Hello everyone i'm a website design student, i just finished my first semester and would like to have peoples opinions on one of my first project sites. I am interested in what you all think about its design, usability, or anything you can think of. I could really use some constructive criticism to give me an idea of what i should be practicing during my break from school. Any feedback at all would be very much appreciated! I would also like to say that the site is not actually intended to sell yet, i just figured if i had to buy a domain for my school project that i would buy one that i could use in the future. [ I really hope this is the appropriate section ] My site www.agitechdesigns.com
Design is good, but you need to improve yourself and which is possible by practice, you also have to check HTML and W3C validations.
Thanks for the feedback! haven't been getting much =/. Any tips on what to improve on though? As in what kind of things look like they need the most work ? Should i be making sites fancier or should i be keeping it simple?
You have to make site as per latest trend and your customer taste, you can see some good design on this website : themeforest.net
Hi. I would recommend better styling, for example the main menu should be vertically aligned in the blue div, portfolio images at the bottom center and maybe set a fixed width to the whole website and center it.
Nice design mate. Still you need to work very hard on it. Try using CMS, you can select good layout and themes.
This is great work for one of your first designs. I'd suggest looking at other professional designers' work and get inspiration from their work. Remember that designers are not artists. We craft communication visually, and through user interaction on the web. As a designer, it's more important to communicate your message clearly and effectively than to be completely original - so don't be afraid of imitating (not copying) other people's styles until you find your own.
I guess i was originally trying to align it with the header but i also think i should probably center it, also i was going to set a fixed width to the site but i started to have fun with fluid grid until i realized Google adds wont auto re-size. i also don't want to use CMS because i enjoy learning to build from scratch, i am currently trying to figure out how to make templates that i can use in CMS's though. I thought i could make my own CMS with PHP but i think that might just over complicate things for me lol. and thanks Deluxious, il try to keep that in mind
Well, you've got code bloat thanks to the HTML 5 nonsense (not a fan), comment placements thanks to that steaming pile of manure known as Dreamweaver that could result in rendering errors in IE and FF (yes, I said COMMENTS tripping errors!), multiple CSS files with no media targets, some idiotic framework crap defeating the entire POINT of HTML+CSS, static scripting inlined in the markup, static style inlined in the markup, that stupid malfing macromedia legacy mm_ scripted crap and the stupid 'spry menu' garbage doing CSS' job, attributes like BGCOLOR, TARGET and ALIGN that have no business on any website written after 1998, tables for layout resulting in fluid width issues at narrow resolutions, absolute gibberish use of numbered heading tags, overstuffed gibberish meta's likely to get you slapped down for abuse if not ignored completely... (It's called keyWORDS -- not keyphrases, not keysentences, keyWORDS! Should be 7 or 8 WORDS that exist inside BODY that you want to add weight to! That's it...), closing tags for elements that aren't even open... Pretty much everything I expect from a college level web design course -- which is why that piece of paper isn't worth a sheet of bog roll. Sorry, don't mean to sound harsh, but I figure SOMEBODY should tell you these things BEFORE you get led even further down the garden path. I mean, what on earth makes these the heading under which all other headings on the page are subsections? Much less multiple headings?!? <h1 class="whitefluidfooter"> </h1> <h1 class="whitefluidfooter"><img src="assets/agitech20.png" alt="agitech website and graphic design" width="307" height="66" align="right"></h1> <h1 class="whitefluidfooter">Navigation</h1> Code (markup): Much less classes on them? For what? What on earth makes these paragraphs? Single words that form a list do not a paragraph make: <p class="whitefluidfooter"><a href="index.html">Home</a></p> <p class="whitefluidfooter"><a href="designers.html">Designers</a> [<a href="roberto.html">Roberto</a>] [<a href="ana.html">Ana</a>] [<a href="andrea.html">Andrea</a>]</p> <p class="whitefluidfooter"><a href="services.html">Services</a> [<a href="webdesign.html">Web Design</a>] [<a href="graphicdesign.html">Graphic Design</a>] </p> <p align="left" class="whitefluidfooter"><a href="aboutus.html">About