Website Opinions

[mynameisbob]

Can I please have some people look at my teams website, I am trying to create one for our rookie team and I need some outlook. I need some outlook so I can at least have a webste worth looking at, we dont really care about winning. The URL is at the bottom of the page.

If you do take the time to look at my website, then please either put a response in this thread, or you can email me directly at nightshaddow13@yahoo.com.

[RyanCesiel]

Originally Posted by mynameisbob

Can I please have some people look at my teams website, I am trying to create one for our rookie team and I need some outlook. I need some outlook so I can at least have a webste worth looking at, we dont really care about winning. The URL is at the bottom of the page.

If you do take the time to look at my website, then please either put a response in this thread, or you can email me directly at nightshaddow13@yahoo.com.

- No auto-starting music, or make a very large turn-off button
- Don't use tables to setup your layout, divs and CSS is the modern alternative
- May want to make your sidebar stand out a little more to make navigation easier

[Cartwright]

I'd definitely say you need some pictures. I also agree that you shouldn't have the autostart music. The writing overlay on the metallic background also isn't very clear because of the background. Besides that, more content would be what I'd suggest.

[Akash Rastogi]

everything said above (especially the fact that your text can't be read in the background)

+links on a blue background can't be seen. lol
+Use something easy like photoshop or anything to make a nicer logo or even better team number to put against he metallic b/g

[mynameisbob]

Thank you for helping me with my website, I am looking forward to taking in any ides I get and using them in my website, please keep on giving me support.

[MiniNerd24]

Love the little touches, like the background and "Domo Arigotto" playing in the background.

[spazdemon548]

Very good start to your site. One thing i noticed is in Julio's bio, Mechanical is spelt "Meckanical".

[mynameisbob]

Should I keep the music or not, Some say yes, some say no. PLease give me your oppinion, and why.

[RyanCesiel]

Originally Posted by mynameisbob

Should I keep the music or not, Some say yes, some say no. PLease give me your oppinion, and why.

No, even though you may think it's related, it really isn't. Also, you're gonna run into the problem where people that are visiting your site may not like that kind of music and would rather not have it playing. In the long run it is better without music. If you think about it, there really isn't any websites that are very popular that have auto-starting music.

[spinmunky]

You can't really read the date/clock at the top.

[Timothy D. Ginn]

So, I will say I agree with most of the constructive criticisms so far; but, that's not really as helpful to you as is guiding you to some of the reasons why and pointing you to some of the tools/techniques that can help you recognize and avoid such problems in the future. After all, like you say, you're not trying for the website award; but, you do obviously want to learn from this.

So, to start off things, here's
Browsershots results. That's what your site looks like in different browsers.

From this you can tell a few things:
* auto-starting music a) doesn't always start and b) can present really confusing/annoying things when it fails to auto-start.
* Using 3 separate images for BOB can wrap one below the others which isn't really what you're looking for.

Next, let's take a look at W3C Validator results - well, that'll help you catch markup errors and such; useful in combination with the above if you find out what you're doing causes something strange to happen on a browser you care about.

Colour Contrast Check - try this to find some colours that are readable on one another for everyone. If you're not having a problem reading the text on the page how you currently have it then you've probably got better colour vision than a good number of your visitors will have. You might also want to see the pictures on the Wikipedia Colour blindness article if you want a better appreciation of just how what others see can vary from what you see.

Hope that helps you out a bit. I won't get into the rationale of why using CSS over tables for layouts and styling is recommended or other more technical points.

[Nightfall831]

although you may not want to go for the website award, you may want to check it out and use it as a decent rubric for what kind of content you want to add

and a general rule for just about everything is KISS(Keep it simple, stupid(not that you are stupid, of course)).

-definately want to check the link colors
-CSS is a good idea, easy to learn and understand, and keeps everything
neat and clean
-Google, wikipedia, and WC3, and chiefdelphi are your best friends
-Keep copywrite stuff in mind...specifically with pictures and logos

i dunno how you are authoring your website, but a program like dreamweaver(but not specifically Dreamweaver) is always helpful as they tend to autofinish the code you are writing, speeds things up a little

I recommend Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition, it's free, always a plus.

[RyanCesiel]

Originally Posted by Nightfall831

I recommend Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition, it's free, always a plus.

Yea, but it has the name Microsoft in it.

jk.

[GaryVoshol]

I concur with the comments on the colors. Hard to read.

The decision to use music or not is yours. If you use it, it should have some purpose related to your team.

For the links to your sponsors, it is more effective if you can use a logo as a link rather than just text.