Can someone take a look at my form?

I'm having hard time figuring out why form's initial input in the fields where it says "First Name" and "Last Name" is white. No one can see it, and I think it's affecting the number of people signing up for my newsletter.

The url of the page is this:
http://theurbantwist.com/2014/12/15/extended-christmas-giveaway-win-ps4-xbox-one-choice/

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

I'm seeing three forms on the page, none of them do what you describe... Well, unless you mean the blank spots in the strange scrolling and broken sidebar.

Of course with the 147 validation errors in a HTML 5 document (which would mean hundreds if not thousands in a real document like STRICT since 5's structural rules are a joke even compared to 4 tranny), the endless code bloat, painfully slow page load, and inaccessible layout/design, one form seems like the LEAST of your problems, as evident by the "I canz has a websitez" markup wasting 162k of HTML on 9k of plaintext and two dozen content images (possibly as much as ten times the code such a simple page should need) and ape-shit ridiculous 4.8 MEGABYTES in 176 files... very much what one can expect when you likely just sleazed a bunch of mods/extensions/plugins/whathave you into some garbage stock turdpress template.

I would advise pitching the entire site in the trash and starting over, there is little if anything worth salvaging from that mess; I'd be shocked it anyone visiting it is anything more than a bounce before it finishes loading.

 

I suspect it is not just affecting the signups; it almost certainly reduces the number of page views when you try to stuff 15 pages worth of content into one page. You already got the best advice on this load of junk from @deathshadow... Scrap it and start over! However I would suggest before you start over you take the time to upgrade your coding skills so you can write code instead of just dumping in whatever trash you find in the gutters of the internet.

 

What an ASSHOLE!

Damn! That was harsh but thanks anyway and for your information, my site is not as slow or as broken as you say. Must be your browser as evidenced by Pingdom, which is one of the tests I run weekly along with my webmaster tools.

http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/RZe...d-christmas-giveaway-win-ps4-xbox-one-choice/

So I really have no idea what the hell you're talking about and if you look at the social shares of the post, you'd also see that others aren't having a problem as well.

I really have no idea why you have to be so god damn rude, lol...must have gotten your girl stolen or something. Maybe I stole your girl perhaps? I don't know.

But what I'm talking about for anyone willing to assist me...is this part in the screenshot.

http://screencast.com/t/x5KsiszFy8D

The text in the input boxes are white and can't figure out where to change it in CSS.

I will be tidying up my site's CSS up when I get the time and working Page speed score soon but right now my site is working regardless of what this guy above says, lol.

Thanks for any help.

 

I respect your opinion and the only junk is mostly CSS which is what I will be working on. Just haven't had time.

 

CSS is not your real problem. The markup is full of structural errors and the page is not stable. Most of the problems probably come from the excessive scripting which is also the most like source of any CSS issues because the Document Object is being modified to such an extent that it has been damage to the point where it is pretty much a blob of goo. It is just a matter of time before page fails. It may already be doing so for some users, because of the overload on the parsers trying to built something the rendering engine can actually understand. It does not matter what you believe are seeing with your tools; the page is unacceptable slow and you are losing traffic as a result.

 

I'll let your kneejerk reaction to hearing something you don't want to hear slide for now...

Truth usually is. Sugar coating it and slapping the rose coloured glasses on your head to blow smoke up your ass isn't helping you -- no matter how many soft, limp, little old ladies at the afternoon tea party claim otherwise. As Gunny would say, "Suck it up princess!"

No, pingdom is blowing smoke up your ass, with completely unrealistic handshaking times on files and even more unrealistic simultaneous requests. Look at the waterfall? That might be fine if you have the magical mystical BS fantasyland 8ms ping time they're showing, but if you are averaging a real world 300ms ping for a real world average handshake for each file past the first 8 of 200ms, that's at least --using their insane 385 file count as opposed to what I got in FF locally -- That's over a MINUTE of handshaking NOT counting actual transfer time for the page to load, meaning I'm getting "best case" here of around 30 seconds and worst case some people could end up waiting as mcuh as six minutes for that page to load -- and if you knew ANYTHING about how servers and file requests worked you'd know that... and be in absolute horror at a page built from so many separate files.

... especially with Google now penalizing sites for things like that; but to be fair, while their load time total is 100% bull, pingdom's comparison to other websites says it all: "Your website is slower than 84% of all tested websites"

That screenshot speaks volumes -- that form IS showing its placeholders here (in black, Opera 12.17, latest each of ChrOpera, FF and IE), so I have to ask, what browser is it failing in? It's using placeholder:

<input type="text" id="chimpy_shortcode_field_FNAME" name="chimpy_shortcode_subscribe[custom][FNAME]" placeholder="First Name"></input>

Code (markup):

... and anything prior to IE8 doesn't support placeholder; though you seem to be linking to a polyfill js for that, you are hemorrhaging so many scripting errors it's a miracle ANY of the scripting is running -- so that script is probably failing so in IE8 and earlier you don't get your "placeholders" .

