REVIEW REQUEST: http://www.freedomtribe.com

oops! forgot to post a link...http://www.freedomtribe.com

Welcome Purenkind, and thanks for helpin out on a few critiques, keep up the good work

ok first up, very slow loading on 56k modem, looks like about 130kb which should be around 30-40 for what you have on there.
The eagles (animated) are annoying and having the text beside them would help, I wouldnt of known they were links without reading above.
Remember this is only my opionion, you dont have to listen to me so if you keep the animated mouseover eagles the "shows" and "bio" ones need to be fixed, they deform on mouseover.

your preloading must of worked, well i waited till the page loaded and they were there.

looking at your source code you have a double up of your meta tags,
The graphic on your site (the one with text) is a nice font but should really be text, the text will help search engines index your site as well as keeping your load time down, sadly the font you used isnt a common one. i just peeked at the bio page, the text is a graphic there as well,
I like the muted eagles on click, maybe use them with link names.

The colors and layout are nice, ever thought about having that background stripe on both sides? since that background image is 24kb you could cut the stripe off, place that in a table cell with the actually texture turned into a 100x100 tiling background image

BTW is that text you used Papyrus?

Thanks for the swift response! I agree with you on the animated eagles. I think I'll get rid of them, even though they didn't deform on IE6. What browser did you see that with?

So, let me understand this, because I chose to do the text as a graphic image the search engines can't read it??? So I have to forgo the design element of the page for functionality? Ah, the woes of a webmaster!...Website design is way different than print graphics. I don't mind it taking a bit longer to load because it's a graphic image, but I'm just wondering how important it is to be found by search engines really...I mean, most people that visit that site are fans already that just want to know when the next show is or to see a few photos or hear a song...I don't think it's for random surfing. All I want to really achieve is if someone doesn't remember the web address, that they can type in "Freedom Tribe" in a search engine and it will appear. Won't having the title in my meta tags do the trick???
I guess I can change the graphic text to a regular old font (yes, it is papyrus) but it's upsetting. Do you, being experienced, really think I need to?????

As for the background stripe on both sides, that's what I wanted to do but I didn't know how to do it...so I made it a repeating tile that is 1600 pixels wide (so that the bar wouldn't show up again in the middle of the page even on high resolution screens) and settled for the stripe on one side only. I'm not totally clear on how you are saying I can do it, but if you wouldn't mind, I think I can get it right with a bit more direction. Are you talking about cutting the background off entirely, and only having the textured background be the tiled imaged??? And that I could make it alot smaller because it does repeat all across the page? Then are you saying to put the black stripe into two table cells one on either side of the page? How would I get the right dimensions for the black stripes so that they wouldn't be too long but would also continue down the page if the body was longer than the page and had to be scrolled?

Or am I way off??????

Anyway, much thanks...

Hi purenkind and much welcome to TWF!

I really like this site. The colors work really well together IMO. I especially like the black and white photos. Nice effect.

I think that you need text links for your navigation or if you perfer to keep the graphic links, at least have the link name visible at all times and not just on mouseover. The animated images that you have for the navigation now are just a wee bit annoying. The font is good though. I like it.

You could also add text links to the bottom of the page, horizontally, in a small font to help with usability issues. Something like this:

Home | Bio | Poetry | Shows | Treasures | Contact

Do keep the small animated image in the top right corner that points to the home page though. That is a nice effect there too. It is small, yet effective.

One big no-no that I see is that you are using a graphic (biotext2.gif) for the text in the body of the page. I like that font a lot but using it for the main body text is a bit much. It is hard to read there, looks a bit crammed up and with it being a graphic, it just adds load time to your site. I would recommend using plain text there with maybe the Verdana font.

You could maybe do some paragraph headers (using graphics and the papyrus font). I see in your code that you aleady have the text there but it isn't showing up. I suppose that the biotext2.gif image is hiding that.

