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Could you check this site please

Bulldog
in Website Reviews and Feedback

Featured Replies

Hi,

 

Someone made this website for me. (www.campusbritain.com) I don't think they did a good job. I recently put the google analytics code on the website and it didn't work properly, when I posted in the google groups they said apparently there is another Java script on my site which has errors in it and it is why the google java script is not working.

 

Could you please have a look at the site and see

 

1: Is the javascript on the site needed at all as I can't see any function for it

2: If it is needed how can I correct it

3: Also the site takes a long time to load even on a 2mb broadband connection. do you know why it is and how to rectify it. Usually it is slow the first time you open it afterwards it is ok.

 

any other suggestions will be gratefully received as well.

 

Regards,

 

Anish

Site code is very poor, I'd be very unhappy if you've paid a lot for that site.

I hope you didn't pay :( the coding is horrendous I didn't look at it in much detail but the homepage didn't even load for me. If you need a hand sorting it out I would be more than happy to help out :)

Wow that site is so slow to load, half the slices didn't show at all and 5 minutes later it is still trying to load. The code is just as bad, what is with all the unnecessary JS? I don't know too much about JS but I am pretty sure half of it isn't needed seeing as the site is basically just sliced images and image map for the links. I would remove the first JS which is in the <head> tag and see how it looks/functions from there.

As for making the site load faster, I would suggest not having it all sliced up and optimising the images properly, also using actual text rather than images for the navigation and footer links. I'm sure someone here will be willing to help, I would but I do not have much time.

That looks sort of like Dreamweaver code, especially the rollover images (which is why you have that unnecessary javascript code at the top).

 

I would recommend hiring a decent web designer to do it for you.. you'll definitely get better results if you choose the right one.

Wow, I'm really sorry but it looks like you've been had. I really hope you didn't pay for this.

If you did pay a lot for it, I can help you recode it from the ground. This is a pretty straight forward layout, but they have used tables for layout, image-maps and other bad techniques. I can't see why you should need javascript eighter. Maybe they've used it for some hover effect.

 

I don't have a PC up and running at this time, but PM me on monday and I'll see what I can do for you. It's a shame you've been fooled like this.

 

Edit: I will do it for free. Not sure that was stated clearly.

It appears that the designer has used the old fashioned (1996?) method of creating sites. I.e. designing/exporting in photoshop, then heavy dreamweaver use. The large chunk of js in the head section is created by dreamweaver as a way of preloading rollovers when creating rollovers in dreamweaver. As for the rest of the layout, because it's been exported as htm/images from photoshop; it's coded into tables (I won't even start explaining why this is bad).

 

I wouldn't go as far as to say that he has been 'had' since the general design of the site is ok, it's just the coding/design methods which are the problem.

 

I think it's great that people are offering to re code the layout for free though. This is why I love this forum. =)

  • Author

Hi all,

 

First of all let me thank all you guys.. I didn't expect this many replies. Really really appreciate it. Especially the ones who offered to do it for free. :) Unfortunately I did pay about £200 for getting that site made up and for the kind of job they did, I agree I have been ripped off.

 

Sono Juventino, I would love to take up on your offer to recode the site for me. I will post a PM tomorrow to remind you. Could you please tell me what things you need, I presume you will need access to the hosting server etc and the files right.

 

 

Thanks again

£200 isn't a rip off it still took someone time to do it. Done properly you would expect to pay at least 3x what you did.

Yeah Mesa is correct. You do get what you pay for and i'm assuming the designer was probably an amateur or just had better designing than coding skills which is why the layout was coded so bad. £200 isn't really a rip of seeing as how most designers would charge a lot more to do a better job.

I only has web designing as a hobby, but I could've done both a better design and coding job for that kind of money. I think this is a complete scam, because this site is not usable. When one single page still loads after five minutes, something is terribly wrong.

 

Bulldog: I don't know how much you know about the web, but if you know how to transfer files yourself, all i need from you is the images used in the design. Do you have psd-files or any images of the whole page? I might need to cut the images myself to optimize your site.

I think some are overreacting. £200 for a site is NOT a scam or rip off so long as they didn't promise a super site and the client knew that (I mean for £200 the client should have know that even if it wasn't spelt out).

 

And yes a lot of people here could have done better, after all it is a web designers forum. It sounds funny when I hear "for £XXX I could have done better", it almost suggests your work is only as good as how much you're getting paid :)

£200 = 5-10 hours of work. I could've done a much better design and still coded it in fully valid and semantic code in that time. This design is not worth the money payed.

