Website Review and Suggestions

**Fenwolf** · 05-23-2008, 10:28 AM

Hi everyone just need some comments and guidance. We just had an e-mail come in from our old site designer and we wanted to see what people really thought of our site: www.medievalmagic.ca

Here is what he sent us:

Your link has been removed from my site – I certainly don’t want my business linking to what you claim to be a website and having my business associated with it.

We feel that this is just venom because we fired him after we found out he was going in and sabotaging us with malicious code. But my wife wants to know what others think and any advice you might have. Thanks for the ear and help.

James

**highanddry** · 11:09 AM

Well to be as honest as I can, your site needs a ton of work if you want to it to look professional and up to modern web standards. The background distracts the text, the color scheme is not "consumer friendly" and the design is well... medieval.

If you changed the site significantly after your old designer was fired, or he left with the design unfinished then you probably shouldn't continue to credit the work to his name.

If I might ask, what "malicious code" did he insert? I can't imagine why a webmaster would want to sabatoge his/her own client unless it was self-promoting code.

The coding itself is outdated, set in "tables" which are inefficient and have been altogether abandoned by the professional web design community. I suggest you find a real web designer who codes using Cascading Style Sheets (divs) , Xhtml with wc3 compliance etc and can offer you a clean cohesive design.

Hope that helped some

**peterboz** · 05-23-2008, 11:12 AM

While the content is presented in a clear and straightforward fashion, the layout and style are a little dated.

**Fenwolf** · 05-23-2008, 11:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by highanddry

Well to be as honest as I can, your site needs a ton of work if you want to it to look professional and up to modern web standards. The background distracts the text, the color scheme is not "consumer friendly" and the design is well... medieval.

If you changed the site significantly after your old designer was fired, or he left with the design unfinished then you probably shouldn't continue to credit the work to his name.

If I might ask, what "malicious code" did he insert? I can't imagine why a webmaster would want to sabatoge his/her own client unless it was self-promoting code.

The coding itself is outdated, set in "tables" which are inefficient and have been altogether abandoned by the professional web design community. I suggest you find a real web designer who codes using Cascading Style Sheets (divs) , Xhtml with wc3 compliance etc and can offer you a clean cohesive design.

Hope that helped some

He was adding things in the code so we would have to keep coming back to him to get problems fixed. we had 3 other companies look at the coding for the old site and they found numerous questinable codes.

Do you know any books that I could look into. I am doing this all myself. I have no wish to be taken again. He was the 2nd. person to take advantage of us on the design of the site. So now I will do it myself.

Also I have been working with some CSS and am reading:

Beginning HTML with CSS and XHTML by David Schultz and Craig Cook

**highanddry** · 05-23-2008, 01:12 PM

If you have a LOT of free time you could train yourself:

Start with w3.org and use google searches to find answers to your questions.

If you don't want to be "taken," this website (Webmaster talk) has a great system where you can offer your budget price, which is actually a "prize" and many designers will give you customized templates to suit your need and based on your specifications. You can choose a winner and be done with it. Often times you can get a completely coded template for a fraction of the cost 100-500$.

Otherwise, you may be in for many many hours of research and unspeakable frustration that comes with web design when you begin.

**Fenwolf** · 05-23-2008, 04:11 PM

I have no fear of many hours of research and unspeakable frustration. I am a father with 2 kids, these are part of the job. I will look at w3.org. Thanks for the tip. If anyone has any other advice or suggestions for the site please send them.