Website Review and Suggestions

**houdini987** · 12-19-2006, 11:14 AM

Well it's been a few months since I last submitted my site for review and since then, I've overhauled a lot. I could still definitely use some additional pointers though.

www.trudeauconsulting.com

Note that the site was designed using DotNetNuke, so I'm not necessarily looking for coding issues, since I have little desire to rip apart the .aspx pages unless it's something really bad.

I should also say that the "Documents" section is really there for multiple reasons. One person said it was confusing to have those documents there, but it brings in traffic and it's an easy way for me to communicate things to my clients (i.e. avoid repeating the same "walkthrough" e-mail over and over).

Thanks in advance - all feedback is welcome!

**adrian88** · 12-19-2006, 01:08 PM

its good..

perhaps some flash could improve it tho

**Silent77** · 12-19-2006, 10:14 PM

I don't mean to sound rude but it doesn't look like a "Professional Business Web Site Design" website. It looks like an older, out of date, website that was never upgraded. Also it kind of looks like you bottom navigation bar has an error or something, it doesn't look right.

I like the layout though, it is unique.

**ACarOwner** · 12-20-2006, 06:35 AM

Overall, it is a website that is good enough for a consulting firm's web site, but not good enough for a professional web design web site. The text blocks are all irregular in sizes and shapes, you may wanna think about removing the shadow from the address block - very hard to read the actual address.

There's a huge chunk of white space in the most important part of your page, the one you're briefly telling what and who you are. And an exclamation point that is on a new line of the first para looks silly (I'm using the the 1024x768 res). Spell checking also helps (maintennance in the TC Small Biz package, last line).

Overall, it's nice for a self-made page, but needs to be tweaked if you are hoping to sell web design as one of the primary services.

**houdini987** · 12-20-2006, 08:09 AM

Thanks guys - that's pretty much what I was looking for. This will help me understand what to focus on.

**virtuaboy** · 12-20-2006, 08:21 AM

nice site but i find the text in the header is a little hard to read with the drop shadow and the text clashes on the footer.

Besides that the sites not bad

VirtuaBoy

**houdini987** · 12-20-2006, 09:01 AM

Thanks Virtuaboy - yeah I think it's a problem with my CSS, I'll take a look at that. Thanks again for the other feedback - I made some of the suggested changes/fixes. I'm only a few months into this little project so I appreciate the more seasoned designers' opinions.

**jordban** · 12-23-2006, 06:55 AM

Not bad. The edgy corners are a bit overdone. But good start.

**ADAM Web Design** · 12-23-2006, 12:28 PM

I'm an oddball case, and I realize that. But I have a 19" widescreen monitor (1440 x 900 res) and your layout leaves a LOT of blue on either side.

I'm with jordban on the corners too. In particular, the diagonal dark blue between the purpley-blue colour and the white is thicker than the horizontal and vertical borders. It looks weird and inconsistent to me (in other words, you need more white edging.)

I know that you said that you didn't want to rip apart the code unless it's bad. Well...it's bad. Unfortunately, by bad I mean 18-car-pileup-on-a-superhighway-in-the-middle-of-rush-hour bad.

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.trudeauconsulting.com%2 F

The links section also has to go. That's clearly an outdated SEO trick that doesn't work anymore (not that it did all that much to begin with.)

You could use a sitemap too, in order to ensure that your submenu pages get indexed properly.

Speaking of submenus, you get a weird jerky effect when the mouse hovers over the menu items. Looks like you're adding padding (cool rhyme!) on hover. Either use it for both hover and regular, or neither.

I'm pretty well with what everyone else said...it's not really "good enough" for a web design site. Maybe a consulting site, but not a design site.

**travelagent** · 12-25-2006, 08:59 AM

When people advertise they're "Professional Web Designers / Consultants", they really should not only present a Professional looking site, but also make sure they have no coding errors such as you currently have -- I'm stating this with the hope you'll take it as constructive criticism.

You have 1 code error and 182 code warnings you may wish to fix, so that your site validates for accessibility in all browsers, as shown here ...

