www.bobblesandmore.com..please check it out

**CAT1** · 10-29-2004, 08:25 PM

Hi Everyone

Would you be so kind as to check out our website at www.bobblesandmore.com It's an informative website that my partner/best friend and I have created. It's totally family oriented so kids are more than welcome as well as adults.

We have a chat board connected to the site where messages go up instantly.

Please let us know what you think. Any suggestions would be much appreciated........Thnx, CAT

**ejumblesale** · 10-30-2004, 08:44 PM

Hi your sitel looks fun but a bit amateurish, it all looks a bit homemade eg comic sans when arial would look better. Also try some rolloever effects on the links.

Good luck

**CAT1** · 10-30-2004, 08:54 PM

Hi

Our site is homemade via a sitebuilder............The pictures are from our own collection (for the most part), taken by us and totally put together by us............

We're hoping that someone here is familar with the site builder we're using because we're having major problems............We've put in many, many long days and nites building the site and want the home made effect.................

We're really hoping someone can give us some advice with the sitebuilder.........It would be much appreciated...............

Thnx, CAT (webmaster@bobblesandmore.com)

**janbouree** · 10-30-2004, 10:19 PM

It looks as though you've certainly put a lot of time into building this site. Were I to make a suggestion.. I'd say maybe incorporate your logo into the design to "pull together" the subpages. I'm personally not to fond of anything flashing in my face.. <G> however thats a personal opinion. Your site is full of interesting information though I can't tell if your selling these collectables or simply sharing with others the joy of collecting them.. A few of your pages are also missing any navigation.. Overall, your doing great!
Jen

**CAT1** · 11:44 PM

Hi Jen and Thank You..............

No, we're not selling anything at this point in time (although we did sell the crystals last year and they sold out extremely fast) but we are now having our own product manufactured..............They're working on it and all the revisions have been made..........

Your point about the logo is well taken and the product itself is going to have a logo that we will be incorporating into the site...............kinda blank, blank, a division of Bobbles And More...........(until the copyright is in place I don't want to give out too much info on the product, I hope you'll understand).......This is something we've worked on for months and we found out it isn't easy to produce your own product.................It's hard work!!!!!!

Thank you for your suggestions as they are much appreciated.............I neglected to mention, most of the flash is done for Halloween and usually the flash is pretty limited...............We may get flashy for christmas when we change everything to reflect the holidays...............That's if we can get the sitebuilder to work properly........We are in real need of help with that............CAT(webmaster@bobblesandmore.com)

**lawend0** · 10-30-2004, 11:46 PM

I think it looks good for a first attempt... I'd say it's a good place to start and keep working. Things tend to get better with time.

**CAT1** · 10-31-2004, 12:14 AM

Hi lawend0

Thnx so much for your comments...........The site just celebrated it's 1st year anniversary earlier this month.............

What would you suggest to make it better??............Please remember that we are a family oriented site so we want to appeal to both kids and adult collectors........CAT (webmaster@bobblesandmore.com)

**foobar** · 10-31-2004, 12:44 AM

Nice work for the most part. I mean, no one is going to mistake it for a site made by professionals, but all in all, it looks good.

As far as improvements go, I agree with ejumblesale: you should go with a different font. I'm not a huge fan of TImes New Roman on a web site.

Also, I personally don't like animated .gifs in a website, but I understand it's aimed at a younger audience, so meh.

Last thing: I have a Cable connection, and the page took quite a while to load. You may want to try and lower your image size.

With that said, nice job!

**CAT1** · 10-31-2004, 01:06 AM

Thnx foobar

I appreciate your comments and suggestions..................

You just answered a question that's been very important to us..............Both Ian and I have dial-ups (I'm in the process of making the switch to DSL) and we didn't know how long it takes someone with cable or dsl to load.......We really appreciate that info...............

We've got the size down but we run into so many problems with the site builder for anything we want to do...............It can take up to 15 minutes or more just to create a button...........Sometimes hours just to load 1 pic that's around 14kb.............We have had bigger pictures on the home page (we do update and change several times throughout the year to keep it fresh) and they loaded faster than these are........

We've had tech support from the site builder but it's like talking to walls..........All we hear from them is that it APPEARS their program is flawed.................We have to get the entire site ready for the holidays and with this program and no help from their techs we're at a loss...............Geeeeeeez, we don't want to have Christmas finally loaded by next July.................Any suggestions????...........CAT (webmaster@bobblesandmore.com)

**nxb22833** · 10-31-2004, 01:51 AM

I would create a table an include the pictures inside a table for more spacing and better organization. Since you do not have the skills to make more professional, I would go to one the the template shops (just do a search on yahoo or google for website templates) and implement it. Same thing for the logo. You can get a template that looks professional for less than $50.00

Content is good.

**CAT1** · 10-31-2004, 01:32 AM

Thnx for your advice nxb22833 but would you please define what you mean by "since you do not have the SKILLS to make more professional"???...........Do you perhaps mean the "tools"??? As for the templates we don't have to pay for them, if we wanted them as they are included in the site builder which we pay for monthly........We do not want a boring look and most of the "professional" sites are dull and boring.......We want a site that's informative, homey and fun and I believe that's what we have..............

What we really want and need is help with the site builder program..........The site is well rated on MSN, YAHOO and LYCOS...........We are #3 so I do think folks like it...........With the content of our site being collectibles something light and easy is required...............Not stuffy..........We have readers from ages 3-90 according to all the e-mails we get and they enjoy the site............For us that's the main purpose..........Enjoyment and information.........

