Thread: Ok, lay it on me!!

Hey Gang!

First site ever developed. I've read through some of the other reviews and am confident you will all provide some great ideas and critiques! Once I become a little more experienced at this, I look forward to offering my suggestions as well.

One idea I kept reading was to center the web page. Is this true for ANY layout or certain types. Would you recommend it for mine? And why?

Thanks in advance for all of your insight and suggestions. So....lay it on me!!

Scott

otterskin.com

well try and place a link for it you need http://www.otterskin.com for people to click on to view it...you site looks good but the weather on right need to come in a tad part of it is cut off and had to scroll to right .so bring it in to the left a bit. all links seem to work good on my end

Scott
LOve your site, love your product.
The site looks good, clean easy to read, easy and intuitive to get around.

First when I was clicking around I couldn't get all the links to work from all the pages, but then for some reason all the sudden it all worked.
Pages load nice and fast, too.

Great job.

The centering makes it look professional, but I think there might be other reasons for it, don't know. Sort of a newbie myself.

Good luck.

forgot to say - I think it's a bit wide. I have a bit of a side scroll, and my screen resolution is 1024.
Most people say to enable the widest viewing audience you have to keep your width down to 800, or you will have some percentage of your customers side scrolling, which is off-putting to some.

very nice...looks like you got it covered.. :p

The paragraph which ends with "...it's no wonder our customers chose, and continue to choose Otterskin Roof Gear to handle their roofing needs!" overlaps the paragraph that begins with "At Otterskin Roof Gear, we pride ourselves on not only being professional and dependable...". Likely just a formatting issue, but worth fixing.

Originally Posted by Subversive

The paragraph which ends with "...it's no wonder our customers chose, and continue to choose Otterskin Roof Gear to handle their roofing needs!" overlaps the paragraph that begins with "At Otterskin Roof Gear, we pride ourselves on not only being professional and dependable...". Likely just a formatting issue, but worth fixing.

Thanks for all of the comments so far!

Originally Posted by Subversive

The paragraph which ends with "...it's no wonder our customers chose, and continue to choose Otterskin Roof Gear to handle their roofing needs!" overlaps the paragraph that begins with "At Otterskin Roof Gear, we pride ourselves on not only being professional and dependable...". Likely just a formatting issue, but worth fixing.

SUBVERSIVE: What browser are you using that overlaps the two paragraphs? I have IE and Firefox and neither of them are showing an overlap on my end. I did see some differences between the two on some other things and had to balance them out. thanks for the heads up!

Hi Bulldog.

Well youve made a great start...click on the link below..to set your page properties, I think it just needs centering tho ...well done ...keep tweaking :o)

Originally Posted by Lincslady

Hi Bulldog.

Well youve made a great start...click on the link below..to set your page properties, I think it just needs centering tho ...well done ...keep tweaking :o)

GREAT TIP!!! Thanks Linda! I'll go back and re-size everything to 800 and definitely will use your tip for the next site. (Not sure what it'll be but this is almost addictive!)

Glad I could help....Almost addictive?...we have an online therapist if you ever need it .lol....(just kiddin)

Good work.
-Ditto on page width.
-To avoid losing users, change the link for the waether channel from '_self' to '_blank'
-Center your pages, or consider extending the red banner to the right, this will help maintain balance.

Originally Posted by bill2006

Good work.
-Ditto on page width.
-To avoid losing users, change the link for the waether channel from '_self' to '_blank'
-Center your pages, or consider extending the red banner to the right, this will help maintain balance.

Thanks Bill! I have a post in a different forum for help on changing the weather box so the user doesn't leave my site. Unlike other links I've made where you can adjust the page properties from self to blank, the html box I used for the weather box doesn't have a page properties option to it. When I right click the html box all it does is bing up a window that contains the html code.

Do you know if there is another way to get it to open a different browser/tab or a way to edit the html code to do it?

Thanks again,
Scott

Speaking of the weather box.....why does it move from page to page? Wouldn't you think it best be in the same place? And....had you squeezed you nav buttons closer together on your Main page, you could really bring the weather box up higher, thus shortenting you page considerably.

Speaking about your nav buttons....why are you using different styles?
I suggest selecting just one style, sizing/posititioning it properly, and making sure the page-to-page transition is seamless...

I will ease off there. I am certain others will pop in with other detailed suggestions.
Really great effort! Good showing!

I agree with Vasili. On the home page, especially, having white page while people scroll down isn't good. And your pages don't have any real "end" point. You need to delineate an end space for them.

Could you select a smaller weather box? Or alternatively, add some more pictures of your work so that you don't have a longer sidebar on the home page than you have "home page".

Good work - it's crisp and clean and easy to navigate.

Originally Posted by TheBulldog

SUBVERSIVE: What browser are you using that overlaps the two paragraphs? I have IE and Firefox and neither of them are showing an overlap on my end. I did see some differences between the two on some other things and had to balance them out. thanks for the heads up!

Looks fine today. Not sure what was happening...

First, thanks to everyone for your comments and suggestions. The site is definitely better because of them!

There are only two things from your suggestions that I need to do.

1) Add more pictures. (I will as soon as I get some more taken.)

2) Have the weather.com box open in a different window/tab. (I am still looking for a way to alter the html box to do it. Clicking on the Page Properties just opens up the html code window. Doesn't allow changing from _self to _blank. Any suggestions?)

Any additional comments would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks again,
Scott

www.otterskin.com

Scott,
You will notice I moved your request to your original review request - this makes it much easier for everyone to see what they've already said - and it follows the forum rules.

I always believe in the saying a "Picture speaks a thousand words".

It would be nice to be able to click on the photo to view a larger version.

A listing of projects with just names dosent do anything for me. I would want to view the list with a vision of a large project photo which is much more convincing.

and otterskin
ithink you have done a great looks really good
going to have a longer look at it now and will get back to you with what i think after going thrugh everything links etc
take care james
www.webbandromicproductions.com