Critique My Site, If You Please

[subfreq]

Hi everyone.

After reading g a few threads of people critiquing new Web sites I have mustered up the courage to put my new site up. It has been live since Monday and there has been a small trickle of users coming on board. I wont explain the concept now just take a look at


MyVisionBoard - Where Your Vision Comes To Life


I have spent a load of time getting this to be a really good service.

I have now reached a point where i want to get traffic coming in and people using the site. It is totally free and i am committed to keeping it that way. I don't even have ads on the site at this stage. I want to wait and let it grow organically first so I know who my users are. Then I plan on bringing in new services to the site that I know they want.

I hope you like the site and any and all feedback will be greatly appreciated.

[Tuumble]

Really nice site - I wish you all the best with it.

I've registered and posted a couple of things in there too. Will let you know more when I've had a play.

[subfreq]

thanks for having a look at my site. I really liked yours as well, very effective layout.

I have made a few changes that will take effect on my site later today. the blog section will be working properly and their will also be an invite a friend section.

I have a very long background in graphics so knew what i wanted for the look of the site. It was developed by a team in India through an online script tender site. I have to say it has been the best experience ever. they are the most honest, diligent and hardworking people I have ever worked with.

It has allowed me to concentrate on making sure the site is providing the right features and services.

I have chosen not to put a forum on the site and never will as their are already great places like here which are moderated by very intelligent people. I wanted to provide something different.

[Brutha]

MyVisionBoard - Where Your Vision Comes To Life

At the same time you say: "A Picture tells a thousand words". Walk your talk.

I know no social networking site that has testimonals. I think it is better, to make it easy for a new user to find how people are actually using your site.

[John Wesley]

It looks good. The about page confused me a bit though. The language was a bit confusing and couldn't figure out exactly what the site was for.

Good luck getting people to use it.

[subfreq]

Thanks guys.

The About page is very poor to be honest. I started it and it was posted before completion.

Now on reflection I think I was trying to use language that wasn't my own, probably in an attempt to sound professional. really i should have trusted my own voice and just written honestly who I am and why the site is there.

I added a testimonial page because I want the site to be a service for people and if they like it let them say so. I have made the service the priority and not the Social Networking features which are not the main focus of the website.

I want users to feel they can make a Vision Board with privacy if they want to and invite a friend if they want to but no be overloaded like other sites like MySpace. Those sites are about hooking up with people where as i want the focus to be firmly on Making and enriching a Vision Board.

I really appreciate your comments so thanks a million for taking the time to look at my site. I will actually take down the About Us text now and work on a proper version over the weekend.

Much appreciated - Scott

[Brutha]

Originally Posted by subfreq

I added a testimonial page because I want the site to be a service for people and if they like it let them say so. I have made the service the priority and not the Social Networking features which are not the main focus of the website.

If I read testimonial on a page, I feel sold. It may just be me but I don't want to feel sold.
I know it is no easy decision, you should just think about it.

How about having your own vision page, and linking to it on the start page?

[Minsc]

-The "this site is green" image link at the bottom of the page is broken.
-The red-on-light-blue color scheme of on the "MYVISIONBOARD BIGGEST BLOGGERS," ect, is hard to read... Maybe make it dark red?
-There's a ton of whitespace in your html. When I removed extra whitespace from my pages, it halved their sizes(but they only have temporary content to make sure everything works).
-Why do you need to know all of that stuff in the signup? Why does every signup need an email address anyway?
Yours isn't as bad as it could by but why do you force people to tell you how they found out about the site? That's supposed to be optional... And you have a date and an over 18 checkbox.
-Why do you have to supposedly be over 18 to use your site? Either make it 13 or get rid of it... (that's the standard; makes me think you're running a dating site or something when it's 18)
-The over-18 and terms-aggrement checkboxes get unchecked after you return to the signup after failing it.
-You have three parameters for some links which is bad for search engines.
-Your site looks like another site that hosts blogs, pictures, ect.
-What's the point of having a virtual board with pictures on it? About page doesn't really explain it.
-"A Vision Board is a journey towards teh ideal things that you choose for your life." -The About Page

[subfreq]

Firstly Thanks bfor both replies.

Brutha - I will spend a bit of time thinking about the testimonial over the weekend. If it does come across as a hard sell then it's not the message i wanted to get across. I might have to drop that link.

Misc phew. Thanks for going through the site in such detail I will reply below.

Originally Posted by Minsc

-The "this site is green" image link at the bottom of the page is broken.

Known Issue. I have to write the copy that explains the site leaves no carbon footprint.

