Critiques on New Website Please

[forthoferfarm]

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.

[Marincky]

Re: Critiques on New Website Please

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

[D'son]

Re: Critiques on New Website Please

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.

[Vasili]

Re: Critiques on New Website Please

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."

[nzbr]

Re: Critiques on New Website Please

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,

[Collectors-info]

Re: Critiques on New Website Please

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.

[SChajin]

Re: Critiques on New Website Please

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

[Marincky]

Re: Critiques on New Website Please

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.

[SAman]

Re: Critiques on New Website Please

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!

[Karen Mac]

Re: Critiques on New Website Please

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

[forthoferfarm]

Re: Critiques on New Website Please

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!

[forthoferfarm]

Re: Critiques on New Website Please

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!

[forthoferfarm]

Re: Critiques on New Website Please

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

[Marincky]

Re: Critiques on New Website Please

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

[specialtiesbarbados]

Re: Critiques on New Website Please

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.