OK it's online

[KevinBE]

Now I need your help. All constructive criticism welcomed. I have been working on this site, it seems like, forever. I haven't finished with all of the content but I have 8 pages ready and decided to go ahead and publish it.

Go easy, it's my first time.

Guess it would help to post the url.
The site is at www.restored-memories.com
Thanks Paul for pointing this out.

[Mig]

I like it a lot. It's got a very sophisticated look that's easy on the eyes. I realize the site's under construction, but the gif is tacky, you might want to drop that and replace it with something simpler, like 'site under construction'. I don't know much about web design, but I surf the net enough to know what I do and don't like, and this is an example of the former, in that it's appropriate to the context, it's soothing, no garish flash, colours are muted and it's easy to figure out what the hell is going on.

Good stuff, congratulations
Mig

[clare]

Hi Kevin,

Looks like you have been very busy - good results

I like the graphics and the consitancy between the pages.

Just a quick comment as I have not fully read the whole site but this is my immediate reaction

On your Contact us page you have put the following headers
Complaint, Problem, Suggestion, Praise
its a minor point but would it not read better if it said
Praise, Suggestion, Problem, Complaint

It would seem that the complaint being the first in the list is a little negative - think positive this should come last as no one will need it

You could also change your page titles to something that is included in your meta tags as the robots check this for placing your page in there list.

Will look at this more in the morning - hope this helps

[GOLDCOIN]

I like it.....

It loaded very fast. I have a dial up. The format was easy to follow. Clear and great colors. Appearance was professional.

Just one thing bothered me .... having to adjust my screen so that I could read what was on the right sideof a page.

The only page that was perfect was the page with the "prices.'

You ought to be very proud of what you have done ......

[Paul]

Hi Kevin, it took me a few seconds to figure out how to get to your site 'cause there's no link in the body of your post, in case anyone else is having the same problem, you have to click on the WWW tab at the bottom of the post.
Very impressed with the site, layout, ease of navigation etc is very good.
On the main page you say "please fell free to browse" oops
I would eliminate the Home page and go straight to the Main page.
Your background image of the forest is nice and "looks" good but is not related to what you do, do you have a photo in need of restoration that you could substitute it with?

Hope this helps
Paul

[KevinBE]

Hey guys,

Mig you are right. When I placed that gif there I couldn't find the proper clipart so I let it put that one there. I have just corrected that. Thanks for your comment

Clare, you are right about the contacts page. I haven't spent much time on that page. I just accepted the defaults from the template. I'm not sure it even works. I just filled in a comment and can't find where it went. Thanks for the tips on meta tags. I need to learn more about them so I can take full advantage of this.

Goldcoin, I noticed what you are talking about and am going to see if I can fix that. I guess the graphics on the main page are not allowing the page to fully compress for the lower viewing resolutions. I have just tested it at 800 x 600 and saw what you mean. I also noticed the prices seem to wrap around at 800 x 600 so I have brought them closer to the center.

Thanks guys for the comments. If you notice any more let me know. It's hard to find problems on your own work so I need the input.

[clare]

Hi Kevin,

I have just found your product pages - second viewing

The reason is you have placed your web site navigation bar down one side of the page which is consistant through out your site - this is good. I did not expect to see the changed navigation under the logo at the top so just plain did not see it. You could change the writing at the top to a larger font to catch peoples attention or move it under the main navigation buttons. Your most important details are here with the examples of your work people need to be able to find this. I can't find anything that points me to these navigation buttons.

Hope this helps

I will soon be putting up my new site so I will soon be in the same situation of will people like it? You have done a good job here I look forward to your comments on my little (baby) project.

[KevinBE]

Hi Paul, sorry about omitting the url in my first post. Thanks for your observations. Guess a spell checker isn't a catch-all fool proof system. I have mulled it over in my mind about eliminating the splash page but haven't decided yet. You suggestion is appreciated. No doubt the site will evolve from here. I am learning as I go and do appreciate you help.