This site has tons of potential. Keep up the good work.

Sonia

I just thought of something. I think that this site would look great with right side navigation.

check out the search engine section of these forums, some interesting info about how they work etc. in short, google doesnt index meta tag words. and having people come to your site looking for "live bands" or the bands music style could earn them some more fans.

I think it happened on IE5 and opera6.

I'd replace the graphic with text, and in your font tag (or CSS) use papyrus as your main font then verdana etc afterwards, that way if people have papyrus on their machine (like i do) we will see it as that, otherwise it will be seen as the second choice verdana ...
la la la

for the double background, several ways to do it, but this would be the easiest: (without CSS)

 
all the pages contents here
 

and body margins would have to be set to 0
take your background image, take the black section make it into another image (just the dark section) and thats the outsides, make the side td widths suit the image, take a section of the middle bit (around 100x100 depending on where you can patch the pattern up) and save that as the middle td background. this way the table will expand and contract to any screen size.
because the table cells are backgrounds they will tile (repeat) as long as the cell is (or as wide).

There is a lot to like here but also problems, most already identified.

Navigation:

Slow to preload. Was this done with Dreamweaver? I often find the rollover script from Dreamweaver sites to be slow.

Re text and animation - Don't have "mystery navigation". You are making your users guess/work harder than they should have to. The animation is nice in theory, annoying as heck in practice. How about static in mouseout, animated on mouseover?

Text as graphics:

"Ah, the woes of a webmaster!...Website design is way different than print graphics."

I had you pegged as a print/graphic designer as soon as I saw the site

Besides the already mentioned problems with this approach, you have also created a product that is not very versatile/adaptable. Simple "text edits" are out of the question. The client (if there is one) is stuck with you for all their future needs because you hold all the source files.

Javascript Error (IE6)

I get this intermittently - Line: 62, Error: Object Expected

Haven't delved into the source code to try and see why - I don't do source code on Sundays

I do like this site, it's a nice change from the normal layouts/colours. However I do agree with everything that has already been said and I notice you've already changed some things. The text is the main biggie, search engines will not be able to read and index anything on the site but if people surf sites with the graphics turned off they wont see anything either! Plus using graphics for everything is just going to slow down the site.

Just one other thing, maybe have the printable flyers open in another window?

Good site!

Thanks so much for all the great ideas and advice. I have a wedding that I'm going to today, so I'm going to have to wait till tommorrow to apply most of the ideas, but I wanted you all to know that I really plan to take your advice. Actually I'm chomping at the bit to get on it!!

So far, the animated eagles and the "mysterious" navigation are gone. I also made all the navigation graphics smaller and I think it looks better. I am also re-doing all the text taking the advice of Busy of creating a new font set with papyrus/georgia etc...thank you much for that Busy . I'm also going to try your idea with the black stripes on both sides, but I'm going to do all the other smaller easier changes first. The way you suggested doing the background is new territory for me...I may have to ask a few more questions...

Webmistress, did you mean to have the flyers open in a window instead of a new page??? I'm not sure how to do that...

Taff- yes I did it in dreamweaver...is there a way I can so something to make it faster???? Like maybe re-write that code in notepad or something???

"I don't do source code on Sunday's" ...that was cute...

Again, thanks so much for the help. You guys are great!

To open a link into a new browser window you add a target to the code so the link would become

thanks Webmistress!

No problems

Hey Busy, I tried to do the black stripes down both sides like you said, but I totally messed up. This is what I did...

Untitled Document

so, the tiles go across the page but the whole thing doesn't stretch to the full width of the screen, and it's only one row of the tiled image...It is at a fixed height of "184". I don't know how to tweek it so it works. Help!!

Like I said, my entrance into this website stuff is through graphic design. I know simple code and this is a bit over my head. But I'm determined to get it!

Taff - thanks for the idea of having the animations be on the mouseover. I tried it and I like the whole menu way better. What do you think?

