Review Music-Focus.co.uk

Ok...This is not valid HTML. That's your first problem...

Head: No keyword, description or charset metas. Link ot the CSS externally. There is no document type decalred.

Body: The main content is WAAAAYYYYY down in the code. You could lighten your code by as much as half if you used classes and ids in CSS to declare style attributes. You have both HTML transitional and XHTML coding elements without a doctype declared (a proofreading issue probably). You're using PHP but instead of using a cofig file and vairables (or even a database) you are repeating a whole lot of code with your Amazon links that can be cleaned up.

You are doing good with actual content, but you aren't optimizing it for search. And unless you have an awful lot of friends, you won't get much traffic with little optimization. This simply goes back to the missing (but still necessary) metas described above. Most SEs still use those tags. What promted me to mention this again is that when I click on a headline in the news section to go to the full article, I look in the top bar of the browser for at least the title of the article, if not some keywords associated with it.

I haven't checked the resolutions yet, but I think I've seen enough for now.

I think you've got a lot of potential here. But it won't fly without some tender-loving care.

Edited: BTW, don't let the things I've pointed out get you down. You are definately on the right track. I'm assuming (tell me if I'm wrong, I can take it! ) that you are relatively new at this. The things I mentioned are easy enough to fix. Fix them and let's have another look.

Hi Atlantis,

I really value what you've said. I am reasonably new to all this. Things have changed a hell of a lot since i first designed a web page 8 years ago!

The site has been a culmination of reading around over a short period and I'm happy with how it looks but agree that I need to look at the code. I'm not 100% sure how to change things like you've suggested but i fully intend to look into it and make it the best it can be.

Thank you for your advice - Iappreciate it so much.

I can't really add to what has been said. A non-techincal bugbear would be what i first thought when the page loaded, what is this website all about? There isn't an introductory paragraph which i feel is essential.

-Rob

I think "Music Focus" says it all when it comes to the purpose of this site, although it might be good to clarify what genres you cover or any other specifics.

Atlantis gave you a lot of good advice about the technical side so I'll talk more about the design. The first problem I'm having is that the layout is too wide for me - I browse with window width at about 800px (Opera panels on the left, windows taskbar on the right). Your design could easily fit in and expand for higher resolutions with a little bit of coding adjustments.

The graphic header really needs some work. The gradient background is looking a little too psychadelic with the heads on top of it there, and the title should be done in a more interesting font. Notice that the heads all have different shadows and lighting. This is the difficult thing about doing collage graphics like this. You could try doing something without photos of the actual musicians. One tchnique I like is to take a photo and close in on just a detail of it (see my www link above). It's easy and it looks good - in this case you could do a concert stage or something like that.

I also think you should tone down the colour scheme. You've got way too many bright colours going on here. Tone it down a little, and keep a neutral base (black is fine in this case).

Eventually you may will to worry about where you're getting the photos and if they are copyrighted (they probably are and you might get in trouble for reproducing them).

It took some reading to realize that this is a UK-based site. That puts a different spin on it and that should be noted up front. I was wondering where those chart lists on the front page were coming from.

Speaking of chart lists, those really don't need to appear on every page, do they? You could remove that column on the content pages to allow more room for the articles.

Looks like you've got a lot of good original content here. Good luck with it!

I think the navigation could use some work. And the long tail going to infinity, I would loose that and bunch this stuff up.

Thanks for your comments guys.

I've taken everything on board but just a couple of things.

Megan - thank you so much for taking the time to look at my site. I intend to look into the coding and design more closely but I was a little sad that you didn't like the title header image. I love it and think it's the heart of the site. I like the way the font for the header is understated. I also love the colour scheme but am happy to consider revising it because at the end of the day it's what the visitors want more than what I want.

Thanks to all of you and i will let you know when I've worked on it a bit. It's going to take a while and I'm new to it but Atlantis i feel you've really helped. I went out and bought a book to read up and tighten up the foundations of my knowledge.

Thanks guys

Pip x

Nice site!

I would suggest changing the blue buttons on the left menu to a light gray, or at least a lighter color. The blues hard to read.

It's bright and colorful.

Maybe you could push the latest news down a bit and add some information right at the top about the purpose of your site. Maybe add a slogan to clarify what styles of music your site focuses on.

Keep it simple and focused.

All the best.

I think desing is too simple for music page.

But it is nice!

Colors aren't bad, keep up the good work!

It Gives me the feeling of Information overload...
Anyways, Links on top seem to have problems, is it supposed to be vertical???
Like the cheme though

Atlantis - you mentioned about cleaning up my Amazon links. I can't find anyway to do this that makes me code valid and doesn't get rid of the links entirely!

I've started changing some of the code.

Pip

I've updated the first page which can now be viewed at:

http://www.music-focus.co.uk/

I have validated this and the code is fine now. The entire site is up now. I need to change the right bar so it's not the same on every page and the content needs updating but the coding is all valid now!!

Let me know what you think.

Pip x