Feedback on new website

[Howard Veteran]

Hi guys,

 

I've just put my new website live and was wondering if you guys wouldn't mind having a quick look over it, see if there's anything you might suggest or that I've done wrong.

 

I know some of the code could be a little cleaner, but I'm working on that!  :)

 

www.howardthomson.co.uk

 

Cheers :D

[DrJohnSmitherson]

I reallllly like it.

[Draconian Guppy]

Pretty streamlined! I have no words other than amazing work!

[The Evil Overlord]

The dropdowns are too big on mouseover on the images when clicking on  portfolio link, site is a little slow in response, I did like how the mouseover tracked the mouse movement though :)

[+Kyle Subscriber¹]

Beautiful. Just really slow on loading. Do you do any caching?

[Seahorsepip Veteran]

So you needed a loading animation for your gallery and had another tab open with google hangouts. Then you thought oh why not just copy that loading animation? xD

 

Are you just using google maps as background at the contact page or?

 

Make a add to skype button from the skype button and a mailto from the mail button on the contact page, now I have to retype those or copy paste them ^^

 

Hmm great inline css at the header :p Other then that some more inline css, jquery etc, good luck cleaning that.

 

One thing I like about the coding is for sure that you had put most of the js in the footer, makes the sites a lot faster.

 

 

Overall quite good!

[primexx]

well it looks pretty crappy with noscript

 

looks great with scripting enabled, though it takes a long time to load.

[the better twin]

Nice use of the contrast theme and logo :p.

Fonts look awful on chrome on Windows 8 unfortunately (Chromes fault). 

[ZakO]

It's good, but if you're going to use a theme (which there is of course nothing wrong with, as long as you don't claim you built it) it would be nice to customize it a bit more.

The order of content / colours / icons / backgrounds are all essentially the same as this page http://contrast.freevision.me/corporate/

[ACTIONpack]

I really like it. The only problem, I have is the icons are way too big. Is that from a template or you made it from start.

[Mandosis]

The site looks awesome. What font did you use on that site? I want to try it out on a project I am working on.

[Howard Veteran]

First of all, thanks everyone. I really appreciate all your feedback. I've replied to everyone individually below.

 

I reallllly like it.

 

Pretty streamlined! I have no words other than amazing work!

 

Thanks :)

 

The dropdowns are too big on mouseover on the images when clicking on  portfolio link, site is a little slow in response, I did like how the mouseover tracked the mouse movement though :)

Response times should be better now as I've moved the site from shared hosting over to a VPS. I've also tweaked the nav a bit :)

 

Beautiful. Just really slow on loading. Do you do any caching?

I am doing some caching now, using APC and browser caching via W3 Total Cache. I'm also using CloudFlare as a CDN now, so hopefully that will help!

 

So you needed a loading animation for your gallery and had another tab open with google hangouts. Then you thought oh why not just copy that loading animation? xD

 

Are you just using google maps as background at the contact page or?

 

Make a add to skype button from the skype button and a mailto from the mail button on the contact page, now I have to retype those or copy paste them ^^

 

Hmm great inline css at the header :p Other then that some more inline css, jquery etc, good luck cleaning that.

 

One thing I like about the coding is for sure that you had put most of the js in the footer, makes the sites a lot faster.

 

 

Overall quite good!

Re: the Google hangouts animation, this is what came with the Wordpress theme. I may change it, but I have to admit it's kinda nice!

 

Yes the contact page is just using a map as a background, it's there for decoration.

 

I've made the Skype link clickable now also. The e-mail link I will make clickable once I've got a decent method to protect it (maybe javascript).

 

The CSS in the header is an unfortunate by-product of the Wordpress theme I'm using :(

 

 

well it looks pretty crappy with noscript

 

looks great with scripting enabled, though it takes a long time to load.

I may add some noscript text to the page, but the whole site does kinda rely on it. I'm not sure the number of browsers with javascript disabled in my target audience is enough to justify a lot of work in this area however.

 

And thanks :) Hopefully it should be quicker now I'm on a VPS, caching and using a CDN.

 

Nice use of the contrast theme and logo :p.

Fonts look awful on chrome on Windows 8 unfortunately (Chromes fault). 

 

Yep that's the one, I never claimed I made the theme :)

 

Regarding the fonts, I've tried to optimise them by using Open Sans and a different font-weight. There's far less aliasing now!

 

It's good, but if you're going to use a theme (which there is of course nothing wrong with, as long as you don't claim you built it) it would be nice to customize it a bit more.

The order of content / colours / icons / backgrounds are all essentially the same as this page http://contrast.freevision.me/corporate/

 

I will be customising it a bit more in the future, but this already fits my needs quite well. I need to switch my focus to content. Then I will tweak the design further once I've populated it.

 

I really like it. The only problem, I have is the icons are way too big. Is that from a template or you made it from start.

 

The icons are from the template, but I'm looking at replacing these with some of my own icons/photos :)

 

The site looks awesome. What font did you use on that site? I want to try it out on a project I am working on.

 

Thanks! The headings are Raleway, and the content is Open Sans. Both are Google fonts :)

[Mandosis]

Thanks! The headings are Raleway, and the content is Open Sans. Both are Google fonts :)

I use google fonts all the time and did not know about that one. Roboto and Open Sans are some of my favorites but I think Raleway might make its way up there.

[Ian S.]

The dots on the Latest Tweets, the selected one is a little too light.