Please review: SkySearchEngine.com

I just started learning php and mysql a week ago and finally launched my first custom web app. It is a search engine for all the states, cities, zipcodes in the US.

site: http://skysearchengine.com

I will really love your feedback on it!
Thanks!!!

 

You have 4 missing files.

http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/bxlryp/skysearchengine.com

Are you using Bing's or Google's geocoder or do you have only 43,633 records and give results based on that? Whenever I need GPS coordinates, I go to Bing Maps (or I used to, I haven't done it in a couple years).

 

@sarahk those are just sample numbers. I don't think he has those followers/likes for real. To me it looks like a template ready to go.

Your Buy Now button (http://skysearchengine.com/buynow.php) goes to a server error.

Buy Now what by the way? I am not sure what that button is for.

 

Sarahk - First I am impressed you got all of that just by looking at my site. Secondly I didn't mention that I am a web designer because it was irrelevant to this web development work I just accomplished. This is my first site built from scratch without any framework such as WordPress. Also, I am not planning on owning the site but selling it to people who are interested in running an online search engine application.

Anyway, thx for your feedback!

 

No one is overstating anything here. I simply asked for a review on my new website and how it could be improved and not for a condescending person to talk down on it.

• Maybe if you read @qwikad's question about the Buy Now button you would've realized that I was answering his question and not giving a sales pitch.
• Maybe if you could have looked closely at the social networking icons you could have realized that there were just placeholders and not real.
• Maybe if you could have looked closely at the site you would've realized that I don't have an adsense ads or an account for it (Since you're so smart I'm sure you could have figure all of this out.)

I didn't know Digital Point staffs members are this rude to new members. Wow!

 

Do you actually know the definition of a search engine? Maybe you should look it up.
Here, I'll help you out (what is the definition of a search engine). Just copy that and past it on Google and read what it says. Sometime it doesn't hurt to get a reality check.

I have to say as a xenforo forum owner myself, I will not tolerate this from any of my staff member. This is unacceptable.

FYI - I don't need to queery a sales pitch, I get staff/volunteers to do them for me.

 

Nah, that jackass would just rant and rave about things like fixed metric fonts and colour contrasts below accessibility minimums, accessibility guidlines, semantic markup, or some other technical mumbo-jumbo nobody understands.

All things considered if this is a week in to knowing PHP, you've done fairly well. I too would be hard pressed to call it a search ENGINE... since you're fixed searching a database without any of your own processing whatever it is you are calling is the search engine (mysql, whatever -- that's the ENGINE)... but it's innocuous a thing I'd not really have pointed it out despite it rubbing me the wrong way.

You do seem to need to pick up a bit more knowledge of HTML and CSS, but that's partly fault of the bloated train wreck of asshat nube predator bull known as bootcrap! -- seriously, go find a stick to scrape that off with before tracking it all over the web's carpets. Gibberish use of numbered headings, endless pointless DIV and classes for nothing -- but none of that is unexpected if you're as green as you claim; there are alleged "professionals" who do a far worse job than you have done here!

Still though,

I do find it quite queer how thin skinned people are getting taking even the most innocuous of statements as personal affronts. It's reaching truly absurd proportions at this point. You found THAT offensive or rude? REALLY?!? WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT!!! That's the type of reaction that reeks of these soft namby-pamby tofu eating "special snowflake" generation cry-baby millenials that I'm about at my wits end of dealing with... Where critical thought and speech are actively discouraged and don't you DARE say anything that might offend someone just because they're too sensitive, used to being handed trophies they didn't earn, or mistake innocent words for similar offensive ones.

By the way, she said QUEERED, not query, as in to skew, set astray, akilter, to veer -- from the root word queer, aka odd or unusual. (remember slang meanings are not official) She's not one to use a niggard hand with her language to dumb it down out of fear or ignorance on the part of the reader. It's why the Flintstones can have a gay old time, why it's unusual but entirely acceptable to put hookers on a Wankel, you can pop down to the shop for a pack of fags, put your faggots in cream sauce with noodles to make them Swedish, though typically one has to wait a coon's age for those to finish cooking. Of course you burn them you might as well take your spade out back to bury them.

Hey Zeus H mammary plowing Christmas, I had someone just yesterday take offense over me daring to call something nonsense. That was the word they took issue with! GOLF OSCAR MIKE FOXTROT LIMA!!!

