Critique my website, if you would.

In My Humble Opinion
1

Well, this thread seems to be a mundane, pointless collection of humble opinions. So I’ll try it here.

I’ve put a lot of work into my website. It’s not about anything specific, it’s basically just meant to entertain, to kill some time, and to keep in touch with friends.

I thought I’d offer it up to the Teeming Millions to critique.

Everything should be safe for work, except maybe three pictures in the “Android’s Dungeon” section:
“The newest OS from Apple Computer” (partially naked woman)
“A brand-new, low-cost grounds crew for your local soccer arena.” (guy not-so-subtley peeing on the field)
“Public Service Announcement: A Quick eBay Tip” (reflection in a ketle of a naked man)

I’m open to any suggestions, really, in content, design and technical fields, or nitpicks about anything.

Some specific questions:

  1. Is the eye motif weird/creepy?
  2. The text is orange for a reason, but is it too much?
  3. Do you see the section titles (or the site title itself) as tributes or ripoffs? Or are they too obscure to be either?

Thanks, and I hope y’all can be entertained for a few minutes.

And thanks again to OpalCat, who gave me this space some time ago. Hopefully you don’t deeply regret it. :wink:

2

I’m no skilled evaluator of content, but I can critique your coding, and I must say, good job! There are a few minor improvements which could be made, but overall, your site is very accessible for one which was made without accessibility in mind.

3

Yeah… that results from learning basic HTML from the “View Source…” option, and from using a Lynx browser for a coupla years. I know the pain of a simple browser.

4

Weeeell…

The photo archive seems to be deadskie. But it is on angelfire, so I don’t think it’s your coding. :slight_smile:

(In all fairness, I know I’ve been able to access it before. You posted in the "home page exchange thread, yeah?)

I know I’ve lost a couple hours going through the funny stuff; the site’s enough like our old site (old as in long gone) that I’m comfortable with the layout.

Oh yeah… title the index page. I keep running across this bookmark for “a fathom site” and not remembering what it is until… I…

[sub]Oooh, you sneaky bugger. You just want page hits![/sub]

:wink:

5

I’m not terribly fond of the magenta text over a dark background (which I didn’t notice at first that it was a gradient - I do like that), but maybe that’s just me.

I like the little repeated eye thumbnails/icons.

The big eye logo, although it’s only 30K or so, took quite a while to load up on my (admittedly pitifully slow) dialup connection; dunno if this is a bandwidth bottleneck somewhere else; I’d usually expect a bit faster. Personally, I found the big page logo a little pointless; it might be better to have a smaller image with the text bleeding off the edges of it.

Some interesting content; I particularly like the chain letters bit; is that your own work?

6

Me neither, but the rest looks good.

7

The dark purple of your visited links on your home page is a little to dark. I can barely read where I’ve been.

I have to agree with the comments about your overall colours. Bit over the top and almost ‘Porn’ like.

This page http://www.angelfire.com/theforce/jjtm/newgallery.html has no <HEAD></HEAD> it also has no </BODY> or </HTML> tags. It simply finished after ‘should have been rehearsing.’ You may wanna look at fixing that.

You’ve got the same issues on http://www.angelfire.com/theforce/jjtm/newgallery/SantaCruz.html

While I’m not getting any bad looking pages (the browser if probably filling in the gaps), you should look at addressing it.

In your dungeon I’m also losing track of which links I’ve clicked as the visited is no different to the unvisited colour.

Still looking at the content, but not really qualified to say what’s good and bad.

8

Sorry, more thing I just noticed.
On this page http://fathom.org/jjtm/dungeon/Compooters.html (you are also missing the tags I mention above), but you may also wanna add the image HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes so the browser can reserve a placeholder for them while they are coming down. It will also help render the images (slightly faster) as the PC is not trying to work out what dimensions to display the image, but is being told what to do.

9

Thanks for the notes, all.

Skeezix- As for angelfire, once in a while it’ll take forever to load, if at all (much like the SDMB of the recent past) but it usually loads OK. Then again, I have DSL, which might make that a moot point. Angelfire also tosses in a banner ad at the top sometimes, and sometimes not.

Caught@Work- The visited links on the homepage should stay orange. In fact, all the links everywhere should be orange and stay orange. Perhaps your browser automatically keeps vlinks dark purple? (But no, the other vlinks stayed orange… very peculiar, indeed.) I kept the visited links orange because I never really saw a need for a difference, but then again, I’ve already seen everything. That’ll be a change. And I’ll add in the HEAD, etc. tags.

