Topic: my personal site - need everyone's imput please

I have a new personal site and want to make it even better. It is a personal site. I would like to know what everyone feels I should do differently and what type of content I could add to make the site even better. Im open to all comments so please offer them!
http://erase-and-rewind.8m.net/

-Dustin

Don't have the text in itallic. Itallic is ment to draw attention to special words or phrases, not to be used on entire paragraphs of text. It is easier to read normal text, so you should stick to that. To make the text more readable I would also increase the line-height a little bit, 120%-150% (of the font size) is usually a good value.

Your page is only abit too wide to fit on a 800x600 display. To ensure that those using that resolution don't have a HSoD you should make the main-area either liquid or 20px thinner.

The colors and layout are pretty good. There isn't much content there now, so I can't really say how it will look with more content added. Have you though about how you're going to implement a menu on the page? Right now there isn't much need of one, but as you get more content you'll need one.

If you want people to visit your page you should add some more content to it. Right now there aren't many reasons to visit your page. You've got an online journal, but it is hosted on another site. So the first thing I would do is to move that journal to my homepage. That way people reading the journal will visit your page instead of reading it through the other site. What type of content you should add to your page after that is up to you...

Code wise your page could do with a lot of improvments. First of you lack a Doctype, which is a big no-no. You've also gotten a couple of <font> tags spread around the page, which is even worse than forgetting the Doctype imo. Those <font>-tags should be removed at all cost. Another little thing is that your headings should be inside <h.> tags. That way you can style them through the <h.> tags instead of using <b>++ like your doing now. Another good thing with using <h.> tags is that search engines will have an easier time seeing which part of your page is important so they can index your site correctly. To get a better idea of how you should code the page you should take a look at the :FAQ: CSS
The code issues aren't that important to the non-programming folks, but you should try to keep the page standard compilant so it will have an easier time being rendered correctly on most browsers as well as getting better rankings with search engines.

You should also add the artists name (with link to his deviant art page) to the image description on your front page. Right now you only refer to him as 'artist', but you never mention his name.

Another little things is that having your mail in plaintext on the homepage is a sure way to get lots and lots of spam. You should either add some _NO_SPAM_ thing to it, make it an image or use a server side language if you want to avoid being picked up by the spam-bots.

_________________________
"There are 10 kinds of people; those who know binary, those who don't and those who start counting at zero"
- the Golden Ratio -

[This message has been edited by Veneficuz (edited 01-12-2004).]

One thing that I would think about doing would be to perhaps put a much smaller picture on your homepage with the title text saying click for enlargement and having it pop up in a different window or something, that way the user would not like to have to scroll real far down just to see the image. You could maybe put it in the middle of the page, with the text you have now on either side of it, perhaps links and stuff on the right, and other info on the left. But this doesn't really matter, its just a personal thing, I wouldn't worry about, I'm no expert or anything....


.quotes.

i heard this voice too, telling me to use more CSS, more tables - less frames(doesn't seem to me you've got this problem), DOC-types, encoding, no <font> nor <blockquote> tags, etc.. and i just can answer to it - thank you! ( [ url=http://www.ozoneasylum.com/Forum6/HTML/001340.html] 1, 2, 3.. things that could be changed[/url] )

CSS and layout problems can easily be fixed with programs like Dreamweaver - but for experience reasons I really recommend to view the Ozone FAQ



[This message has been edited by kazroot (edited 02-15-2004).]

Thank you for your thoughts and I'll take them into account. After reviewing it I do agree I need to rid myself of the much Italics. A little overwhelming it is. Once I make some changes I'll make a new post for you guys to offer your opinions. Thanks all.

-Dustin

*eeeeeaaaaargh* (best Howard Dean impression I can come up with) STOP the pop-ups...sheeesh!