my first site.

dobby11

http://www.youghalquaychristmasswim.com/index.html


be critical if ye want lads it's the only way ill learn more:)

aido179

As far as first attempts go that one is damn good.

I've a few pointers, more things to improve on, not exactly stuff you've got wrong:
1. The banner is a little gaudy and HUGE. Brings down the look of the site I think.
2. The text without any background or boundary at all looks washed out. I never find it pleasing to the eye to leave a large amount of text on the background like that.
3. Your link tabs are looking alright, but they stand out a bit much and the off set kind of unbalances the look. I would go for the banner on top and the links underneath and centred with their background going all the way across the width of your banner.

teddansonswig

its great man well done! gallery is ace
maby a little italicised

tricky D

Homepage needs more snappy text before the text blocks. Something like a brief bit on Where, When, For Who, How to Take Part, How to Donate, linking to other pages as appropriate.

Excessive use of italics doesn't help readability. Try a variation in colours or typography instead.

The gallery thumbnails are resized versions of the full size ones suing height and width in the image tags. The thumbnails should be sized at their display size 80x80 pixels.

Flash at the bottom of the gallery isn't a good idea. Try a jQuery image slider/rotator or even omit the thing altogether.

The popup gallery has no captions and no obvious navigation prompts (arrows). Take a look at other lightbox options for these.

Use a form as well as the email address on the contact page. Not everybody will have their email clients available.

What is the sort code for the bank acc.

Put a background colour into your css.

Make a proper 404 page with a sitemap.

Submit your sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools.

Put Google Analytics into your pages.

Fill in the description meta tags.

hth/gl

conorcan2

Great first site, you've avoided the sin most newbie's make because you've kept it simple.

I'd take on board the point about italics, because it's a way of emphasizing something but when you emphasis everything then nothing is is emphasised. Also italics tend to make font a little jagged and harder to read.

Use paragraphs and headings to break your text apart.

The banner looks great, the tabs are in a smart place. I don't see any other urgent issue.

Do think about your meta description tag and adding a contact form. The sooner the better as this is a Christmasy site.

The word 'Youghal' isn't used anywhere on the homepage, so that page is unlikely to rank for the search term "Youghal Christmas swim".