Disami Social Network Review

[Jumpy09]

Website Address: http://www.disami.com

My Screen Resolution: 1920 x 1080

Tested on: Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome

Compliance: Nearly 100% XHTML Strict Compliance

Contains: Frontend: HTML, CSS, JavaScript ;; Backend: Php, MySQL

 

To start off I have been through various designs and multiple attempts at creating something that doesn't only look good, but loads quick.

 

My first design was a Photoshop cut-out, which (at that time) required multiple nested tables, at least until I got the hang of how versatile Divs really were.

From there I cut it down to a three-piece Photoshop cut out, which still didn't ring a bell to me.

The last design looks similar to this one, but had a 1920x1080 (My Resolution) Background which gave it flavor, but I felt it potentially loaded a bit slow.

 

I came up with this design with the help of the female displayed on the homepage.  I feel it will be a hit or miss with different types of people, but I am hoping to get some decent reviews, but either way still helps identify any design flaws.

 

I'm going to request a few guidelines for review:

 

I'm not only looking for how it looks, but what the website informs you of.

If you review, let me know what your first thoughts are so I can make sure the site says what it needs to say.

 

If you have any advice or opinions I am more than happy to take them, but I want to answer some possible questions first.

 

1. Why that choice of color?  I personally like darker colors because they are less blinding, and the black background offers a wide range of username coloring, and theme options on the inside.  I tried to go with a white background, but for some reason (in my own opinion) I feel like the dark is a bit calmer.

 

This may cause some problems especially when the sun in glaring through your window or you have some form of light in your eyes.  I foresee my website being more of a night site, where most of my users are active during the later hours of the day.

 

2. Who is the chick?  and Do you have permission to use her photo?  The female displayed is a friend of mine who has given me explicit permission to use her photo on my homepage.

 

3. Why another social website?  Honestly I decided to work on this social website because I was getting fed up with the site it takes after.  The site in question allows people to harass and impersonate other members and will not take appropriate action against such users.  I've basically wanted to create a website that has concern for it's users and doesn't just see them as another paycheck.

 

4. Source Code: If you check the source code out it should walk all the way down the left side without indention.  Due to the way things have been coded PHP likes to make some HTML quite ugly in source code.  I took out all the white space excluding line returns, to give it a better look when viewing source code and also to lower the overall size of the pages.  I'm not quite looking for critique on how I've laid out my code, but it wouldn't hurt to get some feedback on how I use the code.

 

So to wrap this up.  If you dislike the color scheme, please let me know why.  Does the website inform you that it is a Social Based Game and not just another standardized social website?  Based on the outside alone does it seem to have potential?

 

P.S. The outside is most of my concern, I want to make sure it's pleasing and inviting.  Once I get the inside of the website complete, I will set up Test Accounts for further review!

 

Thank you for your time, and please keep all criticism on a constructive level.

[QuickOldCar]

These files are all missing

http://www.disami.com/Themes/Dark/Images/Buttons/save.png

http://www.disami.com/Themes/Dark/Images/Buttons/savehover.png

http://www.disami.com/Themes/Dark/Images/Buttons/accept.png

http://www.disami.com/Themes/Dark/Images/Buttons/accepthover.png

http://www.disami.com/Includes/Assets/ChatBar/themes/dark/images/pencil.png

http://www.disami.com/Includes/Assets/ChatBar/themes/dark/images/pencil.gif

 

Is no description or keywords for  meta data.

 

Personally I don't mind black myself, but the dark blood red is kinda hard to see.

 

Why ask questions, What is Disami?, just tell them what you are.

 

[ Page Generation: 0.01 Seconds | Memory Usage: 340.23 KB | DB Queries: 0 ]

 

 

Actual:

Website information

 

Total loading time:

    4.2 seconds

Total objects:

    61 (946.5 KB)

External objects:

    1 (2.3 KB)

HTML (X)HTML:

    1 (14.7KB)

RSS RSS/XML:

    0

CSS CSS:

    4 (60.7KB)

Scripts Scripts:

    8 (205.5KB)

Images Images:

    48 (665.7KB)

Plugins Plugins:

    0

Other Other:

    0

Redirected Redirected:

    0

 

That's too heavy for a front page.

[Jumpy09]

These files are all missing

http://www.disami.com/Themes/Dark/Images/Buttons/save.png

http://www.disami.com/Themes/Dark/Images/Buttons/savehover.png

http://www.disami.com/Themes/Dark/Images/Buttons/accept.png

http://www.disami.com/Themes/Dark/Images/Buttons/accepthover.png

http://www.disami.com/Includes/Assets/ChatBar/themes/dark/images/pencil.png

http://www.disami.com/Includes/Assets/ChatBar/themes/dark/images/pencil.gif

 

Those images should have never loaded, although I do know why 4 of them fail to load.  I altered my button images.

 

Is no description or keywords for  meta data.

 

I am getting on this:  Thanks for the reminder.

 

Personally I don't mind black myself, but the dark blood red is kinda hard to see.

 

Why ask questions, What is Disami?, just tell them what you are.

 

It's actually a dark orange, but it's a hit or miss as some people it comes up well and others it does not.

 

Why ask?  I dunno I've seen plenty of websites do that.  Just got an idea and went with it.

 

 

[ Page Generation: 0.01 Seconds | Memory Usage: 340.23 KB | DB Queries: 0 ]

 

This is for php page generation, memory usage of the server, and how many queries are run.  Loading times for users vary on internet and computer speeds.

 

Actual:

Website information

 

Total loading time:

    4.2 seconds

Total objects:

    61 (946.5 KB)

External objects:

    1 (2.3 KB)

HTML (X)HTML:

    1 (14.7KB)

RSS RSS/XML:

    0

CSS CSS:

    4 (60.7KB)

Scripts Scripts:

    8 (205.5KB)

Images Images:

    48 (665.7KB)

Plugins Plugins:

    0

Other Other:

    0

Redirected Redirected:

    0

 

That's too heavy for a front page.

 

I have absolutely no idea how you came up with these numbers.  You had to have been loading every image in the CSS, which to my knowledge shouldn't occur.

 

Here are my numbers after a slight modification:

 

Actual:

Website information

 

Total loading time:

    1.21 seconds

Total objects:

    15 (355.01 KB)

External objects:

    1 (2.3 KB)

HTML (X)HTML:

    1 (14.24KB)

RSS RSS/XML:

    0

CSS CSS:

    1 (18.80KB)

Scripts Scripts:

    6 (106.77KB)

Images Images:

    8 (215.2KB)

Plugins Plugins:

    0

Other Other:

    0

Redirected Redirected:

    0

 

I've never loaded up 48 images and that loading time is relatively slow compared to all the pre-cache and post-cache tests I have run.

 

May I ask what you used to run those numbers with?

 

Even pre-modification, the sheer number of images is pretty high.  Neither the ChatBar Images or the other images should have loaded.  They are not called anywhere.

[QuickOldCar]

http://tools.pingdom.com/

 

That's what I used, I know nothing is 100% accurate, but I feel gives a basic realistic value.

[isedeasy]

It looks a little dated to me, the dark colours and the boxy layout does not give me a professional feel.

 

The main body text on the homepage should not be an image, if you want to use fancy fonts then have a look at JS/flash font replacement. There are a few methods about, my favourite being cufon.

 

I would remove the validation icons from the bottom, the only people that care about that are web designers/developers.