Website for a Football Team

[Mr. Underhill]

I have built a website for my old football team and wanted to see if any of you had suggestions to improve it. Right now it is in a sort of flux, because I'm adding game video to it, which I've never done before. I generally work on it on the weekends, because I'm in college during the week. The website is at this address: http://www.manhattaneagles.org/index.html

Once again, I really appreciate any suggestions or advice you have.

[goldpaw]

Re: Website for a Football Team

Hi Mr. Underhill;
Here are a few things that I would suggest
1. Center all pages in the Browser
2. Define your print area from the background, i.e. I think the animated .gif of the Eagle is pretty cool but loses its effect as it already has a white background. If you made the content area also white then the flying Eagle would really stand out and really look like it was flying across the page, instead of just in it's little box. (does that make sense?)
3. On the merchandise page, also white defined area for pics of
sweatshirts etc. Then put the pictures in a lightbox so viewer can click
on them and enlarge to see better. Since they are already white background, you could frame them in black.

You are off to a great start.... now for the finetuning.... which, for me, never seems to end. Hope that helps! Good Luck!

[Mr. Underhill]

Re: Website for a Football Team

Thanks for the advice Goldpaw, I have centered my pages like you suggested. However, our team colors are black and yellow, so I won't change the background like you suggested. I did understand what you meant, but our athletic director doesn't want to change the background color, and he's the boss. Once again, I really appreciate any suggestions anyone has, I want to make the best website I can.

[Victory1]

Re: Website for a Football Team

Mr Underhill,
Couple of things I might do to help spice up the site:
1. Optimize the photos (Blue Voda has a pix optimizer)
2. I didn't like having to scroll down to the bottom of the page to go back to the main page all the time - so I would put a navigation menu on each page. On your sponsors page, it took a long time to load & I have broadband. You might want to use a sponsors drop down menu with each getting a link to their website.

[Mr. Underhill]

Re: Website for a Football Team

Victory1, thanks for the tips. I will look into the pix optimizer next time I have time. However, I decided when I first started building the web site that I would not put a navigation menu on every page. Because this is a football website, I already have over twenty pages, and we're adding to this almost every week. I can keep up with changes to one navigation menu, but having to remember to change every page's menu, even with copy and paste, would be difficult. I haven't heard of any troubles with load times except from you. If anyone else sees that as well, tell me. Thanks again, a lot of this stuff I never thought of before you guys mentioned it.

[D'son]

Re: Website for a Football Team

If you create a master page layout and call it, say, template you could clone it for all your pages there after. Have only the basics, logo, menu bar etc. this way all your pages will be the same, they will all have navagation (the same on each page) and you can add all you elements specific to each individual page to that without having to change any of the links. It is best to have navagation on each page and your users will like it better. 20 pages are really not that many and to start skimping now only bodes poorly for the future.

[jkadin]

Re: Website for a Football Team

I just took a fast glance at your site the eagle on your home page looks strecthed out instead of using a image resizer. You need to keep your pages uniformes with menu links on all pages. Like I said i just took a fast look good luck.

[Mr. Underhill]

Re: Website for a Football Team

D'son and jkadin, thanks for the feedback. I will talk to the athletic director about the changes you suggested next time I have a chance. I do understand what you guys are saying, the menu is a convenience issue. I believe the eagle logo wasn't even resized at all, but I'll take a closer look at it, it does look kinda stretched. Thanks to everyone for your suggestions, keep them coming!