Webmaster Resources...

First impression is it is far too confussing to the eye, no clear definition to anything and the banner ad stands out far too much. Your logo definitely needs work doing on it and that's what should catch the eye first.

Layout - I'd stick to a pixel width for the table as now it doesn't work well stretching to fit. You have two differnt reds there and they don't look good together.

See what others think but I say rethink the colour scheme once you've got a better logo and do you really need to tell people what the time is??

I already have the time right here on my desktop so I really don't need you to tell me that

This is taking quite awhile to load on my cable modem here. Could be a problem with too many nested tables???

Now that I can see everything my first impression is that the logo is horrendous. That definitely needs to be changed. Go with something simple - find a unique font and keep the special effects to a minimum.

I agree that the layout is too confusing to the eye - there are too many blue boxes on here. Move the search box to the right side of the navigation bar and lose the one that has the search and date/time right now. The next one below that, with the page header, can go too since you seem to have two of those.

What you should do is move that first page of the resource directory right onto the front page. This is the major content that your visitors will want to see, so it would be a good idea to save them an extra click. That stuff on the front page now is pretty much useless anyway. ALso try to make some more interesting headers. Then you could have the resources navbar on the left and the latest additions/random site stuff on the right. This would improve the layout overall since right now the content area is expanding too much at 1024.

A more interesting colour scheme would help too. The baby blue isn't bad, but it would be nice to see another colour along with it - can't think of anything else offhand that would work, although maybe combining it with some grey and/or black could add some interest. Not sure...

slow loading on a 56k,

those red links on the baby blue are very hard on the eyes.

have you tried making the body margins = 0 ?

the time and date? hmmm have i gone back in time? on your site it says "The time is 6:54 PM on Saturday, 1 September 2001" and I'm postive I have already done saturday, today for me is sunday, 2nd sept 11:06 am, maybe thats your time? i'd remove the clock, no need for it and move the "find it" button next to the search box, not under it.

shame you have to use that annoying hitexchange animated banner

when the results are displayed seems its always 5 at a time, thought about adding an option for more?

not critique, but info -
on your free web hosting page your info is out dated, heres a few examples:
crosswinds, does have pop ups, limited ftp (if any) for free sites, limited in many other ways.
spree, got an email from them the other day saying they are no longer hosting free sites

Who is hosting your site?

Ping

Pinging freecfm.com [208.62.19.34] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 208.62.19.34: bytes=32 time=3051ms TTL=112
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 208.62.19.34:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 1, Lost = 3 (75% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 3051ms, Maximum = 3051ms, Average = 3051ms

Tracert

Tracing route to freecfm.com [208.62.19.34]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms resources.mshome.net [192.168.0.1]
2 146 ms 138 ms 135 ms max5.sktn01.pbi.net [63.200.104.134]
3 131 ms 137 ms 139 ms dist1-vlan10.sktn01.pbi.net [63.200.104.154]
4 128 ms 142 ms 134 ms edge1-fa5-0-0.sktn01.pbi.net [63.200.104.113]
5 144 ms 142 ms 136 ms 208.30.216.37
6 127 ms 138 ms 140 ms sl-bb21-stk-8-2.sprintlink.net [144.232.9.81]
7 124 ms 119 ms 137 ms sl-bb22-stk-15-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.4.242]

8 122 ms 140 ms 140 ms 144.232.18.158
9 134 ms 121 ms 138 ms 156.at-5-1-0.XR2.SAC1.ALTER.NET [152.63.52.214]

10 144 ms 138 ms 138 ms 0.so-3-0-0.TL2.SAC1.ALTER.NET [152.63.54.10]
11 211 ms 187 ms 209 ms 0.so-2-1-0.TL2.ATL5.ALTER.NET [152.63.0.1]
12 207 ms 207 ms 190 ms 0.so-3-0-0.XL2.ATL5.ALTER.NET [152.63.85.226]
13 190 ms 190 ms 186 ms 0.so-7-0-0.XR2.ATL5.ALTER.NET [152.63.85.194]
14 206 ms 209 ms 219 ms 192.ATM4-0.GW6.MIA4.ALTER.NET [152.63.85.13]
15 230 ms 209 ms 210 ms bellsouth-gw.customer.alter.net [65.195.238.138]

16 207 ms 217 ms 216 ms 205.152.144.208
17 222 ms 228 ms 258 ms 172.25.126.38
18 * 3012 ms * WIN-FREE-WWW [208.62.19.34]
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 2965 ms * * 208.62.19.34
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * 3234 ms WIN-FREE-WWW [208.62.19.34]

Well let me say one thing...I am a better salesman than I am a web designer!!

Thanx for the feedback...

Webmistress - If I fix the pixel width at say 800 won't that look a little strange on those with larger resolutions? Or is there a way I can adjust it accordingly?

All - I've tried various colour schemes such as black on white and vice versa but I'm beginning to think I may be colour blind as nothing seems to work.

I am going to do some work on the logo though just as soon as I can get my head round ANY graphics pogram....ColdFusion? No Problem...Graphics...Hmmm Let me come back to you on that...

The time thing is definitely outa there...crap idea anyway and as for the hitexchange banner, well it only brings in about 7 visitors a week so that will go the journey as well!

Keegan2 - Interesting post...I really didn't realise just how crap my host is! I'm going to post a topic in the host forum to try and find a decent paid one methinks...

Thnx again everyone...when I've sorted the problems out I'll repost to see what you think...

Back to the drawing board......

Load time...OUCH!
You code is a mess.
This is what you have just below the (first) body tag:
*body*
*/body*
*/html*
*html*
*head*
*meta tags are here*
and then you have another *body* tag
The poor thing don't know whether to open the page or close it. LOL

Why don't you do a quick check at netmechanic.com and fix your html errors. See what happens then. I'll bet ya dime to a doughnut it will increase the load time dramatically.

DM

The reason the code appears to be a mess is two-fold...

Firstly I use a Application.cfm file to setup all my site variables and secondly there are several "included" files being called on many pages...

The end result is that at first glance the code does appear to be a mess...Its not me, its ColdFusion!

The load time is probably down to a slow host and so many nested tables...Both of which, as we speak I am in the process of sorting out!

Ok...sorry. I didn't know that you could have more than one body, head tag in an html document.

Ya got one or two or three up on me flipper.

Good luck sorting all that out. Me thinks there is a simplier way.

I dont suppose it is good practice to have more than one head or body tag in the document but the problem comes up when I include templates using CFINCLUDE....

If there is another way I would be glad to hear it..

Yes strip them from the included documents. When I include a document it is actually a stripped down web page. Its code will not interfere with the document it is being included on. Javascript is a paid, onloads can interfer with the original document with overlapping tags, so there is some work involved there.

Your first priority should be the hosting problem. It took me 4 minutes to load. After about a minute, the normal surfer would have left already.

But I do agree about the color scheme. It's a bit hard on the eyes. At least make the reds match and darken the blue a few shades.

I've uploaded a new version of the index page here.

I would be eternally grateful if anyone thinks there is an improvement or is there anything that I should do differently.

The links mainly goto the same page and the coding needs to be tidied up a bit but you'll get the general idea.

The original version of the page can be seen by clicking the link in the sig.

PS - The server is running incredibly slowly tonight on my site but that will soon be resolved as I will be moving the site to a new host shortly...

I know its slow at the mo but this will improve...If the site is taking a long time to load pls bear with it as I need help.....in more ways than one