New Hobby Website - Criticism

[markfh11q]

Hi all. I've decided to migrate on over to these forums, since I'm becoming increasingly more interesting in web-standard development.Just some background information before I begin:I made this website mainly as a personal hobby site and a place for some information I've collected over the years. I've been actively perusing this hobby for going on four years now, so I've had a lot of time to generate content.This web site is actually really old. I attend L.S.U. and found some spare time to improve on it. I originally made the site in my Junior year of high school, and it has changed a lot since then. I won't go into details of the original here.Anyway, the new website features:*) Valid C.S.S. central stylesheet. Individual pages are very semantic.*) Documents validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict.*) Server-side scripting to include separate files. Vast improvement over the frames of version 1.x.*) 'Simple and Clean' layout. I laid off the images and sharp colors to put more focus on the content.Those are the main features. I also included a simple email form and bulletin board running on modified miniBB.So, getting to the point, I'd like to get some criticism on the design itself, and not the content. My fellow hobbyists have already bashed the daylights out of the content itself, so I guess I need some criticism on the design and layout. My first version of this new site used tables for layout and some outdated and 'improper' HTML elements in XHTML 1.0 Transitional, but I eventually took the time to convert everything to DIV tags and validated XHTML and CSS.All comments and critiques are welcome, no matter how harsh. I'm fairly new to web-standard markup and design, but not web design in general (been doing that since the 7th grade), so I realize that I probably did quite a few things 'wrong'.So I'm done talking. Here's the link. I might plan on getting a more relevant domain registered, but I have no money for that at the moment, so I'm just keeping the original site name.LINKY ----> http://www.markfh11q.net/

[Jesdisciple]

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Your forum doesn't have a link back to your site. For the less internet-literate, that's a usability issue.Your site is not accessible to search engines, i.e. it could use some Search Engine Optimization. I don't know much about it, but the index.php?file=

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format of your URLs made me think of it. You can access index.php via markfh11q.net/ and, if you set your PHP up for it, each page via markfh11q.net/

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. A search engine would not count "?file=contact" as relevant to a query for "contact" but it must take "/contact".Why do you use buttons for navigation? That's an accessibility issue because screen-readers won't anticipate the technique and a usability issue because I like to middle-click links to open them in new tabs. Plus it's dependent on JavaScript, but that could be solved by wrapping the buttons in a GET form.Can you make the styles of the main site and the bulletin board consistent?

All content and sciprts © their respectful creators

I think you mean "scripts" and "respective." ("Respectful" pays a compliment to the creators; "respective" has a different (legal) meaning.)If you must open a new window with JavaScript, at least make it degrade well without JavaScript (and tell the user where he's going via the status bar).

<a href="http://www.bcarms.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;">BCARMS</a>

That applies to the image map as well as the ordinary links.

[markfh11q]

I really should add a link back to the site from the forum. I didn't realize that until now, so thanks.The search engine function I'm not worried about. If you point your browser towards the 'robots.txt' file in my root directory, you'll also see that I've disallowed GoogleBot from even indexing the site. The reasons for this are: 1.) It's a hobby site and is linked to on other sites of interest. 2.) Search engines bring negative attention as well. I'd rather make the site a little harder to get to so some 12 year old kid doesn't kill himself.Thanks for the tip on the copyright notice as well. That's a two-second fix well deserved, and another thing I must have skipped over.The buttons I can of course replace as well. I think I'll do that now.As to the forums style, it pays homage to an old message board where most of us SpudTards came from, called SpudTech. I guess more bad design practice, but me and others like it's familiarity.And thanks for the tip on the JavaScript as well. I'm a little sketchy on the DOM so I was originally trying (self.href) instead of (this.href), along with the return false statement. I guess I'll try the code you show above and see how it works. I'm more of a server-side scripter, and JavaScript never has been my forté. I would also use this on the multiple image thumbnail links in the cannon pages and tutorials... I was also thinking about removing separate file thumnails and simply using GD to resize the images server-side and preview thumbnails. Simpler, less space, and more efficient, I think.Thanks for the input!EDIT - well, that should address the majority of your points. It appears that I am just completely stupid at client-side scripting (haven't had to use it much... I've always just used server-side). But I guess it's the simple things like opening new windows within the constraints of XHTML 1.0 Strict which get ya'.

[Jesdisciple]

I'm impressed by your concern. :)I was wondering what self was for somewhere else on the page. I'm thinking it's a synonym for window.By the way, using HTML event-handlers is considered poor practice, but a sizable bit of work would be required to replace all of them with pure JavaScript.

[markfh11q]

Yes, I guess I thought it was self.href, but that is referring to the window I believe. I remember now that I used to use this.src for mouseover images, so I should have known.I generally stray around client-side languages like javascript, VBScript, AJAX, etc., when I don't have to use them. There's so many incompatibilities between browsers I just don't know where to being to make a cross-compatible site. I already think it's ridiculous enough with the differences between CSS in different browsers...But enough of my ranting, I changed the site according to those points. I guess the list of future modifications goes like:1.) Replace thumbnail JPEG's in pages with GD generated thumbnails of the target image.2.) Write separate .js file to be included for pages with external links (to open in a new window). To do it without HTML event handlers... now that you brought it up.3.) Get to re-centering all the stuff I had un-centered when I conformed to XHTML.4.) Convert all image links to external links.That's most of what I can think of now.EDIT - engrish.

[sckewi]

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[JC5]

I simply love your forum layout. In fact I am actually going to cancel my vbulletin now and go to mini bb. Vbulletin costs too much!

[thescientist]

a slight niggle, your header pic slightly overlapse your nav boxes. Also, that white space at the top just leaves me feeling alittle empty. Maybe shift your header to the left and have it stretch out a little futher? Other than that, great site concept!

[markfh11q]

What browser are you using, scientist?I've testing on a rather limited range of them.

[thescientist]

IE7, cause I'm at work. I have FF3 on my laptop, but I haven't viewed your page with it though.

[markfh11q]

That doesn't sound right. I tested it on FF3, FF2, and IE7, and they all worked fine.You're saying the banner logo is overlapping the navigation buttons at the top?What screen resolution are you using as well? I've tested it on 1024*768 and 800*600 resolutions.

[uaintgotthisid]

He's a maniac I tells ya! Crazy!