Website Review and Suggestions

**FiZiX** · 02:26 PM

http://www.mydropspot.com

I've been working on this site for a while now and it's gone through many revisions (and probably many more to come). Its my first website and I've basically learned HTML, JavaScript, MySQL, and PHP while writing it.

The idea of the site is that members can share links, embed videos, images, and podcasts they like, post blogs, ect... Then other members can rate and comment on them (sort of like Digg). I'd like to expand on the social networking aspect of it when I get time.

It's pretty much 100% AJAX so you should only have to load the page once. There's also a private messaging, friends system, and adult section but they're only accessible to members (the only members right now are the alpha testers).

I'd like your opinions on the layout, styling, load times, usability, ect...

Also, if you'd like to become an alpha tester let me know and I'll set you up with an account.

**bobming** · 07-11-2008, 04:23 PM

Hi Fizix

Had a look around your site - the Digg-clone model has admittedly almost been done to death in the last year or so, but I'm liking how you've brought something new with Ajax-powered slant to it.

It's a simple clean design (my personal favourites

), particularly good for a first website. A few things I've noticed though -

the login / register buttons could do with standing out from the rest of the navigation (theres a great article I read today on this subject here: http://www.uie.com/articles/user_expectations/)
the 'post' boxes could do with post titles. Also, the posts should all line up - the posts below the fold that stretch across the width of the page look separated from the first couple of posts and create a lot of white space on wider screen resolutions.
being powered by Ajax can mean the website becomes very inaccessible - search engines won't be able to crawl and index pages, and users without JavaScript enabled won't get very far.

great site so far - with a little more work it could definitely become a successful online community.

**raptrex** · 07-11-2008, 05:11 PM

the navigation links at the top are fine
but the background for popularity and the # looks weird with the rest of the design
also you should make them all the same width

**alpha7** · 07-11-2008, 05:34 PM

Very nicely done. I have been designing for a while and my fist site was 100% static with animated gif files. that was 10 years ago.

That's a very good start.

**FiZiX** · 07-14-2008, 11:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobming

Hi Fizix

Had a look around your site - the Digg-clone model has admittedly almost been done to death in the last year or so, but I'm liking how you've brought something new with Ajax-powered slant to it.

It's a simple clean design (my personal favourites

), particularly good for a first website.

Thank you for the kind words!

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobming

the login / register buttons could do with standing out from the rest of the navigation (theres a great article I read today on this subject here: http://www.uie.com/articles/user_expectations/)
the 'post' boxes could do with post titles. Also, the posts should all line up - the posts below the fold that stretch across the width of the page look separated from the first couple of posts and create a lot of white space on wider screen resolutions.

Good points, I will take them in to account in my next release.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobming

being powered by Ajax can mean the website becomes very inaccessible - search engines won't be able to crawl and index pages, and users without JavaScript enabled won't get very far.

I've actually done a lot of work to keep it as accessible and crawlable as possible. I'm using a PHP script to detect the user-agent and I pass a non-AJAX version of the page to browsers/crawlers that don't support DOM.

**FiZiX** · 07-14-2008, 11:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by raptrex

the background for popularity and the # looks weird with the rest of the design

This could be a font issue with your browser that I'll have to look in to. What browser are you using?

**highanddry** · 07-14-2008, 04:32 PM

I know a lot of the big sites don't say what they are on the front page, because everyone knows what it is. When I visit your page, I don't know what i'm looking at and it makes me want to leave... I would include a short blurb defining waht the site does.