The Student Room Group

The 'What do you think of my website' thread

Right, denizens of dev! If you want to show off/get your ego stroked or torn apart/actually get some helpful criticism on your webpage, it goes in here now.

Any threads of this sort posted from now will automatically get merged into here by an increasingly pissy mod. :p:

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Reply 1
My web page isn't doing anything here:

www.diamond-line.com

But how do I get some navigation bars etc. on there? I don't know what to do...

Michael
Acaila/other mods: be careful to distinguish between "what do you think of my site" threads and "how do I get my site to do XXX" threads...
Reply 3
Vector: The best way to do this is with DIVs. DIVs, short for divisions, allow you to split up your page, so let's create two: one for main content and one for a sidebar.

<div class="main">
Main conent
</div>

<div class="sidebar">
Sidebar content
</div>

You can of course use anything inside those tags as you so please. Now, we must put in some technical stuff to make main display like main and the sidebar display like a sidebar. This goes somewhere between <head> and </head>:

<style type="text/css">
.main {
margin-left:16em;
}

.sidebar {
float: left;
width: 16em;
}
</style>

If you want, you can add a border line between the two by adding either "border-right:1px solid #000000;" to the sidebar definition, or "border-left:1px solid #000000;" to the main definition.

Hope this answers your question

---

What happened to getting a seperate forum for this stuff? That would work better than a thread, I'd say.
http://www.scenepointblank.com is mine. Wrote the backend and layout (needs updating, I'm working on that since it doesn't validate whatsoever) over most of last summer and I've been adding bugfixes and features ever since. We get about 25,000 hits per month and 40% of those are returning visitors so we have a fairly regular audience.
Reply 5
This image:



Looks far too much like a banner. If it looks like an advertisement, chances are your visitors will not read it. Especially since it's animated, and you already have an advert at the top of the page.

Also see this article: Why Advertising Doesn't Work on the Web. It's quite old now, but there's a few valid points.
I might be misunderstanding you, but are you saying that the advert looks too much like an advert?

In layout terms, the site is difficult to position ads into, but the new layout I'm experimenting with should allow a less obtrusive ad (we need them for server costs, we don't pay our writers).
Reply 7
Well the banner I mentioned there is clearly not an advert, since it links to an internal page. However, it looks like an advert, which may make users simply ignore it. This is augmented by the fact that there are other ads on the page, and the image is animated.

Why not open up to donations? Or possibly text adverts like Google's Adsense?

Also, on a different matter, you should have a privacy policy organised if you're taking email addresses. I would imagine a little "blah, blah, blah" like that wouldn't get too many subscribers compared to your number of general readers.
Donations just look bad (case in point, TSR. We don't wanna beg, we'd rather link our users to relevant stuff - we're a music site and only have record label ads). True, it's not a conventional ad, but can you think of a better way of advertising a contest feature?

As for the privacy policy, hmm, possibly, but our audience don't strike me as the type to really care (our hits indicate not too many readers check out stuff like our FAQ, I can't see them reading a legal policy). Personally, the "blah blah blah" bit would endear me to the cause.
Reply 9
Just to reinforce the banner-looks-like-an-advert thing - I've got the Adblock Plus extensions installed and I can't even see the thing.
Reply 10
Hmm, I need to update Filterset.G then...
Ah well - any feedback on the site itself?
Reply 12
Is that supposed to be a joke? I don't get why anybody would do that.

EDIT: Okay, if you've never heard about HTML or read about it at all, it's not your fault. Just take a look at the source code to your site. It's no wonder it only works in IE - it has completely non-standard, Microsoft-specific junk embedded all over it. The culprit is Microsoft Office, which is an office package, not a web design package. :smile:

I still don't get it.

It's a lot to ask of somebody so new, but read about HTML, CSS, semantic-markup and using JavaScript responsibly... here are a couple of links to get you started with HTML and CSS. I don't know how good they are for a complete beginner, but W3 Schools are generally okay.

HTML: http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp
CSS: http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp

Just searched on Google quickly and found this about semantic markup. I've gotta run, so I haven't read through it... seems to reference the W3 specs, so it must be okay: http://brainstormsandraves.com/articles/semantics/structure/
Reply 13
woof.addict
i haven't touched the frontpage in like 6 months. ummm don't view it in firefox. it's goes all fritzy.
so ie it is.
and you just click on things. it's an exploring website. with secrets.

i tried my best.


Argh! There are other alternatives to IE other than FF you know! Opera views your site fine, and Opera is vastly superior to IE and FF.

The site, is, erm, well, a waste of time, but everything I do these days is. OMG PICKLES!
Reply 14
http://www.whatsubject.com - -- still at template stage. not functional yet.
Reply 15
If it's not functional, why bother posting it?
http://www.maniland.websponge.net/

It isn't finished yet and it's just a site for me to mess around with really and blog. It's also my first go with a table free layout.
Reply 17
Nice simple design there :smile: - but I think that you have far too much whitespace, especially to the right of the main nav bar. This computer doesn't even have that high a resolution, and it instantly looks a little drab and as if you don't have enough content.
The nav links are a bit small.
The image needs retouching because it's white "border" looks a little unprofessional.
The central content box needs a bit of CSS padding.
Why is there a password on the mani page?
I can't check, but put an RSS or Atom feed on the blog (your blog is firewalled out here :P).
But overall, it's a great site!
Thanks :smile:

There's a password on the mani page? There is a temporary one on the games page I know - a mate of mine has made me an image uploader on his site and it's hotlinked to work on my website only...unfortunately he must have missed a bit because it's still asking for the password. I'll ask him to sort it later :smile: But it shouldn't come up with a password box now because i'v put the image somewhere else.

Yeah, it does still need a little bit working on the styling (first time with a full css layout so i'm still getting used to it and stuff).

I have no experience with RSS yet, but I shall give it ago in the next couple of days :smile:

Thanks for the comments.
Here is a site i made for my friends heavy metal band...

www.apollyon-band.tk

tell me what you think?

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