Thread: Ready for a Critique.....I Think!

There are still a few things I have to get right:

The contactus and thankyou page don't work yet.
Have to figure out HOW and WHERE to put the BV link so I can use their search engine. (the HOW is the big thing)

Please let me know your thoughts.

gsmithmaui

www.alohaainamemories.com

Looks good. Makes me want to go get married there. If only I hadn't already been wed for 20-some years.

-R

Aloha,
Good work, now time to fine tune:

-White text, and size, on the blue background can be ahrd to read - too brillant/harsh, an off white color and a bigger font might work better.
-Center your pages, some are, some are not.
-Consider changing NavBar so links open in same window not new ones, I counted over 16 new windows - way too many.
-Add to your page titles, example on home page add "Hawaiian Weddings" and your URL
-On Wedding Album page and one other, leave more top or headroom so that the NavBAr isn't crushed against the top.
-Same page, there is a big empty space over the photos making this page appear less professional.

Good luck

Also, spell check, found this on Wedding Album page:
"....bottome right of the panel to select next photograph"
bottom

Hello

Love the Sunset at the top. I think the text in the body of your homepage as Bill said is a bit small to read. Other than that your doing a great job.

Well done.

Thanks guys, I have made a few changes....with one exception. Bill, the third item in your critique regarding the links opening in the same window.....not sure how to go about doing that. Can you tell me how to do this?
Thanks,
Greg

Right click on your menu bar, select properties. Double click on each name and set "Target" to "_self."

Thanks Sandy. : -)

Thank you Sandy, but that's the way they're set up now.....is that why everything opens in a seperate window? What should it be?

WOAH!! My apologies Sandy and Bill, I went back and double checked and found that the TARGET was all over the place on several pages. I believe I've got them all straight now. I was hoping that would fix the problem I'm having with the CONTACT page.....NOPE.......BV has been looking at it for a few days now......I'll sit tight!!
THANKS AGAIN!!!

Well, there's one more problem solved, now on to the next, eh?

Thank you all so much for your great input! Now if I could only get the Contact and Thank You pages to work I'd be in great shape!!

Hi, you may have to look at you image pages? They are running at 3 meg & 1.3 meg on the albums pages & making them very slow to load.
Must admit, there should be a health warning on the light box. LOL. Its really only meant for use with one or two images in this version.

Thanks Chris......when I go to the site and open up the pages with the photos, mine loads pretty quickly, as a matter of fact the largest pic is 640 kb but most are under 100.....what am I missing?..........is there another version that I should be using?
Your help is appreciated!!

Greg
www.alohaainamemories.com

Aloha Greg!! Just took a quick look at your site. Doing Great I might add!! Just a few things I noticed.
1. On the image pages you have text that says click close to go to the next picture. Did you know that if you just put your mouse over the large image that at the upper right it says, "Next"? Just thought I would point that out.
2. With regard to your contact us and Thank you page. Are you using Naval Designs Advanced Blue Voda Form? It works great and you can find the thread on how to do it HERE. If you have any questions, Naval is great about helping you out.
3. On your Contact page I would also put your phone number and location (if not your home) and individual name.
4. I would personally like to see a different button used in your nav bar. The one you are using, just doesn't seem to fit the mood of the site. Maybe something with a flower on it like the pink flowers on your home page. You can make your own buttons and HERE is a thread on how to do that.
5. If you are wanting search engines to find you, you don't want to wait to read up on at least the basics. Bethers has a SEO basic info for free download. You can find it in my signature below.
6. If you ever plan on linking your site to others, I would love to exchange links with you, when and if you want to, just let me know.
7. The version of lightbox is the only one. Have you used pixzer to optimize your photos? That may help, but they did all load fairly quickly for me. You can find pixzer if you just do a search on the forum.

Your site is looking Great and congratulations on doing a super job!

Hi, the reason your page will load quick for you is that it is already in your computers cache (Temp storage area) so when you visit the site a 2nd time the page doesn’t have to fully down load all the KB’s again. It is also in my cache now & will also load a lot quicker until my cache is cleared or emptied. But for every 1st time visitor that doesn’t have fast broadband this page will be very slow loading.
I personally would aim at a page being not much larger than 300kb in total.
The problem with the light box is that it makes the thumbnails the same size as the main image & they should really be about 10kb, so apart from using this tool to save a bit of page space there isn’t much point in using it as the page will load in the same time as if it wasn’t used.
With most large images that will pop up, you don’t need them to be any larger than 600x800 @ 250kb max as most monitors won’t show any more quality over this size, & preferably should be a lot smaller.
Have a look at the image & photo tips link bellow, it may help.

Good luck.