new site - any comments?

[www.myalldesigns.com]

Hi Every one,

our new site has just gone live, it's not 100% finished but wanted to get some feed back before we really go for it.

Myall Designs - UK based web designers - Web host and web site developer

[Britnet]

Tables ewww

Nice to see your compliant, site looks clean maybe slightly boring design but hey you can never please everyone.
Information is simple good for clients not so good for the technically minded. External links on every page (WHY). Other than that it’s ok. I would rebuild it in CSS no need for table designs these days, plus it looks lazy. Optimization is crap but if you don’t need it to rank that’s kewl. Hope this helps.

[Dean-123]

The graphic is good. But I think the boundary of every part should be more distinct

[Jonathan Hue]

Good work, infact excellent work. Both from user and search engine's point of view. Easy access to information, clear and un-ambiguous.

[PointandStare]

tables and flash navigation. Do you not want it to get anywhere?
Other than that, as others have said, it's a bit flat.

[www.myalldesigns.com]

Originally Posted by PointandStare

tables and flash navigation. Do you not want it to get anywhere?
Other than that, as others have said, it's a bit flat.

Flash navigation coupled with text links at the bottom so the lovely googlebot can follow through. tables are not an issue for optimization, unless you know something the entire industry has missed. This is a very negative, non contrctive comment (and its wrong) - not interested!

To the other kind people who mentioned my use of tables. It's a shame I missed the CSS revolution... a bit. I am learning the stuff and will probably format again with CSS at some point in the near future. For the time being I am comfortable with tables and will just have to stick to it for now!

Thanks to everyone but pointandstare for the constructive and helpful critisism. Point of interest - take a look at http://www.silverdisc.co.uk/ this site was designed by the world renowned SEO Alan Perkins and generates millions on £s every year but is flat as hell and very plain. It was this that made me decide to make a very clean but proffesional site and not think twice about exciting design work. thats what portfiolios are for

[PointandStare]

Nice to see you know how to take criticism.

"tables are not an issue for optimization"
Do you actually know what the word 'optimisation' means?
And I think you'll find that silverdisc doesn't have a table in sight.

Yet another bloke in a bedroom that thinks he knows everything.

[Neil-C]

he's right ya know... not a table in sight!

[RSimpson]

I'm sorry, but are we still in 1998? Are you designer or a coder? The look of your site says coder but the fact you've used tables for page layout (instead of tabular data, nothing wrong with using tables for that) says you're neither.

2 things which jump right out at me are the horrid drop shadow under your name which is making it difficult to read (think about users who have visual impairments) and the image you've used next to your templates paragraph, please tell me you're joking with that image.

If you want your code to be clean, light (ie. opposite of heavy) and valid you must use CSS to handle the design and layout of your site. Not only will it load faster but the search engines like it better and people visiting the site from a device which is not a desktop/laptop computer might actually be able to use it.

This may've sounded harsh but there are far too many "designers" out there who think they're designers but don't actually understand design. And just for anybody who hasn't grasped it yet, design is not all about how something looks.


Cheers,
Robert

PS. Sorry about the rant there, someone remind me to stop taking in so much caffeine.

[Miss Bee]

Hi there,

I'm not a designer or coder but I am a web copywriter. You shouldn't neglect this side (the text) of your website either; good grammar and spelling is as important as a site's other elements for creating a professional online profile.

I've had a quick look and your text would benefit from some restructuring (shorter sentences, shorter paragraphs and so on), as well as some grammar and spelling checks. Also, be aware of using US English spelling (unless this is intentional, but I'd advise against it unless you are an American business); a few words have crept in.

The content is generally fine, but an 'About Us' page may also be of interest. You may feel that this isn't necessary.

Sorry to come back to the CSS topic; it's great that your coding is validated in terms of accessibility, but CSS would go further again towards making your site even more so.

One thing I've just noticed but nearly missed completely is the 'Start Here' button. I assumed that this referred to the fact that I was on the homepage and that all other content was in the right-hand menu. Reading through, it looks as though it's text that would sit easily on the relevant page (e.g. the CMS information). You're at risk of visitors completely missing this additional detail (partly because they won't want to spend time clicking through).

I hope you find my comments helpful.

Helen