HiveMinds

Eric T · Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2005 11:27 pm Post subject: Input wanted

Hi,

I'm building an Aromatherapy site and wanted to get input. This is my first site using PHP and CSS for layout. I'm still working on the content but if anyone sees changes that need to be made I would like to make them now before I get a ton of stuff on there. On the Essential Oils page if you select "contentment/performance/restfulness" you will get the only oil I have setup so far.

Sense for Scents

Thanks...

The Boy Hope · Posted: Sat Feb 19, 2005 8:58 am Post subject:

I'd suggest getting a doctype, running it through the validator, and testing it in various browsers like Opera, Firefox and Mozilla at different screen resolutions.

I think the rose background image is a bit too strong. Maybe shrink it, unsharp (or dupe then overlay) it a bit and then use it in the banner instead.

Is there a third colour in this colour scheme? Just for a bit of relief from the green and pink?

That's all I got for now. HTH.

PS It looks like you're going to leave a big white gap between the left navbar and the main text at higher screen resolutions.
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ronw · Posted: Sat Feb 19, 2005 10:28 am Post subject:

I'd remove the preload of images that aren't used for that page to speed up the load time.

List an alternative font family for users like " font-family:Monotype Corsiva, Apple Chancery, sans-serif; " my mac doesn't have Monotype Corsiva so my browser will default to Times (serif) or Helvetica (sans-serif) and either of these will produce a very different look than Monotype Corsiva.

The menu list items could be positioned more to the left so that essential oils might fit all on one line (for me all the text is on the right half of the menu box).

I get a pretty big gap (~140px) between the menu box and the main text content (as stated by TBH).

The select boxes aren't aligned consistently - not sure if that was intentional around the flower or not but I found it a bit confusing.

I also agree with TBH's suggestions.
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Eric T · Posted: Sat Feb 19, 2005 1:25 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the input. I was worried about the gap between the menu and the text to the right. Being new to all this I'm not exactly sure where that gap came from because I did not mean for it to be there. So I need to go and clean up the CSS file and figure out where that gap came from.

One problem I have right now is that my monitor died and I am stuck using an old Dell dl-1428 14" max res 800x600 (Ok I can set the res to higher than that but it starts to print two desktop images on the screen, it's really wired) anyway, until I get a few more bucks set aside I'm stuck with this.

Michelle · Posted: Sat Feb 19, 2005 5:27 pm Post subject:

Hi Eric,

I think you've got a good start.

I like the quotes you've chosen. I did not read them initially, though, because it looked like there was a lot of text on the first page. I would draw attention to the quotes by putting them in their own column on the far right side, maybe all the way to the top of the page. You could make an image of the word "Aromatherapy..." using a script font and giving it some depth with a drop shadow or some other effect, and then have the rest of each quote in regular type going down the column. You could add more interest to the page by using some type of pattern or texture for the background of this new column. You could try a very thin light green and white horizontal stripe, but it would need to be very subtle.

I could not immediately tell what the purpose of your site is. Will you eventually be selling essential oils or is the site strictly informational? I would try to make the purpose of the site obvious on the front page.

Also, using an image in your banner instead of just text would look nice. You could give it some depth with a drop shadow or some other way - just something to make it stand out a little. I like the rose but agree that it seems a bit too strong as a background image the way you have it now. I think that a crisp, smaller version might look nice in the banner, then you could repeat it in the background with a less strong version.

I noticed the select box issue too. I think putting the check boxes before the words instead of after would solve the problem.

The fonts seem inconsistent. The sizes are different on the Home page, the Essential Oils page, and the Lavender page. I like the size the best on the Home page. For the recipes, you are using a completely different font. My monitor is squishing up the recipe images so that the recipes are difficult to read.

I hope this helps!

Michelle

SoopahMan · Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 3:15 am Post subject:

IFrames are cool for what they can do, but for layout are rather crappy. I'd say yours is getting in your way... ditch it. The bandwidth saved is frankly trivial.

The left nav in Mozilla is too thin to read the nav.

The form of checkboxes for choosing oils needs layout.

The flower in the background of the content really needs to be lighter. This is a common mistake when trying to create this sort of background the first time; you lighten it to 50% and it seems so light you wonder if anyone will see it. Then you throw it on the page and the text is hardly readable in dark areas of the image. Lighten it to 20% or so - people will still see it, don't worry.

Eric T · Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 9:54 pm Post subject:

Again thanks all,

I have lightend the background image and got rid of the big gap between the menu and the text. I am also working on moving the quote's to the right and putting a reson for the site in the center of the page. I'm also working on including a image in the header. Left todo is re-format the oils page and learn more about CSS, PHP and MySQL.

Oh I'm reading about doctypes and have included one on the pages. As for testing in other browsers, I decided that since IE is the widest used I just won't worry about the others. I mean why put my self through all that hassle for little return. I might just test for browser type and if it's not IE send them to a page that tells them that the site only supports IE ... J/K ... bet that got a few of you... lol

Eric T · Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2005 1:45 am Post subject:

Well I have re-worked the page New Index

The center text is just something I threw together until I can get something more from the person I'm creating the site for. I also have not changed the Font in the header that reads Sense for scents, yet. I'm debating if I want to make it an image or not. Any help on pro's and cons of making it an image would be great.

Susanna · Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2005 3:35 pm Post subject:

The consistency is much improved!

I noticed, though, that there's still an extra flower image on top of the flower background on the recipes page. Also, "Recipes" in the navigation is misspelled.
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dbmasters · Senior Royalty Joined: 09 Nov 2002 Posts: 2433

from a search engine optimization standpoint it needs a lot of work. The body content has lots of text, good keywords likely scattered throughout (I didn't do a keyword analysis), which is great, but the browser titlebar isnb't being used, it should be keyword laden and meta description and keywords are not even there. If you want to be get decent rankings you need to properly utilize those and not just have the same title on every page.
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