SITE REVIEW: UNFLUX.net

UNFLUX.net Web Hosting - a revolution in web hosting

Well, via some peer pressure, I have decided to post this and get some
comments. Please feel free to say what you wish. Thanks!

http://www.unflux.net

I love it, great work. You are always impressing me more and more.

Well the site is undoubtably beautiful, and although the filesize is rather large, we can gloss over that as most of it seems to go into the header, and there is no way your are reducing the size for that. So ignoring the surface beauty:

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http% ... lux.net%2F

Then lets look at this:
http://www.caffeinefuelled.net/richard- ... NFLUX.html

The red lines indicate the edge of a table cell, which are heftily nested, and I'm pretty sure unneccessarily so - you don't have to give every element it's own cell

Now on to images and alt text. You are using images for various headers, and as far as I can tell it is just for basic sans-serif fonts, so not really needed. In addition, you have not placed any alt text on them, which is a big problem for accessibility.

Continuing on the accessibility theme, you have used 10px for the font size, disabling text-zoom on IE. % values are generally preferable for font-sizing.

Thats it for now, but very nice site, I think any visitor will get an excellent first impression of the company. Nice work

wow. Damn. Uh. Im sure rtm pretty much said it. LOL. Great work, looking at just the site I think its very well laid out. Attracts attention. Besides your code errors It s a very well done site. Like the rest of your work Fantastic!

thanks for commenting guys. You all should know that if the site looks good
in all browsers, I don't care what the code looks like. I'm not a coder, I am
a designer, and it's irrelevant to me if the site looks the way it's supposed to.

The nice thing about designing web sites is there isn't 1 way to do it, and
none of them are absolutely correct. If the site looks good, good for you
and your site.

rtm - All of the text is actually 11px, and the section headers are a
customization I made out of an existing font.

Keep the comments coming.

it sucks! tear it down!!

Obviously, VERY obviously, I'm just kidding...

Nice work Unflux, and the forum theme looks good!

Although, I'm not sure if everybody would be happy about registering before posting in pre-sales just to ask a question - just seems like a step that might put some people off before they've even walked through the door, so to speak.

like axe said. nice work on the forum. im glad your brought the look through rather than just slapping in the colours, looks part of the site.

design wise, nice job. some design elements i would change a little.. but it looks good. my only real thought is this kind of style is starting to be a little overused at the moment, just look at all the template sites

i like it, youve done a great job

...I think it is very nice,and not to mention I think the hosting options are sweet...I will probaly get one of those plans very soon..

as long as it is a "conventional" browser and the user has good vision? The primary purpose of the site is to sell hosting, not to be a piece of art (which it it, but that should really come second). If partially sighted person come to your site, you've instantly lost that sale - they can't enlarge the text (which ranges from 9-14px according to your code), so they can't read it and go straight to the back button. The situation is nearly as bad if the person is blind and using an aural browser (because of the missing alt text makes it difficult to view the prose in context).

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to lecture you and I'm not attacking you. I posted the validator link but didn't talk about it, simply because I know you wouldn't care about the code, which is fine by me. But the accessibility issues IMO should not be ignored as just "a coding thing". Swapping most of the px values for % and using alt text is not really about coding, it's about designing a good UI.

I'm only suggesting a few code tweaks, to just make an effort to be friendly to those people with disabilities. I don't expect you to rush off and change it straight away, but it is worth thinking about. Remember that blind people need hosting too

Anybody else realize thats it virtually impossible to win a debate when rtm is involved?

I get asked questions like these all the time, so it's cool and I understand
the points he is getting at. I would have put money on it that he was
the one to bring all this up. The problem with it is, my philosophies for
design are different than his, and that is truly OK.I know he's not
attacking me or putting it down, and I appreciate the comments or I
would never have posted it for a review. Generally I don't do this
anyway, because either the client likes it or they don't, so that's good
enough for me. As I stated in the first post, I did this out of peer
pressure...I never intended to ask for a review.

One of the main differences I see here is the classic coder vs designer. I
do tend to have more of a designer's mentality, but to say that I dont
make a good UI just because its pretty isn't true. Usability and displaying
the information correctly is always my first priority. It just so happens
that I am able to make that presentation a little more in depth and give
the site an atmosphere along side the information, to enhance the
presentation and experience for the visitor.

I very well may take some time and add some alt text to the labels, I
that is a good idea. But to change all my text from a fixed size to a % is
not going to happen, so let me explain a bit. I have said this so many
times about how I design: I design for the page to look the same to all
viewers. The design is what it is and I want it to look that way to
everyone. If I do what you suggest, the entire design would break, and
that is much much worse than anything you have suggested wrong.

As for browsers, there is no possible way to design 100% of your site for
100% of every single possible browser in the world. Everyone knows
this, so I consider my audience for each design we take on. If the
majority of people come to our sites using IE, NS, and Mozilla, then those
are the browsers we design for. If 98% of the people visiting our sites
are using those browsers, than I have always thought that's % enough.

There really is no winner on this subject, everyone should just
understand that their opinion isn't necessarily the best one all the time.
And just because you think it's right, doesn't mean it is. Sometimes a
difference of opinion or philosophy in the same realm is a good thing, as
in this case I firmly believe it to be so as well. We just need to accept a
difference of opinion, agree to disagree, and move on.

Now, I am not mad or offended or taking any of this personally I promise.
I really appreciate the time you put into these reviews, it's exactly what
we need at OZZU for this section to remain successful. So thanks for
doing it, I know a lot of people benefit from your knowledge and
suggetions.

From here now, I'd rather get more feedback on the site than debate
coder vs. designer, so let's get back on topic shall we?

Thank you unflux. Designers rule, as I have been telling rtm for some time now.

Anyway, Excellent design and graphics. Perhaps, just out of habit, I am used to associating professional sites with brighter colors or white as the dominant theme. But the black and blue contrast, along with the pixel fonts look outstanding here.

All is good. I was very impressed. So I decided to send a million dollar check written to the founders of unflux.net. Sent it to this address that I found on the contact page.

Company Mailing Address Email
UNFLUX.net
P.O. Box 553
Hanover, PA 17331

But alas, unflux.net will perhaps never get it because the address does not tell which country it is in.

Just kidding. In reality, it always makes me nervous when I can not find a physical address on a e-commerce site.

The rest of the nice stuffs are already said.

Thought you might like to know Unflux, on your testimonials page, the link to poison whiskey band opens up in the same page. all the others open in a new window. YOu may want to fix that.

Also: even considering that thats a direct quote, you may want to fix the grammer. ITs from the quote by Benjamin Financial

Thanks for letting me know. The benjamin quote was already fixed, that
was an old error so check your cache or do a hard refresh. Fixed the other
one.

I took your suggestion and opened the Pre Sales forum to the public. You are absolutely right, it should be. Thanks.