I've recently launched a new site. I would very much appreciate opinions as to what you web design pros think. Note that I'm only a beginner when it comes to web construction. I wrote the site in XHTML/CSS; it has a Javascript main menu and includes a PHP script intended to track traffic sources. My site is called Coupons To Your Inbox. Its purpose is to present discount coupons for online stores. Is my site's design and look appropriate for its objective? Is it easy to navigate and use? What do you think of the page layout? What do you think of the colour scheme? Does my logo look cheesy? How can I improve the site? Any comments or suggestions will be appreciated.
the site's design is definitely old fashioned. Today the designs are more fancy. Easy gradients are not cool anymore It is good though that the code is validated by w3c. The site hat a clear structure. And looks nice for it's type. I would probably add a big image scroller with colorfull coupon ads to gain attention to specific ones and to make visitor interested right away. Somehow I did nto see the text explaining what the site does and for a couple of seconds I was trying to find it. Then I saw it right in the middle of the homepage. I hope this will help you out a little bit. Cheers!
some more thoughts: the website looks a bit like one of those "Earn money, easy and quick". I would change the font and use some better Web2.0 gradients
yeah the design is a bit old fashioned and could do with some web 2.0 style adding to it, but finding the content that you want to find is easy which is good news.
yeah definately, dull down the colours, get some line spacing int here, change the font's and get rid of the image title's text will suffice just fine man - it's getting there but all a bit 1990's.. really don't mean to discourage - just get it modern, simplify it - your not doign print here, your doign a functional document on the internet.
Thanks, Rebrain! Great feedback. I know what you mean about having to look for an explanation as to the purpose of the site. I think it's because the colours are too eye-grabbing and distracting. Visitors are struck with a mass of colour, which they must make sense of. Your image scroller suggestion sounds cool. However, I don't understand exactly what an image scroller is. Can you elaborate, please? Would you mind suggesting a font for me? And what do you mean by a Web 2.0 gradient? I know what Web 2.0 is (user-generated content), but I do not know the difference between the gradients that I have used and Web 2.0 ones. I suppose I'll just visit some Web 2.0 sites and check. Thank you, Web-Master! You said that finding the Web 2.0 content is easy. Can you be a bit more specific, please? Do you mean that it is easy to gather Web 2.0 design inspiration? Or are you talking about actual content? Thank you, too, Mspider! As you, like everyone else, have stressed my site's old fashioned look and feel, I will concentrate on amending that more than anything else. Great advice from you as well, Helpplease! Thanks for being so specific. But may I ask what you mean by line spacing?
All good suggestions. Take a look at some of the big web 2.0 sites for inspiration on updated color schemes, etc. It's probably just a bit too dark with all that dark blue and black.
Thanks, Itcn. I'm currently in the process of revising my site. The colour scheme is one of the important aspects upon which I'm working, taking inspiration, as you suggested, from major Web 2.0 sites. Thanks for your help.
Hello Masterful, I don't see much of a problem with the layout of the site, or the way in which the information is put forward to the user. It's neat, easy to follow and not too 'busy'. However, as another user has already mentioned, the gradients you've used are a little dated, and I'm not too thrilled by the black/blue/yellow color scheme (personal preference). I think that it has an air of 'desktop publishing' about it - something that could easily be changed by using more subtle gradients and a polished logo. Something a bit more 2008 rather than 1994. To reiterate what some of the others have suggested, try looking at some Web 2.0 themed sites with a similar theme to your own. If you're familiar with Adobe Photoshop, there are plenty of free Web 2.0 styles and gradients available for download. Here's an example: Clean, crisp, simple, modern. This is just an example - you may not even like it - but I've posted it as you said that you weren't sure what qualified as the 'Web 2.0 look'. Took me about three minutes to make. Finally, just to let you know, I like the concept of the website and you've got a pretty good domain name there too so I hope you make it a success. All the best, Jay
i am not a pro but i agree with a few comments above, it's a bit dated. also i personally hate that floating box that scrolls the page as you try to read it. it reminds me of one of those sites "get free grant money' or "loans guaranteed regardless of your credit". could be the layout, could be the font; I do think with a few tweaks it would be an awesome site
Thank you ITCN Like I said, it's purpose is only to exemplify what a Web 2.0 logo looks like, and also how easy it is to make a half-decent header within a few minutes.
Capricious, a DAMN good response! Thoroughly appreciated. I especially appreciate your taking the time to compose a graphic to help me understand the point. Thanks a lot! I am currently revising my site in accordance with all the useful feedback that you guys have given. I hope you all approve when it's done. Onecorr11, thanks for your feedback, too. However, I am a little confused as to the "floating box that scrolls the page" that you mentioned. What do you mean? There's nothing like that on my site.
Unfortunately, despite your display of the W3C Markup Validation icon, your page does not validate (106 errors). I note you are using the XHTML 1.1 Doctype but are serving your page as content (MIME) type text/html. That is incorrect, XHTML 1.1 should be served as content (MIME) type application/xhtml+xml -- it should never be served as content (MIME) type text/html, which is not a registered MIME type for XHTML 1.1. Refer to: W3C Tutorial - which contains information relating to the serving of XHTML 1.0 and XHTML 1.1 documents. and Serving XHTML Documents Serving XHTML as Content-Type application/xhtml+xml James
Hi, Jamesicus, Actually, the site's XHTML is completely valid, although I don't know if the same can be said about the CSS. The errors that you're recording are from the PHP codes. When I validate without the PHP, everythings fine, except for one "warning" (not an error), and that's the MIME thingy that you mentioned. How do I fix that? I don't even understand what it means.
