tidysi

Dear All Today I've uploaded a new version of my company website at http://www.tidydesign.com I'm aware that there are still many things to smooth out, but I just had to launch it because it had been dragging. Now I've uploaded I've got no choice but to work on it all day. As such, I'd love to read feedback from anyone who has time to look at it. My theory with this website was: I wanted to go back to basics with this version of tidydesign.com - I wanted a very clean looking site with plenty of content. My thinking is that once I have a site that is rammed full of useful information to business owners regarding their website, I can then go onto add more images, videos, audio and ajax functionality. For now though, I just wanted a simple site. I'd like to know whether it is overly simple or not, however. I'm particularly looking for feedback regarding: 1 - The layout, colour, size and fonts of the text. Is it readable for you - is it pleasant to read? If not, what can I improve? 2 - (For those who have time). The front page content - how does it read to you, does it make sense, does it belong there? What can I improve? 3 - Usability - do you think it is easy to use? 4 - Aesthetics - what do you think of the websites look? 5 - Functionality - is there anything missing? Please pick it apart - it would be nice to hear some good things about it but as we all know it's better to be critical because customers won't give you a second glance if you don't have a fantastic website. I need some fresh eyes please! (I'd even forgot to put my email address on the contact page until I wrote this post... :/ ) Many thanks for your time Simon

Hello All I joined this forum a couple of days ago and am wondering why it took me so long to find all you lovely, welcoming and helpful people... I've had a client for two years (http://www.dickensworld.co.uk) now who is a top tourist attraction in the UK; I coded a booking system for entry and event tickets, simple hotel reservations, discounts and a staff portal. Then as they had more requirements I added more and more functionality... so much so that now I've got a real need to totally start from scratch again and upgrade it to the next level. Ideally I want to get it to a stage where I can package it as a product for other companies so it needs to work out of the box. I've been thinking about this task for weeks and have no idea where to start. There's the back-end for the website which needs streamlining and the staff portal needs a revamp. The front-end of the bookings pages needs to dramatically overhauled to make it simpler and more usable for the client. On top of that I've come to the realisation that I need to give them a content management system that lets them update the content themselves, but I want to make sure that staff using a CMS doesn't end up ruining the well placed content that I've already done. I guess I'm basically looking for some advice from people about where to start with the project as a whole. I understand the importance of planning, but now really have one - two weeks max before I want to get started. How do you normally document your website projects, (i've always done it on an informal basis since I'm a one man band)? Any comments would be greatly appreciated

In the .htaccess file in the root directory Here's mine currently: Redirect 301 /Writing-Design-Breif-Tidy-London.html /tutorials/analysis/website-design-brief-analysis.html Redirect 301 /Writing-Design-Brief-Tidy-London.html /tutorials/analysis/website-design-brief-analysis.html

Have been getting involved in creating an AJAX contact form because I thought if I could develop a contact form that I can easily plug into any website, then my time will be worth it! as yet, I'm still not getting any luck lol

Hi All I have a website that is comprised entirely of HTML and one contact form; I'm now updating this and need to put some php code on each html page now (I'm having different contact forms) - this means I need to rename all the html extensions to PHP. I started doing this and then realised this could have an effect on my SEO rankings since I have some quite high rankings on Google at the moment. Possible solutions are using 301 Redirects in .htaccess, or developing an AJAX encapsulated widget on each page that can just be inserted with Javascript, or point HTML forms to one php form processing file. Does anyone have any views on this issue? This is actually quite urgent and I would really love peoples views on this situation! Many thanks for your time

Yes I like this website as well, and it's a good start. I'm using Firefox on the iMac I'd suggest making it slightly wider to give more space since its a bit too narrow - you've got 740px at the moment and can easily push another 100 on that. Generally I don't make any websites wider than 960px. Does anyone else agree with this? The text on the header graphic should be bigger, and I agree that using black strokes on text doesn't work amazingly well - a subtle glow might work better. Your images look like they can be compressed further, without losing quality- and you need to put ALT tags on your images for accessibilty and SEO reasons. Your page titles should also reflect keywords and it doesn't look like the heading tags have been used properly (always have use H1 and H2 on your pages).

How often do you use the online community - I mean are you checking it all day long in between web tasks or do you just check at specific times during the day? I'm looking to have people to chat to whilst I work since I'm a freelancer; so I can learn new things, ask questions and hopefully make some meaningful business links with other designers! TidySi

Hi Badmotherz You're probably right there, I guess I like to have the root directory with less files in; for high traffic websites would adding the media folder really increase strain on bandwidth like you say? Out of interest, what sort of files are you putting in /includes and /etc TidySi

Hi I was wondering how everyone else manages their website - at the moment I try to have as few html pages as possible in the root directory, and then have other pages in relevant directories. I then have a /media/ folder which is then split into: /media/graphics/ /media/site-content-images/ /media/php/ /media/ajax/ /media/javascript/ /media/stylesheets I have the top two where /graphics are for images that are used throughout the site for layout purposes, /site-content-images/ is used for images in articles, for example I'd be really interested in seeing what other people do to maintain a clean and tidy site hierarchy - any tips?

Hi all, My name is TidySi and i've been a web developer for many years - graphic design, coding and flash work; I thought that I would start to benefit by joining an online community so I could meet as many like minded web designers as possible. TidySi