Clare, I am taking a hard look at your suggestions. I have made attempts to modify the link bar on the right side. It is not intuitative or as easy to modify as the horizontal bar at the top of the page. I'll have to deconstruct this eliment to see if I can force it to incorporate the additional pages underneath the products page. It took me a while to figure out how to modify the horizontal bar but I am comfortable with it now. The link bar graphics do add to the decor of the page theme but aren't as easy to spot as another type of graphic would be. I'll work on that. I don't regret using the template approach because I have learned a lot and have published the page much faster than I would have if I had designed the pages from scratch. But now I may have to modify some of the key elements of the template to get the look and mechanics I need.

I've been working on this project for a couple of weeks. It seems like longer. I'm going to incorporate the Paypal shopping cart soon. I have been studying the instructions on their site about how this works. It seems that they will save me a lot of time and trouble by using their service rather than trying to re-invent the wheel on my own.

I appreciate all of your comments. Keep them comming.

[Doug Nelson]

Looks good. Your Main Page shows up a lot wider than all the other pages in my browser (IE6). Standard widths help.

[KevinBE]

Hi Doug. Yes I noticed that about the main page. It doesn't compress down as small as the other pages. I'm thinking it is the graphic that is stopping that. I am investigating how to fix it. I am going to lower my screen resolution so that I work in at least 1024x768. I hope that I can set the page to work at that level and have everyone served. I hope I don't have to optimize the page for 800x600. I just don't have a feel for what the average user's screen resolution is. Some books say to optimize for 800x600, some say 1024x768. What do you think?

[G. Couch]

I love what you have so far! Very clean and professional looking. A couple of quick things - The word "Genealogy" is pretty hard to read on the left hand side. Also, you might consider creating a more refined logo for "Restored Memories" just to set the name of your business off from the rest of the text.

[Doug Nelson]

ablrule.gif is what's spreading it out. It's 600 pixels wide by itself.

I like 800 pixels wide as a maximum. It doesn't really make much sense to measure vertically. RP is 750 pixels wide, with a little extra for the menubar.

[G. Couch]

I'd go with 800 pixels wide...but you could always mess around with auto stretching tables to make the site size itself for various resolutions!

[KevinBE]

Hi Greg. Thanks for your comments. I haven't been happy with the sidebar graphic either. The capital G in that font is not very readable to start with. I will try and see if I can redesign those graphics without changing the whole decor of the site. The main thing I like about the current design is the color scheme. I'll need to find some graphic elements that compliment the current theme.

I'm still working on a real logo. I've tried several things and am not happy with anything yet. The logo I used on my business card doesn't look good on the Web page. So you could say I am logo challenged right now.

[G. Couch]

Kevin - you should post your business card logo...we might have some ideas for converting it to the web. I used to work in a place where I created a lot of logos for small companies and it can be difficult to create something that translates well to all media.

[KevinBE]

Thanks for researching that problem Doug. I deleted those horizontal lines and now the site should compress down to 800 easily. That is the reason I designed the site like this so that it would compress and expand to compliment all resolutions.

OK Greg I'll post the business card and see what you guys can come up with. Thanks.

[Doug Nelson]

I'd advise using an obviously antique photo for your card, or people will think that it's a picture of you (this happened to me). Of course, if it IS a picture of you...

[BigAl]

Kevin, I found some difficulty in the navigation:
Main Page and Home Page make me think they should be the same thing.

On the Products page, you suddenly get extra menu items. Some kind of break between the "regular" items and the new ones could be useful in grouping them (you'll probably be stumped by FP on this one ). What sometimes helps is to have the main menu across the top, and submenus on the side.

On the Restoration page, there a new menu items again, with no way to the Manipulation and Archive pages.

Expanding menus could be what you're looking for.