Not so. The W3C Validator is checking your served Markup against the Doctype DTD, recording element and attribute errors and depicting the results in the output report. Having said that, some of the errors may be cascading -- fixing one in a sequence may automatically fix succeeding ones. But as it stands now, your page is indeed invalid. You first need to read and study the references I provided in my previous post. I will provide further information shortly. James
Hi again, Masterful. Check with your Web Service Provider -- they may have already configured their server software to associate a specific file extension with Content (MIME) type application/xhtml+xml. In that case employ that extension for the pages you wish to serve as XHTML 1.1. If they do not provide such an association, the easiest way to do it is via .htaccess (Apache software). For instance, my own Web Service Provider associates .htm and .html file extensions with content (MIME) type text/html. In order to be able to serve both text/html and application/xhtml+xml, I inserted the following line in my .htaccess file: AddType application/xhtml+xml html Now any document with the extension .htm is automatically served as text/html and any with the extension .html are served as application/xhtml+xml. You can also employ scripting to specify content type serving. But you really don't want to use XHTML 1.1 (or any other "flavor" of XHTML) served as application/xhtml+xml -- IE Browsers will not display your pages correctly or render xml content anyway. Why not use HTML 4.01 (strict) or XHTML 1.0 (strict) either served naturally as content (MIME) type text/html (allowable for XHTML 1.0). You will avoid display and rendering problems that way. If the spirit moves you to get "fancy" or to satify your curiosity, use content negotiation to preferentially serve XHTML 1.0 (refer to my Home Page). BTW, just for the heck of it, here is an XHTML 1.1 version of my Home page (Validated) served, of course, as Content (MIME) type application/xhtml+xml. James
I read this whole thread before looking at the page-- it certainly wasn't as bad design-wise as I was expecting. My machine is a Linux machine though and at the default font the form at the left comes out, which looks rather unprofessional (not that your site is the only one to do that to me...). http://stommepoes.nl/couponsitenormal.gif After two or three text-decreases: http://stommepoes.nl/couponsitesmall.gif James is 100% right about the XHTML1.1 -- since you've done lots of stuff with the XHTML ending, I'd downgrade to XHTML1.0 rather than 4.01-- just because it would be less work. You are throwing all Internet Explorers into Quirks mode (meaning they react like IE5.5 and lower when encountering your CSS) because of the space you have before the doctype. You can't have a spacebar space or an enter-key space, or a comment (including XML prologue which you don't have but is commonly seen on XHTML pages when people don't know any better) before the doctype. Second, what James said about XHTML1.1-- this is REQUIRED to be sent from your server as application xml+xhtml but Internet Explorer (including the not-out-yet IE8) cannot deal with this properly... if Firefox is installed on the machine, IE will try to open the page as if it were a document, using Firefox. It doesn't work. Your server is sending as text/html which is fine for XHTML1.0 (as it was meant originally as a "transition" between HTML and XHTML). Don't be fooled by older documents, even from W3C, stating that XHTML is to replace HTML. That was the plan, yes, but because Microsoft didn't comply (and still has no plans to), it didn't work. XHTML1.1 and above is, truthfully, useless. Writing in XHTML1.0 is something you do because that's what your coin-flip told you to : ) I started learning HTML with XHTML so that was my default for a long time, but now I just pick one-- but I do it knowing full-well that on the one hand, I need to make my XHTML as XML-parsable as possible (this means no & copy; or other non-XML character encodings!) while knowing that, in fact, it's really just HTML (so, "fake" XHTML : ) Okay, your errors-- what validator is not giving you errors? You have really obvious ones like <center> <-- this is a deprecated tag, we should be using CSS to center things : ) <script language="Javascript" type="text/javascript> The part in bold MUST be deleted-- XML uses "language" for something else, so "language" was deprecated... just keep the type="..." part. <form...> <input... /> The above, your form, is not valid because a form is one of those special block elements that, for some reason (I dunno why) is not allowed to have inline elements (like input or label) as direct children. You need another block to wrap everything in that form-- it can be a div or your table, but what makes more sense most of the time is <fieldset> (which in XHTML is required to also have <legend>). So you need something like: <form ...> <some block element> <input... /> rest of form... </end tag block element> </form> Those are the obvious errors I saw with my eyes. James is right though, that something like an unclosed tag will cascade errors like mad, so you always fix errors starting from the beginning-- fixing one error can remove 10 others. Anyway, good luck with the site. Don't underestimate the meta tag called "description"-- teh googles like to use that if possible for the little description you see under search results. You could make yours just a little more descriptive (2-3 sentences can be better than just one repeating the title). Edit: if it's validating without the PHP then the code generated by the PHP needs to be changed-- the validator, like a browser, only looks at the code that is generated, not the generating script. So, if PHP is adding <center> tags and language="Javascript" then that's where you need to make your changes. Web2.0 might've been meant to mean a more interactive Internet, but most people nowadays mean the styling, which is a fad. You should use colours and gradients that "look professional" but more importantly that you like. Fads come and go-- if you go all-out with the Web2.0 stuff, then likely in a few years it will look as dated as a geocities site from 1997 does now : ) But you generally can't go wrong with "classic" ideas-- if the site looks clean and is easy to read and navigate, then you're prolly good to go.