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DGD - Digital Gold Designs


slater2009

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Here are my thoughts:

 

- Your site doesn't validate.

- Set the width to a minimum of 1024px. The standard of 800px wide has gone the way of the dinos. With widescreen displays, and bigger resolution capacity graphic cards these days, 800px screens are just not common anymore.

- Your header is comprised of a multiple images? This is bad for the following reasons:

  • It creates additional http request headers (each unique element within the document [including the document itself] has to be requested by the browser.. this extra 'chitter chatter' between browser and server adds some time..reduce this by only using a single header image instead).
  • Did you know that a single image that is optimized to look about as good as a series of smaller ones is overall lighter in file size? Keep in mind that each smaller graphic has stuff like it's own file name, colour table, etc... using just 1 image instead of multiple smaller ones only uses one of each element an image is comprised of.

- I'm not following the bee on the menu system (because of honey, which is 'golden'?). The bee's colours look fubar'ed.. discolourized blue and pink stuff and such.

- On the topic of menus (and relating to less images for less file sizes and http requests, instead of having all separate graphics, I would consider merging them into a CSS sprite sheet and using CSS background and positioning to isolate the sections you want.

- I would ditch tables for site construction and use CSS instead, as there is no tabular data here.

- I would have a gander at the copy (the text that people read) on other webdev servicing websites and see what words they use and how they use them. By examining other people's stuff, it gives you a great gauge to compare your own stuff against.

 

Bottom line, if you are going to go into webdev as a service / business, upgrade your site building skill set and knowledge by building to current web standards. Look at templates for ideas on how to improve your layout / structure. Competition is stiff these days. If you don't upgrade your skillsets and site, you risk being left out in the cold so-to-speak.

 

Cheers

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I don't see the bee he mentioned... Oh well.

 

Your site is too narrow I wouldn't make it 1024px but AT LEAST 800px.  And if your going to be making website designs, you really should be using tables, its a big turn-off.  I like the quote:

 

A picture is worth a thousand words.

A website is worth a million.

 

 

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I don't see the bee he mentioned... Oh well.

 

You don't see the bee? It's that insect with blue and pinkish pixels right next to the word 'MENU' (it's a little mangled looking.. so it may not jump out as much).

 

...And if your going to be making website designs, you really should be using tables, its a big turn-off

 

I think you mean, 'you really shouldn't be using tables'....

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Nice logo.

 

Ive moved away from large logo images....slows the page too much, by using css and small images repeated you can achieve a very fast and sexy site....but its up to you

 

If you have multiple pages you might want to cache the images at least by adding this to .htaccess, you wouldnt believe the speed it increases

 

<FilesMatch "\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|ico|png)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800, public"
</FilesMatch>

 

Your html code is nicely set out but you can halve the code by using css and caching that too with

 

<FilesMatch "\.(css)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=172800, private, proxy-revalidate"
</FilesMatch>

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Hmm.. I have to disagree. Why does somethig have to be big? If it looks good, easily readable, content's set out well; why does it have to fill the screen? I see thin websites as a kind of style. My portfolio uses a thin style...

 

His audience isn't a group of web designers, likely to have a large monitor. It's going to be the average joe at home with his 1024 x 768 or 1280 x 800 monitor after a personal website. Perhaps later on moving onto small companies, but still the companies not gunna equip their staff with hig spec montiors for them to just run Office off. One of the most important rules of web design is to think about your audience, which a lot of so-called designers seem to forget.

 

However, I do think there are improvements that can be made. The line of dashes doesn't look good; looks like you ran out of ideas to fill the space up and just randomlly inserted that. I don't like the centered text, try justifying it. I think a white background for the wrapper would look better, then having the current colour still as the page background colour? Few other ideas if you're willing to listen...

 

Mr A

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Hmm.. I have to disagree. Why does somethig have to be big? If it looks good, easily readable, content's set out well; why does it have to fill the screen? I see thin websites as a kind of style. My portfolio uses a thin style...

 

In my personal opinion, I don't consider sites designed for 800px wide a 'thin style'.. Again, with widescreen monitors becoming the norm these days, 800px seems too compressed. The other drawback is less horizontal room to play with in regards to space for layout / content. This isn't to suggest that one cannot come up with a good design for 800px wide spaces, just that there is less design choices as a result of the narrower area to play with.

 

His audience isn't a group of web designers, likely to have a large monitor. It's going to be the average joe at home with his 1024 x 768 or 1280 x 800 monitor after a personal website.

 

I am assuming you are referring to say a 24 or 30 inch versus a 20 inch as an example. It isn't so much the physical size of the monitor, as it is the native resolution of the monitor. My 20.1" widescreen monitor has a native resolution of 1680 x 1050 for example.. so even on a 'not so large' monitor like mine, this is something one has to take into account. As a result of these native resolutions, 800px wide spaces is starting to look smaller and smaller.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'll mostly stay away from what's already been mentioned, but I do suggest making the header image wider and shorter. The header is very appealing, but it takes your attention away from what's important: the content. The header is important as well, but you can make just as much of an impact with a short and wide banner as you can with that one... but you'll also give the user a chance to peek at the content at the same time, and their eyes will naturally move down and read. Always remember, users don't like to scroll ;) I'll be sure to keep my eyes out to see how it turns out. Best of luck to you!

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