On the manipulation page, I'd change grey scale to black and white (the man on the street won't understand greyscale). In the same sentence, I'm not sure of the American spelling but in UK English, the last word is spelt "blurring"

On the archiving page, it appears there should be a picture on the left of the paragraph (part of the paragraph is indented). In the first paragraph you say the following:
"We use only the highest quality Gold impregnated CD-ROM disks. The normal CD-ROM disks you see on sale for a low price use blue or green dye recording media and can be erased with exposure to sunlight. The CD-ROM disks we use are guaranteed to last in excess of 100 years, excluding physical damage of course."
The CD is not impregnated with gold, but rather has a gold reflective layer. Also, unless you have your discs (note the "c" used in spelling for optical media) checked regularly by someone like Media Sciences, you should be wary of claiming 100 years longevity. All discs suffer from degradation in sunlight, regardless of the dye used.

[Ed_L]

Hi Kevin,

I'm a little late on this thread (been busy). I think the site looks fantastic! One thing I noticed is when you said " Whether you visit us on the Web or at our place of business, please feel free to browse,". I think this gives you credibility, and gives the potential customer a better feeling about doing business with someone they don't know. Regarding the business card, I really like the looks of it, but I agree with Doug. I also thought it was a picture of you when it was loading. Super job! You've put a lot of work into it, and it shows.

Ed

[KevinBE]

Good morning.

Doug I think you are right about the business card. I had the same thoughts. I need to re-think the design on the business card. I don't think that most people would notice that one picture was restored and the other not. The pictures are too small to be effective. Those pictures are of my father-in-law and not me.

BigAl, you really have given me some good information. I appreciate the work you put into the responce. I'm not satisfied with the menus either and will give them a lot more thought. I am thinking of removing the splash page ( the Home page) and making the Main page the Home page. I just need to figure out how to do it. I am using Frontpage 2002 and I'm far from being an expert at this.

Ed, you aren't late at all. I hope this thread keeps going for a while longer. This has been invaluable help for me. Maybe I will get most of the bugs out of my site with everyones help. I thank you for the flowers Ed. There were a lot of other things I should have been doing while I was working on this project. But, I am glad I have spent the time learning how to do this myself.

It's hard to find your own mistakes. I appreciate everyone helping me get this site right.

[Paul]

Kevin, it looks like you've been busy on your site
I hope we don't come across as nickle and diming your site to death as you are obviously working hard at updating and improving it as you go and thanks for the opportunity to see your progress as it's a great learning experience for us as well.
The size of the images on your restoration pages are too small IMHO, consider resizing them to match the sizes you use on your manipulation page and by the way you did a great job on the Father and the Bride image.

Good luck
Paul

[Vikki]

Just visited your site. Very professional looking, clean, easy to navigate, and fast loading.
My observations:
I'm not sure why there is a "Gallery" heading, when there are seperate links to the restoration heading/galleries.
Regarding restoration photos: Have you though about grouping the photos, so that when one clicks on an image, a side by side comparison is available? Also, as mentioned previously, the images are rather small.
Vikki

[KevinBE]

Hi Paul and Vikki.

Paul I appreciate all comments. Thanks for your comments on the work I did on that wedding picture. I have made many changes so far and I am sure I will make many more before I am satisfied. I have moved a working copy back offline so I can make some major changes. I am glad I did because removing the splash page and making the main page the new Home page didn't go well at first. But now I have it and all my link bars working like the should have. I have more work to do on the horizontal link bars, recently added, to make them more visible. I also did away with the pages I wont use, like the Gallery.

I agree that the pictures aren't large enough I will make adjustments to them before re-publishing the site. I like your idea Vikki about combine the pictures so they can be viewed side-by-side. I am going to test the site at 800x600 to see how they appear at that resolution.

[KevinBE]

Well now I am upset. I tested the site on 2 of my other computers and I find that the font I used in all my titles and logo, monotype corsiva, is not displaying. I guess this font is only available with Office XP. It displays just fine on my laptop, which also has Office XP with Frontpage 2002. Why would Microsoft do this. It allowed me to use a font that is not compatible with most computers and didn't warn me. Now I have more work to do.

[CJ Swartz]

Kevin -- I see the monotone Corsiva typeface, and I use Win98SE.

