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MortusEclipse

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Posts posted by MortusEclipse

  1. I am not familiar with that tutorial myself, I would also make sure that there are no file paths in your database that need to be changed. I struggled with this over the last few days as some plugins still use absolute file paths rather than relative file paths. You could have your database still pointing to images @ /localhost/content/...etc instead of /{server path}/content/...etc where your images actually are.

  2. First of all you do not want to use tables for webpage layout, the are for Data Tables only. Early in web design, when there was no other options and website design was static, tables had been used for layout. It's best to use DIVs and CSS to layout the page where DIVs can be dynamically sized and positioned in relation to one another. If you are using Wordpress and your theme does not come with Column shortcodes, noting that columns are not the same as tables, there are several plugins to add this functionality. Some others may have some other options for you as well.

  3. You need to carry your navigation menu through all pages. You want to start thinking grid structure. Navigation should appear consistently either above your content aranged horizontally or to the left (usually) aranged vertically. Currently you only have a navigation menu to the left, arranged vertically and below your content.

     

    Otherwise I think it would be best to follow the tutorials on the site that Andrea gave you. If that does not give you everything you need to follow the suggestions you have already, try some google searches.

  4. Truthfully you will always get both kinds, especially when it comes to certain types of information. Some prefer subitting forms online because as you stated it's quicker. Others prefer to fill in a paper form and mail it or submit it in person. They either like the tactility of a paper form, or feel it's more secure than submitting it online. That being said, if you as a buisiness are comfortable handling both hard copy and digital form submissions, give them the option. Otherwise give them the option that best suites your businesses administration procedures. Options are usually better however.

  5. Yes I agree, that theme definately seems to be handling mobile formatting badly. :| None the less, I think with that you have a fairly good start to work from. You may have to try other themes till things not only look right but work right as well. Though I have a feeling the current theme may be a responsive design, if you do decide to try other themes make sure they are responsive themes, they should format more neatly to just about any mobile device. Otherwise if you use a theme that is not responsive there are a few plugins that will alow mobile devices to access the site in a mobile format.

  6. Is there a standard website starting dimension.

    I have heard that 1024 x 768 is what I should use. then I hear that 960 x 720 is.

     

    Is there a standard size?

     

    Just to expand a little bit on Andreas answer, 1024 - 960 is the target width you should use if you are designing a website to be displayed on a desktop or laptop. Where you need to consider the height is where your focus content will fall in the initial view the visitor will have when the page loads. Considering 768 - 720 as your horizon line, always want to have a significant portion of your focus content above this horizon line, you never want it below the horizon line. In other words you never want the content that is the focus of that page to be hidden and require the visitor to scroll down to find it. Most people won't and not seeing what they came to that page for will simply move on, possibly boucing right off your site.

     

    In either case it's never a bad idea to design for the smallest area. This will give you a little play room in your design. I am sure there are occasions where this is not favorable, but where and when you deem this true is up to you.

  7. Thanks all for the help. I may have made things a bit more difficult as I went to the WP forums to ask some questions and had to switch my theme to another one to show how it was messing up. I will switch the theme back later today to what I plan to use (assuming I don't just start completely over with Joomla or something :)). The actual theme I'm using has a much smaller logo and allowed me to change fonts to a more legible type.

     

    I am going to get rid of the image slider on the first page, it just annoys me. I think I will make a dedicated gallery page and just have one image on each of the pages and then if people want to see more they can go to the gallery. I am one of those people in the minority who doesn't like to be distracted by pictures or videos, I just want to read text and then look at pics or a video when I choose to. I'm sure I can find a way to get it in without being too busy.

     

    I've decided to have a links page of sorts. I am truly doing it to help people out and not just trying to have links for the sake of links. I spend hours talking to people about what gear to buy to get started in Schutzhund (the dog sport we promote around here) and am constantly emailing people links and descriptions of the gear, whether to get leather or biothane, blah blah blah. I have a list of books they should get and a list of where to find clubs and competitions in our region. I have spent a lot of time compiling this info and think it would be great to be able to steer people to the website to get it all.

     

    So for those of you who are in the know, is it a bad idea to group these "miscellaneous" pages under the Home page? I plan to have a Gallery page, a links page and an Articles page (for my husband to post training articles).

     

    Thanks all again, I'm loving these forums so far. I spent a couple of hours last night reading and have learned much already :D.

     

    Annette

     

    Some other things to consider is that your body content (Images and Text.), need not stretch across the whole page. Infact likely they should not. You want your body text to be visible when the page loads, at the moment you have a rather large image dominating the bottem of the page when it first loads. A better idea would be to make that image smaller and put the small blurb beside it. My personal preferance is to keep images to the right and text to the left unless the image it's self is the focus of the text. If your theme provides column shortcodes you may even consider using them to divide the body in three and have the blurb, list and image side by side. Whatever looks best to you and is most comfortable to read. An added benefit of placing the text beside the image at the top of the page is that it shortens the line length, puts your text across more lines and makes it look more substantial. I would say that a good rule of thumb is that your body text to be clearly visible on a 15 inch laptop (As this seems to be the most common screen size purchased.), though need not fit entirely on the screen. You never want to visitor to have to scroll down to view the body text of your page.

     

    I would still suggest that you keep in mind the size and proportion of images you want to display on your website. Cropping for size, proportion and content will make your pages look more organzided than having images of random sizes and proportions. You never want to add images directly from your digital camera, you want to at the very minimum check the resolution (ppi) of the images you are putting on your website and make sure they are 72 ppi. I just want to enphisize this as it's actually very important.

     

    As for the links, you may also want to consider working them into related pages on your site, perhaps as a footnote on the page rather than simply having a miscellanious page for them. I like to have these outbound links open in a new tab or browser window when ever possible. That allows visitors to access content on these external pages without actually leaving your website and can return simply by closing the window or tab. If you really want a seperate page for external links, you can do that.

  8. First thing I will say is you first draft takes far to long to load. Actually it crashed my desktop instance the first time I tried to load it. Pages taking a long time to load it terrible, crashing your visitors computers is nothing short of an absolute desaster.

     

    So the first thing I would greatly suggest is to check all your images for file size and resolution. Your Logo image is set to 1200 pixels per inch. This is far to high! For the web all images should be no more than 72 pixels per inch. Just to be sure you can recover hire resolution images later (Who knows maybe you want to put your logo on a highway side billbourd one day.), I would save your logo as a copy at 72 pixels per inch and play with the quality when you save the image. Set the quality just high enough that it looks good, don't go higher just for the sake of trying to make it look better.

     

    While you are at it, check all the images you are grouping together, for example in your image slider and make sure they are a uniform size. I would recommend that you do not try to enlarge an image just for the sake of using them together. Simply put enlarging images more than a few percent will simply make them look badly pixelated. Crop can be your friend to ensure they are of the same proportion. Generally you want your images as small as possible and yet still fit your design.

     

    Once you have done that perhaps you can get more feedback.

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