Three votes against the colors. Is it only the pink, or the pink and orange? I like the orange (SF Giants color) and I used pink/purple because I used two of my favorite colors in the gradient background, and I wanted to get in purple somewhere, but the contrast forced it to be much more pink. (I assume the backgound gradient is OK.)

And is the slowness of angelfire a real problem? Should I try to find another host? (I’d love to keep it all on Fathom, but Opal’s already letting me stretch my limits, and I just got a digital camera, so it’ll only get bigger.)

10

Agreed…the colors need to go. It’s the pink, orange and green. Although, my pink is coming up a bit purpley. I do give you points for readability, though…that’s a mistake a lot of designers make. Putting colors in that make stuff hard to read. Your colors just make your site look kinda ugly :slight_smile: But it’s not a big deal. Actually, the more I think about it, keep the colors. They give the page personality. Seriously. You can read the text and they don’t hurt your eyes. So I say keep them. That’s a vote for. Especially if it is orange for a reason. If there’s a reason, and it’s not making it hard to view the page, keep it. (What’s the reason, btw?)

Also, what were you using to design the site? You could be a little more inventive if you have the right software, rather than just have a straight column setup. Ideally, you shouldn’t have to scroll on the title page, just be able to see the links to the main sections. Feel free to make them scroll once they have ventured into the uncharted deep of your website, however.

Related to that, you may want to consider making a menu bar and putting it on the top or side of your page, so they can skip from section to section without having to hit back on their browser. Makes navigation easier. Don’t forget a link to the home page on every page.

Ditch the giant eye except on the main page. It’s taking up space and making it longer to download the page. No need for that. Beside, they’ve already seen it.

The link and announcement about Itsawhale should be more prominently displayed, rather than being tucked away in a little corner there. Maybe with different colors, too…to draw attention.

You may also want to not give out your AIM name on your website, and I hope that the e-mail address you give is one setup seperate from your normal account.

Overall, I give it a C. Not too shabby, but could be improved. Sorry if this sounds harsh, it’s not meant to be. You nailed the most important points - you can read it and the links work. Everything else is just fine tuning. Keep at it.

11

Oh yeah, fonts like Arial are easier to read online than fonts like Times New Roman, due to their lack of seriffs. Sariffs? Serifs? Dammit.

Anyway, just something to think about.

12

Mangetout- No, the chain letters bit is not by me. I actually beleive the first time I saw it was in the Pit, but the poster said they had received in e-mail themself.

Neurotik- Orange is one the SF Giants’ colors, so it’s kinda grown on me.

To design it, I used SimpleText (NotePad to you Windows sufferers. ;))

I didn’t stick a menu bar on every page (like SDMB’s forum jump list, I assume) because I personally never use them, so I didn’t bother, I don’t like to bury myself so deep in a site that I can’t back out of it, so I go back to the main menu page/index and go back in from there.

What do you mean by “they’ve already seen” the big eye? I like the eye, I just think it’s an appealing image, but it may just be me.

In case anyone is wondering, the giant eye is that of Elisha Dushka (Buffy, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back). the bullets on the main page are Mila Kunis, the photo gallery is Elisha Cuthbert from 24, links are Sarah Michelle Gellar, and the Dungeon is my girlfriend. (Boy, take that last phrase out of context…)

13

Oh, and I didn’t specify a font. I left that up to the user’s prefs.

14

Ah, I see about the colors. Too bad my Angels kicked the crap out of Giants, huh? OK, enough of that. Back to business.

By the way, I just realized I wasn’t linked to the start of the page, so let me begin again.

The main page has the giant eye logo and the two links to A Little South of Sanity and Akbar and Jeff’s Photo Hut. (You may want to check copyrights, but I’m sure it’s not a problem). So far so good. I, personally, don’t mind the colors…but maybe if you switched the pink and orange. Maybe not. I dunno…I like the orange on green, not so much the pink. But your color choices are limited with the background you selected. So maybe it’s for the best.

Anyway, on this first page we have our first problem. You have two links. The second link is then repeated on the next page. Basically, you are having an organizational problem and it makes your site a little funky to navigate. User friendly is your friend…unless you are making some sort of point. Which I don’t think you are.

I recommend that you take a piece of paper and make a diagram of how you want your site organized with squares or circles or something designating each page and using lines to represent links. Then place the links accordingly.

Actually, this is getting complicated to explain, can I just IM you? It might be easier that way.

15

I’m getting pretty damn confused myself. Please do. AIM name’s the same as here.

Oh, and we let you win.[/pathetic]