Originally Posted by Minsc

-The red-on-light-blue color scheme of on the "MYVISIONBOARD BIGGEST BLOGGERS," ect, is hard to read... Maybe make it dark red?
-There's a ton of whitespace in your html. When I removed extra whitespace from my pages, it halved their sizes(but they only have temporary content to make sure everything works).

I am pretty happy to let the colour scheme stay as it is.

I will have a look into the white space this weekend. I did think that is could have been tighter. I think the load times are OK at the moment but i could probably look at optimizing the images as well.

Originally Posted by Minsc

-Why do you need to know all of that stuff in the signup? Why does every signup need an email address anyway?
Yours isn't as bad as it could by but why do you force people to tell you how they found out about the site? That's supposed to be optional... And you have a date and an over 18 checkbox.
-Why do you have to supposedly be over 18 to use your site? Either make it 13 or get rid of it... (that's the standard; makes me think you're running a dating site or something when it's 18)
-The over-18 and terms-aggrement checkboxes get unchecked after you return to the signup after failing it.

The one field that I could probably drop is the 'Found Out About This Site' link. The developers put that in and at the very least it should be optional but I do think i will drop it.

Email is essential as there is an email verification process that is standard on most sites these days. I might add a Privacy link in the footer of the site to explain that this information will remain strictly private.

The over 18 check box is something i both wanted and was advised to have. I want a mature audience for many reason, but basically I think that age and above is more suited to what the site does. On a different level I don't want to get into complication with users interacting with minors in any way and having Over 18's protects me from that. Their is absolutely no dating element to the site at all so it is a bummer if it comes across that way. I find the majority of sites I use have 18 as the age restriction. I hope that it comforts people 28 and over that this site wont have young kids on it. They have the likes of Bebo, Myspace and loads of places to go already.

The check box resets if the form fails because you have to opt into it when a valid application is processed.

Originally Posted by Minsc

-You have three parameters for some links which is bad for search engines.

The search engine currently only looks on Diary entries. That is so you can see if their are other users writing about your interests. I don't have browsing through users as I want people to feel they can make a Vision Board in relative privacy if they want.

I might need you to explain the 3 parameters in a bit more detail though as I am not sure I fully understand what you mean.

Originally Posted by Minsc

-Your site looks like another site that hosts blogs, pictures, ect.
-What's the point of having a virtual board with pictures on it? About page doesn't really explain it.

The feedback on the site look I am taking as a compliment not criticism. I wanted the site to be clean and simple and am very happy with how it ended up.

I updated the about page last night so hopefully that sheds a bit more light on it. I haven't put this site up to mentor people so don't want to dictate how other users use this site, at the bottom of the About page I have put a 4 step basic guide. I probably need to spend a bit more time on it and make it better. I have really put up my own testimonial on why I made the site and will probably update that during the week to make it more accurate.

Originally Posted by Minsc

-"A Vision Board is a journey towards teh ideal things that you choose for your life." -The About Page

Cheers. For some reason I have a genetic disability when it comes to spelling 'THE'

[aussieNickuss]

Your site looks fantastic, however my pixel-perfect ways makes me a little worried about the 3 boxes at the bottom of the page whose left and right borders don't extend down to the bottom borders.

Other than that, it looks great.

[Minsc]

Originally Posted by subfreq

The search engine currently only looks on Diary entries. That is so you can see if their are other users writing about your interests. I don't have browsing through users as I want people to feel they can make a Vision Board in relative privacy if they want.

SEO Advice on Search Engine Marketing » Minimize URL querystring parameters, don’t use ID=

After a link you have some parameters on your site...

ex: "http://www.site.com/page.php?param=value&param2=value2"

I heard that search engines don't look over your site well if you have three or more of them.
So you should try to reduce the number of parameters to increase the odds of someone finding something on your site with, say, Google.

[aussieNickuss]

Originally Posted by Minsc

After a link you have some parameters on your site...

ex: "http://www.site.com/page.php?param=value&param2=value2"

I heard that search engines don't look over your site well if you have three or more of them.
So you should try to reduce the number of parameters to increase the odds of someone finding something on your site with, say, Google.

I see your using PHP, so most likely your on Apache? If so, then consider using the ModRewrite module.

With ModRewrite, you could convert "http://www.site.com/page.php?param=value&param2=value2" to "http://www.site.com/page/value/value2" with a simple bit of code like this in your .htaccess file....

RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule ^page/([^/.]+)/([^/.]+)$   page.php?param=$1&param2=$2

That code rewrites page/value/value2 to page.php?param=value&param2=value2. The user (and search engines) only see the neat URL, whereas the server sees the technical URL.

