Thread: Critiques on New Website Please

I am tweeking this website to try and make it as efficient and easy to use as possible. I would greatly appreciate it if you would take a look and honestly relay your opinions on it.

www.forthoferfarm.com

thankyou.

See my points on your other thread about optimisation, page titles meta data etc... very very important.

I wish I could look more closely at your site but it keeps freezing my windows. It might not be ALl down to your site though, I am getting a new PC next week with three times more of everything, speed, memory etc so maybe I take a closer look then

From what I can see your site looks nice but as Ramsey has pointed out it takes for ever to load the pages, appearing to freeze. I tried to find out why but was unable, your photo file sizes are small. I did see in the script that there apears to be a few elements probably hidden under the back ground (like a rotating banner or something like it) that is causing the problem. Try this, clone your mares 1 page, and delete everything one at a time (from the clone page) to see if there is anything hidden if so then you know what you need to fix to speed your site up.

Not only is it the super-large transparancy laid over the page, but specifically BV10106.png coupled with the fact you added the "second" Menu system after the four "corner" images, which is like the load being 'burped' somewhat.

You may wish to re-create the pages in a more orderly fashion (all the buttons load in sequence, all the images, etc.).

Also check the actual page width you set ... too wide? (guessing it's around 1100) looks like 800 should be wide enough, and then check "Center in Browser."

Few things I would do:

- resize the pictures. Page will load faster
- it's very hard on the eyes. Change the brown background(?)
- and, as Vasili said, you should center the page

Cheers,

Hi, ditto with the others. 8,814kb (8meg) is just a bit on the heavy side for a home web page. You should be able to get this down to around 150kb with what you have on the page. Similar problem on other pages.
Remember it will look like its loading fast on your machine as you have already got the images in your machines cache giving you a false impression of loading times.

I wish I could see it, but everytime I go there I freeze up...

Originally Posted by SChajin

I wish I could see it, but everytime I go there I freeze up...

Snap!... Ya it's a shame... hopefully she will take notice of advice above where her problems lie.

I looked at your site in FF. The pics take forever to load, and the darkness of the background is a little too!!! The buttons on the right are also hard to read being so dark and the words dark. The lay out is nice, and the nav is OK just slowwwwwww.
Good luck!

Your page closed my browser. Youve named your pages with the .bvp exension..IE: index.bvp

Just name it index with NO extension

Youve made browser errors by doing this and the browser is busy trying to correct it and render it as html. This is part of your loading issues.

Karen

Thank you all for all of the input!

You all have been so helpful, thankyou. Now that I know where some of my problems are, or may be, I can work on fixing them. Thank you all so very much!

Originally Posted by D'son

From what I can see your site looks nice but as Ramsey has pointed out it takes for ever to load the pages, appearing to freeze. I tried to find out why but was unable, your photo file sizes are small. I did see in the script that there apears to be a few elements probably hidden under the back ground (like a rotating banner or something like it) that is causing the problem. Try this, clone your mares 1 page, and delete everything one at a time (from the clone page) to see if there is anything hidden if so then you know what you need to fix to speed your site up.

I did as suggested, and I could not find anything hidden on the page.

I am going through and resizing my pages and pics, as well as centering on the browser, and changing the file format from the bvp.

once again, thank you for the advice. I hope the few pages I get done tonight will have some change in load time.

thank you all once again!

due to personal computer problems, changes may take a few days to get up and going.

Best of luck with it, hope you get your problems sorted soon.

As NZBR says....resize your images....wow, about 8.4 Meg for the 4 images. Take bv01061.png for example - that one alone is about 4 Meg. Although on your page it's shrunk to 107px × 97px, viewer is still downloading 1913px × 1600px (those 4 Meg). Downsize those images and you will probably reduce the weight of the page by 8 Meg.

I am looking at your site via Firefox. Personally, I find the text to small and the font colour (is it gold?) does not show enough of a contrast to the background for easy reading. It's too difficult on my eyes although others may not find so.

Furthermore, change your page name from index to Forthover Farm or just Forthover. When one is working with several open browser tabs, it's easier to get back to your page.

Courtney, you absolutely MUST reduce the images. By that I do not mean the size as seen on the screen but the size in pixels.

I looked at your page http://www.forthoferfarm.com/Foals.html and had it not been for sheer curiosity I wouldn't have waited for the images to download. The 3 photos on that page take up over 36 Meg !

Hey Courtney !

Just resize your pictures with Microsoft Office Picture Manager.
There, you can crop them, resize them, etc., in no time.

This is what I do for my pictures,
and they 're even bigger than yours in size,
yet, my pages load faster than your pages.

Once you've resized them,
delete the ones currently on your site,
and replace them with the resized ones, and that would be it,
at least concerning the pictures.

Concerning the overall look of your site, yes,
I've got the feeling of visiting a farm.

A tiny little bit more of contrast between
the letters and buttons would be appreciated.
But your site has to please you first.

You're the one who has to manage it daily.
Feel comfortable with it, and juggle with
what we all said to you...

Cheers.

Sasha_