dave_cdv Posted March 26, 2009 Share Posted March 26, 2009 I'd be very greatful if you could pass on feedback for my new website www.costadelvillas.co.uk, It's been developed by Daniel (Daniel0) and desgined by Jeff (jcombs_31). I was delighted with the effort and commitment from both of them. The website is a portal for holiday home owners to advertise directly to holiday makers, concentrating on the Costa del Sol region of Spain. The website was built on the zend framework. I'd appreciate any feedback that you have on the website as we are planning regular updates. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nrg_alpha Posted March 27, 2009 Share Posted March 27, 2009 Both those guys (Dan & Jcombs) are talented to be sure. On the onset, I like the look and feel (although the vertical looking tiling water on the left hand side looks bizarre..[speaking of the tides going to the horizon]). It has a very uplifting vacation feel to it. - The site doesn't validate however. - Nor does the css. - With regards to the left-hand menu, I think I would have placed the 'General' and 'Quick Search' at the top, then have the rest of the categories follow, as I find that typically, stuff like about, faqs, contact and search functionality seems to gravitate to the top of sites for immediate exposure, with the rest to follow afterwards. Perhaps the emphasis is on latest deals, travel guides and such? - Other than that, I don't feel there is much to crit, as it seems pretty good IMO. <pedantic_technical_rant> // ignore the following section if you don't care about technicalities... - Glad to see the use of css sprites, although not sure why there is that much space around the graphics. perhaps room for additional stuff in the future? - No biggie though.. just glad to see sites making use of this concept, thus reducing http request / response headers. Not enough of that these days I'm afraid. - The 'weight' can be reduced somewhat. When I pushed the homepage through www.smushit.com, there are apparently some small savings that could be had (4.21 KB.. ok.. not huge by any stretch... just saying..... but admittedly, savings like this is minor [i have seen much worse]). - When I view the stats through the yslow firefox extension, I am seeing some stuff gzipped, while others are not. The index.php page sits at 21k, but with the addition of gzipping, this can be brought down with the addition of php code like: if (substr_count($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING'], 'gzip')) ob_start("ob_gzhandler"); else ob_start(); - Some javascripts are minified / gzipped while others are not. Not sure how much is minified or not overall. According to yslow, it points to the following as an example that could use minification: http://www.costadelvillas.co.uk/static/javascript/cdv.js - At the end of the day, a homepage size of approx. 327.0K and 18 http isn't horrible (again, I have seen worse). Just seems like there is room for more gzipping, minifying the like. But not the end of the world by any stretch as it is, as it is still a responsive site (forgive me, I tend to be high-strung on performance / optimizations - definitely not for everyone). </pedantic_technical_rant> Good stuff though. I like it! They [Dan/jcombs] pulled it off quite well! Good job guys Ok, I'm done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ILMV Posted March 27, 2009 Share Posted March 27, 2009 It looks very good! I think the length of nrg_alpha critique demonstrates how much effort you guys have put into it, I don't think I would critique that indepth on a concept that I knew wasn't of the standard you have demonstrated. Very well done! ILMV Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jcombs_31 Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 Turned out pretty nice Dave. I now see what was pointed out in the top image. This was a cloning issue that for whatever reason I never saw before now. There was actually a lot more to that image originally. What happened to the features on the main page? I must say I do miss the seagull... Overall I think Daniel did a great job breaking down the design and coding it. There are some errors, but likely from the CMS not converting some characters and things like that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maq Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 Makes me want to take a vacation! What kind of discounts can you hook me up with? Seriously, it looks really nice. Perfect theme for the type of site it is. Although I don't like brown, it fits the sand that goes further down in the background. Nice job Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheFilmGod Posted April 1, 2009 Share Posted April 1, 2009 Great first impression. However, I do have several concerns. Some links don't change over hover. That's basic webdesign 101. Although the royal blue looks nice on the right sidebar, it detracts from the main focus of the webpage. I recommend spicing the page up with more blue all around. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave_cdv Posted April 6, 2009 Author Share Posted April 6, 2009 Many thanks for all the feedback, I'll certainly try to make changes were necessary to accommodate everyones recommendations. TheFilmGod, can you tell me which links weren't changing on over hover? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twilightnights Posted April 7, 2009 Share Posted April 7, 2009 Looks nice, the only questionable thing I had was the "late deals" heading. Do you mean latest deals? Or is there some vacation lingo that I am missing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Axeia Posted April 7, 2009 Share Posted April 7, 2009 Only thing I could find wrong with it is that the "Travel Resources" section has no alt attributes and looks rather screamish. I suggest putting a short textual description above the banner and putting some space between them. Other than that, a good example on how it should be done, proper tags used, crossbrowser compatible, good contrast (good enough). Bonuspoints for making the text at the total top left clickable.. a big easy targetable way of getting back to the frontpage Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave_cdv Posted April 22, 2009 Author Share Posted April 22, 2009 Both those guys (Dan & Jcombs) are talented to be sure. - The site doesn't validate however. - Nor does the css. I've managed to sort out all but one of those error, which were actually created by me and not Daniel. Thanks again for the feedback. