Ben Hodgson

Just uploaded some shots from my portfolio to the gallery. http://www.webdesignerforum.co.uk/index.ph...um&album=40 Let me know what you reckon

Hello. I'm Ben, 21 years old, graduating from De Montfort University in Leicester very soon and hoping to get myself a job making websites somewhere. About time I got paid for doing it. Have been designing and developing compliant sites with XHTML and CSS since about 2005, adding PHP to the mixture somewhere along the way. There was plenty of stuff before 2005 too, but most of it is best left back there. Also fairly into my photography. I'm going to miss the regular new camera equipment fun that was brought about come student loan day. Thats all I can think of really. So, erm, Hi

Two ways of doing it really. You can either set a cookie that tells the counter that they have already been logged down, or a more basic solution would be to check where the user has come from using HTTP_REFERRER. So if the previous page was outside of your domain, it'll log a hit, if the previous page is within your domain, it won't. It'll still log multiple hits if someone leaves your site then comes back, but thats better than it logging on every page. You'll want something along the lines of... if (($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']) !== ($_SERVER[HTTP_HOST])) { // Log down a hit } else { // Do nothing } That won't work how you want it, but with some tweaking you should be on your way.

Sorry for double post, but have been playing round with some different colour schemes and can't make my mind up. Would appreciate a second opinion from somewhere.

Better late than never, maybe, here's my contribution. Not feeling the header. I'm guessing the big picture is meant to be a skyscraper, but could be anything (tilt your head 90 degrees and it becomes tiled steps). The 'Framed Designs' font is too small and hidden away in the corner with so much dull nothingness around it that it doesn't jump out and scream the fact that it's your company name. Having deleted the logo from your original concept, that is now your company logo, make it noticeable. One of the points that was brought up in the image at the top of the thread is that you've got a text box and a button that says go. What does it do?? Am I meant to put my email address in there, a username, a password, a search query? Tell people what the box is for. If it's a site search, label it as such. I also don't get why you've made a standards compliant website, complete with blogs on using CSS instead of tables, but are quite happy to use an almost pointless frame, seemingly on the sole basis that the company is called 'Framed Designs', and you like frames. It's like building the worlds most eco-friendly house, then parking a Hummer in the garage. Content wise I'd suggest cutting the About section down a bit. Too much there, your clients don't want to read your life autobiography, they just want something short and simple about who you are and why you are the person for the job. As far as the portfolio goes, its not particularly strong anyway, but doesn't help itself by splitting the sites up into the two categories. If a piece of your work becomes defunct you should either link to a decent quality screenshot of the site when it was live, or don't include it in your portfolio. Equally, the Observatorium link takes you to a website that has lots of test posts and blog entries consisting of "blah blah blah", this reflects especially badly on you as you have specifically stated that it's your own site. Sorry to be so negative. There's potential if you work at it though.

Depending on your version of PHP, you may need to tell it specifically to get the ID from the URL and place it into a variable. In Page 2, stick this in before your SQL query. $id = ($_GET['id']); I find it's a good habit to do this whatever version/setup you're running. Just in case.

Did actually notice that when I tested on my macbook, but completely forgot to then sort it out. Thanks for reminding me!

Hello! Seeing as I've started applying for some web jobs I figured it might be worth getting some feedback on my portfolio. It can be found at http://ben.someaddress.net and contains various bits of my web, photo and audio work. Looking for feedback on the design and build of the portfolio, and the actual content of the site itself really. Thanks in advance.