Read up more on ModRewrite.....

mod_rewrite, a beginner's guide (with examples)

[subfreq]

I am actually on Mysql.(edit I now realise that this comment probably only highlights my newbie code status and the fact I don't really understand this single string scenario)

I had a developer make the site and he has been very good so far with changes but I am just outside my window of getting more done on the back of the major site development. That means i am trying to get a handle on this myself and although i do have knowledge of scripting this is on the outer limits of it.

I have focused on a few different areas in the last couple of days and have changed the Blog function and also added an Invite A Friend feature for users.

I am now getting my head around the search string scenario.

Any pointers for a MySql platform would be appreciated.

[aussieNickuss]

MySQL is your database system, PHP is your programming language and most likely Apache is your web server software, based on Linux server. (Read up on LAMP to get an idea of how it all fits together.... LAMP (software bundle)) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Alternatively, you could be running MySQL and PHP on top of Microsoft Windows IIS server, but if you did, you'd probably be using ASP instead of PHP.

What kind of pointer are you after for MySQL?

[Iksander]

Your HTML should be XHTML - there is no DOCTYPE declaration, and no XML version declaration:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
        "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">

That is the strict DTD, I bet the developer that did the site though didn't make the rest of the elements valid XHTML for strict so I would suggest using this one if not:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

It seems your main styles are embedded directly inside the document, which is not recommended as the browser has to render it EACH time the page loads, where as if you put the styles in a stylesheet ('style.css') and link to it in the header, the browser will cache it and will not need to re-render it on each load.
(Goes in the header element: )

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="to/your/css/styleshee" />

All of the javascript can be put into .js files and linked to as well to make it cleaner...

It takes my computer 1.3 seconds to load all of your images (far too many in my opinion); and I am on a cable connection (will be significantly slower for 56k'ers).

The tables are using element level embedded styles (which isn't invalid per-se, but certainly not inline if you were using a stylesheet).

None of your <img> tags have alt="" attributes (which means blind people won't know what the hell is going on); all of your links don't have a title="" attribute (which isn't NECESSARY but certainly semantic).

Native PHP sessions are not bad, but, if those things are not encrypted you are in for one serious security threat (things as in the PHPSESSID appended to each link...).

Also, as someone else said, the URLS are dirty and mod_rewrite would be a very good idea.

And this is what your site looks like in a 100% text based web-browser (ie they don't use images, they just display text). As you can see, it would be difficult to get a picture of what was going on.

   [1][logo.gif] 
   [2]Home  |     [3]Sign   Up  |     [4]Search  |     [5]Contact   Us  |
   [6]About Us
   [c1.gif]
   username 
   ____________________
   password 
   __________
   [go.gif]-Submit
   [c3.gif]
   [7]Forget password

       Browse blog or search ________________________________________
         [go.gif?PHPSESSID=e256d1438c1dfcc88b6d6923a2e3a4b1]-Submit

   [t1.gif]

   [t3.gif]
   [base1.gif]
   [diary.gif]
   [diary_text.gif]
   [photos.gif]
   [photos_text.gif]
   [blog.gif]
   [blog_text.gif]
   [friends.gif]
   [friends_text.gif]
   [8][ads.jpg] 
   [base3.gif]
       MYVISIONBOARD BIGGEST BLOGGERS

                          [9][3D_Scansac4d27.jpg] 

                        Scoot B
                        [blog.jpg]    [10]view blogs
     _________________________________________________________________

                            [11]Scoot 1 entries
                           [12]amosser 1 entries

   [bline.jpg]
       MYVISIONBOARD RECENT DIARIES

                             [13][nophoto.gif] 

   I enjoy the fullness of my life. I'm greatful for all I have and all I
   will have because I have it NOW
                                             [blog.jpg]   [14]read entry
     _________________________________________________________________

               [15]My Thoughts Of Abundance Tuesday at 9:06pm
                [16]Getting started. May 18,2007 at 11:00am
                [17]Ooo, I like this! May 17,2007 at 2:30pm
                   [18]Intentions May 16,2007 at 12:27pm
            [19]MyVisionBoard's First Day May 15,2007 at 8:33am

   [bline.jpg]
       MYVISIONBOARD LATEST NEWS

                             Invite A Friend!
          New features added to MyVisionBoard     [20]read more...
     _________________________________________________________________

                         Welcome To MyVisionBoard
     Welcome to MyVisionBoard. All you need to build and maintain your
             Vision Board on the internet.     [21]read more...
     _________________________________________________________________

                                                    [22]More News Here

   [bline.jpg]