Thanks again everyone! I appreciate you all so much!

your missing a after this line

and this part:

isn't needed

the contents go just before the missing as mentioned above.
Also add   to between your outer td tags, so whole code should be:

Untitled Document

 
pages content
 

you don't want height tags in any td cell, this way the image will tile to suit your contents, I also removed margin="0" and replaced with proper margins tags

If you want, you could upload what you have done so far (with these changes) and email me the link, this isn't really critique stuff so I'll help you off line if you need more help and keep this thread for peoples thoughts about your site/layout etc.

It looks much better with the animation on mouseover! There is a small horizontal scrollbar at 800*600 on the index page and treasures page though.

Quote: Originally posted by purenkind
Taff- yes I did it in dreamweaver...is there a way I can so something to make it faster???? Like maybe re-write that code in notepad or something???

"I don't do source code on Sunday's" ...that was cute...

Ah, here we are on a "working day" and now I'm not getting the script error. My guess is that whatever it was, you fixed while redoing the nav. Yes, the animation on rollover works better imo but I still find the effect "sluggish"

I'm not a DW user so I'm not sure how you'd tweak it and quite frankly, I haven't written a rollover script in years. I find Adobe's Imagestyler's generated script suits my needs - not sure if ImageReady generates a similar script (Imagestyler is a dinosaur)

Interestingly, I can't seem to get a filesize on your graphics when I right click. I'm getting a "not available" in that slot. I have no idea what's up with that.

Glad to see you've converted your content to text but...

a) spellcheck it

b) you've got 3 sets of font tags around the same text. Even 1 is obsolete and it looks like you have a stylesheet associated with the page anyway. I'm not sure how the heirarchy of fonts would flow there since I've got them all installed but it sure looks confusing. I won't even get into the pre tag.

You're achieving your goals visually but in ways to make a poor coder cringe

One more thing, d-m had a good suggestion earlier - include a smallish, horizontal, text-based navigation at page bottoms. That will provide your users with secondary navigation on longer pages so they don't need to scroll back up just to move on.

ooh. It occurred to me that all my observations were based on IE6 viewing. I popped it open in NN 4.x and 6.x and got some different results...

Rollover is snappy, absolutely no delays BUT... the rollover images for "Bio" and "Shows" are sized differently than your other images.

Opera6 (for the heck of it) - same results as Netscape

I'm getting some weird things happening on the mouseovers. Some of the title seem to be condensing themselves horizontally while others aren't. Is anyone else having this problem? It's just happening on "bio" and "shows" in both Opera6 and NS 4 but not in mozilla.

I would like to see a different arrangement of the front page simply because there isn't a lot of content there. Therefore, I don't think it should be arranged the same way as a content page would be, but rather more like a splash page. If you look at some of taff's designs, he often does a splash sort of page with navigation and a short description blurb included.

So what you could do is arrange the navigation buttons horizontally underneath the logo. It could also be a neat idea to provide some high contrast by putting the splash page on a dark background while the interior pages remain on the lighter one.

I also think that the text block should stretch a little wider, and the font should also be a bit larger there. Also change your fonts on all the pages from the default (Times New Roman) to a sans-serif like arial, tahoma, or verdana (I'm thinking one of the former two would look best with this design).

The page headers are almost un-noticeable in that very light shade. I would darken those somehow, and also change the size so they contrast more with the logo. To provide contrast between two fonts the differences have to be great. If the differences are only minor (like the difference in font size here) it looks odd.

Otherwise I think the site looks very nice. YOu've done an excellent job with your graphics and have successfully created a very distinctive look and feel.

Hello Everyone,
I've been busy with "mom" stuff so I haven't worked on my site too much in the past few days, but I've read your posts and there's a lot to digest!

Busy, I would LOVE more help! I am having loads of trouble trying to get both black stripes on the background.

