Site review - Site ident 7 for shrum.net

Don't forget to add a doctype.

it is one of a kind very creative but a little hard to navigate after clicking on the picture

I don't like that first page at all!

Once into the site I think the layout/design is ok but I just find it boring (not the content) and the icons you use look a little jaggedy. I think it is the top section that is bugging me but I guess that's your identity!

I don't understand why you have a sub-domain for every link. Why not just make them a directory instead. Sub-domains have a separate document root and it loads a bit slower than a directory.

Two points.

1) It would be wise to have the user type "www.shr" and look for "www.shrum.net/cats" rather than "www.cats" and hope to find "www.cats.shrum.net". The logical sequence is lost when the user has to think up the topic before the domain (during this access phase). As a user, I'd normally expect to type the general domain and then look for my options, rather than racking my brain for the exact topic and hoping it's on the right site. You cannot expect me to know all the various subdomains on your site as well as you do, such that I can recall every one of them.

2) I think Mark is referring not to user speed, but to physical loading time.

hard to take seriously when you have ".. California based computer consultant, specializing in ..." then having something about your kungfoo being slick and jumping through your screen and kicking their ***.
The english speaking people read from left to right so that is seen before the serious stuff.
The general concept isn't bad but is a little dull and confusing, very hard to navigate. on the home page i get a massive horz scroll at 800x600, says is still loading, unless you have large images trying to load all i see is a text desciption about each subdomain spanning the width of the page.

Your clock is server time, which is wrong. never use server side for clocks, use javascript as it works off clients PC. You have Sunday, February 15th @ 2:31:11 PM PST my pc clock says Monday 16th Feb, 11:36 am. PST means nothing to people outside of the USA. GMT is bad enough

Good effort

Wow, it's been awhile since you've been around here, hasn't it? Would you mind doing a few other site reveiws while you're here? We've got a new policy and procedure guideline that talks about that. Thanks!

I like the graphic identity you've set out here. The grungy text is a nice contrast against the sleeker look of the layout. I do find it odd that the page title is placed next to the logo in equally large text.

You're right, the navigation is a problem. I didn't even realize that the splash page was supposed to be used for navigation. It looks like a splash graphic to me. I was confused when the logo link kept taking me back there. You're going to have to rethink that. At least make the words highlight on mouseover so the user knows that clicking on that part of the graphic will take him to the corresponding page. I also find it annoying to have to go back there to visit another part of the site, or even to see what's available on the site.

I don't like the way you've used the Win XP style icons everywhere. It doesn't fit with the look and feel of the rest of the site. I would create some custom icons to do that.

I'd also like to second busy's point about the kung foo bit on the front page. If you're looking for work it might be a good idea to try and present a professional front in all parts of the site - even if you have to tone down your sense of humor a bit.

I quite like the frontpage. It's certainly a bit different. The general page layouts are a bit on the dull side, except for the links page which for somereason I absolutly love! What is the purpose of the numbers between the links? Does it denote rank or is it just eyecandy?

okay...

1) Grammar check your index page: "Sean Shrum is a Orange County, California-based..." ---> should be "Sean Shrum is AN Orange...."

2) Same page: I don't like the fact that I have to twist my head all the way around to try to read the border text...nice idea, if you don't really want any one reading it.

3) As stated before, those XP icons just don't work.

4) "currently seeking full time/freelance employment" ...are you kidding me? To me this takes all credibility away from you in a business sense. It seems as though you are begging for business.

I dunno...I just don't like it.

I've been busy

The Splash screen is the same but the main content template has changed.

I've broken general info links out and site navigation apart as sticking these together was even confusing me (plus this way I can space them out).

Please critique the inner template for me.

(Yea, I already know it's better than v.7's navigation omissions so you can skip that)

I'm thinking about doing some additional graphics work to *color* it up a bit. But I need to see how the current template loads on slower connections.

TIA

I really like what you've done now with the splash page. The dark textured background with the orange on top is really eye catching. I think you should do something more along this line with the inner template. You could use the same background in a lighter colour and carry in the dark grey and orange for the header areas. I don't like that cumpled paper background you have there now. It looks cheesy and amateurish in comparison. The outer background should be coloured as you had it before, not white. The dark border with screws would look better with a coloured outer background. Overall this main page is too black/white and bland looking.

The addition of navigation is nice, but I still don't know what a lot of those things mean. To me, cats are small furry animals Make it CATS so people can tell its' an acronym. The family link doesn't seem to belong with that group. "Soaring" and "Colophon" are also confusing to me.

Way ahead of ya...noted and done...take another look!

I actually like this version better. The bright crumpled paper adds a nice contrast to the darker backgrounds. Looks nice, but mess around a little more with the main table background. Other than that, I think it has been time well spent.

I agree with Megan about the crumpled paper BG, (although nice job of making it tile). But generally, I like to read off a smooth looking surface, less work for my eyes, maybe thats just me.

I think you should seperate your professional life from your personal life, at least on the site ... well, at least on the navigation. So its more logical when someone who wants to hire you for a job for example, s/he can click in succession on a group of links, without mistaken-ly staring at your family photos for exmaple.

The colophon page is very charming (just love it), but it should be named just that 'Colophon', 'About' generally means About Me / Us. I forgot who said this exactly, but "We read best what we read most" it was reffering to typesetting though (was a typographer I think, Robert Bringhurst? somebody correct me!). For web navigation it works generally the same, its also the same for controls in an automobile like the left right signal control, hand break, clutch position (imagine if that was swapped with the gas pedal!). Same also for the tiny triangle button on DVD players, it always means 'play'. The tiny triangle button found on Windows Media Player or iTunes means the same thing too, good for all of us, no one needs to relearn/re-adjust to rudimentary info like that all the time. Yes I mean to say adhering to some basic conventions is a good thing, usibility wise.

Back to visuals, I like your homepage man, it looks a million bucks. unique.
For the insides the graphic border with the whats-it-called bullets, the round things you have 3 on the top grey area (inner pages) .

Although I don't know what its called, I do know that those are not heavy duty. and so makes your site, together with crumpled paper BG, seem a litle filmsy. Nice idea it is, but use another more stronger element, maybe neat screw with 'alan' key type opening, not too extream though not going for the WWF wrestling look, but whatever it is make sure it blends in though, no need to make those the star of your site.

The winXP icons ... just look at this site, I wrote too much already
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/mysterymeatnavigation.html
(yes my child you have sinned )

Good effort dude! Most important IMHO is your navigation right now (Feb 29, 04) is confusing, first thing you need to fix is to group related items together. Generally I think you should place more emphasis on your products and ability, place your family links and stuff maybe at the bottom, maybe, just tell family: "the photos are in a link at the bottom of my site, the bunch of text links there, yeah" ... something like that

I'm opposite The Webmistress, I love the first page but then once you get inside the gray is *ok* but the white makes me look for my sunglasses...

The white/paper bg is little hard on the eyes and bit too bright to me. Nothing really stands out and you might want to make the top links standout.

Ok...here's what's happened so far (no love for the paper, eh):

icerider - ...The white/paper bg is little hard on the eyes

I'll admit that the paper b/g is a bit...bright. I wanted to use something in the b/g to give the page a bit more character versus a boring, blah color...as you can see now (http://links.shrum.net for example), I changed the b/g image to a solid color but even lt grey looks bright against the outer page b/g...if I go to much darker, I'm going to need to invert my text color which isn't a big problem, CSS and all

I'd like to stay away from going to the point where I have to change the text color to lt grey but it seems like that's the way things are going.

ed_graphicd - ...I think you should seperate your professional life from your personal life

Totally...I was thinking about this last night and decided to move this stuff out. It was always a pain to cluster the links togother. My shoulder demon always said "Well, you can use those areas as examples of what your content manager can do so in a sense it's work releated." I'm beyond that so I've taken those links out...besides, it's $7 bucks a year for a new domain name for a personal site (seanshrum.com is open...hmmmm).

ed_graphicd - ...Although I don't know what its called, I do know that those are not heavy duty

Rivets, they're called rivets. I can look around for something...bigger and more heavy duty. (snickering) I just don't want the things to pull from the content...more or less just eye candy but I'll look around for something.

As for the WinXP icons...argh.

It's really hard to have a constrained page size that spans multiple areas (subdomains) that have varying numbers of links within them. I'll look into this a bit more but I'm not too optimistic about the outcome.

Keep the comments coming...I'm taking it ALL in!

TIA

1. I like the name. It's short and sweet. Shrum!
2. The splash page is good, but Joe Internet-user may have trouble realizing that the nav cube is right there.
3. Overall layout of site is good, perhaps a few more "highlights" or details with color might add something...
4. I agree with everyone, it's hard to navigate in the subdomains. (Or is it? I tried...)
5. Wow, this is unique!

A job well done!

Welcome page loks nice, but to confusing. Would rather just go to main page and then navigate from there.

i think your splash page can do with a bit of rollover effects on the links to make it stand out more, and prob some alt tags to tell them where they are going, just my opinion anyway, overall its quite a very different design and very polished.