After about 3 months, I'm finished

[crmamx]

Ok guys, after a hell of a lot of work, I am finished and I must say I like it.

 

I have taken almost all of your previous comments into consideration. Only one I can think of I didn't. I happen to be 1990's and like a border on my tables..

 

So now what do you think. Even picky comments welcome because I'd like to fine tune it as professional as possible.

 

I have thanked ya'll (yea, I'm a southern guy) so many times I don't want to overdo it.

[QuickOldCar]

3 months huh, I been doing my project in total over 3 years with insane hours, lol.

 

Anyway, you should post the link to your site so people know where to look.

[crmamx]

Sorry about that. Was thinking everyone knew the link was the little ball to the left.

 

http://bayarearcsociety.com/

[Zurev]

---

Two things I noticed:

 

When watching a video, the menu is shown under the embedded video, making it difficult to see.

 

Also, if you type anything in the $_GET

---

parameter that isn't a page, you can see the full document root path.

 

Ex: http://bayarearcsociety.com/index.php?page=this

[floridaflatlander]

It's Neat and tooooo funny, I saw Bay Area and thought California, then I saw the time and said to myself that's not my time and California is three hours behind me. Then I noticed the flatland in one of the pics and said yep, that's not far from here.

 

Ditto Zurev

[crmamx]

You are right. There is a another Bay Area club in San Francisco. There is also a BARCS (Baltimore Animal Rescue) in Md. We are located on Mobile Bay in Alabama.

 

It is hard to find a unique name these days.

[crmamx]

---

Two things I noticed:

Also, if you type anything in the $_GET

 

Ex: http://bayarearcsociety.com/index.php?page=this

---

parameter that isn't a page, you can see the full document root path.

 

I have fixed this but what is the harm if someone can see the full document root path?

[jj-dr]

Hi CRMAMX. I am a new member here and this happens to be my first ever reply on a user's post.

 

First of all, I have being learning PHP for the best part of the past 8 months or so, and I am in now way an expert of any sort. Having said that, I am an experienced graphic designer, and towards that end goes most my review for your website.

 

To your own relief, there's nothing wrong with using tables, and in your specific case, borders in your tables and or/buttons. However, the way you use them is what you need to be more careful about. I see you have used borders in your main nav menu on the left of your site. Two things I comment on them:

 

1) The white color is a little too harsh in relation to button color. I would make the borders color something in the blue family as the buttons, perhaps a lighter blue. You will see that just by doing that the buttons will look cleaner and more elegant. Look at the a:hover state of of my navigation in the website I am currently working on: http://www.javierbooks.com. I don't use borders on these buttons, but notice how I used lighter color for the over state, yet staying in the same color family of gray, and completing the highlight with a different color (yellow) for the down state of the buttons.

 

  2) I noticed that as you scroll over the buttons, each button label moves about a pixel to the right. I got the feeling that you did not create his by design, rather an after effect of using  left-right borders in the over state <a:> of your buttons. You can easily fix that 1px to the left margin of the a: class in your CSS. Alter you can used invisible left and right border in your up state given the impression that there's not border, but keeping margin integrity when you use them in the over state.

 

I also have a few of comments in the layout of your site as well:

1) The Nav menu seems hanging alone, and there's a harsh gap or space between the menu an the footer banner. All that empty space just looks odd and out of place. I believe that just simply extending the white fill as in the content area, will make the site look more uniform. You will probably have to add another div with 100% height, which will serve as the background for your menu, and of course add a bg color, white, or perhaps different color such as red to give it that separation you are probably looking for, yet maintaining uniformity.

 

  2) I would give it the same color for a:Link and a:visited in your CSS. If you don't define the a:visited{color:XXX} in your css, that ugly purple is always used as default. The reason you need to do this is because after you click more that one button, then you will see they get highlighted, thus confusing users as to in which section of your site they currently are. Again, check my site http://www.javierbooks.com and you will notice that you will always know in what section of the website you are. You will never see two buttons highlighted in yellow at the same time.

 

  3) One last thing, as a rule of thumb, always make sure your content fits within your content area!

In the weather section, for instance, the meter's graphic goes off the boundaries of your page. Same thing happens inf the Funny Stuff section and other areas. By the way, that picture of the sausage dog was pretty funny.

 

Overall the site looks OK, you just need to work a bit more in your spacings, so content doesn't look overwhelming and crammed up.

 

 

 

[crmamx]

Hey jj-dr:

 

Welcome to phpfreakes. As you have described yourself, you will find this is the most helpful forum you could have joined. The guys here are experts in the code and go out of their way to help you. Me, I am just a beginner and this is just a hobby for me.

 

As for my navigation menu, you caught it right in the middle of a screw up. I don't know what caused the harsh white color but will work on it today. It was a baby blue. I have just learned to use Firebug and will see if I can find the problem.

 

Thanks for the critique, especially considering your area of expertise. I will come back to your post as soon as I can get the site back to where it was.

 

Keep a check on me...

 

 

 

 

[jj-dr]

Cool CRMAMX...

I'm glad can help. I am glad I came here too. I love to help too. Always shoot back if have questions... I'll be glad to help. Take care.

[crmamx]

3) One last thing, as a rule of thumb, always make sure your content fits within your content area!

In the weather section, for instance, the meter's graphic goes off the boundaries of your page. Same thing happens inf the Funny Stuff section and other areas. By the way, that picture of the sausage dog was pretty funny.

 

Overall the site looks OK, you just need to work a bit more in your spacings, so content doesn't look overwhelming and crammed up.

