Virtual Graphiti - Review

I personal think "we" and "us" make it sound more professional, "I" is to "trying to get started, help me out" kind of a plea, "we" and "us" are more professional words

On netscape 4.7, first glance looks very impressive, the text at the very bottom, I think its your contact details cant be made out, i think the very bottom line says policey terms of service ?
the naviagation on the right is a change, I think a good change it shows your not afriad to try new things, things that work.
some of the answers on the faq page are bold, I think keep the questions bold and answers normal. The links at the bottom of the page (top marks for that) are same as the text, or very similar, they dont mouse over in Net4.7 so maybe add the underline or makea lighter color.
on your about you page you have
It is not easy to be proficient in all aspects of web design so we do involve others in site design when called for. even thou this is true you dont really need to tell the world this, as its saying you are limited on your knowledge, maybe just mention you contract work out for some topics or something.
Also "Hand coded HTML using Notepad", that could be shortened to just "hand coded html", or "html coded by hand" as notepad is known as the "freebie", not the top notch, high priced tool, pros use, notepad is limited to content size so isnt the best tool anyways. a few other things you could add are, ftp program (you use that to upload), validation program if you use one, and any other fancy names that look good lol

as for the top right hand logo, I think the web design and hosting one should be on all the pages (maybe d & h in caps), its a nice logo

On IE 5 it looks the same as net4.7, except the links on the right use the hover (mouseover), the yellow is good. The small contact details at the bottom are readable in IE and I see I was pretty close with the guess I made. the mouse overs at the bottom are black when run over?

I think that mouse image could be a lil more real looking to match the sites look.
That google search isnt really a good thing, all its doing is inviting people to leave your site

overall I think your on to a winner, keep up the good work

I like the logo with the mouse, although I would use the yellow a little more.

Look here: http://www.netsol.com/

Notice the use of the color livens up the site.

I like the yellow and with some sprinkling (For lack of a better word) of color similiar to that yellow you might get a nice effect.

The text on some of the pages are wrapping while others are wrapping at table edge, so some text formatting inconsistency with larger resolutions.

This definitely isnt a nit pick review of your site DM I actually like the way it has progressed. (When you are ready for mysql and php you know I am here to help)

Love the CSS ( I think I over did it with my hosting site personally) but you have it going on with it. Looks like you actually sat down and learned how to write it out. I am a hack! lol

Samuel

DM, overall, the site looks real good. Just a few tips and code improvements.

• Logo - I liked the Web Logo on the right much better than your logo just because I the mouse with the VG in it looks a little clipartish.
• Home page looks good. I would change the google search though since it takes you completely off of your site. I don't know of any way to redo that except to put a link to goggle instead that opens in a new window. I am wondering if you even need it there. If it takes someone off of your site, it needs to go.
• Stylesheets - I looked over your stylesheets and found some unneccessary coding like specifying the font style for table and tr. You really only need to specify it for the td tag. Also as Busy said, the text at the bottom is not very readable in NS. NS has a little problem with small verdana text specified in px in a stylesheet. Try changing it to 8pts and it should be much more legible and about the same size.
• Little coding things. In your first table your color is 000000. It should be #000000. Most browsers will read it okay. Still I would fix it. You have this line HREF="http://www.authpro.com/cgi-bin/auth.cgi?user=staylor. There is a line break causing the " to be on a different line. There is this line also table width="70%" "cellspacing="0" . Note the extra ".
• Terms of Service yields a 404 error.

Overall pretty good impression.

Good site! I like it but I too prefer the logo on the right but I think the one on the left better suits the title of the site. Together they look like they are not for the same site though.

To make the google search results open in another window change the form action line to read

form method=GET action="http://www.google.com/search" target="Google"

Well I have to say that I have been critiqued by some of the best.

In reply to busys suggestions:
I will change the "me's" and "I's" to "we's" and "us". Text at the very bottom a little bigger. Is it readable is NS now? I only found one bold tag on the FAQ page that was not supposed to be there. Did this take care of the bold answers or are there more? Added underline on links in body of page. I will reword my about page today.

Quote: as for the top right hand logo, I think the web design and hosting one should be on all the pages (maybe d & h in caps), its a nice logo

Which one are you talking about...the one on the home page, design or hosting page??? The more I look at them, I like the one on the site design page but it needs some altering...not sure what.

In reply to Keegan:

Quote: The text on some of the pages are wrapping while others are wrapping at table edge, so some text formatting inconsistency with larger resolutions.

Not sure what you mean by this????

Quote: ( I think I over did it with my hosting site personally)[\quote]
or this??? did i do something wrong keeg? not sure what you meant by this either. Oh, and it is a good thing you can do view source on style sheets

In reply to Mairving:
The logo on the top left that says, "Virtual Graphiti-- Creating the virtual extension to your reality" ....I want to keep this here. It is the one on the top right that I can't make up my mind about and no one was clear on which looked best. There are three different ones that I made. One is on the home page and the other two are on the design and hosting page. I moved the google search to the webtools page and it opens in a new window. I fixed all of the other little coding things. Good eye on the extra " before cellspacing. I wouldn't have ever noticed that one. I am not finished with my terms of service page.

In reply to webmistress:
Thanks for the target thing for the search box. I didn't know that you could do that for forms. Did you look at the logos on the top right on the design and hosting pages? like I told Mairving, I want to keep the one on the top left. It is the one on the top right that I can't decide on. Any ideas?

Oh, the background color is in the style sheet. Should I put the bgcolor in the body tag also? Would it help older browsers that maybe do not read css? What color are the links in the nav in Netscape?

Thanks guys!!! I really appreciate your help.

Looks great, I really like it a lot. Simple but not too simple. Colour scheme is very good - it's rather unique and not too purple at all. Where is your portfolio? That should definitely be a major part of a site like this.

One thing I'm gonig to comment on is the organization of the navbar. I would probably move "about us" up to go underneath the "home" link - it just seems out of place where it is there. For the text on that page it might be best to write most of it in the first person plural but refer to yourself as an individual in the third person. Ie:

"(your name here) is the owner of Virtual Graphiti and has approximately 3 years experience in web design. She... (maybe something more about your background)

We at Virtual Graphiti promise to put forth all of our efforts in creating a one-of-a-kind site that meets your needs and compliments your content. The success of your web site reflects on our service so we must do our best."

Maybe add something more about business targets, usability, stuff like that. Something to impress them about how well your sites work for their audience, will keep people coming back etc. Get rid of the second paragraph about using affiliates - they don't need to know that. Either that or replace it with a brief statement along the lines of "some development work may be outsourced to third parties" which may be more appropriately placed at the bottom of the page under your "tools of the trade".

I do feel that this site is a little on the text-heavy side. There are some things in here that could be removed.

Oh, and I like the top right graphic from the home page the best.

Great job - you've given me some ideas... I'm going to be putting together something like this for myself fairly soon.

Thanks Meg. I was pondering over the order of the nav. I will fix that. I believe you are correct.

I still have to get my portfolio up. It is a little "slacking" right now but I plan to put the sites that I have done and am working on. Maybe this week!

Gee...do you mind if I use your suggestion for my about page??? Excellent! I am not good at writing or wording things. Been out of school too long.

I was reading over the site this morning and thought it to be a little text heavy also. I tried to put myself in a potential clients position and said to myself, "would you really read all of that?" Probably not. I will work on cutting out some of the stuff that is not needed. I know that most people scan when reading a site so I will take that into consideration.

I still can't make up my mind on the right top logo. I think what I will do is keep all of them and from time to time change it. Just to keep the site fresh and have a little change. Maybe people will come back to see what I have in the right hand corner this month.....LOL I like change anyway.

I need some ideas for my terms of service page. Any ideas on where I can find a good example to go by?

FAQ page fixed and the contact info is readable at the bottom

the links arent underlined thou, they are onmouseover (hover) on IE

The logo was the index page one, the sitedesign one didnt load properly the first time I looked at your site, I think the site design one is to "techo" for your layout, the index one is more in line with your layout.

On the site design page you also have the sub headings bold and italic and your other pages just bold, just bold looks way better.

As for text heavy (and I'm probably the worst on here for babling lol) I think it doesnt need much tuning, you have it layed out in topics so people can see what they are about to read and can skip parts they arent insterested in.
to much info is better than not enough

Would you believe I have a diploma in jounarlism, was taught to edit, edit, edit and I still babble lol, I still rely on others for finally checks and spell check is something I couldnt live without

- all the words I cant spell could fit into a dictionary

Ok guys...is my "About Us" page too CHEEEEESY?? I was really beginning to feel like I was a top notch web designer while trying to word that just right. hehehe

Not sure if I should put the paramedic part in there or not. What do ya'll think? I am grasping at straws and I do not like writing about myself. Guess I'm shy. *awwwwww*
http://www.virtualgraphiti.net/about.html

I like it, but then I'm not good at wording things either! I wouldn't put in the part about being a paramedic as it has nothing to do with web design and gives the impression that this really is a company of one.

The first line I would reword to say 'At Virtual Graphiti we promise ........' and the last sentence it should be FREE consultation

Thanks Webmistress! That does sound much better. I just wasn't quiet sure how deep I should go into my background. I have seen some web design about me pages where people talk about how many kids they have and what their fav drink is. Nothing wrong with that I guess. I like what you suggested. I am about to wrap this thing up. Almost finished with terms of service and need to get a few other things. I feel really satisified with this site. That is a good feeling. I still have to put mucho thought into a logo for the upper right corner but it will come to me. Just got to get in the "mood".

Thanks everyone for all of the positive advise. You guys are great!

I like the layout of your website(load speed), but I would put the navigation on the left side.

You've made good use of meta tags.

If your looking for business you should give examples of your work,also provide good acounts from satisfied customers. Also explain what meta tags,banners etc are to confused protential customers.

very nice! I don't remember your old site to be honest but this I like.

I like the colours, I like the layout, I like the logo.

and now to nitpick...

The different logos to the right: are you just experimenting? I can live with them changing but you need to make them all the same size - the navigation gets "pushed around" from page to page.

Your "Site Design" page is wider that the rest.

The level of detail you go into about tools, etc is probably wasted. Anyone who knows that much can probably do it themselves.

Prices: eek!
*mental note: keep taff's clents away from this site*

About Us - personal pet peeve. I dislike "About Us". How about "Profile"?

Portfolio - you GOTTA have a portfolio! the rest, as they say, is commentary.

The page content is clean.. VERY clean.. too clean? I'm undecided on this but you may want to consider adding... something - graphic subtitles? a few images?

Hi taff,
I didn't have an old site. Actually, this site has been through about 5 metamorphases over the past 9 months. LOL Kinda like a pregnancy. I just haven't posted any of it here.

Yes I am still experimenting on the top right logo. I am aware of the size difference. Working on it.

I wasn't aware of the design page being bigger. I just fixed it. Thanks for catching that. Profile does sound better. Everyone uses about us. I may change that. As for the tools of the trade....hmmmm. It does look a bit out of place and i see what you are saying. I will have to ponder on that one.

Prices: This is my first price list and it is kinda cheap. It is more or less a rough draft. I had a hard time deciding what to charge. I will probably change these later but for now I am gonna leave it like it is and if needed I will simply let "inflation" happen. LOL

I too think it needs some cute stuff here and there to liven it up as Keegan said. I would like to make use of the yellow more.

keane16 said:

Quote: but I would put the navigation on the left side.If your looking for business you should give examples of your work,also provide good acounts from satisfied customers. Also explain what meta tags,banners etc are to confused protential customers.

Oh, i guess I am the oddball. I wanted to try something different. Nav stays on the right. Portfolio to come. Working on that now. I may consider adding more stuff like meta and banner explainations but that isn't my priority right now. Thanks for the input though.

yeah...what they said....

how many cups of coffee went into that one? it looks great. ive never seen css working THAT well before. no complaints about layout.

just 2 things:

1. i noticed one spelling error [site design section]: "Having an online presence has become quiet popular, especially for businesses..."
"quiet" to "quite."
didnt really spot any others...

2. whatever happened to adobe photoshop on ur list?? :D:D even if ur not into it, get a copy (if u wanna spend) and make like u do use it...clients love hearing names they usually associate with the creme de la creme of site design.

thats it...once again, awesome site

Quote: Originally posted by disaster-master
Hi taff,
I didn't have an old site. Actually, this site has been through about 5 metamorphases over the past 9 months. LOL Kinda like a pregnancy. I just haven't posted any of it here.

That would explain my faulty memory

Not posting it is no guarantee that I may not have seen it - I tend to snoop.

Yes - navigation on the right! I like that. If you think about it, right side navigation makes sense - the scroll bar is on the right; less mouse travel.

Folks are way too stuck in the left side paradigm. Everytime I try to design a site with right side navigation, the client balks.