hi sara b

well you'll soon be as good as us if you are enthosiastic .. ive been doing web design/developing for about 8 years now

down south .. same here ...

anyway your in the right forum,

its not a bad layout but im not sure about the menu .... its a bit hard to read the links/wording ... but the colours are ok..... maybe if the font was straight it would be better..

sorry to be ruthless but you did want our views (i hate criticising others work).

not sure if you know but you have erros on the page .... (javascript)

but overall a good start i still remember my first page ......aaagghhhh those where the days

anyway i must run ..

looks a lot better than my first site way back when...

just keep practicing and trying new things out...it's the only way to learn.

pmormr wrote: u should have seen my first website

Actually, the sins of our youth have a way of coming back to haunt us - http://www.archive.org/ - http://www.archive.org/

Don’t worry as your site look ok to me. The only things you may wish to consider that is if you can run ASP scripts, is a guest book and a News Mailing List. By doing this you will give interaction for your visitors. It’s a bit hard to find contact info, You may wish to think about a contact me page.

Looks good

Navigation good

Information good

Imaging good

Interaction Needs more visitor inputs

Keep up the good work

BoLt wrote: I suffer from Dyslexia, it means I can not spell to well not that I am thick.

"I syffer fromm Dislekseeia, dat meens I can know spel 2 wel, not dat I m thyck"

pmormr wrote: BoLt wrote: I suffer from Dyslexia, it means I can not spell to well not that I am thick. If that's a joke then you should fix it up a little... "I syffer fromm Dislekseeia, dat meens I can know spel 2 wel, not dat I m thyck"

HHAHAHAHA~!

pmormr... I nearly peed laughing...

I have some dyslexic friends. One is very thick and knows it. He's a newf and one of the funniest people you'd ever meet. The other fellow worked real hard to overcome is dyslexia, did so, and has become a very successful drug dealer since.

For the site, it looks like you have a good deal of content, which is the absolute #1 most important thing.

I'm not a fan of navigation buttons, in fact I hate them. I prefer text navigation. But get rid of the "button" text in the tags. You don't need it. "Eating Out" is enough. "Eating Out Button" is too much.

The nav button font is a bit hard to read. It works in the title, but the nav seems difficult. e.g. The second last button, "Algarre Fires 2003" is quite hard to read (relatively of course). I did not misspell there... The 'r' and 'v' are too similar when the font size is that small with that font. (Fonts are an art in themselves, and I suck so I stick to Arial, Courier, Times, etc...)

The color scheme is fine, but the contrast is a bit much. Try to blend the top and nav section with the body. It should be a bit more organic and not so stark.

Having Google ads is a great idea, but try a different color scheme. Can you match it a bit better? Also, the positioning for the ads is chaotic. They should be set in a specific position with no change.

You have email links that expose your email address to spiders... get ready for spam... Put that in a page where people enter all their information and click submit. You will get less spam.

Copy... be careful what you say. Things like "Please subscribe..." sound like begging. Don't. Tell people to subscribe and why they should. e.g. Subscribe to Algarve Beach Life and get all the latest and best information on blah blah blah. Invite people like you are doing THEM a favor, because you are.

Titles are poorly managed. You have code like:

<h3>
<b><font face="Verdana"><font color="#3333FF"><font size=-1>Desserts</font></font></font>&l t;/b></h3>

That's very messy. But good that you are using H# tags - VERY good to do that. The lower the number, the better. However, make them bigger. They are too small. You want them to stand out. I'm a web surfer, and I have little time, and I'm stupid. Make it real simple for me... Don't treat people like they care... they don't. You have to make them care, and a BIG DESSERT is much better than a little dessert.

CSS might help there.

pmormr wrote: If that's a joke then you should fix it up a little... "I syffer fromm Dislekseeia, dat meens I can know spel 2 wel, not dat I m thyck"

Dyslexia is no joke, and yes I do suffer form dyslexia and work hard to get round it. I never ask for sympathy and I never give sympathy in similar conditions, including disabled disabilities, I just give respect out instead. Dyslexia is hard on it’s own to overcome without being provoked with disrespectful comments.