 

Damn! As many times as I've looked at it I never noticed the graphics going out of the boundaries.

 

I do know that there are lots of places I need padding (or margin) so my text isn't jammed against the images.

 

Went to backup and put the menu back to where it was. I have put so many hours in this since December I am going to take some time off. Maybe an hour or so a day instead of 6 or 7 hours, 7 days a week.

[Maq]

Went to backup and put the menu back to where it was. I have put so many hours in this since December I am going to take some time off. Maybe an hour or so a day instead of 6 or 7 hours, 7 days a week.

Good idea, give it a rest and let the mind clear out.  With that many hours and a man can go crazy...

[Philip]

With that many hours and a man can go crazy...

+1

 

If you feel comfortable with PHP (even slightly) I'd suggest using a contact form instead of the mailto: link at the bottom for contacting the webmaster. If you add spam prevention (e.g. captcha/question&answer) it'll really help cut down on spam, because right now your email address is out there in the open.

[crmamx]

Thanks for the suggestion.

 

Probably can do that since I have written (rather giz, pickachu and I) programs to access and update my db.

 

In the member's area (which supposedly is password protected) I have the same thing, i.e., using mailto for all of them. Would the same thing apply there?

 

I am cleaning up the css now and moving it all to the external file. No problem there except with my menu. It crashes when I move the internal css. Then I want to figure out how and where to apply some padding so my text and images have some separation. And I have a couple of boundary problems. So I still have some work to do.

[Philip]

If it is password protected, then it should be fine to leave it... but it's ultimately up to you on how you want to get emails

[crmamx]

If it is password protected, then it should be fine to leave it... but it's ultimately up to you on how you want to get emails

 

Not via spam that is for sure...   It is on my list of to do's.

[cssfreakie]

make sure read about preventing header injection, if your going to make a contact form,

http://www.phpro.org/tutorials/PHP-Security.html#4

[bateati]

Take the background picture out and fix the footer(It looks a little strange).

 

For an informational site it's not bad though

[crmamx]

No background picture there. It disappeared...

 

Always something.

[gizmola]

I really like what you have done with the site.  We were talking about it recently, and I wish we had a version of your original site just for comparative purposes, because it makes for a great example of how much someone can learn and develope their skills in a short period.  The main thing about the site I'd like to see modified is to have you add some type of background for your main content area. 

 

One idea would be to add a background to the wrapper style.  Because you have a nice background image, I added a little opacity to it using the webdeveloper plugin, and a style based on support for the rgba()  style.  This is not supported by all browsers, and for IE you would need to conditionally serve up something extra, but this should give you an idea.

 

#wrapper {
    margin-top: 30px;
    overflow: hidden;
    background: rgb(0, 0, 128);
    background: rgb(0, 0, 128, 0.7);
}

 

More about fully implementing this idea here:  http://robertnyman.com/2010/01/11/css-background-transparency-without-affecting-child-elements-through-rgba-and-filters/

 

The problem is that once you do that, the header image would need to be reworked a bit, so that it fits entirely inside the block with no border or padding -- otherwise it looks odd.  Here's a screenshot of what you could expect:

 

 

The other thing that bothers me is the footer background color which seems to have no relationship to any other part of the site.  I would suggest making it the same as the header color.

 

I realize you are still working on things here and there, but you've really done an incredible job.  I think I can speak for a lot of the other vets here who contributed to your thread, when I say that your progression and results is what makes the effort we put into answering questions and trying to help people worthwhile and keeps us coming back.

[QuickOldCar]

Here's one thing I noticed.

 

If you go and watch a video, then try to view the menu, the slide out menu's are under the video.

Maybe can make the dropdowns slide out within the main menu.

 

This video was pretty cool btw.

http://bayarearcsociety.com/index.php?page=video_amazing3d

[crmamx]

I really like what you have done with the site.  We were talking about it recently, and I wish we had a version of your original site just for comparative purposes, because it makes for a great example of how much someone can learn and develope their skills in a short period. 

 

The other thing that bothers me is the footer background color which seems to have no relationship to any other part of the site.  I would suggest making it the same as the header color.

 

I realize you are still working on things here and there, but you've really done an incredible job.  I think I can speak for a lot of the other vets here who contributed to your thread, when I say that your progression and results is what makes the effort we put into answering questions and trying to help people worthwhile and keeps us coming back.

 

Thanks for the comment. It makes me feel like all the frustration and hard work was worth it. Of course it would not have been possible without you and the other vets.

 

I left a version of the original site up and running but had some trouble with it being accessed. I was told that the priority order on the server was index.php, then index.html. But there were occasions when it seems my domain name brought up index.html instead of index.php.

 

Anyway, all the files are still there and I can put it back up for you and others to use as an example (of an ugly, 1990's Iframe site) if you like. How about some hints on the best way to do it.

 

Check my footer again. I had some problems with it but it is fixed now.

 

quickoldcar

If you go and watch a video, then try to view the menu, the slide out menu's are under the video.

Maybe can make the dropdowns slide out within the main menu.

 

Thanks, I will look into that. Hadn't noticed it before.

 

I like the video of the idiot's crashing their planes...

 

[KevinM1]

I also think you should keep an old version of your site online.  It would be a great way to show the before and after for the newbie tutorial you're thinking of writing (which is also a good idea).  Simply put the old site's folder/file structure in a top-level folder named 'archive'.  That will keep relative file paths the same while keeping index.html from interfering with index.php.  The old site could then be accessed through bayarearcsociety.com/archive/index.html