REVIEW REQUEST: littlelynx.port5.com

Wow, this site does seem to be really slow. Looking at your pages there doesn't seem to be a lot on there in terms of big graphics thtat would slow things down, so my first guess is that it's your server. You may want to consider moving to a better hosting service - most hosting services should be able to provide better speed than this, even for a low cost package. I also noticed that your code coudl be cleaned up a little bit (switch to stylesheets rather than using font tags), but I don't think this is the root of the problem.

Your questions:
1. Except for the slowness this site is very easy to navigate as it is. You could make the navigation look nicer by using some CSS to style the links differently and add mouseover effects. Also use left alignment rather than centering for a more professional look. You could also try organizing your navbar a little differently - those links should be in some sort of order. They seem rather random right now (my first thought is that Guestbook should be towards the bottom of the list).

2. Look into image optimization software. you should be able to get those photos a lot smaller than they are. YOu may also want to look into automated photo gallery scripts, which will make it a lot easier to set up and navigate the galleries.

3. Why do you want to translate this? Are you really expecting a lot of international visitors? I would think not for a site like this but I guess my instinct must be wrong on this one! Really, the best way to get a good translation is to use a human translator.

Overall I think this site is quite good. It serves it's purpose well and does a good job of getting the information across cleanly and easily. What it could use is some more interesting graphics and a nice logo to spice things up.

Welcome to TWF, could you help us out and review a couple more sites please. Thanks
I find the colours a bit bright (dark background causes it).
I agree with Megan on the translation, you don't need it. But if someone was to find your site on a search engine, they have the option on the search engine to translate it.

Here is a couple of ideas for you, since a lot of it's based on basketball why not give it a basketball theme. It's for the kids so it can be a little childish.
Another option, get the kids involved in it, start a competition and get the kids to design a layout for you and adjust to suit, or if not the layout maybe just a logo or banner. (I noticed bits of artwork by the kids on the bottoms - gave me the idea)

I'm on dialup and didnt find the page slow at all, some of the images were a little slow but nothing to worry about.

You mention on the homepage "This site is for collecting memories of our basketball season and for improving our game and our academics" Do you guys have leagues over there? maybe have a score sheet going, and if you do player of the day, most improved ... kind of like a prizegiving as I bet the girls would love to see their names up in lights (so to speak).

If you want to go the translation direction you might want to add more information about yourselfs, I'm on the other side of the world to you and know where Minnesota is (even been there) but for others, there is only a small link about your city at the bottom of the page which goes to another site. maybe add more about your location, I was going to say lifestyles and that but you have to be careful with kids info and the internet, to many freaks these days. but the idea is if someone from another country came to your site, give them enough info to know roughy where you are (map of USA with a star), how many kids at the school (if its one school) or about the sports club (if it's a sports club) ...

I like your site, the layout is simple and to the point, the colors go together, which in mind are very important. The site is easy to nav around, and the pictures are postioned well.
Keep up the work. Later, Dave

Thanks very much for the initial feedback!

Yes. The slow downloads are very likely due to either my host or my dependency on sitemeter.com for tracking hits. My hosting was free so I can't complain. My site-meter was also free but it slows down my page if their servers aren't responding (even if I place the javascript at the very end of my code).

I wasn't fully aware of the advantages of CSS. That's next on my learning sheet. I think I agree on the left-alignment of the columnar nav-links but I'll need to adjust the font size to keep all the next on just one line.

The idea of getting the girls more involved is a good one. I managed to incorporate some of my daughter's artwork (it was her idea) on the pages. The website was sort of an unplanned creation; it started as just three pages with a schedule and photos and evolved into its current form.

I'll probably add the scores next year. We don't track scores at the 1st-2nd grade levels since the girls are just learning the game. The "player of the day" is definitely an addition for next year too.

A French translation option was added after the site was featured on basquetebol.org, a French womens' basketball site. I noticed that many of the hits from France didn't go past the front page and surmised that part of the reason might be the absence of a translation utility. After I incorporated Babelfish, the pageviews per hit increased. German and Spanish were tossed in just in case. In December and January, 65% of the site's traffic came from Western Europe.

Yes. I do have to be careful about how much information goes on the web about these kids. That's why I don't mention their specific schools or provide anyone's last names. That's a careful balance I have to maintain because I want to highlight their achievements and still protect their privacy.

I'd appreciate any further suggestions. I there a better way for me to make the text automatically fit the width of the browser and maintain the columnar texts?

BTW. One site-design rule that had been recommended to me was that navigation should never go more than two layers deep. That is, the end-user should not have to click more than twice to get to their content objective. Has anyone tried to apply this to their websites? Do you find it a good rule?

DSL
800x600
IE5

Site loaded quickly enough for me on DSL. I'm generally not a fan of black backgrounds, but your text is large enough that it reads well. The site is clean and easy to navigate.

The only thing that I would suggest is to left justify your navigation menu, but that's likely due to personal preference.

Good job.

Deborah Whipp
acleverpenny.com

Nested naviagtion can be a problem, then again anything nested to deeply can be. If your using tables, break the tables down into sections, this can also help load time.
have a table for the banner/logo
a table for naviagtion and content (navigation can be nested within a cell)
and a table for the footer (copyright, contact etc)

Take a look at the link in my signature, tables page 2, shows how to layout designs like you have.

Another page you could add is a 'sitemap' - lists all the pages within your site

Quote: Originally posted by zoinks
A French translation option was added after the site was featured on basquetebol.org, a French womens' basketball site. I noticed that many of the hits from France didn't go past the front page and surmised that part of the reason might be the absence of a translation utility. After I incorporated Babelfish, the pageviews per hit increased. German and Spanish were tossed in just in case. In December and January, 65% of the site's traffic came from Western Europe.