Thnx again for your comments.................CAT (webmaster@bobblesandmore.com)

**Duport** · 10-31-2004, 01:03 PM

The music can we turn it off somehow, I wasn't expect that when the page loaded lol

**CAT1** · 10-31-2004, 01:11 PM

Hi Duport...........ROFLOL............Sure you can turn it off..........Put your volume down..........Today's Home Page music is kinda spooky but it's just there for today, Halloween...........Usually we have the Theme from "Cheers" or something that's well known and the coloring is very different and more sedate.................I wasn't expecting that either this morning but my partner suprised me.......Halloween is his favorite holiday.........Next week we start with Holiday music on every page................The entire site will be holiday decorated and it's going to take a load of work but we hope everyone will enjoy it..............I'm a Christmas kinda gal through and through.......................

Thnx for the chuckle....................CAT (webmaster@bobblesandmore.com)

**ejumblesale** · 10-31-2004, 03:42 PM

HI, you said you are having problems with site builder which one? Also I would highly recommend not to use a site builder, purchase yourself frontpage or dream weaver you will be able to make your site look a lot better than.

Also you said you want it to look homemade, well I think you can still make a page look homemade and fun without it looking amateurish. e.g.

http://www.hitentertainment.com/arta...rtattacks.html

Kids can still tell the difference between a well made site and a home made site.

Suggestions are:
Get rid of the back background
Use a smooth font, ie Arial/Tahoma not Times New Roman
Center align your layout
Compress your layouts on your pages they are all a bit too long with too much scrolling

I strongly suggest to take in everyones advice try it, if you dont like it then keep it your way but you will find you will play with it constantly and you will eventually have a site so good that you cant believe how it looked before.

It is looking good and fun just think more about style and design and get yourself frontpage or dreamweaver that will make a huge difference.

**CAT1** · 10-31-2004, 04:30 PM

Hi ejumblesale

I just looked at the site you listed and it's not to my liking at all............The whole concept of it would never make me go back to that site....................It's boring and no fun........(I hope that doesn't offend anyone but that's the way I feel about most of the sites on the web today........It's like they're all clones.....) Our home page depicts what we have on the site..............For most every button (category) there is a picture on the home page so people get an idea of what they're going to see when they go to that page...............There is no way to do this except the way we've done it...........In all honesty we're very pleased with the way it looks and so are our visitors.......I don't think we would have come this far if they weren't..............They keep coming back and writing to us so we know we're doing something that's pleasing to them.........

Our site is based on our collections and collectibles that our readers have requested we research (marketwise) and if we feel they're marketable would we do a segment on them...........which we've tried to do.................with more to come............

We don't want something purchased...............We want something we created.........We don't want regiment, we want it loose and easy...............The black background is there for Halloween and will change with the Holiday mode and after that go back to our usual soft blue background.........

Your advice is appreciated, as is everyone else's...................Yet the concept we have for this site is our own, not something that can be bought or found throughout the net...........Our site is personal and ours, not something that anyone could buy................That wouldn't make it ours anymore.........I hope this clarifies where we're coming from with our site.............

What I'm basicially asking about the site builder is why does it take so long (it can take an hour or more) to download 1 picture (apx. 7-10 kb in size), same with text..........It can take up to 15 minutes for a very small paragraph to be done and sometimes it's a letter at a time...........We've been told the program is flawed and that's directly from the techs with the 24x7 svc...........We've been sent discs (which take 6 weeks from request to us and forever to load) and the error messages we get are constant...........We're on state of the art computers less than 10 months old...........Could these problems in any way be connected to our servers????............Things are not all that easy for us as Ian (my partner/best friend) lives in Indiana and I'm in NY................We're on different servers and Ian does all the work himself with the site builder and I think he's done a fantastic job and that's excluding the extenuating circumstances with the site builder problems..............

Those are the questions we are looking for answers to and any suggestions are and will be appreciated.....................CAT (webmaster@bobblesandmore.com)

**ejumblesale** · 10-31-2004, 06:21 PM

You said in your original post "Please let us know what you think. Any suggestions would be much appreciated" And that is exactly what we are doing.

THe site that I listed if you looked at it is one of the biggest kids tv shows in the uk and has a page rank of 5/10, it is a good site and is what the public want. That however doesnt mean that your site has to look like it and it is true there are a lot of sites out there that look like clones.

Also as far as the site builder, they are designed for begginners as a easy way to convince people they need to start their own webpage, they are not however for serious website owners and I can garrantee that no proffesional website builders use site builders instead they use applications such as frontpage, dreamweaver and use ftp to upload the files which will be a heck of a lot faster than 1hr download more like 3secs.

I hope that clarifys things, as far as the site builder goes it is all down to the company who designed it and there isnt really a huge amount of advice that can be given on it.

Good luck with it all,

**CAT1** · 10-31-2004, 07:26 PM

Thnx again ejumble

That does help a bit on the site builder...............No we're not professional website builders nor do we want to be..............For a couple of non-pros apx. 1,600 hits a month is pretty good and it does give the public something they like...............Our site has been reviewed by product manufacturers, 3 TV shows and 2 Collector's magazines, among others and we're constantly being asked to allow others to link to our site because it's so well thought of..............So we ain't doin' so bad............(pardon my NY accent)...........

Yes I did say to let me know what you thought and that suggestions would be appreciated........And they are..............When I wrote the first post I should have stated exactly the type of help I was looking for hoping that someone here had experience with a site builder........That's my bad!!!!!.........

The folks here are pros and that's what they're oriented to...........We're collectors and that's what we're oriented to...........We've both been written up in well known magazines for our collections not once, but several times...............

I don't want you to think that everyone's suggestions and the fact that you all took the time to answer my post isn't appreciated because that's not the case at all..................It is appreciated.........Thank you........................CAT (webmaster@bobblesandmore.com)