Quote: If you want, you could upload what you have done so far (with these changes) and email me the link, this isn't really critique stuff so I'll help you off line if you need more help and keep this thread for peoples thoughts about your site/layout etc.

Is there an easy way I can upload the page I'm practicing on? You see, all I've ever done is use DW to upload my files to an established website that's being hosted. I'm not sure how to do it any other way. If you gave me simple instructions, I'm sure I could do it...

Megan, I fixed those links "bios" and "shows". Just a little graphic error. I also re-did the splash page to look different than the other pages. It's funny, but that's how I had it originally, but other people suggested I make it all uniform, so I tried it that way. But I think it looks better being a bit different. Thanks for the suggestion. As for the dark background, I haven't had time to put any thought into it yet. I'm still trying to get the *@%? black stripes on either side of the page! When I conquer that I'll shift my focus to your suggestion (which I think is a good one.)

Taff -

Quote: You're achieving your goals visually but in ways to make a poor coder cringe

I know! What can I say, I'm not a coder, and I'm not pretending to be one! I just try to get it to look the way I want, anyway I can do it...but I am learning code a little at a time as I go. I corrected the spelling, thanks .

thanks again everyone!

to upload your site you need a ftp program like ws_ftp or cuteftp or any of the other ones out there, if you choose either of the above I have a page on my html site how to set them up.

Your hostmight even have a built in ftp agent, another option is use a program called filemanger, which is free, allows you to upload, modify, delete files online. Check with your host first.

If all else fails I'll make the code up for you, but if I do it for you, you wont learn how to do it. I'd rather see you do it yourself, so you can say you did it yourself. It's a great feeling getting something like this to work.

Just email or PM me if you want me to do it.

Hey Busy, I don't think I was clear about what I was asking before, but I figured out what I needed. Here's the link to my test page. http://www.freedomtribe.com/Biotest.htm I think it's a good idea to move this conversation away from the critique forum. I agree with you that I should do it myself so I learn it. I don't mind help though...in fact I'm very thankful for it.

BTW, your website on HTML is great! What a valuable service! I plan to go through it when I have a bit more time on my hands.

Much thanks.

Thanks, Hope my HTML site can help

I've sent you an email

Hey everyone,
I want to thank everyone who helped me with their great ideas and practical advice. I've been working hard on the site and I was wondering what you all think about it now??? I decided to have the black stripes on both sides of all the main pages which meant that I had to re-do all the pages since I originally did them in layers and the code didn't work with overlapping layers. I've learned a lot about code since I first poked my head into this forum, thanks mostly to Busy, and it's all starting to make more sense to me.

anyway, if any of you feel like taking another look,I'm wondering how it all looks from a coders point of view, if there's anything that makes you "cringe" that I should change...

Also, I don't know if it's "ok" to share this information or not, but I would love to know what someone in the website design business would charge for this site as it is right now. Like I said before this is my third site ever, and the first one I am actually getting paid for. My client wants to pay me what it's really worth, which leaves me totally at a loss...

Thanks again!

On all of the pages I'm getting a horizontal scrollbar at 800*600 but Ive just woken up and see what's causing it right now. The link to home 216.33.240.250/cgi-bin/index.htm is getting a Hotmail Page not found error! Also the navigation jumps around from page to page slightly but other than that you have done a really good job. It's very hard to say what a website is worth as everyone will charge differently and I have know really good designers only charge a couple of hundred pounds for something of this standard yet I have seen (and subsequently rebuilt) sites an awful lot worse which were paid in the high hundreds if not a thousand pounds for!

We're not allowed to talk about specific prices for web design work - it could be considered Price fixing and it's illegal in most western countries at least.

The first thing I notice about your code is that you're using Macromedia's built-in scripts. They tend ot be really bloated and messy for what they need to do so you might want to look around for a neater script. I also notice that you've written some of your tags in upper case the new standard specifies that tags be written in lower case, so it's good to get in the habit of doing that (I'm sure there's a setting in Dreamweaver's preferences that lets you change that). ALso make sure that all attributes are quoted. If you're using Dreamweaver MX you can run a couple of little automatic utilities to fix all of this quickly.

