Website Review and Suggestions

**BDevil15** · 05-24-2009, 04:48 AM

Hi all,
I am looking for some input on where this is going. None of the links or other pages are ready but the home page is about done and wanted to get some input on what people think. Its the first page I've ever hand coded (well used dreamweaver but did 99% of it by hand) and if you want to give advice on the code that would be great too.

http://yourradiantbarrier.com/

Look forward to your opinions.

Thanks,
BDevil

**davemies** · 05-24-2009, 05:31 AM

why only a transitional doctype? that means you're using code that is earmarked for deprecation.

although i like the blue and orange together there's something that doesn't quite work with all that grey and black

try replacing some of those blacks/greys with corresponding shades of blue e.g. a dark blue for to replace the black in the header

increasing text size a couple of notches breaks the 4 panels at the top - they need to expand like the rest of the page

the drop shadows are too heavy on the 4 panel icons (question etc)

the main links at the top are too difficult to read with orange on blue - use (almost)white text on blue instead

the RBS inc logo looks a bit washe out - it could with more contrast

otherwise it's all quite presentable

**piem** · 05-24-2009, 06:03 AM

About your page? i like that, you make the good lines there, this very good friend,..

**d3sc3n7** · 05-24-2009, 10:55 AM

It looks quite good to me. The changes I would make personally? I dont like the sidebars, however from the looks of things, this is a template so you would have to try to edit style.css. If im wrong, and its not a template, again I would expand it to full page. This will, I believe, make the page easier on the eyes...for me those side bars are just distracting.

**davemies** · 05-24-2009, 11:29 AM

i was thinking something along the lines of this
http://pp.kpnet.fi/prescott/stuff/radiant-barrier.png - note the lighter drop shadow on the first icon in the panels

**d3sc3n7** · 05-24-2009, 11:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davemies

i was thinking something along the lines of this
http://pp.kpnet.fi/prescott/stuff/radiant-barrier.png - note the lighter drop shadow on the first icon in the panels

I agree, this is alot more appealing.

**BDevil15** · 05-24-2009, 12:41 PM

Thanks for the suggestions all,

Dave could you be more specific about the DOCTYPE?

I really like the change you made with the background and the header.

Thanks a lot for the feedback I will surely try to use it to make things better, Im a little bummed that it looks like a template, even though this is a construction based site and not supposed to wow visitors as much as offer info on our products I still didn't want it to look like a template.

Thanks for anymore feedback I truly appreciate it.

**davemies** · 05-24-2009, 04:17 PM

glad you liked the colours

hope they can be some use to you

it didn't look like a template to me

re. doctype - there's not much point in using a transitional doctype if you're serious about coding because then it will include deprecated tags and attributes (i.e. ones that are earmarked for removal from the (x)html spec in the future) that you can well do without. better to use a strict one where you can e.g.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

or even <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

**BDevil15** · 05-25-2009, 03:10 AM

Ahh ok I'll change it then Thanks again Dave

**davemies** · 05-25-2009, 09:04 AM

of course - be sure to validate it too to catch any errors that you may now have

**Nomar86** · 05-25-2009, 09:36 AM

Like it! It is clear and gives a warm feeling if you visit it! Menu is nice to

**iamboredr** · 05-25-2009, 10:23 AM

The homepage is fine. It would be great if u show some images of your product at the homepage. To add more credibility, provide a testimonial page or certificates.

**dt17** · 05-25-2009, 11:00 AM

Some small things I (personally) would change;

: Logo - you definitely need a logo for the top of the page, every website/company should have one in my opinion
: Times New Roman - I think it's a horrible font and makes the design (especially since you have so much text) quite jagged and ugly
: The gradients arent good at all, they are too bold and look quite amateurish. Gradients should be smooth and flowing.
: The "curves" on the content boxes look too jaggy. If your going to round them, they need to be smooth else it doesn't work
: A few images wouldn't go a miss (looking at the 4 boxes you have that are just text - couldn't you put a few images in?)

Apart from that, I think your design is good and has potential to be great

**mightymap** · 05-25-2009, 10:55 PM

nice layout, easy to read good graphics and color...overall i'd give it an 8.5/10...i'm not feeling the white links at the top.

**BDevil15** · 05-27-2009, 11:54 AM

Implimented a few changes as suggested, also does anyone have a sec to look at the code and maybe give an opinion? anything in the code which is particularly unnecessary or ammateurish?

Thanks again, Great suggestions and all of your input has been great.
BDevil