Review Request : glowhost.com

Doh!

Suppose the site URL would help!

http://glowhost.com

Later!

There are a few too many links in your paragraphs which just pop up in every sentence or so, try reducing the amount of links you have within paragraphs, they look really messy.

The site does look a bit plain, it's missing that x-factor, try using rollovers for your navigatin bars.

My parents want to use the phone now so I have to go, I might take another peek at it some other time.

Oh, BTW, the site was incredibly slow to load...

Thanks renegade,

Actually the site did have rollovers and a real nice DHTML menu but I decided to nix it for our dial-up users. I think the pagesize is like 70 or 80k already....doh!

Anyone else?

:wave:

Takes waaaaaay too long to load. At first it seems very messy, but once the backgrounds are loaded, one can make out some order.

I like the colours and the design in general. The double-lines where two bordered elements meet gives a disjointed appearance.

At 1280*1024, there's wide spaces in the boxes. Also not enough padding in them - some form elements and images are hard up against the edge.

Logo is a little dull. So is the entire header, actually.

In Mozilla, 2px gap between the left triangle image and center element with copyright line in it.

Overall, it's not bad at all; just seems to be in a little disarray. Lacks a cohesive feel.

I agree that there's something not quite right about this one. I do agree that the logo is a little dull (boring! the swoosh and ball effect has been done enough already!).

With a name like "Glowhost" you should really hone in on the "glow" idea. An alien type effect might work. Look around for photoshop tutorials - I'm sure there's lots out there. To go with that, you should choose some bright, neon colours like lime green or hot pink. Think about those glowing signs you see in store fronts. The design just doesn't go with the site concept here. Your site will be a lot more memorable and interesting to the user if you can tie your site title into your visuals to create a coherent message.

its a bit dull. Liven it up a bit

Well, it loads fine with DSL

I found the site a little too white. I think your logo is fine, though I don't see how if fits your name. Why don't you make the yellow swish in the logo some sort of neon color so it appears to glow?

I agree with too many links in the paragraphs. If they are absolutely necessary, I would unbold them. However, the top navigation links could certainly stand out a little more.

Overall clean design and I give it a thumbs up.
Deborah

Thanks all. I chose to make nothing "glow" so people might remember the name? Like..."So whats Glowing?"

Did it work?

Okay 2 votes to get rid of the bold.....Ill have to find where that triangle seperates from the rest of the design...I need to cut like 20-30k off this first page it sounds.....

But I like it all so much. :eek:

Ill show you the old site....here:

http://glowhost.com/index_hostsearch.php (minus the new footer)

Thanks all.

Quote: Originally posted by GlowHost.com
Thanks all. I chose to make nothing "glow" so people might remember the name? Like..."So whats Glowing?"

So you want to make people wonder about it, is that it? That's a little too tricky IMO. These things should be more obvious than that and I really don't think that this sort of a strategy is going to work for you. It's just going to cause confusion and drive people away. I'd be suspicious.

185kb just under a minute to load on 56k
whats "ompatiple" ? (the frontpage alt tag)

I'm not sure why it's so slow, you dont have that many images on there. ok possibly found the reason

I'm sorry but your code is a mess, perhaps the worst I have ever seen, you have html, title, head tags all over the place (two pages in one), you have doubled up font tags but the second set of html tags suggets a .css file (am glad the text-decoration: blink doesnt work). this double tagging will slow your site down majorly.
Some browsers the layout isn't working properly (the backgrounds of the title and sections don't display) this could be from your code as well.

this is what I see: (I added spaces so it wouldn't make the page to wide)

  Password: < span class=testimonial>

this all could be replaced with:   Password:

Fix your code and it should/could display the same in all browsers and even in a decent load time.

Actually what you are seeing with the second head tag is an PHP include of another document altogather.

Maybe ill get rid of those head tags as I suppose they aren't needed in the footer at all really.

The reason the code is so ugly as well is that I compressed it a bit to get the best load times but I guess what i really need to do is clean up some of these redundant tags...

arg.....maybe ill give a postback when i think im good.

Thanks for the tip folks!

okay how abbout this,,,, who wants free hosting for a month or a domain name or two for cleaning up this and a few other pages? (3-5)

Any takers?

Thanks

:wave:

Oh my word thanks for the heads up...Im not nearly done removing all thes tags and already down to 66 kb

wooohooo

I'll help you out with slimming it down a bit, give me an email or a PM
As for a review of it, it loads fine on Cable, but everything does
I was expecting something glamorous of the site... it bored me and I didn't even finish looking through it
You have to walk that fine line between exciting and annoying

Hey guys and gals, you rock.

Page is down to a respectable 33k or so.

Looks good to me and must be okay for dial-up'rs

one problem tho....

When one goes to resize the text the tables move/resize.

I want them to be static/not-resizable.

Can anyone provide a snippit?

Regards,

MAtt

page looks good

I like the new skin you put on it, makes it really easy to navigate. I especially like the fact that you have the nav bar at both the top and bottom of the page. Makes it so much easier than scrolling to the top to change the page.

Has the site been successful for you?

Well the new skin really I have seen a little less than before as far as signups go, but I am attributing this to loss of some tracking codes causing a de-listing on a few important search engines as well as to heavy, heavy pages (60-100k)which so far have been reduced (and are being reduced) to about 20-33k YAAAAAAY.

Still though the tables resizing thing really annoys me. Any suggestions?

Wish i could help.

I dont notice the table re-sizing problem. i made my text as big and as small as it could get, and nothing disturbing happened to the tables..

Quote: Originally posted by Megan
I agree that there's something not quite right about this one. I do agree that the logo is a little dull (boring! the swoosh and ball effect has been done enough already!).

With a name like "Glowhost" you should really hone in on the "glow" idea. An alien type effect might work.

Okay fine you made me agree my logo stank the big one. So look what I have now. I'm not sure what to think on this one.....it Glows, and is cooler per say but Im not so sure it fits with what we are selling...
Plus the logo placement is a little awkward maybe? Or does it look okay?

New page header: http://glowhost.com/indextest.php

Old Page Header: http://glowhost.com

Any thoughts on the new logo/header are appreciated.

Thanks,

Matt

Quote: Originally posted by deciever
Wish i could help.

I dont notice the table re-sizing problem. i made my text as big and as small as it could get, and nothing disturbing happened to the tables..

Thanks deciever, I think I fixed that issue by wrapping css tags around the tables themselves. FYI for anyone trying to do the same.

:wave: