Webmaster Excellence Award

**Gamer-Talk** · 10-20-2002, 08:06 AM

Please review my site for the Webmaster-Talk Forums Webmaster Excellence Award. The address is http://www.paoliwd.com/ . I have put a lot of hard work and energy into this site, and if I don't get the award I hope I at least get a good critique

. You guys are awesome.

Thanks
Adam Paoli

**Mo Money** · 10-20-2002, 08:14 AM

1. take away those links to other webdesign websites! what are you thinking?
2. instead of using hourly pricing, i suggest using package pricing. Its much easier to deal with, for you and for your customers.
3. Instead of using bravenet to forward your form, learn a little php and do it, php is actually not that hard.
4. Maby change the CSS, I would make the links change colors instead of loose the underline, i think it would look better, try it out.

-----------

overall looks good!

**Gamer-Talk** · 10-20-2002, 04:00 PM

Hey,
Those links with other web design sites vastly improve my search engine rankings and site popularity, they are linking back to me. Im going to replace the bravenet form with php, i just have to write the script. Ill try the changes to the css. Thanks.

**Gamer-Talk** · 10-20-2002, 04:37 PM

Ok, I changed the form to an internal PHP form, that wasnt too hard

**fonzerelli_79** · 10-21-2002, 07:23 AM

well your prices are way too high - $50 for search engine submission is a complete rip off

$25.00 per hour for html programming is too much also

sorry to be a pain but youd be ripping people off with these prices

**Gamer-Talk** · 10-21-2002, 11:57 AM

Most people charge 40$ an hour for html programming

**ghettocars** · 10-22-2002, 09:23 AM

thats true fonz. webdesigners these days are offering high prices, i see apaoli's prices pretty cheap.

a simple business website made with a cheap template and little content is worth 100$ these days. its rare to find a webmaster that charges pretty cheap.

i myself make websites normally from 50-250$ depending on what they want.

oh btw apaoli, im speaking to the webmaster-talk team about your award. your site will be under review asap.

**Gamer-Talk** · 10-22-2002, 12:31 PM

Thanks ghettocars

**conkermaniac** · 10-24-2002, 11:56 AM

Hi apaoli,

Your site looks great! It's a simplistic design that gets straight to the point. While I do love the color scheme and layout, I do not feel that it is appropriate for a web designing firm. It would be perhaps better suited for a portal, which needs fast-loading pages to keep users coming back. A professional web design company should instead make their sites flashier to attract more visitors.

Overall, the CSS needs a lot of work. While the site looks great in Internet Explorer, the text on the site loses almost all of its appeal when I switch to Mozilla, which is known to be more compliant with the CSS standards. Don't forget the other browsers!

In addition, the Contact page looks a bit crowded. I don't know how to fix this, but I would just recommend spacing it out a bit and see what happens. Similarly, the links page is very crowded as well. They also need some spacing out and perhaps better organization.

There's actually a lot of work that can be done for that links page. I would eliminate the affiliate URLs you have in there, if I were you. The users who see that may choose not to go with you, as it may seem to them like you are trying to cheat them. Also, I see that you have a Yahoo address on the page. Get a yourname@paoliwd.com address!

As for the text on your website, I think that you need to weed out the typos. I see quite a few on the very main page, which is definitely a no-no!

I would also get more accustomed to using the "lingo" in this industry (i.e. "quote" is a better word than "estimate").

Overall: 6

**Gamer-Talk** · 10-24-2002, 12:32 PM

Thanks!!

**Gamer-Talk** · 03:00 AM

Thanks again Conker,

I think I'm going to stick with this design for a while, but not forever. I like it, its simple and nice.

Im really not sure about the "css work" becuase I looked at my site in Mozilla, and it looks good. There is a screenie below.

I did my best to clean up the contact page. I removed the clients type of business part, and spaced the top some.

Im now using my email address too. paoliwd@paoliwd.com, instead of the stupid Yahoo one.

I also fixed all the typos with Office 2002, and reworded lots of the site.

I think only one of my reciprocal links is an affiliate, my host. I took my top nav link to links off, so its only on the bottom.

I think your review was great. Thanks for the help!

It looks good on mozilla to me.

**ghettocars** · 10-25-2002, 07:13 PM

ok here goes my IMO.

