My New Website!

[Carp4U]

Hey,

I recently made a website!
I designed it on FrontPage, it still needs A LOT of work doing on it and more info but visit it and tell me what you think!
www.cheshire-wildlife.co.uk

Thanks!

 

[saltynay]

Front page is extremely inefficient it adds a lot of code that isn't needed. I am not a designer just what I have heard.

 

[rabbut]

A good start. There is a div tag at the bottom of the page that is showing as code, rather than what it is supposed to be (A hit counter I think?), so it may be an idea to look at that is you haven't already. Your navigation bar is missing it's links and images, but otherwise all looks OK and works (I'm viewing in Mozilla Firefox BTW)

If you are going to have many pages, it may be an idea to look into and start playing with CSS (Cascading Stype Sheets). Though they look daunting when you start to learn how to use them, they allow you to change the appearence of the whole site from one place, which has obvious editing advantages if you intend to have more than a select few pages It also makes all the pages more professional-looking, as styling is standorised

The head of the page that Frontpage has built for you isn't W3C standords compliant. If it's a year 9 project, it may not matter too much, but if it's a site for a hobby group that's going to stay hosted, it could again be an idea to look into XHTML coding and fixing that. In doing so you make your page compatible with all web browsers, using all the lay-out tags you put in place to affect appreance. I think the missing nav bar and stray tag at the bottom may be down to Firefox not seeing the page as XHTML, rather the older code whose name I've forgotten but that does not support the use of anything but text and basic images...

That site has potential to look realy good with the extra work you plan to put it

All the best
Rabbut

 

[matt20687]

the next step i am trying to take is to try to learn how to use joomla! apparently it is really good and you can make pro sites with it!

 

[rabbut]

We have it at Uni. It's supposed to be worse that Frontpage, but hey... Each to their own. Dreamweaver is the main one used by pro developers...

The thing with web development is that everyone has their own tools preferances Whatever tool you choose, you will have to learn XHTML code to get your page to validate to W3C standords. It is currently in the discussion process of being made law that all web pages being hosted in the UK comply to W3C standords, and no tool can create code for you that will validate successfully every time Some will get close (like Dreamweaver) but others are way off (like Frontpage). They are all usefull tools, but none are perfect

Don't forget to view in IE and Firefox as a minimum when developing. Pages display differently in different browsers. Firefox, Google Crome, Safari e.t.c are all W3C compliant, but IE and Microsoft contantly work against W3C standords... In most browsers, bar IE, the page will appear similar, but will be different in IE. Frontpage allows some things that only IE will allow and that aren't W3C compliant and may fail to show to people that aren't using IE... The reverse argument it true for making your page W3C compliant, IE users might not be able to view the page correctly...

If you get into the web development field seriously, you will find CSS very usefull, and only a few web development tools will let you work with them (Dreamweaver being the only one I find reasonable intuative to use with CSS's). In reality, I prefur to code myself, as I know it valiadates when I get to the end, and I can use CSS easily for the styling... Again though, each to their own

I can still see one or two "rogue elements" in your homepage ATM...

The place for webpage code and validation is W3C's Website or here for validation...

All the best
Rabbut

 

[saltynay]

+1 dreamweaver its a very effective tool and you can code in notepad if your hardcore

 

[helterskelter]

I used to use dreamweaver and it's very good at what it does.

But i mainly use ASP and hand code most of it as a tool to teach my self ASP.
For the last 6 week's though I've got into Joomla and now looking at PHP and trying to teach my self again!!!!

I'm crap at CSS but this is very important if you rarely want al simple site an easy to manage with out having to edit every single page.
This is why I'm on Joomla now as i cn nick theme's and just personalise them

 

[Darkstar]

+1 dreamweaver its a very effective tool and you can code in notepad if your hardcore

don't use notepad, it's crap. If you're coding yourself notepad++ is far far better.

the next step i am trying to take is to try to learn how to use joomla! apparently it is really good and you can make pro sites with it!

You might want to try out a few cms packages before deciding to which one to stick with, there are plenty out there and some are better than other depending on what you're trying to do. If you are using joomla though and want a 'pro' looking site as you put it, then make sure you design and code your own template. Otherwise your site may look 'pro' but it'll still look like thousands of others on the web too.

 

[helterskelter]

+1 dreamweaver its a very effective tool and you can code in notepad if your hardcore

don't use notepad, it's crap. If you're coding yourself notepad++ is far far better.

It's ok used it a couple of times.

I use editplus 2
One of the best hand coding tool's I've ever used, and used it now for the last 5 years.