It's like going to Catholic Medical Center, saying your a hemopheliac, and having the nurse say they can't treat you as they don't support that lifestyle choice...

You know who gets offended by those words? STUPID PEOPLE.

But that's modern America, cornering the market on getting offended over non-offensive things since 1998. I can't even say my cash flow is in the black anymore without some ignorant twit getting their panties in a bunch as if the color of pen traditionally used in a ledger book (yes, money was once recorded using books of paper with pens) somehow is related to racism. Mind you, I said twit, I actually mean a very similar word with a different vowel!

 

All I came here for was to ask for some constructive feedback on my new website.

- Not a background check on me and accused me of lying
- Not to read a lecture on how thin skin our generation is getting, or metaphors about Zues or the Catholic Medical Center.
- Not to read about how you can't use the word black because you're white. I'm obviously not playing any race cards here and I don't know how that relates to this conversation.

And BTW until you walk a walk in my shoes don't even utter the word thin skin to me.

Also, I didn't know we could just hit up our dad/husband/buddy to come fight our battles for us. So convenient! What a previlege. Wow!!!

 

Back to the review:

1. Your search results go in the opposite order. For instance, when I search Ohio the search results start with Zoar rather than with Akron.

2. You need to add First / Last buttons. Otherwise it takes forever to get to the end of a listing.

The more I look at your site the more I realize that as is it's not going to be a big hit with anybody. However, if you could somehow turn it into a job search engine showing up job openings according to a zip code that might pique an interest in your software more.

 

Which you also got, but seem so focused on a minor questioning you're acting like it's not there.

We're so used to people coming in here, throwing up links like that in their posts, then making unfounded claims you're gonna get a bit of "really?" response. IF you've run a successful forum I would think you'd know that; unless you just blindly let the scammers go about their business whilst going over the top banning people who dare to have opinions and state them; at which point you might be more comfortable in a forums filled with suck-ups and sycophants like another site with "point" in their name.

Besides, @sarahk using the callout for me was more of a joke you wouldn't get, hence my first line. It was that if you took offense to her review, how would you react if I actually opened up with both barrels like I usually do.

But would you like a more specific breakdown? I only did a drive-by on it last night, let's really mix it up with one of my typical FULL reviews. I'll TRY to take it easy on you, but it's bootstrap so no promises.

You have large sections where your fonts are declared in pixels. That's a giant middle finger to users on the usability front; admittedly crap like xenforo has that by default and you're probably unfamiliar with why we're supposed to use EM's. There's a reason on many forums I have to override the style in the browser using user.css through extensions like stylish so I'm not having to zoom and then deal with how badly layouts break when zoomed.

EM measurement fonts adjust to the default font size and inherit across the page. Not everyone starts out with that default 16px you are likely familiar with -- users like myself using the windows 8514 / 120dpi / 125% / large / win7+medium / whateverTheyCallItThisYear setting have a 20px default, and so expect a proper layout to adjust 125% without changing image sizes (since image scaling sucks). Generally speaking from mobile to 10 foot interface media centers you'll see the full range running from 12px up to 32px as the default font size, and a well written page should adjust to that. If you declare your font-size in pixels, you don't have that.

The dark-red on red and ochre on yellow of your counts are WELL below WCAG accessibility minimums. That text is going to be invisible to around 20% the population and headache inducing to another 10% or so. It's not HORRIBLY so, but it's by no means right. I don't know if you've studied the web content accessibility guidelines but if you're going to be designing and developing sites you must treat it as a "must know".
http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag

For checking if colors pass or not, I find this online tool handy:
http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

You should at LEAST aim for AA, though AAA is best. YES that limits GREATLY what you can do in a design. In general the WCAG is all about restrictions on what you can and cannot do so that you aren't flipping the double bird at visitors to your sites -- naturally these limitations are why the ignorant fools who call themselves "web designers" when all they really know is Photoshop outright ignore or even attack the WCAG. You'd think it was saying that they know **** about **** and as such aren't qualified to "design" a blasted thing.

But that's the difference between design and art. Design means limitations -- like mechanical design, structural design, electrical design -- there are rules, tolerances, minimums and specifications that must be followed. Why the PSD jockeys calling themselves "web designers" have deluded themselves into thinking they are exempt from that is beyond my ability to comprehend... pretty much have to chalk that up to ignorance and stupidity. The former is forgivable -- nothing wrong with ignorance, just means they don't know... the latter is the unforgivable part.