 

The work here is so bad I would call it a scam. You can't use a site that is loading for 5 minutes. Most visitors leaves after 5-8 seconds. This site is just not usable, therefor a scam!

£200 = 5-10 hours of work. I could've done a much better design and still coded it in fully valid and semantic code in that time. This design is not worth the money payed.

 

The work here is so bad I would call it a scam. You can't use a site that is loading for 5 minutes. Most visitors leaves after 5-8 seconds. This site is just not usable, therefor a scam!

 

Gotta agree there, I'm afraid. While there's a certain amount of "you get what you pay for", any site has to be at least usable. Unless you wait for it all to load, which takes a pisstakingly long time (I still haven't gotten it all to load fully), this isn't usable. £200 or £20, it's not worth the money as you won't get a return on it.

I think we can all agree that £200 sites are worth f'all. I mean £200 to a business is nothing, £1000 to a small business isn't much.

I don't agree with you. You should get what you are paying for. Even do web design is creative work, you should receive a usable product.

 

£200 = 5 hours (£40 hour rate). You should be able to do something much better than this in 5 hours.

I'm not sure what you're not agreeing with. On one hand you say £200 is a rip off and it's a scam, then you say you should get what you pay for. I suggested a £200 site is an unrealistic amount to pay.

 

Just because someone here thinks they can do a full site in half a day it doesn't mean whoever done the site could. It could have taken them a week (judging by their poor code it very well may have), therefore £200 isn't a rip of so long as the client knew exactly what they were getting (which may or may not be the case). You can buy a car for £200 but you wouldn't expect it to be a supercar would you? I'm just very careful when throwing **** because I know it sticks, playing devils advocate was intended merely to present an alternate view. For the record I think the site is very poor (as stated) but if the client thought they were getting a great site for £200 I'd also say you get what you pay for, worthless or not. Caveat Emptor

The thing is that a car salesman has to state the car's flaws. I this user has obviosly not said that he will reiceve a site built on second-hand technologies.

 

A car is taking hours and expensive machinery to build. A web designer should not need more than 50-60 hours to built a good web site. (Php etc. not included of course). And he doesn't need very expensive machinery neighter. Of course a car will cost you more than a web site because of this.

:pp I agree with you but each and every time I have stated "so long as the client knew exactly what they were getting".
  • Author

@Messa,

 

£200 might not be a big amount but this designer indeed tell me the website will be very good and that is indeed why I think it was a rip off. Ofcourse if he has said the site he designs for £200 wouldn't work well I wouldnt have hired him in the first place. As I don't know much about web design, obviously thought £200 is a reasonable payment for a 6 page website with nothing fancy.

:pp I agree with you but each and every time I have stated "so long as the client knew exactly what they were getting".

 

Yeah, I can see that in the contract...

 

"Upon payment, the client shall recieve:

 

1) a site that takes approximately 3 working days to load;

2) a site that encourages visitors to bugger off somewhere else before being able to view the content;

3) a site that basically, because of the above, serves no useful purpose to the client unless they like watching progress bars."

Hey guys I'm on the same side, I feel like I'm in a fight. OK just to make things very clear; :crazy:

 

YES I THINK IT WAS A RIP OFF

 

As far fetched as saying "exactly what the client will get" may sound we know very little about the relationship between client and designer. It could have been his mate who said "yea it won't be dat gud but I willz do it for a bag of weed and £200 so I can get the floor of ma corsa welded".

 

...this designer indeed tell me the website will be very good and that is indeed why I think it was a rip off.

 

I wouldn't pay him, or ask him to remove the site and give you your money back.

I'm shocked at the replies so far. Upon loading the site I expected to see a right mess, but the design looks good to me and it loaded at an acceptable speed. On first load, I noticed that the text was visible straight away, so I had something to read before all the slices downloaded. In total, it took about ten seconds to load from start to finish on my 8mb broadband.

 

Talk of "horrendous" code - come on guys, it may be tables, but we've seen worse...

 

I will agree that the site is quite badly coded due to the excessive amount of slices, but for £200.00 I actually think you got quite a good deal. The coding just needs tidying up, that's all. It's not a big job, and that's why people are offering to do it for free.

I think he has removed the javascript. The page loaded for four or five minutes before all images were displayed.

 

So, it's not that bad the way it is right now.

