SITE REVIEW: EraSkateCo

yo this is my skate team's website that i designed, can everyone check it out, any comments would be great thank you!

best viewed with favourites bar off and resolution at 1024 x 768

http://www.eraskateco.tk

hi,
Just my 2 cents on your site.

1- the font on the index page is very hard to read with the busy background you should reconsider changing either your background or your font.

2 - I found your site to take too long to load. I tested it on IE, FF & Netscape and it took a long time on all. Too long for the kind of content it has, especially on the index page where on IE the mouseover didn't even work for me. Try to minimize your graphics' KBs.

3 - I get a couple of broken images on the page with IE but they show up fine with FF. Make sure you test your page on all popular browsers. It's important to make sure they show up the same on all of them or at least on IE & Netcrap.

Definitely gotta do something about the loading problem. I gave up looking through your whole site because it took too long to load each page!

I do like the colours you picked though and the name for the company Keep up the good work!

it takes too long to load. I didnt manage to follow up.

takes awhile to load i think the white on the grey is a bit hurtfull on the eyes but i did like the rollover effect you do have on the links in the content.

...and regarding those links - you may want to emphasise them so that the user knows they are there! I only acciddentally realized there were links in the body when my mouse ran across it.

Load speed is sluggish, even here for me at work You may want to make the colors match better between the forum and the site. I thought I'd got the wrong link when your charcoal and mustard forum came up!

On your main site, I would make your 'inner-scrollbar' a little lighter - it is so dark (e.g. Kev's profile) I almost missed it! ...this is probably only an IE thing as scrollbar-colors are only customizable in IE.

So you have a team and a company. Right now (to me) it is unclear as to what exactly your company provides? Will you be selling skating apparel, maybe other extreme sports gear? I understand there is nothing to sell yet, but you could provide a sentence or two about what you hope to provide in the fututre so visitors kind of know what to expect. And your team - do they compete in competitions or just against each other?

Overall a very good effort. I think the biggest improvement you could make would be load-speed. If you can reduce that you wil reduce the number of visitors who give up waiting... Next, maybe some beefing up of the content. The white text on the semi-transparent grey layer isn't too bad.

...one more thing.

You have used frames well here, but I do see that the content of your frames have .php extensions. And if you have .php hosting capability you most likely have SSI (server-side includes) which are much better than frames. Especially for search-engine optimization - the easier you're customers find your site the greater customer-base you direct to your site. If you're going to stick with a .tk domain then I'd do everything else to maximise SEO, as most people will look for (eraskateco) .co.uk or .com most likely...

the background is so busy...and the left of the page is so empty! why? i think it would look better if the content was centered and the background went and wrapped around both sides of the content. as for the text, ya, white on grey is kinda hurtful, what happens when when you have more text than that box will allow?

Why is your site loading from neo-studios.com? Is that your "hosting company"? They need to get faster servers. You should switch to a better host, then your site wouldn't load so sloooooooww. I recommend startlogic, http://www.startlogic.com

thanx everyone for the comments, i have no idea why the site is running slow, because i have sliced the images more than enough, even a 56k modem should load it fairly fast, the only thing i can think of is the host im with, because some of my site's do tend to drag alot even when they are sliced to the best they can be.

LIONKING - i don't understand what you mean by your paragraph saying "and one more thing" and the frames and SEO etc.

NEKSUS - the gray area with the text in will be ok, once there is no more space for text a scroll bar will automatically appear and then it will scroll.

i will also make the scroll bar easier to see and as for hosting, i can't afford none and neo-studios was free hosting as my mate knew the guy and i got some free hosting too.

if anyone knows any good sites for free hosting that supports php could you let me know, (if there is any at all)

thanx for all the comments i will try to correct them!

forgot to say, as for the broken links i am confused to what you mean because i checked every single link i had made in IE and they all worked fine for me, i didnt check it in netscape or FF because i don't have them browers installed, maybes i shall install them

Also the forum was just set up as a temp forum, i'm going to make a new one which will be better that's why there wasn't any work put into it.


What's everyones internet connection because it loads instantly on my connection (high connection)

as for the team and company i agree i should really say what we do and stuff even if where not currently selling products, i will correct that too, thanx all

running cable 10mpbs, site loaded somewhat slowly, probably just the server (might be loading instantly for you because its cached?)

NEKSUS - thats a fast connection, my is 750kb/s and i even emptied all internet activity one time and it still loads next to instantly so it must be the server, donno wah i can do about that, guess for now will have to deal with it until we start earning money and then can pay for a better server

haha thats 10mbps MAX, most ive ever gotten was 4mbps (boy was that nice ); avg for sites is around 250kbps, the first few images for your site loaded quickly (the top and right), the left bg took a while, and the grey for the content loaded last. its not good if i can distinguish
as for a server, check out http://www.diyhosting.ca ; if you're in need of cheap cheap hosting, http://www.friendlywebhosts.com

i think that you should defo compress it down! also to much is happening unless u want that

yer it should load pretty instantly, i can only think its the server, and im only a student so have no money at all, have to spend it to get to college, if we start earning i shall have to have words with my team mates about a new server, thanx all

ok i really do need a new server, my host is down yet again! but i guess i can't complain seen as though it's free lol

i really need a good host but i'm not gonna get that for free:P i shall hav to buy some hosting or find a person who would be so kind