web critics...

[C0nR0cks]

can you give me opinions and/or suggestions. my site (http://www.conrox.netfirms.com) i just started building about 4-5 days ago, i'm still new to the whole thing so it may be a little scratchy. any feedback is appreciated. thanx in advance.

[spufi]

Well, you hit just about all of the common newbie errors, so let me go through them.

1. Find a theme for the site, and go with it for the whole site. This means colors, images, etc... Your front page has a total different look than the rest of your site. Don't have a hover effect make the link totally dissapear.

2. Don't annoy the viewer. That round image on your front page hurt my eyes because of the pattern it had on it. I'm not really a fan of front pages anyway. It's one extra click for the user. Users don't have time for that when you already have slow load times.

3. Load times. The front page almost kills my 56K modem. Hitting enter pretty much finished it off. Images can be cool, but images take time to load.

4. Don't use tables for layout.

5. Validate.

[C0nR0cks]

what should i use for the layout. i'm not too familiar with it, but i know i don't have php support. i started off using just html, but now i'm using dreamweaver to create it.

edit: should i use a diff format other than html?

[C0nR0cks]

lol. i can't even validate it due to missing doctype and encoding. i have some work to do.

[lopvin]

go to www.guestbookdepot.com
and thats ure best bet for a decent ad free guestbook and allows for deleting entries
and its a good way to get suggestions for ure site and stuff :)

[brendandonhue]

Use a DIV or SPAN for layout.

[spufi]

Originally posted by C0nR0cks
what should i use for the layout. i'm not too familiar with it, but i know i don't have php support. i started off using just html, but now i'm using dreamweaver to create it.

edit: should i use a diff format other than html?

For layout use CSS along with your HTML. PHP is a server side code and isn't really want you want to be using for layout. Once you start to get into CSS you'll see that Dreamweaver likes to put in extra code that simply isn't needed. I would suggest trying to learn HTML using something like Notepad, or go and download Textpad, so you can at least get line numbers and color coding. Textpad has a trail period, but they don't really stick to it, so it's good for newbies to learn on.

Here's some links to look at.

http://www.alistapart.com/index.html
http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2
http://www.webstyleguide.com/
http://www.w3schools.com/