Thread: Opinions, opinions, opinions

Hey VodaHost world. I finally finished my website and want to see what everyone thinks.


schompinsurance.com

Hi

Its a good start and here are a couple of things that you can look at:

Check your spelling......alot ?¿.....notch..not notched.....

You really need to put some internal links back to your home page as well.

You are on the right track, so keep going
and

internal links?? what do you mean by that? I thought I had a home tab on all the pages.

followed through all the forms and the last one did not have a link back.....

Will have another look later..........

oh I see what you mean... the form page. Should I put one on there?

Alrighty I got links not only back to home page, but to all pages on the form page. There we go. How's that?

Hi there, I think you did a great job on your site. A couple of pointers?

All the links that are taking your viewers off your site should have their target set to _blank in the Edit Hyperlink dialog box. This way you don't loss your viewers.

Center your pages in the browser. It would probably take you less then five minutes, but would take your page up a "notch". View, Page Properties, Center in Browser (it's a check box under the General tab).

Great job!

hey just real quick ? Dave how do you add a hyperlink with your website on this message?? mine is not working when i click on it. It just opens a blank bock in another window.

Thanks Halaal, yeah I remember seeing that when I click in the link

type the text, highlight it, click on the hyperlink button, and insert the address of the page you want to link to. the link has to start with http://

got a ? what exactly does _blank do? What does the others in the list do too?

Originally Posted by bschomp

got a ? what exactly does _blank do? What does the others in the list do too?

Blank will open a new window, so that the user will still have your page open but also be able to navigate the off site page in a different window. I was going to suggest this but Halaal beat me to it. Otherwise the site looks great. Good job.

Thank you. And do you think also I should center all the pages too?

Your right Halaal, thats what I meant to say (_blank) sorry if it didn't come across that way.

bschomp:
In order to center your pages now you have to go into the builder and on each page click edit/select all and move everything over to the left top most portion of the builder page, save and publish. It looks to me that you did not start your pages in that location so I do not think it is as simple as clicking the center in browser box, but try it to be sure (can't hurt).

Ok guys fixed all the links to _blank and centered the website. how is that?

Did you physically center your entire content in the window? If so, select all your text and move them back to the very left

I would have left the plan page the way it was (opening in the same window) but each link within the page have open in a new window. If you do it the way you have now the user can navigate your site from two active windows and pretty soon have so many open they are going to confused, agrivated or just exit all of them.

I agree with Ed. Pages within your site should have their target field let blank, as in empty.

Ok I fixed the plan page now.

The plans page is still opening in a new window. It seems the target is on _blank. Check all the navigation on all your pages. Or, fix the nav on one page, copy, and then go to your other pages and Edit Paste to paste to the exact spot on the current page as it was on the page pasting from. Saves you a bit of time.

Originally Posted by bschomp

hey just real quick ? Dave how do you add a hyperlink with your website on this message?? mine is not working when i click on it. It just opens a blank bock in another window.

Just go into your cp(top left of this page)
click on signatue (where you put-give a man a fish etc)
type in your web url
select it then use the green worldy icon
save........and there you go.

OK OK ....now that I have figured out what you guys were talking about. I have now fixed the problem. Tell me what you think

Sweet thanks again Dave :)

Your web conference is still opening up in the same window. That should be opening in a _blank window.

Go here. You want your content to the left as in this pic. Edit, Select All, Unlock All. Move your entire content to the very left. The status bar should read x:0 , y:0. Try one page, print preview and see if there's a difference.

arrrrgh rofl....wow ok that part is done at least. Ok i'll try doing what you say about page position. Is it really that off? when I started creating them, I had them all flush to the left.

I have to scroll to the right on a 17 inch monitor. Is it really that off? lol

lol uh yeah

yes, it's really off. lol You never want to have the viewer scroll horizontally. We are getting to be very lazy these days and I for one am not patient with such sites that require scrolling. It's one thing not having the site centered, but you risk losing viewers with scrolling (to the right).

Brian .....

Remember to ALWAYS begin your page builds with the furthestmost element "locked-left" to the top-left corner of the BV workpane (the 0:0 axis point). You can make your pages as wide as you want, but everything in the world of webbing relates to the top-left positioning (even when using an HTML box with a script in it, the script will run whatever it is coded, but will "position" itself from the top-left corner of the 'box').

So, if you move everything back to the 0:0 position, (no matter how wide you make it and then "define" the width via PROPERTIES), when you go to Center in Browser it will not be unbalanced.
That would be the first thing I would suggest to make a dramatic improvement before you tweak the small stuff.

Then, step back from the monitor a bit (seriously) and let your eye rove freely over the overall display ..... what catches you eye first? Did you pick the unbalanced elements and uneven flow?
Thus, my second suggestion: to repair and establish a proper flow and balance to your layout. First thing would be to NEVER place text over 2 separate elements like you have! Splitting text over two totally contrasting elements (a blank space and a bright image) is simply HUGE, and it amazes me you let it stand so long as you have.....

I think you can pick up the rest.
Just think 1. Precision; 2. Balance; 3. Natural Flow; 4. Emphasis (as in text or Content -- stimulate cognitive recognition and value-making naturally, which is a preferred foundation for interaction you may have an opportunity to characterize later...).

Great choices for colors and images to work with! Looking forward to your refinements.

Thanks Gen I'll work on that. Now as for when I created the pages, they were all flush left.

Hi Brian,
You should also resize your pictures. When you go in Collaboration>>Latest Creations, this page is taking too long to open. You have 28 pictures there as big as 73kb! You could get away having them only at 20 kb!(or even less)
This would make a big difference regarding the speed the page opens up.

Cheers,