Kids Alive Website...whatdya think?

What is the address of the site?

haha I just noticed i left the URL out *sheepish grin*

http://kidsalive.isfun.net

Ta!

The intro page needs something. The "enter" inside the brackets looks lonely. I like how you did the Kids Alive text on the second page with the kids in the text. Maybe add that to the intro page.

Remove "This page is best viewed in ....blah, blah, blah".

The graphic that says "Welcome to the official website for" needs cleaning up a bit. The background of the graphic is a fuzzy tan color.

I love how you have the little girl in the upper left corner. That looks really good. You could help her out by moving the Whats on, Mailing list and Idea box elsewhere, maybe to the bottom of the page and put a logo or the title of the site there using the same color as the nav bars.

Add some alternative navigation at the bottom of each page. Small text links are good.

The blue text that you are using doesn't really match the color scheme. I think I would go with black. Black text would also enhance the little girl. And don't bold it. Also, you need a bit more content for each page.

The headers for each page, (ie; For The Parents, What is Kids Alive) need some attention. They don't stand out enough.

I like how you have the Places to visit page laid out but there is that blue text again. And lots of white space at the bottom of the page.

I believe that you are missing some of your bold tags or they are out of place.

I like the site and think that you have done well. The above comments and suggestions are just my opinion so don't let me interfere with your originality.

DM

I agree with most of that.

One thing that's bugging me here is the nav buttons - those drop-shadows are just too big and ugly, both on the boxes themselves and on the text on mouseover. Get rid of those shadows and try a colour change for the mouseover.

I really like the logo text - what you should do is try moving that up to the top of the page - change places with the three buttons across the top and make the background of that part white.

On the front page, un-center that paragraph of text and change it to say something more informative about the site. I shouldn't have to go to another page to get a basic idea of what Kids Alive is.

You also might want to make some sort of statment about the location of this program, just in case people from other geographic areas happen to find it.

Well, you used the little [ ] again but must we enter your site can't we just come to it. As Megan said the drop shadowed text is kind of ugly. I think the main problem with it is the orange background. I have seen one site that beveled them a bit more so when you mouseover, it had a 3D effect. I kind of understand where you are going with some of the stuff. The picture of the girl looks like a negative gone wrong. I think that it would look better on a different background. Is it just me or is the top link for Mailing List, not aligned with the other ones?

Frames, frames, I hate their guts. I think they are very dated and still can mess up some search engines. There are better ways to do things nowadays.

Things that you must do.
(1.) Get off of Geocities. You can get your own place for a few bucks a month and not have to worry about the ads.
(2.) I would advise using mostly black text, not green or blue, when you want to say something.
(3.) Come back and see us.

Anyway, the site did have a kid-feel to it, after all I liked it.

Some splash pages are good but most are just an extra page to go through till you get to the real site. I'd loose it in this case.

On both the splash & main page I'm getting an error message:

Line: 170
Char: 1
Error: Permission denied

I agree with most that's been said before, except I'm not as against frames as a certain person! If you have to use frames specify the sizes of each frame and the main one as 1 relative, as they currently grow on a bigger screen and look odd.

I actually like different coloured text as long as it's easy to read. It goes well with the subject of the site in this case.

The splash page in this case contributes nothing to the site IMO. I'd lose it.

Where is Kids Alive located? You mention the Wallara Place Learning Centre, but I don't have a clue where that is. City, state/province, country? Even your "contact" page has only an email address.

That kid graphic up the upper left... no offense, but she looks like she's awash with blood, made me think of a Stephen King movie. Not inviting to me at all.

I like your page --- I think it looks great.
A lot better than a lot of the ugly pages I've seen on the net. I thought it was very crisp and I liked the colours.

Regards,
FreeFlash.

thanx for all your responses...I'll be taking them all into consideration (even the Stephen King comment! hehe )

Later, Tania

Dont forget to post updates here & continue this thread. Look forward to seeing the improvements

I got about 22 permission denied errors. After closing the offending browser I tried it again, this time loading my host file for ad sites. Hmm not as many.

I would spend some more time working on the colors. The orange with the maroon bg just doesnt burn my wiskers. I would try using some bg pastels, and bring the site out with brilliant primarys.(HOILY MOILY SOMEONE GET HER A WEBHOST!) I tried browsing to another page and another 14 popup errors, or denieds.

Try using some curves on the layout. Something like this.

Here is a rough idea what I mean.

http://www.kilclinefuneralhome.com/wf_posts/rough.jpg