REVIEW REQUEST: sofnet.com

Way tooo slow. Took it 53 seconds on my dial-up and I definately would have left had I not been critiquing.

You have 4 different animations on the home page. Two you can for sure loose are the microsoft thingy and the animated flag. A nice static flag would look better. I also think you have way too many other cutesy little graphics splattered all over the page. More text content would be nice.

The line of images across the top may load faster if they were split up into seperate images or at least appear to load faster.

Again, you need more text on the page. I assume that you offer web design and other stuff but this needs to be more clear beside just listing these things in your navigation.

You could also reduce load time a bit by replacing the folders that you have beside each nav link with a bullet. They are cute but you pay with time.

Welcome to TWF

first thing I noticed was the time/date, is it done by php? reaon i ask is its wrong, it says Friday, February 08, 2002, 5:24:08 P.M. but today for me is Saturday 9th and its 12:30pm, if you must use a clock/calendar use a javascript one, javascript works off the users pc clock, php works off the hosts server clock.

I think your right about the load time but you have some things on there that arent needed, like the get IE button, the search section (its taking folks off your site), same as the stock quotes.

To be honest I have no idea what your site is about, seems most of the links in the main area are just links out of your site, but then the left section has things like services and support.

I get a horz scroll bar at 800x600 on IE5, NS6 and Opera6, NS4.7 just gives a forbidden error, something is wrong with your coding, url goes to http://www.newshub.com/index.cgi?style=list&c=5&d=4-5&id=w0rCdbtu&tz=PST8PDT&fmt=js

also looks like the American flag (bottom left) is being cut off, you could speed up some loading time by loosing some of your javascript, things like colored form boxs (doesnt work in opera) arent needed and just slows your page down, asking people to make it their homepage when it loads so slow isnt a good idea, you'll get people disliking your site real fast.

Your layout is very jumpy, especially in NS6, you need to size your lft table as it seems the content in the right is controlling the width of the right section, example, on the main page the gap between the link "terms of service" and the white section is about the size of the cursor, but on the web design page their is no gap.

I have made a few changes - so check it out now. BTW our company is an ISP and alot of the things on the front page are there because of our users requesting them. (like search and link etc)

Also this site is a one area site really - meaning we provide internet service to a certain area so to all of our users the date and time is correct.

Just peeked at your code and noticed a few errors.
In the part below you have your closing and backwards. The should come before the . There is also a for the image but no closing center for the image.

There are several other little tag problems here and there. Try netmechanic.com for a free html check.

I have made some changes including optimizing my images so the load time should be faster now.

Having a lot of things on the page isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you need to make sure all the items have a place. Improving the layout will make it easier for your clients to find things, and will also likely decrease your load time and increase the ease of editing.

Sounds a bit like a snake oil pitch, doesn't it!

Looking at the page, I see no reason for 137kb of data. Something is very wrong. Having a design elements to celebrate the seasons is fine (see http://www.google.com/holidaylogos.html for an excellent example), however, just plopping clip art around the page is distracting. If I add up all the image file sizes on the page, it's quite hefty. You need to better optimize those images and get their file size down, or get rid of some. The banner at the top, for instance, it 18k alone. A number of the gifs are between 4-10K. Your animated logo is inexplicably 12K!

You can remove a number of frames from that to make it smaller and it will stay smooth.

Basically, you need to give each piece of information a place on the page. If you don't have a place for something, think about whether you need to have it on that page at all.

Suzanne

Overall impression was not a great one. The biggest negatives that I had were these:

• Page layout. It looks like that all of the graphics and links were thrown in a bag, shaken up and then just dumped on the screen. I really don't mean to be unkind with that remark but that is what it reminded me of.
• Colors - the red text with the yellow clashes rather severely. Then it rolls over to a blue.
• Graphics - most of the graphics look rather ragged and clipartish. Some like this: should be text not a gif. You need a logo, preferably one that doesn't move.
• Navbar - I would rethink the navbar. For one thing there is no Home button on there so you could get lost quite easily. A bright yellow background with red text and all those folders don't really help the looks or the navigation. I would lose the folders. Change the text to something besides red and create some more clearly defined category headings. I am not really a fan of PHPNuke but I kind of like the way that their category headings are done.

