Topic:Report Post to Moderators
How harsh can I be.....? I'm a software developer by trade so designing and developing websites is part of what I do for a living. I'm also responsible for the Bad Company shop and forum. A few things I'd mention:
The title of each page is just "Web site". If someone adds the site to their favourites/bookmarks, that's all it'll appear as unless they change it.
File names with spaces or capital letters in can be a pain. Most browsers should handle them correctly but it's easier to manage if you stick to underscores and lower case, something like a_file_name.html. On some systems FileName.Html is a separate file to filename.html and it's easy to get them mixed up.
The banner at the bottom of the page is slightly cut off in Firefox. It's worth testing the site in as many browsers as you can, in particular IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox, Opera and Google Chrome. Internet Explorer is the most common but the others are increasing in popularity. IE6 is particularly bad at handling CSS, and something that works in it often doesn't work too well in the others. Unfortunately it's also the most popular. I'm guessing the site is template based so you probably won't have a lot of control over the code. The colour of text isn't too important as long as links are a different colour to normal text, and you don't use underlines for something that isn't a link.
I'm also a bit picky about language and I prefer not to use txtspk on web pages. There's no 160 character limit so there's no need to abbreviate, and it looks better using formal English as you don't know who might be reading it. One time I found a page from my own site being used as evidence against Microsoft in some legal case from a few years ago. Obviously things like correct spelling are important as well, especially in file names. One time at work 2 of us wasted half a day trying to fix something until we noticed that a file was called smarkfile.html rather than smartfile.html. At the moment your "About us" page is called Abousus.htm. Your/you're and they're/their/there are also ones to watch.
Once the site gets a bit more established, it's worth paying to get your own domain. The cost varies but usually starts at about £5 a year plus hosting. Depending on what package you get this can also include email. One problem of free hosting services is that the name can change. How many times have you seen a sign with an address something like www.example.freeserve.co.uk, even though Freeserve sites no longer exist? Similar problem with BT Internet, who used to have their own web space, then transferred it to GeoCities and now that is being shut down. I've had nukesoft.co.uk since 2000 despite changing hosting providers a few times. The paid version of Freewebs is pretty expensive at $100 including a domain and you can get the same stuff cheaper elsewhere.