SITE REVIEW: service6

Ok, here's a project that has been shelved for the last couple of months, but now I have started getting content from the client (a local charity), I have built a working mock up of a page layout.

Not much to review, but any feedback welcome, especially if you spot any bugs in older browsers or whatever, I haven't tested thouroughly yet Also coments from anyone on dialup would be appreciated.
http://www.service6.org.uk/test/

Looks pretty good in a text browser too

I like the design, but since I don't know anything about the charity I can't say if it is appropriate. So far it seems like it will be easy to navigate but depending on the demographics of the visitors you may want to brighten it up a bit.

Why don't you give us a little background on the charity and the people who would visit the site and then we can make better informed comments for you. At this point people can really only determine if they personally like the design/colors/layout etc, but there is a lot more to it than that.

Anyway, for now my only comment is that I like it. I'll check in again to see what else you post about it.

looks nice and loads well. Pretty dark for a charity site but it's nice. One advice i would give it to use a footer and blend the edges just as the others. I would look way better like that.

i noticed that it is a youth advisory charity. i guess the site could work.

SEO-wise... does the javascript menu work in your text browser? I havent got time to check. remember that the search bots find it hard to get past javascript.

the buttons dont look completely-flash, so that would be good too.

Yeah phpservers got it right about the demographic, it's a local charity offering advice, councelling, and general help, to 12-15 year olds.

I was given the logo as a starting point and the blue-green/black theme is consistant through nearly all of their promotional stuff, hence the dark color scheme. I've tried to stop it getting too bland and would like to make it a little bit more interesting, but I'm not sure how. Maybe getting some colour into the header(s) bodytexts etc. Any ideas people?

The javascript menu works even if you don't have javascript on (at least on mozilla), it's just a big nested list and I'm quite pleased with how the site is structured SEO-wise, take a look at an unstyled version:
http://www.service6.org.uk/test/text-only.htm (how the site looks in a text browser / screen reader / bot)

@ soulseek3r, did you not get the footer image load properly? It kinda fades off to the sides and the bottom? It should already be there

Thanks for the feedback.

//edit: just remembered something I saw a while back at orkut, the text fading in when the page loads. might add a nice little subtle tweak to the site.

//edit edit: Well I've tried and you can see the results here, any comments on that because I'm not sure. Looks a bit funny on the first page view, but will be better on subsequent pages (once the images are cached).

//edit edit edit (lol): Well I just got all three scripts I intend to use up and running, and started styling some links and bold text in the main content, but I'm not sure if the bold and strong look too much like links Lemme know what you think on this page.

looks sexy ^^ fade.
I agree site is a bit dark.. sends maybe a underline message? I dont know.. darn, you use divs ^.- I shoulda knew you would, looks nice alltogether

Haha Foxy, You didn't think I'd be using any tables did you? No icky tables and no image tags in my layouts The fading is definately growing on me now and I think it will help to appeal to the target audience, so assuming the client agrees, it's staying Still not sure about whether the links and bold are different enough though. someone tell me what to do about that, please.


Just wanna pick up on this phpservers, because I'm not sure what you mean do you mean I should make them into flash buttons, as opposed to normal images?

no keep them the way they are; they are great.

flash is generally bad because search bots cant pick up on the link/navigation within the flash... a common mistake to make.

edit: love the fading effect too

I love the layout rtm, especially the fade. The only thing I can see that appears wrong is that the "g's" in the category on your header, the bottom part of the g i cut off in IE6. Not a major bug, but If you are as anal as me, it will bug ya.

I am and it does now you've pointed it out fixed now thanks for letting me know

Wow i love the look of the site. The smooth edges go very well with the logo.

I dont know a lot about coding but by looking at your code i can see that it looks veery clean!

I like the breadcrumb trail, thats a very nice touch.

You have done a good job with the design and code. I would like to have some content to read but i understand that your waitiing ont he charity to get back to you.

And i have one question - Are you going to be the one updating the site or is there going to be an admin area for the charity workers to access and update content etc?

There are actually a few pages up now, and it is slowly getting added to (the pages that are up can be accessed through the main menu). The copy needs slight adjusting for SEO once we have made definate decisions about the keywords we want to target. The top three in the services section.


The answer to that is "yes" To start with it is essentially a static site, with php include()'s for the header/footer. but then I'll plug in a basic backend with a database and stuff a couple of months down the line.

Nice graphics (do coders make good designers ? )

Did you do the logo cos thats sweet? (maybe another more expensive font needed for "Service"? Any Humanist, Dine Cafe, Ariel Black!

The CSS and XHTML is textbook stuff well done. However it wont work on anything less than IE5 unless you have detected for that and give them another site or don’t care. (Dont worry about not caring!)

I love the way you cant save the site or quickly steal images from it. I wanted to find out how big the site was.

I'd love to say I created it but no, the logo, including font, was given to me (I think originally done a few years back by a graphic design student). Everything else was done by me. I spent ages getting everything to look just right, especially that mist effect took a lot of time. So maybe coders can make half-decent designers if they try bloody hard at it


In regards to IE4, I don't care that much and don't have access to anything to test in. assuming it is the CSS that throws off IE4 then I think I could detect IE4 at the server level and feed an unstyled site to them..I might very well look into this as I'm keen on supporting every possible method of viewing the pages.


it's all background images (for optimisation purposes), so try "view background image" or "save background as" (depending on your browser of choice. I've altered a lot of the files now so the site at /test/ will not reflect this, but here are the current filesizes:

images: 24.5k
html: 2.1k
CSS: 1.3k
JS: <1k

Although those html, css and js are the zipped sizes (using Gzip compression to send the text files).

Thanks for the feedback, it's appreciated

just wondering, unrelated to the site review really, how would one go about testing earlier versions of IE? Seeing how you can only install one version, or can you?