REVIEW REQUEST: thegreatoffers.com

Hi Faraaz. It really isn't that bad. What I would suggest is....if you don't have anything to put there then just get rid of it. Once you get your logo at the top that will help. Then you could put a catchy phrase to the right of the logo. Next I would probably get rid of some of the white space just below the yellow bar where you have your navigation.

You have some of your table borders set to "1". I am assuming you have these turned on while working on the site. Just make sure you set them to "0".

The body of you page is a bit wide. I have a horizontal scroll when viewing at 800 X 600 meaning that I have to scroll the page to the right to see what is on the right side.

As for what to put in the body part.....You could start by telling your visitors what the site is about. A brief paragraph or three would be good. Tell them some of the things they will find at your site, how they will benifit from hanging around, etc. Mention anything new, special. You do have a lot of stuff on the left and right side of the page. Maybe you could place some of those things in the body part as well.

I will leave it at that for now. Let's see what the others have to say. You are off to a good start so don't give up.

Sounds good.
Does anybody have anything about the color?

Thxs Everyone
-Faraaz

Okay, kid.

The color is okay but it seems like I have seen that orange/yellow combo on a lot of sites. Try to be more original. Think about what you like on a website. If that is your choice, then go with it. You might add something like a spot or line of blue here or there to give it some contrast.

The main thing wrong with the site, besides the horizontal scrollbar that DM mentioned is that the Nav links are too far down for people to see easily. People have a tendency not to scroll somethings so you have to have most or a portion of your links at their level. That means at around the 550px height limit. Make sure that your spelling and grammar is correct. In the short text that you had, you used right instead of write. Don't make us email your teacher .

Ok, like I said english =)

Nav links?
550px?

and how do I make this compatible so people do not have to scroll in 800 X 600?

Thxs,
-Faraaz

Your nav links are the links on a site that takes people from page to page. You will see people here refering to your navigation as "your nav" or "nav links".
In you case these are your nav links.

Home - Hot - Stores - Categories - Expiring - New - Contact Us

I think mairving was referring to your category section on the left that has Apparel And Jewelry, Baby, Computers, etc. in it.

500px means 500 pixels. Like this:
That means your table is 500 pixels wide.

To make the page so that there is no horizontal scroll you will need to make the tables on your page less than 800 pixels wide (a good width is 750) or you can use percentages. When you use percentages the tables will automatically fit to the users computer screen. Does that make sense?

Read this.---> http://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutors/tbl.html

Ok
I updated that bar at the top DM. Check it out now. I have not got around to the tables widths yet but soon.

-Faraaz

Here is the link to your site so that everyone will not have to type it into their address bar:

http://www.thegreatoffers.com

The top part is fine for now. It will come together when you get your logo there. Really all you need to do is mess with you tables a bit and add some content. If you shoot for making your whole page as wide at that top part (the orange and yellow) you will be right on the money. I am sure that some of the others will be poking around here in a bit and will offer some more advise what you should do.

Good luck!

I'll definatly shoot for that kind of width. And I am counting on those pokers . C'mon people. .

-Faraaz

Looks like your missing a theme, all I see on there are banners and links, looks like your just trying to make some money from the site.

Dont take this the wrong way, but I think your content here is way over your head, your asking us to talk in basic terms when your site is going to be a high tech site to work, you'd need a database for sure, a lot of server side scripting and things.
you have that shopping tip on your page "Did you know that all hopping websites that have a really bad site design tend to participate in more frauds?" I had my view point of your site before reading that, but with that knowledge you could turn this around to be a win win situation.
Your 14 (getting a bit old but you could pull it off), use the kid angle, dont try make a full blown e-commerce site, make a kids look and feel but still sell/use the same links. but you'll need a target group. when making a e-commerce site you need a product (your links), you need to market your site based on a target group (boys, girls, young, old, games, programs, houseware, carware, ....), dont try do them all, pick a theme, a group and only do links of that topic (for now anyways).
check out your competition, why are they doing well, how do they promote their site/products ...
you could deal in all products, but again your going to need a fully database driven site and has to be bigger and better than the guys who put in thousands of dollars into their designs and things.
while starting off, think small and work up to hugh, Rome wasnt built in a day.
you also have "Don't Miss Out Signup For Out Weekly Or Alert Newsletter" so this means it would be a full time job for you or your team.

I dont mean to sound dicouraging, you could do it if you put everything into it but you'll find al the big names out there are there today because they started small and worked up to big.

