My first site, need feedback

**kriso** · 02-06-2007, 03:05 PM

Hello,

few days ago I uploaded my very first site and I'm very proud of this hehe

I came to the idea of making this site after I was looking for a hosting service for my fathers site. I needed just a simple comparison for different hosts: the price, space and traffic eventually. At that time all the PHPs, Perls SShs meant nothing to me.
Now I'm trying to build a site for the common man who is looking only for a place to put his pages, so I'm trying to keep it low on detailed information. Good/bad idea?
This site contains mostly affiliate links, but now I'm aiming on providing more informational service to the visitor: I added the glossary and some articles about hosting if some one wish to read more about this subject. I'm expanding the range by listing free sites for hosting and templates.

It was a nice template before I tortured it. My design skills are not mastered yet

I would like to know what are Your opinions about this idea, and how (what?) may I improve to bring more quality.

Well, I hope no one will take it for an advertisement - if you look at the site you will know its rather crying for help and not an ad hehe To put it clear: don't buy anything, don't click on ads. Just tell me what are Your impressions.

Here's the site: http://www.resource-parade.com

Thanks, kriso.

**Echilon** · 02-06-2007, 04:35 PM

Looks great!

**kriso** · 02-06-2007, 05:47 PM

Wow nice to hear I made a perfect web site

To be serious, I would really appreciate some comments from people who bothered to read my post or even visit the site.

kriso

**KeithKrueger** · 02-06-2007, 05:58 PM

Nice idea.
Here are some constructive gripes though:
1) Monthly prices have a comma instead of a decimal pt.
2) Cant sort or filter the list.
3) Doesn't include DB or .net facts.

Nice work so far though.

**kriso** · 02-06-2007, 06:13 PM

Hey have many thanks, KK!

1) Fixed
2) A friend said it could be done with databases. Unfortunately I'm not advanced enough, so I have to learn it first. But I like this idea, and definitely I will do something after Your suggestion
3) This was the leading idea to make the list simple and don't confuse the less-internet-advanced man. But I was thinking about this more and probably this could be resolved together with No.2, by putting the data in the database and allow to filter it with one click.

Thank You
kriso.

**softfruit6** · 02-06-2007, 06:18 PM

it does look good, my current chops lean to visual design over code but ill give you my (mostly visual) 2 cents:
-like img use.
-like the negative whitespace allottment for the most part (layout proportions)
-ditch the whitespace behind your sub-tagline txt and put it on the bg color and allow it to have some visual harmony with your Logo/main tagline
-ADVISOR pg-- tuck the Index content under the img -- be tidier visually ALSO use a different class on the home jump link at bottom and put under right col. I LIKE the style choices you made with the text content on this page.
-your stylesheet looks "well organized" but i see a ton of numerical classes (and empty divs) in your HTML -- something annoying DW will do if you make font adjustments in-line rather thanon your stylesheet. very messy usage of stylesheets not to mention virtually unusable for future ref.

I think its a great concept -- ll check out again im sure-- happy site building.

**RanaD** · 02-06-2007, 08:02 PM

Monthly prices have a comma instead of a decimal point? Why? Which rule-book?

Your list of sites are only sorted by paid/free. How about alphabetical, cheapest to most expensive? Even when you have a sort function, that's a logical way to present it as default.

You have CSS in the header and in an external file. Any particular reason for that? (I'm not even looking at the rest of the code - it's too late)

How do you decide which hosts to list? I've done some research recently for a new site host, and the host I chose isn't on your list (I did look at some of the ones you do list at the same time...)

My question: Is this site really there to help people, or is it there to make you money? You can only choose one for this question. At the moment, to me, it seems like you have a vague interest in helping others and a much bigger interest in making some bucks. If not, perhaps you need to rethink your strategy.

Ever been to a fairground? The lights and the sounds make you dizzy? That's what too many moving graphics in close proximity do to most people.

Quote:

...I hope no one will take it for an advertisement - if you look at the site you will know its rather crying for help and not an ad hehe To put it clear: don't buy anything, don't click on ads.

It sounds like you know it looks like an ad crying out for help to look like a proper netcitizen.

I think you have some work to do, but it's a good idea if you know where you want to position yourself, since there are other sites that offer roughly the same idea in various forms.

**ritchie111** · 02-06-2007, 09:54 PM

Great site.
Keep the work up

**kids** · 10:06 PM

You have a bright site. Good! But I think this idea is not new. You can add some thing like comments. And your ads is very good blending

**ExCal** · 02-06-2007, 10:08 PM

Im not to fond of the apperance. In my opinon it could use some work, but it's not off to a bad start. A comment/rate host feature would be a good idea, like one stated above.