I would say that it needs a major overhaul.

Loaded fine for me, however, I would have rounded corner instead of sharp ones, they look nicer.

I'm sorry to say I have to agree with everything that's been said. It just doesn't look professional and that's what I'd expect from an ISP. Loose the clipart/animations, choose a better colour scheme and get some better images for the top part as they look over optimised and fuzzy.

Hi, it's not bad on its own but since it's the website of an ISP, I naturally would expect much more...There's a black dot at the bottom of the page...takes a keen eye to see it though...

Perhaps you could model your site after other ISP websites out there like www.singnet.com.

When I first load the page, I have no idea of what it's about - or that it's for an ISP. The overall look is pleasing - not too cluttered, and I like the colors.

I would get rid of the 6 images at the top of each page, and replace it with a single box that has your name, and conveys what you do (dial-up accounts, hosting, design?)

Navigation isn't bad - but could be better: as I go to different pages on your site, I don't see a way (except by repeated use of back button) to get back to the top page. (Oh, I finally found your logo is hyperlinked to top page - but without any alt text).

Non-members can't access some pages - I get a standard IIS error page when I click on 'Account Info'. You could do several things, including using IIS custom error pages & ASP to handle these, or at minimum a static custom error page.

(Oh, and by the way, you happen to have a link to my site on your front page - as '56kb Init String Sites' - the URL of my page that you link to has changed, although my 404 handler takes care of it, it would be nice if you updated the URL to modemsite.com/56k/index.asp

Aloha,
'v.Richard'

My first impression with this is that there are too many visuals with incoherent styles. It just seems to be a hodgepodge of different things borrowed from many different places. Try to get things looking more alike for a more consistent layout.

I do really like the logo you have, but I feel that it could be larger. The problem, though, is that the logo has a really light, subtle feel to it that doesn't work well with the rest of the design. Again, more coherency is needed.

OK I have done a redesign located at http://www.sofnet.com/6/
Comments ?

Your gettin there. Colors are a bit drab. I like the yellow and you just gotta keep the little logo at the top.

See if you like this:
SCREEN SHOT

I like it - its just a little to bright, I am going to mess around with the colors a bit and see what I can come up with

Yea, guess you are right. I looked at it again and it does need to be toned down a bit. Keep clicking those brain cells and you will get it perfect.

Quote: You could also reduce load time a bit by replacing the folders that you have beside each nav link with a bullet. They are cute but you pay with time.

there's just two, totaling less than 2KB, so it wouldn't save that much time

You got a point there mmi. Even so, they still clutter the page so I would suggest not using them.

Anyways, "a bit" in Alabama language means "just a little" and the dictionary says,
A small portion, degree, or amount. So I guess that 2KB would count as a small portion.

it started to load in NS4.7 but then gave me the 403 forbidden error.

new colors - I think the soft net logo and logo area is to wide, deep, tall, high which everyway you want to look at it lol
The advertise cell at the right has a white background while the rest have light grey.

Is looking very professional

as you know my spelling sucks, but the word "Begginers" looks weird, I checked with spell check and said it was ok, but type it in with one g and it offered this: beginners

**I think I gotta stop mentioning spelling and grammer, am usually aways wrong lol**

It's looking much better and a lot more professional now but as Busy said the top section/logo are too wide/big and it looks like there should be something to the right of the logo in that white space. The only other thing I'm not overly keen on is the Button type section headers you have there, they look a bit heavy and the white writing is a bit small. I also think it would look better if the grey box on the left went the full length, top to bottom, with all the blue sections on it being the same width.

I agree that it looks much better here. What you need to do now is refine the details and bring it all together. I agree with Julia about the left sidebar. I also think that when compared to the right sidebar the page looks unbalanced. Make the left one the same width as the right one and use the same styling.

I also agree about those button style headers - they do stand out and create a t-shaped visual shape in the middle of the page that really seems to break up the design.

And again, I agree that something should be done about the white space next to the logo. Maybe you could find a way to sort of curve the design up around the right side of the logo and fill up that space a bit.