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel0 Posted April 23, 2009 Share Posted April 23, 2009 Just figured I would drop in to respond on some of the things mentioned. I rarely visit this board so I hadn't seen this topic yet. - Nor does the css. I'm not too concerned about that. As you see, it's either because you're validating CSS 3.0 attributes against the CSS 2.1 specification or it's the vendor specific implementation of these aforementioned attributes. Until there is full support amongst all browsers for CSS 3.0 there isn't much to do about it. You could apply it using Javascript, but you would still be using invalid CSS. The only difference would be that the validator can't see it. Therefore, you might as well just put them directly in the stylesheet. - Glad to see the use of css sprites, although not sure why there is that much space around the graphics. perhaps room for additional stuff in the future? - No biggie though.. just glad to see sites making use of this concept, thus reducing http request / response headers. Not enough of that these days I'm afraid. The extra whitespace doesn't really matter. It'll just say something like "give me 50 transparent pixels over the next 10 rows", so to speak. - The 'weight' can be reduced somewhat. When I pushed the homepage through www.smushit.com, there are apparently some small savings that could be had (4.21 KB.. ok.. not huge by any stretch... just saying..... but admittedly, savings like this is minor [i have seen much worse]). Yeah maybe. Many of the images are user uploaded though. They'll get cached anyway, so I think think it's much of a concern. - When I view the stats through the yslow firefox extension, I am seeing some stuff gzipped, while others are not. The index.php page sits at 21k, but with the addition of gzipping, this can be brought down with the addition of php code like: if (substr_count($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING'], 'gzip')) ob_start("ob_gzhandler"); else ob_start(); I think these things should be handled on server level and not on application level. In that way you'll get everything (i.e. also static media like images, CSS and Javascript) and not just only the HTML. Unfortunately, that was not possible using Dave's host. On the dev site on my VPS I get all As using Yslow. The only penalty is for not using a CDN, but I don't count that as a problem for small sites. - Some javascripts are minified / gzipped while others are not. Not sure how much is minified or not overall. According to yslow, it points to the following as an example that could use minification: http://www.costadelvillas.co.uk/static/javascript/cdv.js That file is so small I didn't bother with it. Using packer, you would only save about 200 byte, which I don't think is worth it for having to work on two copies. It could of course be packed on runtime, but the extra overhead doesn't outweigh the savings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nrg_alpha Posted April 23, 2009 Share Posted April 23, 2009 Nice of you to drop by and join in the conversation, Dan. You're only (check's watch) about a month late lol (j/k I understand about not frequenting some forums - I think we all have forums that we don't frequent, if ever at all). Yeah, I didn't realise it was css 3 stuff. So indeed, if the validator isn't gear towards that just yet, it's a bit of a moot point I suppose. Yeah maybe. Many of the images are user uploaded though. Ah, well, that certainly throws that idea out the window then (putting images through smushit). I think these things should be handled on server level and not on application level. In that way you'll get everything (i.e. also static media like images, CSS and Javascript) and not just only the HTML. Unfortunately, that was not possible using Dave's host. I agree completely on everything done on a server level (by which I assume you mean that by default, if the browser supports gzipping, the server would be configured to automatically gzip what it can)...However, much like Dave, I can't configure my hosting server to gzip automatically (but that's why I suggested trying that code snippet, in case the server does allow it through that method.) If I don't include stuff like that in my site code, my stuff doesn't get gzipped.. but with snippets like that, I can get some stuff gzipped. So I was just throwing it out there, just in case. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nrg_alpha Posted April 23, 2009 Share Posted April 23, 2009 Actually, on the note of having things gzipped, I just checked my own site, and now my provider doesn't even let application level gzipping through.. wtf? It was working a few weeks ago... now the server just ignores that stuff. Man, that sucks... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jcombs_31 Posted April 23, 2009 Share Posted April 23, 2009 With just a little bit of knowledge and willpower I don't see any reason not to get your own VPS. If you're in the states I recommend fsckvps.com or overseas you can use cheapvps.co.uk. Daniel gave me the original reference to cheapvps and they own fsckvps. I've been using them for about 6 months or so and haven't had any problems. I'm running a few client sites from my server so I decided to install a control panel (ispconfig). If you plan to just run your own site and/or know more about setting up mail servers/etc, then there would be no reason to install a control panel and you can quickly install just about any flavor of *nix. Sorry to jack the thread, site looks good Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nrg_alpha Posted April 23, 2009 Share Posted April 23, 2009 Thanks for the heads up on the VPS suggestions. I'll have to educate myself a little on those and ultimately look into possibly going that route. Sorry about the this thread going off course, Dave. I digress... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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