**Hoosier_Buddy** · 02-06-2007, 10:13 PM

Not too bad, I see that your template is a common dreamweaver template. It would be best if you made a logo for yor company, an icon or symbol someone would remember that represents your company.

**LadynRed** · 02-07-2007, 12:03 AM

I noticed something was racking up 100's of JS errors in FF 2.0. This is the error:

Quote:

menuitem1 has no properties
closesubnav(mousemove clientX=0, clientY=0)www.resource-para... (line 37)
onmousemove(mousemove clientX=0, clientY=0)www.resource-para... (line 1)

[IMG]chrome://firebug/content/blank.gif[/IMG] var shutdiv =eval('menuitem'+i+'.thediv');

Wherever that's coming from, my debugger counted over 600 instances of that same error in 2 minutes on JUST your home page !!

Perfect site ?? Not by a long shot, sorry.
You've got a DTD of XHTML but you're using FONT tags ??? They are NOT allowed in XHTML, they are deprecated and should not be used. XHTML, in general, means the separation of content and presentation -- that means styling your text with CSS - not a million <font> tags.

You have no alt attributes on your <img> tags and your img tags are not all properly closed.

**kriso** · 02-07-2007, 07:57 AM

Wow! This was good. Exactly what I needed! Thank You All!

LadynRed and softfruit6,
I see now how much I have to learn about coding, to be honest I have first to analyze Your posts to understand what You are saying

Well, it was just a template and I have reorganized it in the visual editor... without thinking about the code, of which I know nothing. Starting right now, thank You both for this!
Ah, "Perfect site" was ironic, sorry for that.

RanaD,
thats right, decimal point is country-specific.
As for the lists I'm working now on dividing it into two pages, commercial and free. I lack of knowledge to build a sortable list, please tell me what do I need to learn to make such one (Databases?) No reason about CSS, I didn't know before that I have it twice

(Now I'm learning what is this CSS)
As for the decisions about presented hosts, I'm still building up the list, it is growing everyday a little. I'm always open to new suggestions.
About the service, like I said I want to divide it into pages: if some one is looking for a paid server, then I give the comparison and collect a provision if a decision is made. The free hosting and template pages are without any affiliate links, and in connection with the article page shall give the quality to the visitor. So this is a point where I cannot agree - I believe it is possible to stay neutral.

Quote:

Quote:
...I hope no one will take it for an advertisement - if you look at the site you will know its rather crying for help and not an ad hehe To put it clear: don't buy anything, don't click on ads.

Posting the link on forum was meant here.

ritchie, kids, ExCal, HB,
thank You for the words of cheer

And thank You All for Your honest reviews, I'm sure it is not always easy, maybe before I should warn You that looking at the code could be a traumatic experience

Im starting the improvements right now,
have a nice day! kriso.

**greenlush** · 02-07-2007, 08:44 AM

for a first site its awesome

**katkac279** · 02-07-2007, 09:05 AM

I like it, very good first attempt

**toms184** · 02-07-2007, 09:58 AM

One of the pieces of advice I received from this forum dealt with color. The gray border might be too dull? I'm just learning myself, so I may be way off base, but that was my first impression.

**kriso** · 02-07-2007, 10:45 AM

Hey thank You guys! Well, like said it was first a template, and it was much prettier than the site now, but everything is ahead

The graphic layout is still in working order.

**RanaD** · 02-07-2007, 01:27 PM

Clarification: I did not mean it is evil to help people and make money off it. We all want money. My point was raised with an eye on how you present yourself to someone new landing on your site.

Reaction wanted: This guy is so helpful! Oh look, there's a link that looks interesting, let me click it.

Reaction you could get with too many advertisements: Ok, so where's the help? Let me go back to Google and look for a more helpful site. (Or click on one of the links that look fairly helpful.)

It's not about the affiliate links, it's about the Google ads. But then, that's just me, and ads make me mad if I notice them. Otherwise they just go on auto-ignore.

Your moving graphics did look like a million at 3am this morning. I must admit they're not so terrible at 8pm.

Best of luck with the site!

**Nadeem** · 02-07-2007, 05:56 PM

haha thats actually nice! good job man! all you need now is a kick-*** header to attract more attention i guess

or you can just leave it simple for the theader so it's a faster loading site!

**kriso** · 02-07-2007, 06:23 PM

Hehe You got me while sending the new to the server

I cleaned the code a little too, should open now without errors. But there is still much to do.

Thanks, kriso.