   [23]About Us | [24]Terms | [25]Contact Us | [26]Testimonial

   © 2007 MyVisionBoard.com, All Rights Reserved

   [27][green1.gif] 

References

   1. http://www.myvisionboard.com/
   2. http://www.myvisionboard.com/index.php
   3. http://www.myvisionboard.com/signup.php
   4. http://www.myvisionboard.com/search.php
   5. http://www.myvisionboard.com/contactus.php
   6. http://www.myvisionboard.com/aboutus.php
   7. http://www.myvisionboard.com/forget.php
   8. http://www.myvisionboard.com/signup.php
   9. http://www.myvisionboard.com/member/profile.php?uid=117882719797&PHPSESSID=e256d1438c1dfcc88b6d6923a2e3a4b1
  10. http://www.myvisionboard.com/member/profile.php?uid=117882719797&action=viewblog&PHPSESSID=e256d1438c1dfcc88b6d6923a2e3a4b1
  11. http://www.myvisionboard.com/member/profile.php?uid=117882719797&PHPSESSID=e256d1438c1dfcc88b6d6923a2e3a4b1
  12. http://www.myvisionboard.com/member/profile.php?uid=117978300662&PHPSESSID=e256d1438c1dfcc88b6d6923a2e3a4b1
  13. http://www.myvisionboard.com/member/profile.php?uid=117989126428&action=showdiary&did=84&PHPSESSID=e256d1438c1dfcc88b6d6923a2e3a4b1
  14. http://www.myvisionboard.com/member/profile.php?uid=117989126428&action=showdiary&did=84&PHPSESSID=e256d1438c1dfcc88b6d6923a2e3a4b1
  15. http://www.myvisionboard.com/member/profile.php?uid=117989126428&action=showdiary&did=84&PHPSESSID=e256d1438c1dfcc88b6d6923a2e3a4b1
  16. http://www.myvisionboard.com/member/profile.php?uid=117946093841&action=showdiary&did=83&PHPSESSID=e256d1438c1dfcc88b6d6923a2e3a4b1
  17. http://www.myvisionboard.com/member/profile.php?uid=117943676020&action=showdiary&did=82&PHPSESSID=e256d1438c1dfcc88b6d6923a2e3a4b1
  18. http://www.myvisionboard.com/member/profile.php?uid=117934075376&action=showdiary&did=78&PHPSESSID=e256d1438c1dfcc88b6d6923a2e3a4b1
  19. http://www.myvisionboard.com/member/profile.php?uid=117924280473&action=showdiary&did=77&PHPSESSID=e256d1438c1dfcc88b6d6923a2e3a4b1
  20. http://www.myvisionboard.com/shownews.php?newsid=13&PHPSESSID=e256d1438c1dfcc88b6d6923a2e3a4b1
  21. http://www.myvisionboard.com/shownews.php?newsid=10&PHPSESSID=e256d1438c1dfcc88b6d6923a2e3a4b1
  22. http://www.myvisionboard.com/morenews.php?PHPSESSID=e256d1438c1dfcc88b6d6923a2e3a4b1
  23. http://www.myvisionboard.com/aboutus.php
  24. http://www.myvisionboard.com/cms.php?pageid=15
  25. http://www.myvisionboard.com/contactus.php
  26. http://www.myvisionboard.com/testimonials.php
  27. http://www.myvisionboard.com/green.php?PHPSESSID=e256d1438c1dfcc88b6d6923a2e3a4b1
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

I know that is a VERY long list and hope it does not discourage you; because I know what VisionBoards are and think it is an absolutely AWESOME idea for a website (wondering why I didn't think of it). Do your own vision board for the website and don't take my post as something negative at all, take it as positive criticism and support. If you make that website open-source I might be interested in contributing programming time.

[subfreq]

Thanks for the post Iksander

It has taken me a few days to digest all of the info. I am trying to figure out how much of it I am able to modify myself and how much i would need a more experienced person to do.

All of your comments are greatly appreciated and I totally agree with you on pretty much every count.

I hadn't thought about making the site open source but it raises a pretty cool idea. I could do it with a few trusted coders i guess.

I am just about to start developing a new module that will give the site some very unique new functions to take it on from being a simple Network based site.

Your post has made me realise that i need to tighten up the basics first before adding the next module. Of highest importance to me is that the site is water tight from a security perspective. The SessID issue is a concern to me.

Drop me a PM if you would be interested in helping out.

aussieNickuss - I am hosted on an Apache server. Thanks for the LAMP link it was very helpful. I not have quite a bit to consider in regards to tightening up the site. Getting a lot of support and users signing up on the other side of all the backend work.