I don't think he was ripped off at all. The design is not so bad, but the coding is horrible-but as Mesa said-you get what you pay for.

 

Also, the JS is still there and the site still took a long time to load for me so I have no idea why it was so quick for you Pendulum.

 

Ofcourse if he has said the site he designs for £200 wouldn't work well I wouldnt have hired him in the first place.

Nobody, designer or not, is going to say "I will charge you this much-but it won't work very well". Whoever the designer was obviously wanted to make some quick money and quickly sliced the images up in imageready. Hope the lesson is learnt that you do indeed get what you pay for.

I don't understand why so many are experiencing the site loading slow either. It loaded for me in under 5 seconds. But then again, I am on 24mb broadband.

 

As for the debate about the professionality of the site. You have to look at it from both sides. Us as enthusiastic designers on WDF are going to say 'this is wrong, that is wrong' etc as we mostly know the best practices and proper ways to go about doing things when creating a website.

 

The individual who designed the website may have thought they had l33t designing skills which were more than adequate for the job, which is why they told the client they would be able to make a good site.

 

As I stated previously, the designer may have just been a better designer than a coder as the layout design itself isn't exactly 'bad'. Hence the reason it was sliced in photoshop and exported, then shoddily coded in Dreamweaver. Highlighting the designers lack of coding experience.

 

I still don't agree that the guy got scammed though, I have seen much much worse sites which people paid thousands for.

The loading of the site is really quite slow. As I'm writing this, the images are still loading.

It loaded zippily for me. Design wise it doesn't look *too* bad for £200. Of course, the markup could do with a lot of work. There's a whole lot more to web design than just making it look pretty. :)

Hi Anis,

 

It is unfortunate that choice of your web design company is not the right decision. Programming is horrible and lot of mistakes....does not support w3c validation......

I think that you haver made horrible mistake in choosing web design company. Javascipt is used in your code. site is very slow, because graphics is not optimised. To correct javascript, yopu need knowldge of javascript.

 

Regards,

The thing is that non of the techniques used on the site needs javascript. (Hover, image-preloading, etc.) All this can be achived with CSS and in even faster and better ways. I have taken the job to reconstruct the site from the bottom, but I'm not quite finished yet.

 

I will update you when I have some code to show.

I'm shocked at the replies so far. Upon loading the site I expected to see a right mess, but the design looks good to me and it loaded at an acceptable speed. On first load, I noticed that the text was visible straight away, so I had something to read before all the slices downloaded. In total, it took about ten seconds to load from start to finish on my 8mb broadband.

 

Talk of "horrendous" code - come on guys, it may be tables, but we've seen worse...

 

I will agree that the site is quite badly coded due to the excessive amount of slices, but for £200.00 I actually think you got quite a good deal. The coding just needs tidying up, that's all. It's not a big job, and that's why people are offering to do it for free.

 

 

Glad I'm not the only one then :lol:

Not sure if anyone noticed, but the reason it's such terrible coding is that this is simply an image/psd sliced and exported through Photoshop (<!-- End ImageReady Slices -->) so the guy's really had u there.

£200 = 5-10 hours of work. I could've done a much better design and still coded it in fully valid and semantic code in that time. This design is not worth the money payed.

 

The work here is so bad I would call it a scam. You can't use a site that is loading for 5 minutes. Most visitors leaves after 5-8 seconds. This site is just not usable, therefor a scam!

 

 

Agree with all awful site, poor code, bad design.

 

But a 6 page site in semantic XHMTL/CSS that works cross browser with design and images in 5-10 hours. Tested, validated, coded,designed, images optimised. graphics and logos designed, layout...etc no way jose wake up. Either that or you'll make yourself a million Sono.

 

:flm7:

 

PS agree with everything else you said by the way about the site.

regarding loading i'd guess it's the web host. i'm on a super fast 24mb download, no probs lesehwre and this took well over a minute to load for me.

 

:flm7:

I didn't even get to see the 'not too bad' design it took so long to load I gave up (so don't hope for an international audience!). It's definitely not worth the money because you've lost something like 80% of your visitors straight off and the other 20% only hung in there because they like to help.

Got to say, at the rates that get banded around no wonder everyone wants to be a web designer! If you did a full working week you'd earn about £75,000 a year. Making it the third highest paid job in the UK behind company directors and city traders - not bad at all! :lol:

 

*hides from the onslaught of outraged designers*

 

Please don't kill me - I'm only teasing! Let's settle it over a friendly drink (on you of course!).

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