Thread: Building my first website

Hi Everyone,
As a newbie, I'm having a few problems, but overall wanted to post my home page to see what you guys think so far. Plan on getting everything launched for next week.
Any general ideas about presentation, good or bad would be appreciated....

Thanks,
Brenda

Untitled Page

Brenda- you are off to a great start. I like your layout. I do have some suggestions though.

1. Make the page width 800 wide. People really get turned off trying to scroll from side to side. To see this yourself- set your monitors display properties to 800X600 and you will see what I mean.

2. Re-size your pictures. Just one was 3.2 megabytes. Your dial-up customers will wait for ever for the page to load. Here is a picture display tutorial to help http: //netisopen.com/computer/PICT001/PT001.html

3. The Title in the middle has yellow text with a white back ground- remove the white background as it is very difficult to read.

Do these things and you will look top notch!!!

Keep up the good work. Can't wait to see the finished product.

Andy

Thanks Andy.
I have a full size 19" monitor and forget others don't...
Also, I am stuck on that white background. It looks great in my layout page and I have background color set to automatic, same as my name, and yet every preview is back to white background...

Thanks again.

Hi Brenda,

I agree with Andy, but you have done a lot of work and you will get it done. Good work

Great work !
Nice New England home. Will this market continue to grow?

Ditto Andy's comments, I would add naming or titles to your page. Right click on your page in BV Page Properties> General>Title, for example "Brenda Realty"

Good luck

I believe that your text area extends down into the white below it and thus is picking that as it's automatic background. Make sure all of the text field is in the colored area and give that a try.

Andy

A great start. I agree with Andy about the yellow text on a white background. And the high resolution photos are wasted on a web site. Maybe you could try a few smaller pictures, with a 'click to enlarge'.
The photos would stand out better with a one pixel black border.

I think that the white background in the main body of the page is a good choice. It is classy, and won't offend any potential buyer!

I personally feel the scrolling "featured home of the month" is a bit gimmicky.

Were you asking a question about backgrounds in your reply starting "Thanks Andy. I have a full size 19.... etc"?

Well done.

Regards,

Thanks for all the comments so far everyone. I really appreciate the help.
(As for the real estate market, Bill2006, it is definitely a buyer's market right now and prices are normalizing with a really large inventory.)

Andy, I double checked my text field for my contact info and am still getting a white background...
I am continuing to work and will definitely let you know when I have some additional work done and have you guys check it out!


Thanks again,
Brenda

Brenda: Well done! Ditto on the comments above. Pictures took a very long time to load and I have high speed internet access. Other than that, I love it!

hi. i'm new to this too. musician/composer by profession. site is DILIUPGABADAMUDALIGE.COM. need to build it fast.

Hi Brenda,

Up and running in a week! I'm going to take some tips off you, Ive been doing my property site since Febuary and its still not ready lol

Anyway ...I agree with what has been said ,First and foremost you need to set your page widths ..if you follow the instructions below this will save you a lot of hard work later on.

great start, cant wait to see your site finished :o)...then you can tell me how you done it lol

Brenda-
Reference to he lettering with white back ground. Delete it entirely and simply put the DeFelice Realators in it's place.
Do you still have the white back ground?
If no- then the problem is that when you fill in your text, your text is extending down just a little into the white area (maybe not the text itself but part of the text box) and is picking that as it's back ground.

If the above answer was yes- (you still have a white background around DeFelice Realators) then their is a problem with the way the text field area is behaving.

Let us know and we'll go from there.

Andy

I think I fixed the white background problem with my contact info etc...
I do appreciate all the feedback....
working on resizing all my pics now.
Can't wait to put the finished site up and see what you all think.

Thanks again,
Brenda

Hi Brenda. Sorry, but the white background is still showing. Of course you may not have re-published your site since you fixed it. If that's the case, then ignore this post. lol

Hi Cindy,
Please check again, I re-published.
Now I am working on getting my navigation buttons to work.

Brenda

Yeah, it's looking good.

Brenda, I think what Cindy was referring to was the original page you posted, which takes you to

http://www.brendarealty.net/Castle2.html

That page still shows the white background.
I didn't notice the fix until I hit the home button. :)

I am also on a fairly large monitor (17" widescreen) so I totally understand where you're coming from. My site looks kinda weird on my monitor when I go to it. It's 896 px wide, when my computer's resolution is set to 1920 px wide... It was a chore for me to fit everything in the space I had while I was designing it. In fact, I started with a template that was 1200 x 900. Once I saw it on my friend's comp it was back to the drawing board. too much scrolling all ways.

A note for the pictures you have on the front page. It's funny because you went from super hi-res to super small. (not super small to most though). Not that I know everything about buying/selling houses, but I think some slightly larger pics might help get people interested. And I'm not trying to contradict anyone else's advice.

And I assume you used the "gallery" feature in BlueVoda. When you set the pics up be sure to check the box next to "Generate Thumbnail Images". This way, BlueVoda will create another image file (default tn_filename.jpg) and automatically upload it to your online folder when you publish it. The thumbnails shown will of course load much faster and point you straight to the larger image.

I think you just may have overdone the downsizing. :) It might just be the fact that my monitor is also at a hi-res setting, but I would guess a good size for pics like this would be around 800 x 600, more or less.

Your site is looking great though. keep it goin'. :)

Thanks again for all the feedback everyone.
Sorry I haven't posted back sooner, I have been working hard at the additions and changes.
I am hoping my site looks half as good as the ones I ahve seen form you guys so far!

Brenda
www.brendarealty.net

Loads very slowly, try crunchinf pics for quicker download. personal preference on marquee for me is to slide and not continous flow.

Thanks Bruce.
I re-sized pics, but will relook at them individually again.

Also thanks for the suggestion on the marquee.

Brenda

While your text is no longer against a white background, perhaps you want to avoid a background. Eliminating the horizontal scroll would be nice too. Try centering your page at 800 and see what results.