text) plus some information on services (one is how a world wide web hosting is local only) will help.

hope this helps
falcon

**CSS4Life** · 10-04-2007, 03:45 PM

Thanks. Could people not review it for the next hour or so - I'm working on the colour and backgrounds right now and I've got a few issues so the redesign looks terrible.

I was using RVSiteBuilder - it produced terrible table markup and I thoroughly hated it.

Now I want to make the entire site CSS based and standards compliant by hand.

I'm aiming at my local market mostly as there aren't many web designers or hosting companies locally and I think it would be a good market. I do welcome customers from further afield though.

I accept paypal and credit card through this, although I'm not sure why it's very relevant to a web site review.

By the way - please review the REDESIGN, not the current site!

**CSS4Life** · 10-04-2007, 04:44 PM

OK I've fixed the background and colours now so I'm welcoming more reviews on the redesign.

What do you think of the colour scheme? What about the text - is the font ok, are the colours suiting and what about it's size? Do you think I need a header as well?

Many thanks,
Dan

**TEB** · 10-04-2007, 05:13 PM

1. Get rid of the banner right next to your navbar, make really nice banner in photoshop or gimp.

2. The picture of the servers right in your first paragraph really doesnt match.

3. Your package listing look kind of boring, incorporate an image or something attractive to each one.

4. Your font and size in the first paragraph doesnt match that in the lower paragraphs.

5. White background looks better than what you had before, but consider a border or line or something to smooth the transition from white to dark.

6. The background color of your navbar links needs to be changed.

7. Try adding a customer testimonial to the front page somewhere right or left justified with a nice image.

8. You need a footer, to state your copyright, billing, faq, sitemap, stuff like that. It would also give you a chance to add more professionalismto the page.

9. I assume you have some form of customer support, put that on the homepage as well, so customers looking for support dont have to really search for it. ex. Live chat, e-mail.

Its looking better, keep it up

**CSS4Life** · 10-04-2007, 06:15 PM

What you refer to as the "banner" is actually my logo which I use across the site, so I'm not going to change that, but I'll try and incorporate this into the page better - i.e. making a header or banner image or something.

I've changed a few things including the text size and the server picture - thanks for all of the suggestions and I will continue working to improve this

**coolkbk585** · 10-04-2007, 08:49 PM

I like it. I think that rounded corners could add to the design, along with something other then a white background. You also need a little more padding from the text at the bottom of the page, it runs right up to the edge of the div.

**joder** · 10-04-2007, 09:13 PM

I like the design. The source code looks great

In FF, contact in the menu is smaller that the others as is the login submenu. In IE the logo is discolored because it seems to be a transparent png which IE doesn't support. On my computer, your menu in IE doesn't fit all on the same line. I think the site needs to be a little wider. Personally, I would go liquid instead of absolute width.

**CSS4Life** · 03:51 AM

OK thank you both for your reviews - I'll keep working at it then

Update: Just changed the background colour - what do you think? (If you haven't reviewed this before, the original colour is on the main page of the site - the current theme/design)

**gringo** · 10-05-2007, 01:00 PM

Hi whym,

Here's my opinion on a very subjective matter so please ignore if you don't like!

I'm not keen on the background colour, but I've a feeling you like it because it's appeared on different iterations. I'm a big fan of white background dark text, but there are some darker backgrounds that do look good
I think some kind of flashy background image as bullets for your <li>s would help
How about a repeating gradient background for your Cone, Cube, Cart headings? A bit like the repeating-x backgrounds here: http://www.affiliates4u.com/forums/ (obviously a different colour)
I prefer sans-serif fonts but that's just me
Could you jazz your logo up a bit?
Not sure you know this already, but the CSS doesn't validate

The video tutorial bit looks interesting - what tuts are you going to put in there? Are you going to do them yourself?

**CSS4Life** · 10-05-2007, 01:08 PM

gringo, try revalidating that CSS and refreshing the page - I've been messing around with a few things just now to try and get rubbish Internet Explorer to do anything like I want it to - just checked the validation of the current CSS and it's fine - probably just a mistake I made while tinkering with it now.

Thanks for those other comments. Regarding the tutorials, I'll be using the iframe tag to cPanel's web site for the time being - this redesign thing is extremely exhausting - mostly due to IE's idiotic behaviour and also IE6's lack of transparent PNG support. On top of all that, I've got work to do for college!

**CSS4Life** · 10-06-2007, 03:52 AM

Has anyone else got any more reviews for the changes on my site?

**o2i** · 10-06-2007, 07:28 AM

you really need to rework on the layout and the design of the site .... i don't think this site design is all that great

**CSS4Life** · 10-06-2007, 07:50 AM

OK well can you tell me what's wrong with it - it kind of helps if you can be more specific about how it should be changed.

**coolkbk585** · 10-06-2007, 01:09 PM

I like the edges of the container div now. The padding seems nice.

I think the site looks good...but it would be better if the text on it was sans-serif. I've never been a fan of serif fonts anywhere.

**CSS4Life** · 10-06-2007, 01:23 PM

OK will do - several other people have commented on the font too!

Thanks for the review (btw it's fixed in IE7 now)