I've also noticed that your page is made up of two large tables. It's a good idea not to nest tables whenever possible, so you could remove the outer table and just use a page background tile instead of using the table to define that.

Hey, thanks for looking...I fixed the nav and the home link. I will fix all the other things soon as well.

Megan, I'm really kinda attached to having the background have both black stripes so if there's another way of achieving that without nesting tables please let me know.

You'd just have to put them into one graphic, that's all. It would be really long and narrow (like 1200 px wide). This is a pretty common thing to do. Actually, I'm really not sure if that would actually be a better ida - that side tile is 184 pixels high so a 1200 x 184 jpeg might be a lot to load up and tile... might as well just leave it as it is.

Megan, if the image size were smaller and I were to do it the way you were talking about, putting it into one graphic, how would I get it to look right on all screen resolutions? Would making it width="100%" height="184" work?

Also, I checked and I didn't get a horizontal scrollbar on any of the pages at 800 x 600? How is it possible that webmistress got scrollbars and I didn't? This is some of the stuff I just don't get!!!

IMO there isn't anything wrong with a basic nested table (it is only one deep), 6 deep becomes a problem ...
The idea of one graphic is a bad one for several reasons
1/ the file size of the image would be big
2/ this limits the site/page to one size screen only and it would overlap on bigger screens, smaller screens wouldn't get the two sides.
3/ control of content on bigger size screen other than the size made for would be difficult as you wouldn't want the text flowing over the second line so would have to be a fixed table width which defeats the purpose of having a layout like this that will work on 800x600 and up.

You could do the stripes with css but isn't supported by some browsers (5.5 +) so would just be a long long page.

never use height for mutli celled tables (td is ok, but not the table tag) or you'll get some unexpected results

I'm still getting the horizontal scrollbar and I also tested it on my other two PCs at 800*600 and they show them as well.

Quote: Originally posted by The Webmistress
I'm still getting the horizontal scrollbar and I also tested it on my other two PCs at 800*600 and they show them as well.

I see the horizontal scrollbar in IE6 also at 800x600. Well, in a window set at that res anyway. My suspicion is that the fixed width 778px table is the culprit.

Pure, 800 does not really equal 800. Nah, that would be to straight and simple. I try to confine myself to about 720 max in a fixed width table to ensure that it fits in all 800x600 windows.

Also, have you thought about centering the site? At 1152x864, it looks a little lost to the left. I think that a 100% page height would look better also but that gets a little tricky

The most I set tables to is 770 so that probably is causing the problem. I also thought about it being centered might look better at higher resolutions as well!

well I fixed the table width...I think it's ok now and won't make a horizontal scroll.

Quote: Also, have you thought about centering the site? At 1152x864, it looks a little lost to the left. I think that a 100% page height would look better also but that gets a little tricky

of course this brings up the question, how do I center the site? And also, what does 100% page height mean???

I'm okay with the nested table, I'm just so glad that it all works!

Add align="center" to the content table.

You could also use width="100%" instead of a fixed width table

I am a bit of a tough one when it comes to site design as i tend to have more than one window open, and i get fed up of havign to copy and past whole contents of sites over to word, so i can read them.

A few suggestions on the accesbility issues may be considered for you though.

Alt tabs are very usefull. Even on buttons. Beeign told that the home button is a gif, isnt very uesfull!, when there can be as many as 40 gifs on some web sites.

Your site looks very pretty, I am dyslexic not blind

However i am not fan of being told how small/ big my site is going to appear.

Hopei havent upset you to much. I will always give honest opinion.

Thought xxxx

Hey Thought...thanks for the feedback, but, at the risk of sounding completely ridiculous, I have to honestly say that I didn't understand anything you wrote...it all went right over my head. If you feel like explaining it a bit more plainly for me (I'm a complete novice) I'd love to understand what you're saying.

