SITE REVIEW: Webhosting : A Basic Guide

Well guys here is my offering, I developed this website for one of my college projects, its a simple website that at the end of viewing should enable the user to come out with basic knowledge of the webhosting industry. Im sorry to say its not been tested in different browsers or that it conforms to current standards as I guess it was designed for viewing by fellow classmates, I may decide to keep it on as a little informative piece.

Anyway here is the link:


http://hosting-guide.co.nr/

any feedback will be greatly welcomed, wether good or bad, thanks for your time.

Simple, yet effective. It looks good in firefox as well. The only thing I can think of is to possibly justify the text in the right content scrollbox, altho not sure how that would look. Also I noticed I couldn't scroll with my mouse wheel in that box.

Also, the text scrolls clear to the top and leaves alot of white space at the end of the content. Seems to me like the text should stop at the bottom, but maybe you wanted it that way.

Nice layout, though. Good job

Pretty nice, simple layout. The content and theme seems straight forward. But there are a few things that caught my attention. Starting with your links, I notice while hovering over the links, the actual url is from another site (liltman.250a.com). I've never liked that because I dont know if you're trying to fool me into clicking some ad and re-direct me to another site. I'm not sure exactly what the situation is, but you should really keep all your links within your domain.

The scroll box thing is cool, but totally ineffective and not well designed. First of all, making a user hover for seconds at a time over an arrow just to reach the top/bottom of the content is borderline cruel. What if I scrolled all the way to the bottom and wanted to read something back at the top? I'd probably close your window, it wouldnt be worth my time. Also at my resolution (1024x768), to get to the scroll arrows, I have to scroll down the page a bit. Then if I scroll that frame content down, I cant see anything at the top of the screen. Its all cut off. Click the image below to see you what I mean:


Anyway, long story short on that scroll thing, I dont like it, its just not effective. That translation thing you have, its cool. I tried the french version, looks nice. But now that I want to go back to english, there's no flag for that. Yeah, I could use my back button, but I shouldnt have to. You need to provide a back link for the english version.

You could also benefit from a footer, maybe put Copyright or All Rights Reserved at the bottom, just to give a nice finish to the site. Code-wise, you should reference your javascripts into your code. You're also missing meta description/keywords tags and alt tags for images. You should also try and get your code validated by w3c (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.liltman.250a.com%2Fwebhosting%2Findex.html), start by adding a doctype. This probably isnt a site I would hang around for too long mainly because of that scroll thing. Its annoying. Thats a bad thing because your content relies on that feature. Thats my rant, hope it helps you. Good luck with the site.

dispalyed in 1024*768 mode, too much blank space on right/left sides.

I don't see what all the critisism is about, seems like a nice site that can do what it is designed to do - tell ppl "not aquainted" with the webhosting business what it is and how they should avoid it. Another plus is the clean layout that loads fast even with a slow connection. Good job.

yo man, like i said before i love this layout, nice colour scheme and relaxing, doesn't hurt your eyes and looks good for the purpose of the site, i liked it from the start, even when you where still half way through it, its very informative and describes web hosting good!

the scroll bar isn't a problem to me and i'm not criticising it but i have never really liked DHTML scrollers like that, especially with all the white space but i'm sure that can be edited to fix it

even though the scroller is not my style i think it suits the site and you have a good layout, in total i say good job man!

I have just one small suggestion, when you click the translation links, you get that annoying banner come up. You could just copy and past the already translated page into a new link, and it would get rid of the banner. I like the layout.

a few pointers:

1. lose the times new roman font. use arial for a clean looking result and will make the site 10 times better looking
2. Sorry, bu the grey navigation links suck. Try another, bolder colour.
3. The site logo seems fuzzy because it's a jpeg. Use a gif instead and you'll also cut down on file size even more.

apart from that, keep up the good work!!!

Nice and clean design, with clear images and graphics, A bit to small maybe? change the font, and possibly try and make it tighter?

First of all the purpose of this site is executed well. The other thing I like is the fact that since it is a "informative" site it has translation features.

THe only bad is about the scrolling. Tha javascript scroll is nice but some users like me just wanna have control over scrolling instead of having to go a certain part of the page. It breaks reading concentration when you would have to do that while with your mouse "wheel" you scroll at your reading pace when you like and how u like. I think it's just better that way.

You doc type tag is missing.

Other than that great site.

Nice and light - but don't forget you can get too sparse with the graphics .. you don't want users to think its a man page or anything.

The gray text is a bit over done... you might try a hint of color in the text rather than gray... how about a nice very light green... OR... how about a random function in the php that changes the text color for each new user... cool... you could, of course, change the text that way... I did that once on a site called intern-direct.com... go take a look .. the quotes change each time so the site is never quite the same... simple really and no big thing... just changing the text color might be nice.

Counter to popular opinion, grammar is still important... bad grammar is a dead giveaway that you are an idiot... but since we all know your not, you might want to use 'don't' in the text below as it is appropriate for plural nouns like 'features' where as 'doesn't' is used for singular nouns, for example 'feature'.

"...reasonable and home users can now get access to professional features that doesn't come with Free hosting services..."

also try an 'an' before 'easy to use online control panel' in the following text of the same paragraph "SQL features, easy to use online control panel, "

The next paragraph is also grammatically in error. Try 'these', appropriate for plurals like 'features'

'Features like this are just one of the many reasons why people pay for web hosting services.'

If English is not your first language, I think there may be forums where you can submit your text for proof reading... you might try that here.

Yours,

Michael

I found quite a number of things I didn't quite like.


1. The font you chose. I don't know if it's just me but I hate Times New Roman.

2. You've made a scroll button at the bottom. This isn't exactly very good and a bit time wasting for me at the rate it scrolls at. Besides, there is barely anything that needs to be scrolled down to see. Why not spread it out?

3. Make the images on the side have a rollover effect when my cursor touches it.

4. ">TRANSLATE" should be aligned in the middle along with the rest of it's content.

5. The pics are very fuzzy.

Well that's about all... Good work anyway. Keep improving it and I'm sure it'll be great. Keep up the good work!

Your site is too simple, but I like that because it supposed to be simple as it targets people that do not know anything about web hosting.

As for the layout, I do not like it, because it is too old fashion, and the colors you chosen are not the best for my eyes. Maybe you should do something about that by changing the white color to a soft grey or something, and use a better font (like tahoma or verdana)

Your site is ok when viewed with firefox