Code:

line 11 column 1 - Warning: <meta> element not empty or not closed
line 11 column 47 - Warning: <meta> element not empty or not closed
line 11 column 113 - Warning: <meta> element not empty or not closed
line 11 column 225 - Warning: <meta> element not empty or not closed
line 11 column 294 - Warning: <meta> element not empty or not closed
line 11 column 407 - Warning: <meta> element not empty or not closed
line 11 column 453 - Warning: <meta> element not empty or not closed
line 11 column 496 - Warning: <meta> element not empty or not closed
line 11 column 540 - Warning: <meta> element not empty or not closed
line 11 column 584 - Warning: <meta> element not empty or not closed
line 11 column 622 - Warning: <meta> element not empty or not closed
line 76 column 37 - Error: missing quote mark for attribute value
line 92 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 94 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 96 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 100 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 121 column 2 - Warning: missing </span> before <h1>
line 121 column 84 - Warning: inserting implicit <span>
line 125 column 5 - Warning: missing </span> before <h4>
line 126 column 16 - Warning: inserting implicit <span>
line 126 column 16 - Warning: missing </font> before </h4>
line 129 column 45 - Warning: discarding unexpected </h2>
line 130 column 18 - Warning: missing </span> before </h2>
line 133 column 375 - Warning: discarding unexpected </span>
line 133 column 382 - Warning: discarding unexpected </span>
line 133 column 389 - Warning: discarding unexpected </font>
line 135 column 17 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 136 column 17 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 137 column 125 - Warning: discarding unexpected </span>
line 145 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 149 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 151 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 153 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 166 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 168 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 170 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 174 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 195 column 68 - Warning: missing </span> before <p>
line 195 column 2 - Warning: missing </span> before <p>
line 196 column 4 - Warning: inserting implicit <span>
line 196 column 4 - Warning: missing </span> before <p>
line 197 column 4 - Warning: inserting implicit <span>
line 197 column 4 - Warning: missing </span> before <ul>
line 199 column 5 - Warning: inserting implicit <span>
line 199 column 5 - Warning: missing </span> before <li>
line 200 column 5 - Warning: inserting implicit <span>
line 200 column 5 - Warning: missing </span> before <li>
line 201 column 5 - Warning: inserting implicit <span>
line 201 column 5 - Warning: missing </span> before <li>
line 202 column 5 - Warning: inserting implicit <span>
line 202 column 5 - Warning: missing </span> before <li>
line 203 column 5 - Warning: inserting implicit <span>
line 203 column 5 - Warning: missing </span> before <li>
line 204 column 5 - Warning: inserting implicit <span>
line 204 column 5 - Warning: missing </span> before <li>
line 205 column 5 - Warning: inserting implicit <span>
line 205 column 5 - Warning: missing </span> before <li>
line 206 column 5 - Warning: inserting implicit <span>
line 209 column 1 - Warning: <hr> element not empty or not closed
line 220 column 1 - Warning: <hr> element not empty or not closed
line 231 column 87 - Warning: discarding unexpected </span>
line 231 column 94 - Warning: discarding unexpected </span>
line 239 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 243 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 245 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 247 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 258 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 260 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 262 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 266 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 287 column 68 - Warning: missing </span> before <p>
line 287 column 2 - Warning: missing </span> before <p>
line 288 column 4 - Warning: inserting implicit <span>
line 294 column 4 - Warning: discarding unexpected </span>
line 298 column 9 - Warning: discarding unexpected </span>
line 306 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 310 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 312 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 314 column 13 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 323 column 51 - Warning: missing </span> before <div>
line 324 column 1 - Warning: inserting implicit <span>
line 325 column 7 - Warning: discarding unexpected </span>
line 365 column 28 - Warning: entity "&nbsp" doesn't end in ';'
line 11 column 1 - Warning: <meta> lacks "content" attribute
line 11 column 699 - Warning: <style> inserting "type" attribute
line 11 column 736 - Warning: <link> ID "_Portals__default_" uses XML ID syntax
line 11 column 838 - Warning: <link> ID "_Portals__default_Skins_DNN_Gray_" uses XML ID syntax
line 11 column 967 - Warning: <link> ID "_Portals__default_Containers_DNN_Gray_" uses XML ID syntax
line 11 column 1111 - Warning: <link> ID "_Portals_0_" uses XML ID syntax
line 15 column 1 - Warning: <body> proprietary attribute "bottommargin"
line 15 column 1 - Warning: <body> proprietary attribute "leftmargin"
line 15 column 1 - Warning: <body> proprietary attribute "topmargin"
line 15 column 1 - Warning: <body> proprietary attribute "rightmargin"
line 15 column 1 - Warning: <body> proprietary attribute "marginwidth"
line 15 column 1 - Warning: <body> proprietary attribute "marginheight"
line 18 column 1 - Warning: <input> ID "__EVENTTARGET" uses XML ID syntax
line 19 column 1 - Warning: <input> ID "__EVENTARGUMENT" uses XML ID syntax
line 42 column 1 - Warning: <script> inserting "type" attribute