Quote: I am a bit of a tough one when it comes to site design as i tend to have more than one window open, and i get fed up of havign to copy and past whole contents of sites over to word, so i can read them.

I have no idea what this means...

Quote: Alt tabs are very usefull. Even on buttons. Beeign told that the home button is a gif, isnt very uesfull!, when there can be as many as 40 gifs on some web sites.

I don't know what this means either...

Quote: However i am not fan of being told how small/ big my site is going to appear.

this either...

Quote: Hopei havent upset you to much. I will always give honest opinion.

should I be upset???

anyway, I'm glad you think my sites pretty!

lol o.k.,

ignore the first item, it was netscpape, not yoru site i think, It resized on me, !

The second one, is about alt tabs.

alt tabs are normally included whenever you put a image on your site.

eg ims src="home".gif alt="home button" This means that when a louse goes overthe image the words Home button apears. It also means that screen readers can tell us what is there.

And the last one looks liek it was also my computer settings last night, or may be i was just to tired.

Hope that expalins the alt tabs thing anyway!

Thought

xxx

I have a general question about screen size. When you all design a site what size screen do you design it for? I was recently told that since most people have larger screens these days, I should design my site for 1024 x 768 at least. Is that what you all do? What is the most common screen size viewed these days???

To be honest, I haven't checked the stats lately but as recently as last spring, 800x600 was still hovering around half of all users. I design with 800x600 compatability in mind although I must admit that most of my stuff looks a little better at 1024x768 - a tad more breathing space, imo.

Monitor size does not always mean higher resolution. I've seen quite a few 17" monitors running 800x600, sometimes because the user doesn't know any better. In addition, another common occurrence is to have smaller windows on larger screens. I'm typing this into a 800x600 browser window although my res is set at 1152x864.

design for 800x600 or smaller, true a lot of people do use larger screens but many people still use smaller screen sizes. but people are still using 14" screens as well, (someone on here was I think) would hate to see a 1024x768 on one of them lol.
The benifit of using width="100%" in tables is that you can get your page looking similar in all browser sizes.

Quote: Originally posted by Busy
The benifit of using width="100%" in tables is that you can get your page looking similar in all browser sizes.

I'm not sure I quite agree with that. A lot of "flexible layouts" look a little lost on a 1280 width screen. What was a healthy little paragraph of text at 800 becomes one looooong line at 1280

isn't that why you use larger resolution? to stretch things out?
I look at some of my sites in the biggest my moniter goes up to (1280x1024) but can't read any of it on 17" moniter as it's all blurry - cheap moniter.

I finally got it so that my background fills the width of the screen at any resolution, but doesn't fill out the height on higher resolutions. Adding lots of at the bottom of the page makes it have such a long vertical scroll, it doesn't look good. Is there a way to make the background go as longs as it needs to in order to fill any screen?

Also, I'm having trouble centering my navigation bar on the index page. I'm sure it's an easy fix but my head is spinning right now....

thanks everyone.

I figured out the centering on the index page... but I am having trouble with a couple of other pages...

on the biography page I want the thumbnails to be centered over the text no matter what the screen size and I don't know how to achieve this. It looks good at 800 x 600 but ate 1024 x 768 the thumbnails align to the left, even though I put align="center" in the table. Maybe I didn't put the align=center in the right place???

Also on the treasures page I'm having a similar problem. I want the thumbnails of the cd's to be centered over the thumbnails of the t-shirts. It works at 800 x 600 but not at 1024 x 768, even with the align center.

Thanks. I appreciate the help so much!

As I see it, the photos are centering fine. It is the text that isn't being flexible. The td tag that contains your text has a fixed width assigned to it. Remove that attribute and everything should kick into line.