I really like the look of your site --- it is very attractive in color and line, but clean and readable and usable. Others have given good ideas about possible changes, but I just want to reiterate that the general over-all impression is one of a professional business website that exemplifies good taste and customer service. I really like how you included the image that could NOT be perfected as an example to show folks the limits of digital restoration.

Pat yourself on the back for all that you have accomplished and learned. Then, just keep up the good work -- there will always be reasons to make modifications, and this is great practice to learn how to make adjustments without changing the over-all scheme.

I heartily agree with the recommendation to change your contact page to list Suggestion and Praise before Problem and Complaint. In fact, I would avoid using the word "complaint" just because of the negative feelings it elicits. "Problem" should be a strong enough term and can cover any issues someone would have with either the website or with their restoration/retouch project.

Congrats on a great start!

[KevinBE]

Hi CJ, thanks for the kind words. If that font displays on your PC I wonder where it comes from, Office maybe? In any case I will have to change it to a font that is more common. It changes a lot for all the text to display as Arial. It sure looks better with the Monotype Corsiva font.

I have changed the contact page to your and Clare's recommendation. I have made changes to the Galleries. I'm not real happy with the way the Gallery works. Its too restrictive in the way comments are displayed. I may dump it and place the pictures on my own, but there are limitations to that too. Oh well it's all a part of the learning curve.

[clare]

The navigation is much better now with a far easier system of finding what you want.

Another thing to think about....
When you click on one of your images it would be benifical to have a direct link back to your main site without having to hit the back button - maybe you can incorporate this when you place the images side by side. Also the image pages seem not to have the same interface as the main site. Just an idea but maybe you could use your page layout to view the images with them above and below as restored and before.

Your site is looking and becoming better and better by the day, you've done a good job - it far exceeds my first attempt at a web site and I have also learnt loads from the comment here, thanks for sharing

Clare

[KevinBE]

Well the monotype corsiva font doesn't come in Office XP. I just checked the other computers and they have Office installed. I wonder where it comes from?

Hi Clare, noticed your post just as I opened this new message. I have made several changes off-line that I haven't uploaded yet. As I said before I am not happy with the gallery. I don't seem to have control of how the viewing page looks. I'm either not looking in the right place or this is another limitation to the Gallery feature.

I have removed the horizontal lines, which were too wide and now all the pages can compress to whatever screen resolution the viewer uses, down to 800x600 at least. Don't know why these lines were a fixed width, the other graphics I used have the ability to compress or expand. At least the top bar graphics can adapt to screen size. I'll play with the lines to see if I can get that working too.

Yes, I have received a lot of good help here. This site is the best!

[CJ Swartz]

While searching for the origin of "monotype Corsiva", I found a good reminder here:Fonts and web design

"The only way to have a typeface display exactly as you intend it to display on a web page, you must put the typeface in a graphic image.

If you desire to force a typeface in the text of your web pages, we recommend that you use the most common typefaces already installed on computers. The most common serif typefaces are Times and Times New Roman. The most common sans serif typefaces are Arial, Helvetica, and Verdana."

So, you can still use your decorative monotype Corsiva type by making it a gif or jpg image for your logo at the top, and your copyright info at the bottom. Don't know if that's practical for headings, but at least you can make some use of it, and I would hate for your visitors to just see Arial.

I found this webpage:Where Monotype Corsiva comes from It's found in these applications - products - Access 2000, Access 97 SR2, Excel 2000, FrontPage 2000, Greetings 99, Home Publishing 99, Office 2000 Premium, Office 4.3 Professional, Office 97 Small Business Edition SR2, Office 97 SR1a, Outlook 2000, PowerPoint 2000, Publisher 2000, Publisher 97, TrueType Font Pack, Word 2000

[CJ Swartz]

For all of us who are either working on developing our websites, or editing our websites, here's a site to help find possible errors

Dr. HTML

You can check up to five pages for free each day.

On your Main Page, Dr. HTML found this minor error: Table 2, line #32 - TR -- "A close tag was found without a matching open. This is probably an extra tag that you should remove."

It gives you an idea of how different browsers will fare with reading the page also -- there are some HTML attributes that may not be readable on some browsers.