So I've put my website up...

John_Mc

Hi,

I've finally gotten round to uploading my website. Designed and developed from scratch so no one to blame but myself

Some things I'm already aware of:

• Background image in body is too large (800kb). Will be reduced when I figure out how
• On IOS devices the sliding mechanism is jerky.

Your feedback is appreciated!

http://www.johnmcavinue.ie

yossarin

its a minor quibble but:

your doctype is set to "xhtml1-strict", but the HTML on the front page at least doesn't pass the w3c HTML validator (http://validator.w3.org/)

Other than that - it look good. nice use of rest-ie URLS for different sections.

John_Mc

yossarin wrote: »

its a minor quibble but:

your doctype is set to "xhtml1-strict", but the HTML on the front page at least doesn't pass the w3c HTML validator (http://validator.w3.org/)

Other than that - it look good. nice use of rest-ie URLS for different sections.

Thanks for your feedback and good catch with the W3C validation- I completely forgot about it! This is my first MVC project so it's great to be able to have proper HTML rendered as opposed to the horrible stuff Web forms produces.

Thankfully only minor errors returned so will fix them as soon as I can.

Thanks once again!

Fanny Cradock

You forgot to put in the url to the Hibernian Hotel.

John_Mc

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

You forgot to put in the url to the Hibernian Hotel.

Thanks for your feedback, and good catch. I deliberately left it out though as their current website was not the one I developed for them. I did it about 5 years ago and they recently updated it.

I put a note in the description but it's not as clear as it should be though

Fanny Cradock

One thing that immediately struck me was the two occurrences of the menu menu on the main page. First is the real thin, second is a copy of the real thing in the project banner. I realise that you site is quite clean and doesn't offer you the chance to show much else. However, it just seems a little repetitive to have an image of the menu under the menu.

Two additional things that struck me.

1) The tabs of the menu have a white border around them (see the left side of the Home tab for an example). I don't know if you are going for this look or it is bad cropping.

2) The Home tab starts with a shadow. It shouldn't.

All in all, I would personally prefer a little more colour or background texture/ contrast. But I'm not an expert.

montreal2011

It's good in that it gives me the impression that you are competent in the skills necessary, but also a likeable person to work with:



:pac:

I'm not sure that I would use your own site in the portfolio, at least not include it on the home page. It would be better to have the baby one there for example.

As Fanny Cradock said, it's repeating what's already there to see. I think some graphics of some kind would improve the home page, especially photos; maybe use screen shots of some of the other sites, something colourful, pretty etc. instead of just using the text logo's of the sites.

It's good, very good. I especially like the "Filter By Technologies Used" side bar.

stephenpalmer

Well done, I was expecting an amateurish site but it seems you have a good bit of experience behind you

Are the other sites in your portfolio your projects or other peoples?
What I mean by it is are you making much from them :cool:

John_Mc

Ok, it only took a few months but I eventually managed to fix most of the issues you eagle-eyes spotted. Thanks once again, really appreciate the feedback

yossarin wrote: »

your doctype is set to "xhtml1-strict", but the HTML on the front page at least doesn't pass the w3c HTML validator (http://validator.w3.org/)

I have it validating against transitional doc type now. The syntax highlighter plugin I use breaks the validation on some of the blog pages but it doesn't for others... Still looking for a reliable fix

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

One thing that immediately struck me was the two occurrences of the menu menu on the main page. First is the real thin, second is a copy of the real thing in the project banner. I realise that you site is quite clean and doesn't offer you the chance to show much else. However, it just seems a little repetitive to have an image of the menu under the menu.

Two additional things that struck me.

1) The tabs of the menu have a white border around them (see the left side of the Home tab for an example). I don't know if you are going for this look or it is bad cropping.

2) The Home tab starts with a shadow. It shouldn't.

All in all, I would personally prefer a little more colour or background texture/ contrast. But I'm not an expert.

I wanted to keep my website listed in my portfolio as it describes the rationale behind it and the technologies used. I changed the image though cos I think you were right.

I can't fix #1 unless I change image type to PNG24. GIF and PNG8 are the same and have the white border you see, and I need a transparent background so can't fix this at the moment.

Well spotted with #2!

montreal2011 wrote: »

I'm not sure that I would use your own site in the portfolio, at least not include it on the home page. It would be better to have the baby one there for example.

As Fanny Cradock said, it's repeating what's already there to see. I think some graphics of some kind would improve the home page, especially photos; maybe use screen shots of some of the other sites, something colourful, pretty etc. instead of just using the text logo's of the sites.

Totally agree. Have tried to add colour and contrast with the images I now use.

stephenpalmer wrote: »

Are the other sites in your portfolio your projects or other peoples?
What I mean by it is are you making much from them :cool:

I did all of them for other people, and I did it for the experience more than money

Trojan

SEO: Home links should go to / not /Home
SEO: /Home should 301 to / if it needs to exist.
SEO: Title, H1's and H2's on homepage are awful.
SEO: "Project Title" is redundant, you could get rid of it.
SEO: Hyphens are recommended rather than underscores:
/Blog/Emailing_Documents_as_Attachments_from_Sharepoint_2010

URLs: I don't like Caps in URLs personally.

Design: I wouldn't bother with the w3c validation icon, even if the code is valid.
Design: /Content/Images/BgSplice.gif is too small or badly cut, it's creating obvious grid lines - get a better bg that tiles nicely.
Design: /Content/Images/NavMenu_About.png needs a designer's TLC

All in all, a pretty good site.

John_Mc

Trojan wrote: »

SEO: Home links should go to / not /Home
SEO: /Home should 301 to / if it needs to exist.
SEO: Title, H1's and H2's on homepage are awful.
SEO: "Project Title" is redundant, you could get rid of it.
SEO: Hyphens are recommended rather than underscores:
/Blog/Emailing_Documents_as_Attachments_from_Sharepoint_2010

URLs: I don't like Caps in URLs personally.

Design: I wouldn't bother with the w3c validation icon, even if the code is valid.
Design: /Content/Images/BgSplice.gif is too small or badly cut, it's creating obvious grid lines - get a better bg that tiles nicely.
Design: /Content/Images/NavMenu_About.png needs a designer's TLC

All in all, a pretty good site.

Thanks very much for the feedback, especially the SEO stuff. I'll get them changed later on tonight.

I see what you're saying about the background image, and I've tried my best to make the repeating seamless, but the design background is very noisy and therefore very big in terms of size. I'll keep working on it though.

About the NavMenu_About.png, is it just that image or all images in the nav menu? They should look the same?