I don't think I worded my problem properly...on the bio page what I'm trying to do is have remain aligned left always because I like it lining up with the golden filigree bar, but I want the photos to stay centered above the text in any size window...you see what I mean? also on the treasures page, I'm trying to have it look the same at 1024 x 768 as it does at 800 x 600 with the cd's lining up centered over the t-shirts, not aligned left.

Yes, I think I'm clear here. Removing the fixed td width will not stop your text from being left aligned. However, it *will* allow the right edge to expand with the rest of the content at higher resolutions.

Alternatively, go with fixed width across the board which, imo, would probably look better anyway. But then, I'm kind of partial to fixed width tables.

I think DW is undoing a lot of your good work, try adjust your screen size to 1024 x 768 adjust content to suit, then save, go back to 800x600 and fix to suit, remove all width and height tags on table cells (td's) that aren't around a solid object (if the td cell is same size as an image, leave it), DW has a bad habit of putting with and height tags where you don't want them.

OR make the layout at 800x600 and make the content table a fixed width but center it (align="center" inthe table tag) and the content will be in the same postition but just more side space on larger screens.

There's a little button in dreamweaver's properties palette that will let you quickly strip the width and height tags (just in case you weren't aware of that). The width tag seems to be causing your problems in both cases. (or you could just go in and remove the width attributes from both table cells)

I don't think that fixed width would work very will in this case because of those side borders. It would look silly floating in the middle of the page.

Can anyone shed some light for me? I'm having a really wierd thing happen...when the site first opens to the index page it looks right, then when you go to another page and on that page click the "home" eagle on the upper right side of the page, it takes you back to the index page only the page isn't the right width or length. I don't understand why the index page looks right when you go to the site, but wrong when you come back to it from withing the site.

I have just checked it out and it all appears to be working fine for me. When you say it isn't the right width or height what exactly is it doing?

http://www.freedomtribe.com

works fine for me,
To add to what The Webmistress asked, what browser did this happen on

In Netscape 4 the front page won't load because it's giving me a 404 on the stylesheet - make sure that it's linked properly (most other browsers will just load the page anyway if the stylesheet is missing).

Index page seems to be working fine for me as well.

what's happening is that when you go to freedomtribe.com the index page fills the screen. All the other pages look fine when I go to them. The problem only happens when I click the home button that takes me back to the index page. At that time the page looks different, gets smaller in width and height. I'm linking back to the same index page so I don't know why it doesn't work.

I think we all understood what you were saying the first time but none of us are seeing a problem. The index page looks the same to me when I first load the page as it does when I revisit it using the top-right home button. Which browser is this problem occurring in?

ok, it works for me now...I think what happened is that I had to refresh the pages, though I don't know why that is. Is there a way to set IE6 to automatically refresh the page you go to? I mean, if I go to cnn.com it goes to the page that was in the cache from the last day I was there and I always have to click refresh right away to get todays news.

With IE open, click on Tools > Internet Options > Temporary Internet files - Settings, then change to one of the options at the top. It may be that yours is set to never.

I had it set to "automatically" but now I changed it to "every visit to the new page". Maybe that'll work. thanks.

I've been away and it's been a few weeks since I've written in this forum, but I just wanted to thank you all again for all the help you gave me in getting this site to work right. I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving!

p.s. I'd be giving a lot more critiques on other people's websites if I felt my point of view really was helpful...as you all know I'm not super experienced in code...but I will try to at least give some overall design reflections when it seems appropriate.

I'm glad you appreciate your help. Feel free to give your comments about other sites - don't worry about not being experienced enough or whatever. Actually, a lot of the times comments from people who don't know much about design are very helpful - it gives the designer more of an insight into what the average person is going to be thinking, and therefore what the target audience will be thinking..

ur site looks good
i havent had a chance to look what the other ppl have said but loading wasnt to slow and the animation is awesome - some nice affects...over all a good site....

PS - am i to late? LOL

ya know it's never too late to give a critique...thanks for the positive feedback!

