Sword dancing site

[medlington]

Hi,

Just finishing this site off and looking for some feedback,

Its for a local sword dancing troop who needed an online identity. They only have a small budget so we couldnt go too over the top with features.

triskele sword sheffield

any thoughts?

[all4sma]

Not bad... at least you used divs and the site is standards compliant.

The header:
Maybe it's just me; but it looks cut off because of the way that picture is cropped. I think the logo needs to be better 'pronounced' and the extra color the header could have brought to the page(s) would have been nice rather than the red mask.

The Navigation:
Very, un-intuitive and plain. It calls attention to itself, but not necessarily in a good way. Seems to stand out a bit because it almost looks out of place. This is common, but I think a simple gradient and more padding around the individual links would go a long way. The light gray roll-overs aren't too attractive either.

For SEO and visually impaired purposes it should be in an unordered list rather than inline links.

The JavaScipt is totally un-necessary... The images that light up over mouse-over are kinda awkwardly placed in a position that has no relation to the navigation and they're not links themselves which is kind of weird.

Links and events are not necessary and I think would be better utilized in a side-bar visible on all pages.

What the heck is Tyzach? Looks to be an about us page, but why is it called something like that? Keeping visitors guess; not a good idea.

Rapper: Maybe would be a little better called Rapper Dance; or just Dance or something... or maybe even leave it out of that top navigation on the top and just linked from the link on the home page or maybe linked as some sort of "Esclusive! - Check this out!" kind of thing.

The Body/Content:
Why is the text light gray on a white/gray background? Boy is that hard to read! Spacing is okay, but I think a little extra line-spacing would go a long way to the amount of content you have... as it is now looks pretty bunched up; especially on long paragraphs.

The image on the right -- Looks a little awkwardly placed because there's no spacing on the top. If it was lined up a little more vertically with the text it would be much better incorporated. Also, I think that if you made it so the text did not wrap around on the bottom it would look better placed too.

What's with the events page? ...

date04 event04 date05 event05 date06 event06 date07 event07etc...

If there's nothing there then why are these visible?


The Footer:
Now, this isn't entirely necessary, but I think it would be a good idea to fill in that red bar on the bottom with a sort-of second-chance navigation or at least a anchor link back to the top of the page for those longer pages.

The valid css/html links gotta go!



That's all.

[medlington]

Thanks for your comments all4sma,

I agree about the header, in my initial designs I had made several pages with normal colour headers but the client really liked the red filter. I have been considering putting something behind the logo to emphasize it but just not got round to it yet.

Navigation:
again this was the clients choice from the test designs but I like simple navigation. I do think I will make the images actual links and have been considering repeating the navigation in the footer.

Im interested in what you said about having the navigation in an unordered list, could you tell me why this is better? Im completely self-tought so might be missing some basic info.

Tyzack is a sword maker, the page is info about him not the dance troop. All the content has been provided by the client so Iv had little control over what pages there are. I do see what your getting at though, you wouldn’t know what the pages about until you’ve read all the txt.

The image on the right was level with the top of the txt but I thought it looked even more out of place so I moved it up.

The events page is user-updateable and the client hasn’t updated the events yet, that’s why it says event01 etc.

Interesting what you say about the validate CSS links. Id like to know what everyone thinks about having these links on the page. Personally I put them on so that if someone is looking at the site that could be a prospective client they can see that the site is made correctly and have more faith in our services. Lots of people hate these links though, I cant really see what harm they do to the site. I do think I need to change the colour though as its just too much red, I wanted them to be un-intrusive but I just don’t like the look of them.

Thanks again for your comments, its good to get a bit of constructive criticism

[karinne]

Nobody cares if you're site validates ... 99% of your clients don't know what the heck validation means or what XHTML is or even CSS.

I agree with all4sma ... they've got to go.

As for the rest ... well ... he's pretty much get everything covered