Wow, that's interesting! It's really too bad that translation is so difficult and expensive to do properly - I'm sure a lot of sites could benefit from being offered in more than one language but unfortunately it's just not realistic for most. I'm involved with a site that was trying to provide some french translation for awhile (with a french-speaking writer on staff!) and it just wasn't sustainable in the long term unfortunately. Too time consuming.

Looked fine with IE 6.0 and NS7.01 on Win98SE at 1024 x 768
Not sure why you chose that color scheme, but it doesn't look bad.

Hello Deborah,

Thanks for the feedback. I briefly had a look at your website. It's a tad late but I'll be submitting my opinion on it. My first impressions were very favorable regarding the layout and download speed.

Hello Busy,

Thanks for the advice. I found your website ExHTML.net very useful and bookmarked it!

Hello Megan,

The options for "free" web translation are certainly limited, unless one happens to be multilingual. Still, I've found Babelfish able enough to provide a rough translation which can be understood about 70% of the time if no colloquialisms are used.

It seems to be "almost" adequate. We've just received another invitation to play in Europe (Belgium this time. We already received invitations for Austria and Poland). Heavens! These are just 1st and 2nd graders!

Hello c-double,

Thanks for the tests. I expected most browsers of ver 4.5x and above to be compatible. I have noticed however that the fonts are not correctly interpreted when viewed through NS 4.7x on a Solaris-based machine. I don't know why but perhaps someone in this forum might.

The base color scheme was intended to be white on navy. The orange seemed to complement the general background of the photos (the court's walls were a reddish-orange) and, well, it also matched the color of a basketball. I felt I also needed a bold color to highlight the links. It was a about an hour of trial-and-error but it seemed to work well in the end.

Thanks very much for the continuing feedback. It's gotten me thinking about my next website.

Wow, a nice clean site, something I haven't seen for a while!
Had a look at the code...It really needs a good clean up:

Random layers for no reason
Use of Font tags - these are deprecated and have been replaced by CSS (I noticed you're learning this at the moment )
Loads of div tags, used for alignment, a properly structured page just doesn't need that many!
JavaScript - what does that script actually do?

Hope you find this useful!

Sorry about that, I had four open at the sametime.

LOL, Corvette_Dave! I think JeevesBond was addressing me. Perhaps you had two browsers open at the same time?

Hello JeevesBond,

Well, you WERE probably addressing me since I use TOO MANY layers to place my images and text in precise locations. I probably should just use tables. Or do you have another suggestion? Thanks for the compliment and the thorough review of my HTML code!

Yes. CSS will be implemented in my next website. I finally got religion.

The javascript was provided by http://sitemeter.com . It's a counter.

Best Regards,

- zoinks

Cute site.

About navigation layers. It is a good idea to keep it down to 2 layers but not always practical.

My personal taste is that I don't like the centered text navigation on the left. It's not a big thing but I think it would "read" better for the eye left justified. Think about it. Your eye is TRAINED to return to the left each time you finish a sentence. I just don't like center justified unless there is a concrete reason to use it.

The only other thing I don't like is the Visitor counter. Of what use is it? Your clients don't care. 865 visitors won't impress anyone. The page is for people from the area not people from Europe. It just slows down the page load and looks amaturish. Check your hits elsewhere.

Otherwise I find the site charming. What a bunch of cuties.

Most of what needs to be said has been said, but i'll jsut add one more thing:

Don't use relative widths

Quote: Originally posted by Megan
Wow, this site does seem to be really slow.

lol weird it loaded in about 1 second here. Just a typical 1mbit connection too, must have been busy earlier or something.

I like your site a lot! The girls are adorable! I only have a couple of comments. First, I would center your whole design so that it doesn't look so empty on the right side of the screen when viewing at higher resolutions. And secondly, the color orange that you choice I find to be a bit too bright for my eyes. I think a lighter orange would still look nice but be easier to look at.

Overall, I think your site is very nice!

Thanks everyone for your comments (and compliments)!

cordedpoodle - Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, the little ladies are as cute as buttons!

Yes. I'll agree that the visitor counter is amateurish and just for vanity. But it's also a fast way of tracking whether on not the site has gotten any visitors lately (without having to go through a login procedure on our server). I'll hang on to it for now.

Renegade - Actually, I WAS considering relative widths and was going to read-up on them this weekend. Could you explain why you don't think it's a good idea? Do you have an alternative?

DaveyBoy - LOL! Yes, the free servers at portland.co.uk are very unpredictable. I'm only thankful that their uptime for THIS site has been very good. Two of my other sites were down for TWO weeks due to a database crash.

purenkind - Thanks for the compliments! I'm glad you like the site! I wanted it to be a very positive and helpful experience for young girl hoopsters and their parents.

I'm trying to work out the "space" thing and thought that relative widths might work. I'm hoping Renegade can give me some feedback.

Yes, the orange can be a little intense and that was one of the factors behind its selection. I need to experiment with a few other shades that will be easier on the eyes but still convey some "excitement". An orange-burgundy combination might work (and still stand out against the navy-blue background). You're welcome to suggest another color combo if you have one in mind.

Thanks again! I'll be planning a site rework sometime in May (or whenever I can finally bone-up on CSS).

Quote: Originally posted by zoinks
Two of my other sites were down for TWO weeks due to a database crash.

Was that free hosting? If not, i'd say thats totally unacceptable!

Yes. They provide free hosting with no adverts (but with poor uptime and spotty responsiveness). The free sites are small and intended for site development and script-testing. You need to upgrade to their paid services if you want six-sigma reliability.

I can't complain.