I have a full respect for BoRg, Maddog and others like them as they work hard to achieve there end results. Just think how hard it must be for someone that looks at words only to see the shapes of the letters change and try to achieve a small part of what BoRg and Maddog can do. I have achieved many things in my life so far including. working with electronics, advanced robotics, meteorological, geological and computer engineering all with my dyslexia.

No I never joke about Dyslexia...... I just give it my best.

BoLt wrote: pmormr wrote: If that's a joke then you should fix it up a little... "I syffer fromm Dislekseeia, dat meens I can know spel 2 wel, not dat I m thyck"   Dyslexia is no joke, and yes I do suffer form dyslexia and work hard to get round it. I never ask for sympathy and I never give sympathy in similar conditions, including disabled disabilities, I just give respect out instead. Dyslexia is hard on it’s own to overcome without being provoked with disrespectful comments. I have a full respect for BoRg, Maddog and others like them as they work hard to achieve there end results. Just think how hard it must be for someone that looks at words only to see the shapes of the letters change and try to achieve a small part of what BoRg and Maddog can do. I have achieved many things in my life so far including. working with electronics, advanced robotics, meteorological, geological and computer engineering all with my dyslexia. No I never joke about Dyslexia...... I just give it my best.

No disrespect intended. I'm ADHD. I just don't take too much too seriously.

The fellow I mentioned that's a drug dealer... He really exists. He is dyslexic, very intelligent, and has worked very hard to overcome. For that I have a lot of respect for him... For selling drugs... well... that's another issue we won't touch here.

When I look at my two friends who are dyslexic, the "thick" one never tried much, and there is nothing to be said other than his thickest attribute is his unwillingness to try harder. The other fellow deserves a clap for his efforts.

Cheers to you Bolt for successfully dealing with a difficult predicament.

P.S. My viewable MSN ID name for the past month or so was, "Dislexic Christmas: What did Satan bring you?"

sarab wrote: Thanks again, all (and especially Bluefrog this time). Some of the stuff you've written has made me rethink what I'm doing on my own site, and I know Jennifer's planning some reworks, now she's gotten over me submitting her site to critiques! One question bluefrog  --  the email addresses were put in to be specific to the page contents.   I argued with Jennifer that she should have a Contact page, but she was adamant about doing it this way.   What I don't understand is why this approach would be more prone to spam than email links on a Contact page?   Am I missing something?  And is there a technical way to get around this hassle of spam? The titles code is what the WYSIWYG editor that Jen uses puts in.   We don't know how to avoid that.   Are there programs that would strip such messy stuff out?   We'd love to be slick enough to use a 'proper' page editor, but that's for the future, unfortunately. Oh, and the bit about the alt text for images...   We thought that if someone had images disabled then 'xxx button' would make more sense than just 'xxx'.   Are we way off beam there?   If so, that's something else I'll have to fix on my own site also. Thanks again, all, for the great feedback.   We can't believe all the help we're getting.   It's like Christmas in February! And sorry about the 'just one question' bluefrog.  Once I get started, I do go on a bit!  Sara PS   Pity about all the off-topic stuff about dyslexia.   I certainly never thought it was put up there as a joke, and am sad that anybody would think it was.   Ah, well...

Email Addresses:

Never actually post one online. Use a form and an email component to send the mail. There are LOTS of posts here about email components. Some are free (Jmail) and some are not. My favorite is Persits because it works really well and is highly functional far beyond what most people need, but I do.

There are programs that "spider" the internet looking for email addresses to send spam to. If you post your email address, get ready. Some nitwit posted my support email address and now I get a ton of Korean porn spam. I'm aching to DDOS the site it is for...

I've posted other technical links in the forums here on how to avoid spam. Search for "spam" in the forums on my user name and you'll eventually find it.

For the WYSIWYG thing, don't worry about it. You don't want to have to get too messy doing hand coding. Hand coding is much better if you can do it, but it is not necessary.

Regarding ALT properties, people who use LYNX or other text only / image diabled broswers will understand what it is. You don't need to tell them it is a button because they don't really care. They only want to know the link itself.

And Merry Christmas

There are a lot of very knowledgable people in this forum who are willing to help out. Take advantage of it and join the party  ~!