Hi purenkind,
I am a late comer to this thread, but wanted to say that I like your design. I wanted to mention a few things that came to mind. Sorry if any of these have been mentioned already: I like the logo, but it seems much to prominent on the main page. You might consider shrinking or layering it in Paint/Photo Shop over a pic of the actual band. The "Poetry" link from the left menu seems broken. Also, I'd sure like to hear one of the groups songs. Maybe you will put a demo file there for us
Keep it up!

thanks for pointing out the broken link...it's fixed now. As for the idea of layering a band photo behind the logo, I think it's a good idea to try. the band is lacking current photos due to a few changes in people in the band, so they don't have a group photo yet. As for putting some music on the site, I am ready to do it now! the only thing is that I've never done it before so I'm not sure what to do exactly. Mostly I'm not sure what the best approach would be, streaming audio or mp3's? I don't know what format to save the files in. I would very much appreciate any advice on the matter.

Hi again,
I think the simplest route to take would be to just post some mp3 files and make links to them on a separate page. Visitors could choose to download or play through their mp3 players. It would be really cool to post the lyrics to the songs and maybe a word from the band on what inspired it. Good luck!

i liek ur layout to be honest it was a "site" for sore eyes, cause when i browse the net i always see the same layout over and over again (nav on left and/or right and/or top) but ur's is different

althought i must ask, what is all the blank space at the bottom for? some surfers don't like to scroll that much and especially if they find that it's nothing :S if u shrunk that "main" image down u may be able to fit it all on "one" scrren

happy surfing

clickfire - I'm planning on putting up the lyrics to the songs...I am waiting to get them! I am also waiting for a personal bio from each band member to put on their page that expresses their musical history as well as a bit about their take on life. They are just so busy right now that it's hard for them to take the time to give me the info! yeah, I think that I'll go the mp3 way. I just need to ask the band what songs they want to put up.

renegade - I'm a bit at a loss at how to handle the long pages. I made them long because at 1024 x 786 the background and the black side bars weren't reaching the bottom of the page. Is there a way that I can make the page reach the bottom at any screen size?
Also, how would I shrink the first page down? Do you mean resize the graphic to be smaller or is there another way?

I've been asked to set up a mailing list so that the band can send email announcements to people about shows, cd releases and whatever. Also, they want a "snail mail" mailing list for people who don't have computers (are there still such people? just kiddin')

I'm thinking that for the email one the simplest way to do it would be have a mailto: link that goes to an email account created for creating a mailing list. I can add the addresses to that account and use it to send out multiple emails to people.

is there a better way to do it???

as for the other mailing list, I was thinking I should set up a form on the website where people can type in their name, address, etc. what I don't know how to do is access the information! I would like to have it all go into a database somehow so that I can print mailing labels. how do I do this???

I appreciate any help on the matter. thanks!

You could use one form for both sets of lists and have them choose as part of the form if they want regular mailings through the post or whether they want it by email. If you want the details to go into a database then you are going to have to use an asp or php script to do that. Does your host allow the use of asp, php , mysql?

at the present moment, the package deal I have with my webhost doesn't support any asp, php or mysql so I'm going to change my webhost. I found one that supports them all and costs me way less! now all I have to do is learn how to make it all work...

Good luck!

well, hope everyone enjoyed the holidays...i've been away for a while so i haven't been visiting this forum at all. i was actually laying some flute tracks for freedom's new cd...anyway, just want to say thanks again for everyone that has helped me in the past, and to let you know that i put some mp3's up on the website. would love some feedback on the mp3's...if they load fast enough, if the sound quality is good enough...that sort of thing.

peace to all...

I generally like the logo. the sight has an identify-able image and works with the help you recieved. I would think a little about saturation. a symbol is most powerful when it stands alone...special. I think your logo is saturated by its overuse and might be more powerful if it happened once. just a thought.

sean