My first site design since joining these forums (plus one question)

[torndownunit]

I have received so much helpful advice since joining this forum. It may not be as large as some of the web design forums out there, but the userbase is so much more helpful.

Anyway, I know this site won't be perfect by any means but it's the first site I have done with tips I have learned since joining this site. I haven't asked for any tips/help specific to this site though. I just did it based on what I have read. It won't be perfect, but it's night and day from what I was working on before joining this forum I think.

I did use a table for the Rates section. But as far as I know, it falls under the 'tabular data' category which people seem to think is 'ok'?

http://www.jdrmt.com

One thing that kind of stumped me. I moved the internal ID styles (#centerbox, #content, #menu) to my external style sheet at one point. But the background image in #centerbox wouldn't show up when I uploaded it to the server. It would show up locally though. So I put the the styles back as internal styles as a quick fix to get the site functioning. Any idea what I may have been doing wrong?

 

[Blindfutur3]

The problem is your external stylesheet is in it's own folder, and doesn't know it's position in relation to your media folder.

All you need to do is modify any file paths in the external stylesheet to have ../ at the start. So for example:

body {
background: url('../media/bg.jpg');
}

The ../ basically tells the stylesheet to go up one directory. This can of-course be used as much as possible.

Example:

../../ to go up two directories

../../../ three directories

& so on

Hope this helps


- John

 

[torndownunit]

The problem is your external stylesheet is in it's own folder, and doesn't know it's position in relation to your media folder.

All you need to do is modify any file paths in the external stylesheet to have ../ at the start. So for example:

body {
background: url('../media/bg.jpg');
}

The ../ basically tells the stylesheet to go up one directory. This can of-course be used as much as possible.

Example:

../../ to go up two directories

../../../ three directories

& so on

Hope this helps


- John

ARGH should have got that one.

Thanks!

 

[angelwatt]

First impressions of the site are good. Has a nice feel to it and things are well balanced. The couple of pages I ran through the HTML validator came back good. Use of the table tag for the rates is fine. It could be done without tables, but no reason to.

On the home page, for the massage graphic, you have that golden strip that goes across the top. I think some people may not see the that it's following the same strip from the content half. I find the color contrast of the two tan colors hard to distinguish. I would recommend increasing the contrast or get rid of the two colors and decide on one. Also then, I would lighten the gold strip up. It's not a big deal though.

From an SEO standpoint you should have some text present for the header. You're currently using a background image for the text, which is fine, but search engines can't pull the text from that. There are image/text replacement techniques using CSS that you can use here. This article describes one such technique using FIR (Fahrner Image Replacement). This will definitely help bring it up on search results.

I've got mixed feelings about the navigation being at the bottom of the site. From an accessibility standpoint, it means the menu options will be one of the last things read to those using screen readers. Also, for those people using small screens (such as mobile devices) they may not see the navigation. Even if they scroll down, it kind of blends into the page so isn't immediately recognizable. I'm not sure what alternative I would go with though. It may work to have it below the header and just adjust the content down. Another possibility might be to use a vertical navigation that comes out of the left side of the content, with each item being presented on a gold strip like what is currently on the image. That may look tacky though. Hard to picture. Just thinking out loud.

Looks like you've put what you've learned to good use. Keep up the good work. And don't worry about that mix up with the relative paths for the CSS. I still screw that up from time-to-time and it just doesn't sink in what I'm doing wrong. Just a brain fart.

 

[torndownunit]

First impressions of the site are good. Has a nice feel to it and things are well balanced. The couple of pages I ran through the HTML validator came back good. Use of the table tag for the rates is fine. It could be done without tables, but no reason to.

On the home page, for the massage graphic, you have that golden strip that goes across the top. I think some people may not see the that it's following the same strip from the content half. I find the color contrast of the two tan colors hard to distinguish. I would recommend increasing the contrast or get rid of the two colors and decide on one. Also then, I would lighten the gold strip up. It's not a big deal though.

From an SEO standpoint you should have some text present for the header. You're currently using a background image for the text, which is fine, but search engines can't pull the text from that. There are image/text replacement techniques using CSS that you can use here. This article describes one such technique using FIR (Fahrner Image Replacement). This will definitely help bring it up on search results.

I've got mixed feelings about the navigation being at the bottom of the site. From an accessibility standpoint, it means the menu options will be one of the last things read to those using screen readers. Also, for those people using small screens (such as mobile devices) they may not see the navigation. Even if they scroll down, it kind of blends into the page so isn't immediately recognizable. I'm not sure what alternative I would go with though. It may work to have it below the header and just adjust the content down. Another possibility might be to use a vertical navigation that comes out of the left side of the content, with each item being presented on a gold strip like what is currently on the image. That may look tacky though. Hard to picture. Just thinking out loud.

Looks like you've put what you've learned to good use. Keep up the good work. And don't worry about that mix up with the relative paths for the CSS. I still screw that up from time-to-time and it just doesn't sink in what I'm doing wrong. Just a brain fart.

Thanks for the tips! This is a friends site, so she will likely have to take what she gets because I don't have the time to do more lol. But I will definitely make note of the design tips for the next site. My goal along with help from the forum, articles, and some books will be to improve with each site.