If you try jump in with the big boys will little knowledge it will show and you'll be disappointed, if you start small and dont try make it a full e-commerce site (use a kiddies theme) then youd be more noticed as you wouldnt be expected to be right up there.

example: a guy in a suit selling lemonade from a multimillion dollar store or a teenager selling from a milk crate, who would you buy from? 9 out of 10 would go to the teenager - reasons, the kid is giving it a go, its a honest look, they are using what they know, its a good cause ... reasons not to buy from the rich guy - whats he really selling?, is the lemonade real? lemonade is lemonade.

I take my hat off to you for trying, but you have to walk before you can run. and if/when you become the next bill gates (fortune wise) dont forget us at TWF

Quote: Originally posted by Busy

you'd need a database for sure, a lot of server side scripting and things.

What do you mean server side scripting and a database?

Ok, second lemme fill you in on my team =). I got my friends =) 3 of em. and I got Michael Coley from
amazing-bargains.com
He said he would help us out with some of the updating and such. Anyways we still got to get our schedule in gear =).

Can u just explain waht you mean by the scripting and database. I'm a fast learner =).

Don't worry I won't forget you guys, and I am not leaving for a while . Mind you "Faraaz Gates the second" does have a ring 2 it. =)

-Faraaz

explain server side scripting and databases, ummm

umm errr lol, a database is like a bit of paper, each line on the bit of paper contains something (like each section of these forums), there are stored in the database with server side commands which can read (view) or write (post) to/from it. this site for example probably could be done with html only but youd have a very long delays in posting and reading and thousands upon thousands of pages, would also be very hard to edit anything or change anything.

or think of a caculator, the memory function, if you use that while working out a sum, it stores the info, a bit like a database does, and you can recall that info at a later stage. but if the caculator didnt have that fumction youd have to try remeber it or write it down making more work for yourself.

or this:
say you have two dice on a web page you want to roll the dice (even thou this idea in theroy doesnt need a dtabse, betend it does ) if you had a button which could randomly pick the numbers as if the dice were rolled, storing the numbers in a database would make your job very easy, or you could make up each html page with every combination of what 2 6 sided dice could produce.

this probably doesnt make any sense - sorry its late and i'm tired, If no one else can explain it better I'll have another go in the morning

As far as your layout is concerned I think you need to unify things a little bit. There are way too many boxes scattered around here. Try to bring things together more. This is hard for me to see because it's not fitting into my browser window. However, I think that you need to bring those tables closer together, first of all, and get rid of that extra white space below the top banner area. The categories links should be further up. Remember to keep important information above the fold as much as possible.

Also switch your base font from times to verdana - it will just look better on screen. I agree with busy that it would be a good idea to try to come up with a more specific theme. I read an article somewhere recently.... here - it's about niche marketing. Basically what is says is that the more unique your product or service, the easier it will be to sell (because you have little competition). So, if you do something like this but market to a certain segment of the population, you will be more successful than if you were to try to market to a broader audience. Think about it...

Quote: Some Boy Text. I dunno what to right Apart from welcome

Oh my gosh. You're fourteen, and this is how you're writing - a testament to the sad state of education in your country. I understand that this is just filler text, but you should know the difference between write and right. If these kind of mistakes are common for you then you should really consider passing off any writing duties to somebody else.

Does anyone know where I can find out howto make a database?

Thxs, Faraaz

do a search in here (TWF forums) for database or mysql or access etc

depending on what your server offers as to what links we can provide for you.

Did a search, and the only one that got close to it was "how do I make a database?" but you told him to tell you what platform to use and he never responded.
Access sounds like a cool platform to build in, or is MYsql better?

Thxs,
Faraaz

first to need to find out what your host (hosts server) supports, if any. Is your hosting Microsoft or Unix based? are you allowed databases? if so how many? what supporting languages does your host support to use with your database if they do - PHP, ColdFusion, Perl, ASP ...? you need to find out from your sites host before jumping in learning whatever you need to learn.
You dont have to have a database, you could do as you were doing, just that a database will cut down on updating, operating and maintance time in the long run

Ok got it. Its supports PHP3/4, and perl and all this other stuff, Mysql comes with a different package.

-Faraaz

PHP and Perl are the server side languges needed to "talk" to the database, but MySQL, Access etc is the actual database.

a database would make your job easier, especially in the future (as its going to take some time setting everything up) but you dont have to have one, since you cant use MySQL etc you may have to look at doing it all manually the way you have been, but things like top 10, most viewed ... will have to be done manually with some guess work from your server logs