NOT that placeholder should be used instead of proper labels, since that's what is commonly called "false simplicity" -- I also call it arsty fartsy bull put together by people who don't know enough about accessibility to be making websites in the first place. Bottom line, Placeholder is NOT a replacement for Label... and doing the "magic swap the title as the user types" is some of the worst usability out there and a total /FAIL/ at web design. It was inaccessible garbage when people were using scripttardery to pull it off, it's even BIGGER steaming pile of manure now that people are crapping all over the web with "placeholder" -- See:

http://baymard.com/blog/false-simplicity
http://www.pardot.com/faqs/best-practices/placeholders-and-labels/
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/form-design-placeholders/
http://www.webaxe.org/placeholder-attribute-is-not-a-label/

AND EVEN THE PATHETIC JOKE called the HTML 5 "specification" (yes, I'm making air quotes with my fingers again)

... and I quote : "The placeholder attribute should not be used as a replacement for a label."

So the very CONCEPT of that form is accessibility trash... to go with it's gibberish markup like </input> (there's no such thing), lack of proper semantics, improper use of HTML 5's pointlessly redundant <header> and <footer> tags...

Much like every other bit of HTML on that site, whoever built that form doesn't know enough about HTML, CSS, Scripting or accessibility to be coding websites! Sorry if that's going to upset you, but that's the TRUTH.

Again, why it's wasting 162k of markup doing 16 to 20k's JOB! Seriously, if you don't know what's wrong with deploying code like this:

<div id="header-nav">
        <a class="ubermenu-responsive-toggle ubermenu-responsive-toggle-main ubermenu-skin-none" data-ubermenu-target="ubermenu-main-7717"><i class="fa fa-bars"></i>Menu</a><nav id="ubermenu-main-7717" class="ubermenu ubermenu-nojs ubermenu-main ubermenu-menu-7717 ubermenu-responsive ubermenu-responsive-default ubermenu-responsive-collapse ubermenu-horizontal ubermenu-transition-shift ubermenu-trigger-hover_intent ubermenu-skin-none ubermenu-bar-align-full ubermenu-items-align-left ubermenu-bound ubermenu-sub-indicators ubermenu-accessible"><ul id="ubermenu-nav-main-7717" class="ubermenu-nav"><li id="menu-item-32479" class="ubermenu-item ubermenu-item-type-custom ubermenu-item-object-custom ubermenu-item-home ubermenu-item-32479 ubermenu-item-level-0 ubermenu-column ubermenu-column-auto" ><a class="ubermenu-target ubermenu-item-layout-default ubermenu-item-layout-text_only" href="http://theurbantwist.com" tabindex="0"><span class="ubermenu-target-title ubermenu-target-text">FrontPage</span></a></li>

Code (markup):

You most likely have no business making a website; admittedly much of that is just the typical off the shelf turdpress template idiocy.

But it sounds like you just want to stick your fingers in your ears and go "lalalala" Vancome Lady style over the TRUTH, and have been duped into a delusion of what you have for a website; sadly this delusion is becoming WAY too common amongst site owners of late, and all it does is lead you down the garden path to failure.

I said toss it for a reason -- between the broken bloated gibberish trying to pass itself off as HTML, endless pointless scripttardery and massively insane number of separate files, you've basically shot your horse in the foot. It's a miracle it works at all, and long term between hosting costs and fragility of the invalid code it's going to give up the ghost sooner than later.

 

Whoosh.
Deathshadow, you should definitely start selling «Honest website reviews» on Fiverr. $5 for a review, $40 for not publishing it.

 

If you can't see the difference between:

and or

Then you're missing the point. Deathshadow may be rude but if you take what he says into account then it can only do you good.

I can't see your problem in Chromium or IE, which browser are you using when you get this error?

 

@jamjar919, your post also shows something interesting, that my own local results reflects as well:



It illustrates EXTREMELY well how file counts are more important than file sizes; your unoptimized images brings your page to thirty two times larger than mine, and even nearly three times larger than the OP's -- BUT, yours loads fastest because it is less than 8 files so the handshaking overhead is effectively nonexistent!

... and that's why pissing all over a site with two dozen separate CSS files and nearly three dozen separate JS files is utter rubbish; and these numbers are from FAST connections; Joe help the poor sods who have far, FAR less capable connections than we do.

File counts is RIDICULOUSLY important when it comes to building a website -- and all these stupid mouth-breathing frameworks, dumbass broken CSS methodologies, and "gee ain't it neat" scripttardery is nothing more than walking through a pile and tracking it across your website's carpets.

 

I think before anyone is allowed to write a single line of code for a website they should be required to write an exam to prove they understand the technical detail of HTTP, tcp/ip, ftp, and network topography. We would still end up with moronic bloat but at least network overloads would be based on stupidity instead of ignorance. Ignorance can be remedied with education, but there is no cure for stupidity, so we should restrict them to a new TLD .stupid and display a warning in all browsers to let the users know they are entering an area of the internet that operates in slow motion.