Appearance

Colors - I really like your color scheme, very professional and home looking. fits the mood and its appropriate. I would give the yellow a little more brightness though, or make a golden color
Score: 9.5

Fonts - the fonts are good, no problems there.
Score: 10

Graphics - you seem to have only 2 graphics on your site. 2 graphics to which i personally dont like much. the sites shown there seem like really small personal/business sites. a screenshot of something amazing with all kinds of graphics as an example would be great.
well either way, why dont you put one image on the left, and one on the right? this is on your portfolio link btw.
add an image to the left, and the other one to the right, it would look great

Score: 5.5

Logos - you have no graphical representation of your website, but the logo you have seems to be good enough, i would make it a bit wider though and maybe add some sort of graphic to it as the background.
Score: 6.5

Layout - nice layout, well organized. i would remove all that excess yellow space on the outside though, there seems to be too much at times. remove the excess space by adding more to your site!
Score: 7

Backgrounds - nothing here, looks great to me.
Score: 10

Section score unweighted: 8.0
Section score weighted: 7.3

Functionality

Navigation - very user friendly and very easy to navigate, the only thing i dont like is that you have 2 menus and that it really isnt all that flashy enough to be a web designer's site.
Score: 7

Load time - the load time is great! score 10 here!
Score: 10

Bugs - i dont see any so im giving you a 10
Score: 10

Section score unweighted: 9.0
Section score weighted: 7.9

Overall & Content

Content & Site purpose- ok, i am going to basically give you another version of what conker said.

conker mentioned in his review that your site looks great but...

Quote:

I do not feel that it is appropriate for a web designing firm. It would be perhaps better suited for a portal, which needs fast-loading pages to keep users coming back. A professional web design company should instead make their sites flashier to attract more visitors

and that is true. your site looks great but it really is not exactly what a web designers website should look like. try something more flashy to attract more visitors.
Score: 5

Section score unweighted: 5.0
Section score weighted: 5.0

Technical

no problems here so i am just going to give you 10's for all the sub categories...

typos- score: 10

grammar- score: 10

wordin- score: 10

Section score unweighted: 10
Section score weighted: 10

Overall

here comes what youve been waiting for...
after averaging out the scores with some scores weighted more than others, i have come to the conclusion of...

Overall:7.55with weighted scores.

a 7.55 is a good score, but not enough for the WT award. of course my opinion is only worth a small portion of the team votes.
although i gave you 0.45 points less than the minimum for the award consider your site a very good one that you just need small changes to make it perfect.

my suggestions: I suggest you work on your content, you need more content to make your site look full. you may also need something flashy to attract lots of visitors rather than the portal look you have now. I also suggest you add an image behind your logo to make it look better. And try to add some more graphics and make them look good on your site.

good luck!
-Josh

**Gamer-Talk** · 10-25-2002, 08:51 PM

Thanks Josh, I'm gonna start using some of your tips and changing things right now. We will see how it is when I'm done.

Thanks again
Adam

**conkermaniac** · 10-25-2002, 10:12 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by apaoli

It looks good on mozilla to me.

You're welcome! It's always a pleasure to help out others.

It looks OK on Mozilla, but if you'll notice, the differences between the Mozilla and the IE version are great. Different fonts, font sizes, etc. Take a closer look and you'll see what I mean.

Good luck!

**Gamer-Talk** · 10-25-2002, 11:58 PM

Ok, I got an idea. Im going to make image rollovers for my nav and slice it all up so I dont have to use the background tag in my tables and can validate my code. This will help multi browser display too. Anyways, I'm going to either take the bottom nav off or put the copyright there. Any suggestions?

**Gamer-Talk** · 05:11 PM

I just started a redo. Please tell me if you like the design.

http://www.paoliwd.com/

Thanks

P.S. I tried to make it look and seem more like a web designer site, and kind of tried to add a southwest theme to it, without going overboard. I cant thank you guys enough for your critiques.
I think we should rename this area Website Critique's

, sounds cool.

**ghettocars** · 10-26-2002, 05:00 PM

i liked that tab look on the other template. but this template is really good though.

i see you still have standard links. still looks better now.

and as for the logo, i liked the gold plated one much better than this one for some reason.

this template is better though, the southwestern theme is great!

**Gamer-Talk** · 10-26-2002, 05:05 PM

So should I apply for this version? Think it would score better?

**dk01** · 10-26-2002, 07:53 PM

I liked the last one much more. I thought it was perfect.
-dk

**ghettocars** · 10-26-2002, 09:27 PM

dk01, did you ever review the last one? if you did i woud like to see your input.

as to aplying this version, i like it but at the same time dislike it.

Pros

-I like the southwestern look
-i like the image next to the logo

Cons

-i liked the other portfolio better
-the other logo was better, (the color)
-colors were nicer on the other one
-the tab look of your template was much nicer

those are my IMO's...

its really your call if you want to apply for the award on the redo or not.