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "name"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "backcolor"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "iconbackgroundcolor"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "hlcolor"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "shcolor"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "selforecolor"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "selcolor"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "fontstyle"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "sysimgpath"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "display"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "menubarheight"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "menuitemheight"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "iconwidth"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "moutdelay"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "menutransition"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "borderwidth"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "iconimgpath"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "arrowimage"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "rootarrowimage"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "rootarrow"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "cssmenuarrow"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "cssmenubreak"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "cssmenucontainer"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "cssmenubar"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "csssubmenu"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "cssmenuicon"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "cssmenuitem"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "cssmenuitemsel"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "cssrootmenuarw"
line 76 column 37 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "xml"
line 92 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 93 column 9 - Warning: <td> proprietary attribute "background"
line 94 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 96 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 99 column 9 - Warning: <td> proprietary attribute "background"
line 100 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 101 column 9 - Warning: <td> proprietary attribute "background"
line 104 column 21 - Warning: <td> proprietary attribute "background"
line 144 column 9 - Warning: <td> proprietary attribute "background"
line 145 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 149 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 150 column 9 - Warning: <td> proprietary attribute "background"
line 151 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 153 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 166 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 167 column 9 - Warning: <td> proprietary attribute "background"
line 168 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 170 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 173 column 9 - Warning: <td> proprietary attribute "background"
line 174 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 175 column 9 - Warning: <td> proprietary attribute "background"
line 178 column 21 - Warning: <td> proprietary attribute "background"
line 238 column 9 - Warning: <td> proprietary attribute "background"
line 239 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 243 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 244 column 9 - Warning: <td> proprietary attribute "background"
line 245 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 247 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 258 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 259 column 9 - Warning: <td> proprietary attribute "background"
line 260 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 262 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 265 column 9 - Warning: <td> proprietary attribute "background"
line 266 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 267 column 9 - Warning: <td> proprietary attribute "background"
line 270 column 21 - Warning: <td> proprietary attribute "background"
line 305 column 9 - Warning: <td> proprietary attribute "background"
line 306 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 310 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 311 column 9 - Warning: <td> proprietary attribute "background"
line 312 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 314 column 13 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 323 column 51 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "align"
line 324 column 1 - Warning: <span> proprietary attribute "align"
line 375 column 9 - Warning: <input> ID "__dnnVariable" uses XML ID syntax
line 377 column 166 - Warning: <script> inserting "type" attribute
line 377 column 370 - Warning: <input> ID "__VIEWSTATE" uses XML ID syntax
line 16 column 5 - Warning: trimming empty <noscript>
line 125 column 5 - Warning: trimming empty <span>
line 195 column 68 - Warning: trimming empty <span>
line 208 column 1 - Warning: trimming empty <p>
line 211 column 1 - Warning: trimming empty <p>
line 219 column 1 - Warning: trimming empty <p>
line 222 column 1 - Warning: trimming empty <p>
line 287 column 68 - Warning: trimming empty <span>

**houdini987** · 12-27-2006, 11:20 AM

Thank you for the input - yes, I am aware that the code behind the site is ugly. This topic has actually come up quite a few times over on the DotNetNuke forums.

It's frustrating because my users and I like the ease of which it is to maintain and customize, but the back end is pretty rough. That being said, there may be some things I can change to the .net coding that will help with some of the coding issues. I'll take a closer look - thanks!

**McBone** · 12-27-2006, 12:05 PM

it looks ok, but i would make it smoother, less square, it doesn't really flow, and i agree with ACarOwner it is "not good enough for a professional web design web site"

but asides from that its a **** good start

**houdini987** · 12-27-2006, 07:26 PM

Thanks again - I managed to get the # of compatibility errors down from > 400, to around 20. Of those 20, I truly think there's not much I can do to resolve them, as they have to do with how DotNetNuke encodes things.

Good feedback - and that's exactly what it is, a start. As for the more/less square aspect, I'm trying to come up with a good balance. My last version was on the other end of the spectrum, too round...

Guess I'll keep plugging away!