Under the hood you've got MASSIVE comments before the doctype... that's a waste of bandwidth but more importantly it can break the entire reason we use doctypes; making sure IE doesn't fall into "Quirks mode". The doctype should be first and foremost on the fist line. Likewise as SOON as you are in head, that's where your charset declaration should go... You have <link> before you've even opened <head> which is utter and complete gibberish -- I have to ask, have you run your code past the W3C validation service? Even though the HTML 5 validation is so ridiculously loose thanks to 5 dragging things back to the worst of 1997, even it would throw a wobbly over that.

The CORRECT order for a document is doctype, html, head, stuff that goes in head -- you don't have that.

Of course you've got those WONDERFUL malfing bootcrap fairy-tale "integrity" and "origin" attributes which are utter and complete gibberish and NOT part of how HTML works. Another of the reasons I consider bootstrap to be utter and complete rubbish that developers are dumber for it even existing. You have no media targets on your stylesheet <link>, the bandwidth wasting aria role nonsense that not one legitimate user-agent is EVER going to make use of, no H1 so how can you even have a h2...

I should explain that one. The different numbered headings correspond to heading levels in professional writing... like on scientific papers, journals, news articles, term papers and so forth. The H1 is the heading under which everything on the page is a subsection... same as how on every page or "fold pair" of a newspaper, magazine, or novel has the title of the entire "collection" in a top corner? Same thing. The H1 is the title that links all the pages together, which is why your "Sky Search Engine.com" text in the upper corner should be your H1. An h2 means the start of a subsection of the h1, a h3 means the start of a subsection of the h2 preceeding it, and so forth -- fanning out like a tree. Likewise an HR doesn't actually mean "draw a line on the screen", it means a change in topic or subject where heading text is unwarranted.

Of course, with numbered headings providing that structure that's why HTML 5's new idiotic SECTION, ARTICLE, NAV, HEADER and FOOTER tags are pointless redundancies -- there's a reason I call HTML 5 "the new 3.2"

One big thing that stands out is at first I thought you had broken labels... then I realized you just misspelled it. It's LABEL, not LABLE. That's a pretty big flub you'll need to fix... except you have them on things that aren't labels.

the <label> tag exists to be the text associated with an <input>, <select> or <textarea> tag. It is NOT simply a way to mark text in the page as you seem to be using it. Generally speaking you've got this ugly mess of unnecessary markup around those locations and times and I'm really not sure to what end. (likely because you dove into the bootcrap before learning enough about CSS or HTML).

In that same way, you are abusing placeholder to do label's job. Placeholder is NOT a label. I don't care how many websites you'll see doing that, it's still FALSE SIMPLICITY and a giant middle finger to users. See:
http://baymard.com/blog/false-simplicity
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/form-design-placeholders/

I could link you to dozens of places -- and even the HTML 5 specification says it so...

One of the big things I noticed once I dug into the code was that you have show/hide of major content sections that on the page itself has no real visual queues to tell you they are hide/show content. Given how ridiculously little text is inside them, seriously just axe the scripttard show/hide on those. It's completely counter-intuitive to visitors.

Also, is "riched" even a word, much less proper in this context? Did you mean to say "richly"?

... and then you close body, but have content AFTER body?

Even for bootstrap, your markup is a bit wonky and gibberish. Admittedly a LOT of that is HTML 5 has made it confusing for people just learning since they have both <head> and <header>, so people think <footer> goes after <body> instead of inside it... There's a reason I say people should learn 4 Strict BEFORE they even look at 5. Then they might realize how utterly and completely back-assward 5 is an how it's dragging development practices back to the worst of the late 1990's.

Just to give you an idea what I mean, had I written that same page the markup would have gone more like this:

<!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en"><head><meta charset="utf-8">

<meta
	name="viewport"
	content="width=device-width, height=device-height, initial-scale=1"
>

<meta
	name="description"
	content="A geographic search engine tool which helps you to get latitude and longitude of a place or city and find gps coordinates on map."
>

<link
	rel="shortcut icon"
	href="/favicon.ico"
>

<link
	rel="stylesheet"
	href="screen.css"
	media="screen,projection,tv"
>

<title>
	US Latitude & Longitude Search Engine - Search By Cities, States, Zipcode
</title>