us</a></p> <p class="whitefluidfooter"><a href="portfolio.html">Portfolio</a></p> <p class="whitefluidfooter"><a href="contact.html">Contact</a> [<a href="mailto:services@agitechdesigns.com">Email</a>]</p> Code (markup): I suspect you've been using the 'preview pane' / design view in Dreamweaver -- which typically craps out such absolute drek for code you might as well be using Frontpage for all the good it does you. You might want to take a step back and learn semantic markup before pressing onward -- since if I was to be writing that same page, there is no reason my markup would end up significantly more than: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en" ><head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en" /> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width; initial-scale=1.0" /> <meta name="keywords" content="affordable,graphic,website,design,low cost,custom,good,easy" /> <meta name="description" content="AgiTech Designs is a new Website & Graphic Design firm that provides quality work for affordable prices. " /> <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="screen.css" media="screen,projection,tv" /> <title> Agitech Website & Graphic Design </title> </head><body> <div id="pageWrapper"> <h1> Agitech <span>Designs</span><sup>H20</sup> <b><!-- image replacement sandbag, do not remove --></b> </h1> <ul id="mainMenu"> <li><a href="index.html">Home</a></li> <li><a href="designers.html">Designers</a></li> <li class="hasKids"> <a href="services.html">Services</a> <ul> <li><a href="webdesign.html">Web Design</a></li> <li><a href="graphicdesign.html">Graphic Design</a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a href="aboutus.html">About Us</a></li> <li><a href="portfolio.html">Portfolio</a></li> <li><a href="contact.html">Contact</a></li> </ul> <div id="welcomeArea"> <img src="assets/agitechbrushlogo20.png" alt="AgiTech Web Design" width="255" height="334" class="leadingPlate" > <h2>Welcome to AgiTech Designs!</h2> <p> We know you have options, and we're proud to be one of them. We hope you'll realize that we are the right choice for you! Don't let yourself be cheated out of money by people who will simply plug your information into pre made templates shared by hundreds of other people. AgiTech Designs starts all of its creations from the ground up. </p><p> In order to provide all of our clients with top quality work we only accept a certain amount of projects at a time. At the moment we have plenty of time for more, but when weare at full capacity we will give you the option of being put on a waiting list. We hope you understand & appreciate this since it is solely for your benefit! </p> <!-- #welcomeArea --></div> <div class="recentWork"> <h2>Recent work</h2> <p> See more examples in our <a href="portfolio.html">Portfolio</a> </p> <ul> <li> <a href="http://www.mrspallares.com"> <img src="assets/mrspallaresthumb.png" alt="Mrs Pallares Link" width="167" height="136" /> </a> </li><li> <a href="http://www.etyrnal.com"> <img src="http://agitechdesigns.com/assets/etyrnal.png" alt="" width="164" height="136" /> </a> </li><li> <a href="index2.html"> <img src="assets/rednblackcoolthumb.png" alt="Red & Black" width="178" height="134" /> </a> </li><li> <img src="assets/deadmau5.png" width="181" height="134" alt="blank" /> </li><li> <img src="assets/blank20.png" width="150" height="135" alt="blank" /> </li> </ul> <p> Click any of the thumbnails to see more. </p> <!-- #recentWork --></div> <!-- #pageWrapper --></div> <div id="footer"> <img src="assets/agitech20.png" alt="agitech website and graphic design" width="307" height="66" class="trailingPlate" /> <h2>Navigation</h2> <ul> <li> <a href="index.html">Home</a> </li><li> <a href="designers.html">Designers</a> <ul> <li>[<a href="roberto.html">Roberto</a>]</li> <li>[<a href="ana.html">Ana</a>]</li> <li>[<a href="andrea.html">Andrea</a>]</li> </ul> </li><li> <a href="services.html">Services</a> <ul> <li>[<a href="webdesign.html">Web Design</a>]</li> <li>[<a href="graphicdesign.html">Graphic Design</a>]</li> </ul> </li><li> <a href="aboutus.html">About us</a> </li><li> <a href="portfolio.html">Portfolio</a> </li><li> <a href="contact.html">Contact</a> <ul> <li>[<a href="mailto:services@agitechdesigns.com">Email</a>]</li> </ul> </li> </ul> <p> © 2012 All rights reserved - AgiTech Design Code (markup):
Your home page (and others) users need to scroll down to see the rest of the content. Below the fold content/google adverts don't fair well as a lot of the people will not go any further than what they can see the 1st time they go to the home page. Also to note your home page blurb doesn't say really what you do. You say design (its a broad subject) , but what you seem to be doing it web design so you want to reword your opening statement so google (and users) can understand what your services really are.