Hi, I'm linzi jayne and i have recently designed and built my 1st website from scratch. I have little/no experience in this sort of thing and have found things very challenging. The learning curve is steeeep! My site is about aromatherapy & essential oils. It isn't very good and I know it looks very basic. Any suggestions for any design or technical errors you can spot will be very much appreciated. I can't see the wood for the trees!

PS: I'm not just looking for backlinks as i am aware that this forum is nofollow - I am just hoping to learn from you.

Edited August 2, 201214 yr by MikeChipshop

Hi Linzi jayne - and welcome to webdesignerforum

 

this isn't a criticism aimed at you but i'm just wondering why oh why did you build the site in tables? tables are for tabular data (stuff like excel type info, or sports results etc)?

 

1. you need a logo, but i gues you know that

2. the main image is missing - it's linked to a file on your hard drive

3. the borders on the mavigation items on the left look clunky

4. links are better when they show when they are hovered and have been visited: specify them in youer style sheet something like this:

a:link {color:blue;}

a:visited {color:red;}

a:hover{color:blue;}

a:active{color:red;}

5. you styles should be in an external stylesheet (check somewhere like http://www.w3schools.com/ )

6. don't centre whole paragraphs of normal text, use normal left-aligned text (like this forum text)

7. the basic colour choices are fine but too heavy when used in large areas and the red text on blue background is uncomfortable to read. use a white or pale background with subtle use of your colour - i'll try and illustrate this if i have time

Edited July 5, 201214 yr by dap

maybe something more like this (pretty much based around your colours and those from my lavender pic in the header and Georgia instead of times

Edited July 5, 201214 yr by dap

oh and you might be interested in looking at wordpress...

well guess that was a waste of time

i wouldnt say that. it helps me with my learning even if the op isnt interested. so thank you.

ok glad i was of some help to someone then

Hi, I'm linzi jayne and i have recently designed and built my 1st website from scratch. I have little/no experience in this sort of thing and have found things very challenging. The learning curve is steeeep! My site is about aromatherapy & essential oils. It isn't very good and I know it looks very basic. Any suggestions for any design or technical errors you can spot will be very much appreciated. I can't see the wood for the trees!

PS: I'm not just looking for backlinks as i am aware that this forum is nofollow - I am just hoping to learn from you.

 

Please take a look and point out my mistakes...My sad excuse for a website!

 

 

For someone who does not know web design - talking about "no follow" and "making a contextual link" are pretty advanced.... not adding up

Maybe I am paranoid...

Edited July 19, 201214 yr by zed
link removed

Lol, I am very sorry you seem to have got me all wrong. I have been waiting for an email to tell me when I had a reply!!! My experience of forums and question/answer sites has not been great and usually no one bothers! I logged in today to see if any one had even READ my post!!!! I don't mind that the link was removed (seo is not what i was looking for because unless i can get better at making websites it doesnt really matter how much seo i do now does it). We seem to have got off to a very bad start indeed which is sad because i am just starting out and would like to participate properly.

 

I would also like to say a big thankyou to Dap for the great feedback - it has given me alot to focus on and it appears that i should go away and do some home work. The example design was excellent, far better than anything i could ever have come up with and i have taken some very valuable lessons from your response. I will look into learning some css and try to figure out how to use that instead of tables! It was the site wizard website where i had that idea from!

 

To who ever suspected me of being more experienced - did you actually SEE the site i made, lmao! I am not experienced (yet) but the thing with teaching yourself web design (as with lots of things) you dont have a clue what you are doing and so learn things in no particular order (hence my being so basic and confused about some things yet seemingly proficient in others (it took me some minuted of pondering and going over the post i had written before realising that i had, in fact, used a contextual link as you put it. I had thought this was called using anchor text as i had googled what anchor text was a while ago and i seem to have gotten mixed up; but hey, at least i can do a contextual link now and know that i'm doing it so i even took value from your comment too!. I am of a reasonable level of intelligence but can still become confused like any one else. I am sorry for my lack of response which seems to have given you all cause for annoyance and suspicion; it was simply a genuine mistake and just goes to illustrate how i can often do no right in life! (Both feet straight in usually,lol).

 

I hope to revisit this forum again when i have brushed up on my skills and get some more feedback (if you'll even have me now that you think i am just kerb crawling for links or whatever it is. I will stop my "development" (term used very loosely) and learn some better skills. Thanks again to Dap for the feed back; it has really helped and i will look on the w3 site for some guidance with css.

 

Thanks again and i am honestly sorry for my blunder.

 

Linzi Jayne

For someone who does not know web design - talking about "no follow" and "making a contextual link" are pretty advanced.... not adding up

Maybe I am paranoid...

You are joking right? My boss (who has even less experience in web design than the OP) knows all about nofollow and contextual links.

Edited August 2, 201214 yr by jamesosix

no i am not joking. Nor do I know about your boss.

I assume that if your boss, being so inexperienced in web design, knows all about nofollow and contextual links then it wouldn't be such a shock to see me use/reference them in my initial post-not too advanced after all?

Its nice to hear that you took my side jamesosix!

lol no problem Linzi Jayne, just pop in whenever you have a question. glad i was some help

 

I assume that if your boss, being so inexperienced in web design, knows all about nofollow and contextual links then it wouldn't be such a shock to see me use/reference them in my initial post-not too advanced after all?