I need some further review

They have: 67 posts

Joined: Aug 2001

Guys,

What do you think about this little site I am a Newbie.

http://www.haitisurf.com

They have: 45 posts

Joined: Oct 2001

have a way to skip the intro and avoid music (I *hate* music that autoplays on websites)
try to not center everything on the side.
that font is *tiny*!
the bouncing images look tacky, esp. w/ the white square.

Busy's picture

He has: 6,151 posts

Joined: May 2001

186kb is a lot for a 56k or smaller modem, in IE it was ok, I could click the skip, but the preview load bit hasnt displayed in NS yet, ok it loaded after 10%

now i'm at the page and i'm wondering, what the heck is 186kb? oh the page has finished loading and it has cheesey bombs or something floating around. if i put my mouse over them the status bar says javascript:hidebutterfly, lol funny looking butterflies, anyways

displays pretty much the same in IE5 and NS4.7 except the horzitional scroll bar in NS is bigger at 800x600
looking at your source code looks like you forgot to finsh your style sheets, you have
A:link{color:COLOR;text-decoration:none}

your title: HAITISURF|haitisurf.com, #1 Haitian Web site, Haitian Chat, Forum
looks very messy on the screen, things like "#1 Haitian Web site, Haitian Chat, Forum" arent needed, plus its to long and wouldnt beeb seen by bookmark anyways, keep it simple so people dont have to guess what site they book marked

add marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" to your body tag and the margins will be the same in IE and NS

your table is 780 wide, I forget what the max is, but its only something like 760, you have to remember scrollbars, cellpadding, spacing etc as well

Those bombs things are a real pain in the butt, the red background on things like the top left banner looks bad.

keep to the same font, and highlighted sections in the middle of the index, "go and add your posts ..." and "do you believe ..." should be the same size

you have a Site Analyzer on your site and you suggest people check your site, i tryed yours in both but both times couldnt be found so i tested it at w3c.org and netmechanic.com, here is the results at w3c
http://www.htmlhelp.com/cgi-bin/validate.cgi?url=
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.haitisurf.com%2Findex2.html&warnings=yes&input=yes (warning its a long review)
and netmechanic
http://results.netmechanic.com/aps3/toolbox/summary.cgi?
f=364/2316/27-17051&s=NetMechanic&fv=5

these links are one line, i cut them in half so the page wouldnt scrol into tomorrow, most are javascript errors but are some html ones, linke having a form tag between a table and tr tag.

disaster-master's picture

She has: 2,154 posts

Joined: May 2001

Starting with the flash intro. I'd loose it. It serves no purpose. A still shot of the little earth with the fire twirling around it would make for a nice logo though. Maybe you could include it in with the title of the site and replace the one that you have on the home page. (the one at the top left) The one on the top left looks a little wierd having "Haitisurf." and the the "com****" below it. Also, the red mouseover doesn't match. I probably wouldn't do that.

What ever those little floating things are they stop the animation of the banner at the top of the page when you click on them to make them go away. hmmm...
And speaking of banner, maybe you could make it smaller while making your logo at the top bigger. Or better yet don't have a banner for your own forum.

There are two small images just above where your text starts. These images will take you to the chat section but they don't have anything to do with chatting. At first glance they look like they would take you to a vacation spot or something. And one images is faded at the bottom while the other isn't.

The red mouseovers that you are using on the links on the first page do not look good. Colors don't go together. I like the white underline that is on the other pages better.

Some of your pages have different layouts than others. They should be uniform. The first page uses a very small font while the others have bigger fonts.

Have you really had 915137 hits on this site?

Didn't get to go through the whole site but those were a few things that I noticed right off.

Happy New Year!!!!

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

Yup, that intro is really cheesy and it doesn't match the style of the rest of the site so get rid of it. The main site seems very incoherent to me - there doesn't seem to be a defined set of content, just kind of add-on type things (search, forum, web design, free e-mail etc.) You need to do a better job of emphasizing real content. Maybe you could provide more visitors information type stuff, local history and cultural information, local business directory, things like that.

THe body copy here talking about what this site about is also seeming very vague and particularly cheesy to me. Maybe that's part of your culture there???? I don't know...

The design is okay, but it doesn't really stand out to me in any way. I would add some elements that really represent Haiti - I've never been there, so I don't have any specific ideas, but a much larger photo would be nice and maybe a more carribian/island colour scheme in cool colours like blue, teal, or green. The logo should be reworked as well - I don't like how the ".com" part appears on a second line - makes the whole thing look kind of fragmented. Maybe incorporate some sort of icon... maybe a palm tree or something.

They have: 30 posts

Joined: Nov 2001

hi,

good looking site over all. Banner at top runs slowly for me. Perhaps a flash banner would be smoother.

They have: 4 posts

Joined: Jan 2002

Overall a nice looking site, but as others have suggested I have concerns about the flash intro. The flash is well done, but I would have an opening page that says...enter flash enhanced site or normal. I don't like my speakers screaming at me when I go to a site.

They have: 9 posts

Joined: Jan 2002

Have to agree , don't like loud music (or any music really) disracting me from what i'm seeing. Intro looks good, like the globe, but it runs on a bit too long and as someone said, "it serves no purpose". The rest of your site is nice. Good mix of colors etc.

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