</head><body>

<div id="top"><div class="widthWrapper">

	<h1>
		<a href="/">
			Sky Search Engine
		</a>
	</h1>
	
	<input type="checkbox" id="menuShowHide">
	<label></label>
	<ul>
		<li classs="current"><a href="index.php">Home</a></li>
		<li><a href="features.php">Features</a></li>
		<li><a href="contact.php">Contact US</a></li>
		<li class="standout"><a href="buynow.php">BUY NOW</a></li>
	</ul>

<!-- .widthWrapper, #top --></div></div>

<div class="heightWrapper"><div class="widthWrapper">

	<form method="get" action="result.php" class="bigSearch">
		<h2>US Latitude & Longitude Search Engine</h2>
		<fieldset>
			<label for="bigSearch_term">City, State, or Zip Code</label>
			<input type="text" name="search" id="bigSearch_term">
			<input type="submit" class="submit" value="SEARCH NOW">
		</fieldset>
		 <p>
			Skysearchengine.com is a geographic search engine tool which helps you to get latitude and longitude of a place or city and find gps coordinates on map. Skysearchengine is loaded with over 40,000 verified locations from the United States. You can search by city, county, zipcode, latitude or longitude for any location in the U.S!
		</p>
	</form>
	
	<div id="extras">
	
		<div class="firstSection">
	
			<div id="benefits" class="subSection">
				<h2>Benefits of our tool</h2>
				<div class="subContent">
					<h3>Richly Verified Data</h3>
					<p>
						More than 40,000 US zipcodes. Each zipcode consists of city, county, county code, state, latitude and longitude
					</p>
				<!-- .subContent --></div>
				<div class="subContent">
					<h3>Simple API Integration</h3>
					<p>
						API provides search and get functions based on zip, city, state, county, and coordinates. Give you maximum flexibility in your own business needs.
					</p>
				<!-- .subContent --></div>
				<div class="subContent">
					<h3>Fully Automated Income</h3>
					<p>
						Multiple locations to monetized with Google Adsense or paid avdertisers. Easy setup and watch the money start flowing into your account!
					</p>
				<!-- .subContent --></div>
			<!-- #benefits.subSection --></div>
			
			<div id="recentLocations" class="subSection">
				<h2>Recent Search Locations</h2>
				<ul>
					<li><a href="result.php?search=India">India  <span>2015-12-23</span></a></li>
					<li><a href="result.php?search=135001">135001  <span>2015-12-23</span></a></li>
					<li><a href="result.php?search=ohio">ohio  <span>2015-12-23</span></a></li>
					<li><a href="result.php?search=12345">12345  <span>2015-12-23</span></a></li>
					<li><a href="result.php?search=98109">98109  <span>2015-12-23</span></a></li>
					<li><a href="result.php?search=greenvulle">greenvulle  <span>2015-12-23</span></a></li>
					<li><a href="result.php?search=ohio">ohio  <span>2015-12-23</span></a></li>
					<li><a href="result.php?search=greenville, oh">greenville, oh  <span>2015-12-23</span></a></li>
					<li><a href="result.php?search=45331">45331  <span>2015-12-23</span></a></li>
					<li><a href="result.php?search=45013">45013  <span>2015-12-23</span></a></li>
				</ul>
			<!-- #recentLocations.subSection --></div>
			
		<!-- .firstSection --></div>
	
		<div class="secondSection">
	
			<div id="records">
				<h2>Records</h2>
				43,633
			<!-- #records --></div>
			
			<div id="daily">
				<h2>Daily Search</h2>
				14
			<!-- #daily --></div>
			
			<div id="sponsors" class="subSection">
				<h2>Our Sponsors</h2>
				<img
					src="https://mybillingtree.com/wp-content/themes/dialy-theme/lib/img/300x250.jpg"
					alt="DESCRIBE THIS IMAGE!!!"
				>
			<!-- #sponsors --></div>
		
		<!-- .secondSection --></div>
		
	<!-- #extras --></div>
	
<!-- .widthWrapper, .heightWrapper --></div></div>
	
<div id="footer">
	Copyright 2016 <a href="contact.php">Clifford Ngong</a>. Version 1.0
<!-- #footer --></div>
	
</body></html>

Code (markup):

Basically 1/3rd the code. I very much doubt given the simplicity of your page it would take more than 16k of CSS for the ENTIRE SITE -- thanks to bootcrap you've got 476k in 17 files for a page that should be taking 24k or less in two or three files.

Also a LOT of the things you've linked to are reporting 500 errors.