Our New Site (T3d)

[perfecthill]

Hi,

This is our new portfolio site. It features some of our most recent work, as well as a tutorials section and possibly some freebies!

http://www.twenty3design.co.uk (http://www.twenty3design.co.uk/)

Let me know what you think!

Thanks,
Perfecthill

[glosrfc]

Cannot find server

C:\Documents and Settings\General User>tracert www.twenty3design.co.uk (http://www.twenty3design.co.uk)

Tracing route to www.twenty3design.co.uk (http://www.twenty3design.co.uk) [213.171.192.236]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

9 * * * Request timed out.
10 * * 195.188.230.50 reports: Destination net unreachable.

Trace complete.

[perfecthill]

I take you have done a trace on the location of our website.

Can you tell me what any of that means?

Thanks

[glosrfc]

Must've been a temporary glitch - it's working now.

First impressions then. It looks okay although nothing spectacular. I was about to comment on the padding particularly around the "About Us" image, but then the background colour appeared so that's probably redundant. It is wise to proof-read content and not rely on spellcheckers though - the news item for 29-10-06 should read Keep your eyes peeled.

The banner is nice but it's a shame that it's so high as it means I've got to scroll by just that amount on this 19" monitor. Nice title font though. The home page Contact Us link has a redundant " tacked on to the end of the URL. Doesn't prevent IE from loading the correct page but it might affect more strict browsers.

I'm also not a fan of sites that have a lot of different URLs for their own links. Fair enough if the link is going to take you to a different site but when it's simply loading another page from your site I'd expect it to use the same URL.

As I said at the start though, it looks okay. Might also pay to have kirupa.com as a site you like rather than flashkit ;)

[glosrfc]

I take you have done a trace on the location of our website.

Can you tell me what any of that means?

Thanks

What it means is that that particular Cheltenham-based Telewest server wasn't able to reach the next server in the route to the Fasthosts Gloucester-based server hosting your website.

Spotted a few more typos on the portfolio page too - development spelt wrong and incorrect use of there/their. It suggests there are possibly more scattered around the site.

Hope that helps.

[perfecthill]

Thanks!

I was hoping for someone to properly go over it. You've made some really useful comments, and we're in the middle of implementing some of them now.
I think the site needs a few tweaks and adjustments so I'll be sure to put it back on here when the changes are made.

Cheers,
perfecthill

PS. Kirupa is far better than Flashkit! corrected it ;)

[glosrfc]

No problem, that's what critique is all about :)

I can't remember who said it but there's one quote I always keep in the back of my mind - "There's no right or wrong way to design - just good or bad ways to communicate." I guess that's why I'm a stickler for correct usage of spelling and grammar on a page.

Good luck with it.

[nj_jcarter]

I can't remember who said it but...
"There's no right or wrong way to design - just good or bad ways to communicate."

Well said. I also am of the school of proper grammar and punctuation. I intensely dislike the improper usage of the words, "they're", "there", and "their". "You're" and "your" also upset me when used incorrectly. Spell check has made us all stupid. My personal mistake is thinking to trust spell-check to correct words but then not proofreading it. My all-time most hated mistake, when I accidentally type "form" instead of "from".

[fasterthanlight™]

Your logo needs a lot of help.... theres no style to it, no composition, its just a straight line of text with an ugly font.



Stick to one border style

e.g:
-For your header you have a subtle drop shadow with no stroke
-The about Us section has no border at all, it expands all the way which is cool, but if you added a border to continue the header border downwards, it will look much nicer
-News & Latest from blog has no drop shadow, BUT a 4px grey border...
-footer with "sites we like" has no border and doesn't expand fully width wise...

BE CONSISTANT WITH YOUR BORDERS

Choose one style and apply it to evvvvvvvverything


Within Portfolio page:

Those black buttons are ugly and unrefined, they look rushed and they don't mesh with the lighter design of the content area.


On the Tutorials page, the border on the right hand side mysteriously stops after the footer for the tutorial

And if you're going to put your contact info in your footer for every page, you don't need a contact section at all.....

Its getting there, but overall you need to go back in and deal with all the finicky little details to make it perfect.