new dog site - please review

The site looks great, but I do not really like the process in which the content is displayed. For instance, when i click on Dog Breed Info (and other links), I get a drop down box and instructions saying to choose a breed. And and otherwise empty page. I would try to find a way to have maybe 6 thumbnails of something like the most common, most searched, etc. displayed underneath. Just a suggestion. Otherwise, its awesome!

First of all, hi and welcome to the forums.

First impression of the site is that the layout is excellent and that it is very well-designed. There are a few nitpicks, though:

- Navigation menu changes ever so slightly on each page
- What about if I want to view dogs that are missing so I can try and find them?
-Also, have the title banner (dogdropins.co.uk) link to your main page
-I'm sure your partners won't be happy when they find out that their link is oly on the front page - try and have a consistent footer throughout the site.
-In the navigation menu, the first letter of each hyperlink is not a link. Huh?
- I think I kind of agree with tecknoh. You need to put content on those pages that have only drop-down menus. Keep them, though

Did you do this 100% yourself or use another program?

a very good site 84% (now you don't see that mark often from me )

Wow, a very nice color scheme you have going on with your site.

I think that you should have a dog-related theme go in with your website, like in your header.

Just make that change and it'll look A+. For now, I'm going to have to grade it with a solid A.

Good luck with it.

thank you for the comments, i will try to change or edit the things you have pointed out,

once again thanks for the posiertive feed back, any ideas for upgradeds?

Well, just fix the stuff you've mentioned. no need for a radical upgrade.

Hi, dogdropins. Thanks for following our posting agreement and reviewing other sites first! It is appreciated

This site looks good overall. You've done a nice job with the layout. It's got a good light look and feel. The logo is really nice too.

I do have a few problems with the text. Firstly, the links on the navbar is treated as plain text which could be confusing for some people and the mouseovers are barely noticeable. I was confused about the blue text in the content area because I was expecting it to be a link. Use bold to highlight words within text, use colours and underline for links.

I really do not like the drop down menu navigation you've used on subsequent pages. Just use the body of the page to present this in directory style. Those lists are going to get too long and hard to use at some point. That fixed height is going to get too restrictive at some point so you might as well go with it now. tecknoh's suggestion about highlighting some of the entries is a good one as well.

thanks for the comments,

the mouseovers are not ment to be that noticeable it was just on the page when i made it and forgot to take it off

i under stand with the drop down menus it just trying to find another way of showing them with out messing up the page.

im going to sort out the drop down's where you have to click GO to find the info, ill change the so they load auto.

thanks again from matt king

Hi just one thing I noticed... you need some padding in the tables (ie. dog breeds) the text is jammed against the table border. (the border only shows in Firefox not in IE) Also, when in firefox I get flashes of the Dog picture to the right while changing selection and when I click on the 'Go" button.

Also, I agree that the logo should also link to the main page, it's pretty much standard on websites, saves poeple the hassle of looking for the 'Home' link.

Otherwise, I really like it, looking good.

why is it that the boarders only show up in fire fox and not IE?
it getting on my wick and i cant get rid of them ill sort out the text, thanks for pointing it out

dogdropins wrote: it was just on the page when i made it

It's a template?

i think it was in the templat but i had to do a lot of work to it to get it how i wanted it

This site is a very clean layout! And I think The idea is great , Good Luck!

Just becuase you own aimilar site and your link is on its front page.

so, I gave my honest opinion.

Hi.
Not talking about the design but the code is very unclean ... what about using CSS layouts instead? Try to write a valid code (validator.w3.org).

Try to visit sites like http://www.zeldman.com/ | http://www.webstandards.org/ etc.

good luck
madeo

hi it been about 2 months since ifirst put my site on here (dogdropins and i would like some feed back on it now because it nearly 6 months old.

thanks

matt king

I just merged them. We just like to do this so we can keep all the reviews for one site together. That way we don't have to be jumping back and forth to remember what has been said or what the old version was like.

This is outlined in the posting agreement.

Love the site: Hate the code. Although it seems to work in all browsers, so this is one purist comment you may choose to ignore!

I can remember this from the first time round and there is indeed something that I like a lot about the layout and colours. Don't have much to say on this on this one.

Having scratched the surface there are some problems, whole articles are displaying mouse-over behaviours, this is rather confusing and incosistent. Also as a typical user I'm expecting everything highlighted in blue to be a link, but this is not the case. Overall this seems to be due to bad coding, this is illustrated by the fact your site will not validate according to W3C Standards (http://validator.w3.org).

You can choose to live with these inconsistencies, things that look like links but aren't and things that don't look like links but are, or you can choose to fix them... Fixing the problems properly will take some time but your site will benefit from being more accessible, useable and easier to update in the future.

i have changed the main links to be that same as the rest of the site (blue and underlined) thanks for the comments.

from matt

Ah that's a bit better... Code's still invalid though

Ahhh, you're using Frontpage. Being honest you should just stop right now, even if you can't write code yourself please get a decent editor (e.g. Dreamweaver).

I'd change the hovering effect on the links. It's a standard effect, but I'd change the color to something besides green. The green at the head of the navigation maybe? And I'd probably lose the underline on it as well. I'd move a picture of a dog (IE the one that is all ready on the front page) to somewhere above the fold of the front page. That's all I've got for you. Good work all in all.

I agree that the site looks very clean and fresh. Very easy to eye-ball! The logo is good ... but maybe good be larger (he-ight=""). I like the 'quicklinks' drop-down menu but this should only be on the first page. If it is on all pages then...make it just that a QUICK LINKS facility i.e Home, Contact, Back, Next.

~S

Try running it through the (X)HTML validator at http://validator.w3.org These are the guys that manage standards for the Web, so what they say goes (not what MS believe is right! ). A lot of your code is very outdated, you could do a lot better if you migrate away from tables/HTML and move to XHTML/CSS, it'll make things cleaner, you'll use less code and the end result will look better!

...Although what you've done does look good.

Indeed, it will take much work and perhaps it is something for the future (but never to forget!)

As for advertising I'm no expert, although cleaning up your code will help spiders from search engines eat your site without getting a MS-induced upset tummy, better code to content ratio can only help

I would say that the name is a bit strange...
i like the layout though

Indeed, the name is good. Verging on being controversial but not quite...

I like your layout very clean, and pro looking. I am not sure about the little Java pop windows. I thought that a pop blocker might stop them. So I tried it with my Web Washer, they still poped up.
But in the future there will be less and less support for Java, I might change that to Dhtml still java but more friendly.

Very nice and simple design. You may want to user a background image or a pastel color rather then grey which may liven up the site a bit.

Post a new thread on this...

the top right seems a bit empty, maybe you could add some advertisment there or soemthing.

I like the general layout of the site. It was easy for me to find things. It is clean. One thing that I think you need to add is additional sections under the Business's section. Also it would be very good if you made listing the company email address mandatory. I went thru the section of adding a business but did not have a category available. Then after adding my business (I sell insurance for people and pets) the thank you page popped up and the word keep should be kept.