SITE REVIEW: Gravestone Archives 2

Hello everyone! I have worked pretty hard remaking this Genealogy site. Let me know what you think, does it browse well? can you navigate well?

BTW I am trying to re-do the "Surname Search" page because it takes forever to sort the table. I think that something like a folder tree on the left listing all of the surnames in the MySQL database and that expand showing individuals that match that surname. But I think it will have to do for now... I think I may just have someone do it for me at the lowest bid. Any Starving programmers reading this?? lol

http://www.gravestonearchives.net

The contents are good..but u ought to add a layout or a better background color..navigation iz okay..

Yes, Background is an issue, it is acctually a temporary background... I was hoping to get a better one... but my graphic design skills are not so good...

What is everyone's suggestions? Should I just have a straight background color? or should I work on a picture kind of like I have now?

it wud be much better with a layout..coz background color wont look that much good..with a layout it ll loook much more organized

Layout? okay... I don't want to sound dumb... but maybe you could explain the "Layout" part a little better for me... It is not a website term I am familiar with, I really appreciate your suggestions.

Hello!

It has been a while since I had asked for people to take a look at my site, and I have added quite a few things to the site since then, I may have gone a little overboard on this site so I am interested on seeing what you all think of it, I am interested in listening to comments from professionals and non-professional people too so don't be afraid!

A little background: This site is genealogy related and more specifically, a place where I place transcriptions (and Pictures) of gravestones from Cemeteries that I have visited to aid genealogy researchers in research of their family tree. I do not charge so I hope my visitors right from the start learn that this is a totally free site so if my site looks like a pay site please tell me what I could do to help make the first time visitor view it as a totally free site.

I am interested to find out if it is easy to navigate and not easy to get lost.

This website is mostly dynamic... PHP and MySQL database make up most of the content. I have also done something kinda different... in order to get all of the pictures of the gravestones that I have taken (over 2000), I have set up a computer at home to serve the pictures of the gravestones using PWS. I am interested to see what comments you all may have about the performance and if you notice anything abnormal, or anything.

Thank you all for your time!

Robert

The site has a rather unique concept, but looks a bit unprofessional. Site should not have any height attributes set, as they force some text into your banner in Mozilla-based browsers and Opera.

Tables are right-aligned when generated. I recommend left-aligning them.

Thank you Truce for your comments, I think what I need to do, is read up on css and Div's because I know I do not have enough knowledge with manipulating those things... I think I will have to re do the dividers. I have problems changing those attributes and having the site al of the sudden do something that I do not understand or want.

I have learned that I need to really do some fin tuning on the layout of it all.

I am trying to make the site look as simple as I can, most of my visitors are probably people who do not have a lot of internet experience and are researching genealogy (you know retired people who have a lot of time on thier hands)

On the other hand... I wanted to make it as easy to look for a grave as possible... I think the minimum number of clicks to get to a picture or transcription is just 3 without typing anything. so I think I have accomplished ease of "finding What you want"

I really appreciate your time to look at it!

Robert

First of all it's a great concept

You have too much grey. Don't use the same colour for both navigation and for background! The content is hard to read b/c the font is the same colour as the background colour Change your background colour it's too busy.

Your content is too close to your title tag (logo) Bring it down a notch

Use email forms.

Your navbar is jumpy when I click through the categories in FF.

Align your form properly on the submit page.

On your Search page, the footer & the google ads on the right disappear. I don't recommend keeping this page since all you seem to have on it is a simple search feature. Why not incorporate the search feature into the navbar on the left somehow.

Your Record Query page really needs to change. Your layout is totally different on this page. KEEP YOUR PAGES CONSISTENT. Also the footer disappears and you're missing part of your navbar

Same issue for the Cemetery Query.

Contact Us is missing the footer.

Wow thank you 613flavah for taking the time to look over the site!

I think what I may do is just make the background white, and make the center DIV have a background of something like notebook paper, it stays white, so it is easy to read, but yet it doesn't look too boring Because most of the time, us cemetery transcriptionists that is what we use, we are running around the cemetery for hours writing in a notebook or PDA with JFile if we can afford something like that...lol.

You are right, the content on all the pages are too close to the header and looks too clumped together. I'll work on getting the pages more balanced.

I am not sure why the navbar is jumpy... it is a javascript... it works fine in IE, but I think it may be jumpy because it captures "alt-letter" combinations just like a windows button would... I think it may be too much, I just liked the way the buttons looked in IE, that is why I kept them, but if I mak my background a lighter color, I may want to redo the buttons to be a little more interesting.

The submit page is a work in progress, I think I might give up on it, it was a suggestion on a suvey that I received, and I thought it was a good idea at first, but I would like more control of the content of my database... I haven't decided if I should keep it... I will have to see if I get any submission first... maybe I will incorporate a transcription submission in a forum-yupe setting instead. Not Sure.

I think I am going to trash the record query page... it is just too confusing for viewers to use... they have to read through the records on the left, select the unique number next to the record and put it in the text box in the middle... that is a good idea to put a search feature in the nav bar, I think I am just going incorporate parts of both the search and record query page into one page, and get rid of the confusing parts of both pages.

When you said "use e-mail forms" where should I be using e-mail forms? Where a visitor is viewing a record, should I have all the data in text boxes?

Thank you for your time, I really appreciate the suggestions!

Robert

Anytime

Not sure why your navbar would be jumpy either as I didn't take the time to read through your code, but just remember when you're using any kind of script or even just simple html, it's important to test it in all popular browsers to make sure it shows up the same. Something that shows up beautifully on IE will not always be guaranteed to display the same on NS or FF/Mozilla.

What I meant by e-mail forms, is what I tell everyone to use. On the contact us section or anywhere where there is an email displayed, I would suggest setting up a form for users to fill in to contact the appropriate department and send an email through there since there are still a huge percentage of the internet users who use web based emails (gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc) instead of email clients like outlook. So when they click on the link it will either do nothing or pop open their O/S default mail client which they haven't configured and so the email won't go through.

Keep up the great work RBeau

Awesome! I get the contact part it makes perfect sense, thanks!

I am fixing the website now... I am doing a complete overhaul one page at a time. and I replaced the navigation buttons with CSS type buttons I figure they look better and are better than JScript buttons anyway I think that this will be more viewable by Java disabled browsers. It also got rid og the flashing in Firefox...(I downloaded it and installed so I can do more testing)

Rbeau

heh nice site, really liking the layout