Hi,
I am new to webdesign and have spent the last Month using a Fusion 8 to design this site for a friend.

Can you have a look and offer any critisism or praise!!!!!

Thanks in advance

Lisboyboy

Site

Ashgrove, Castletownshend, Luxury 4 bedroomed Self Catering, Holiday Home

I love to say something nice but I can not.
You worked so hard on it and I am sorry.
The buttons are very blurry.
You using frames, why I don't know.
No stylesheet.

My kid who's 8 could do a better job than that.

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hi,
I am by no means a skilled web designer but I can point out a few
things you may want to consider.

You are using a tables based approach to your layout. Nowadays
its recommeded that you dispense with tables and use css. This
gives you much more flexibility in how you layout your pages and
also is much more easy to maintain the site on an ongoing basis.

If you have no experience with css then do a google on "css tutorials"
there are many excellent sites that will get you up to speed. If you
are serious about web design on an ongoing basis then you will need
to become expert in css. I would say that if you have the time it would
take 2-3 weeks to get to grips with css to a more than basic level.

I would say your use of centered text is a little difficult to read. Also
you may want to take a look at your font selection its a little bold and
large. Try and have the text to the left ( or right ) of the images that
you use to associate the text more directly with the image.

If you are interested in optimizing your site for search engine listings
you will need to do some research on "keywords/phrases" that you
would like to list prominently on search engines for and optimize your
site for these keywords.
e.g. keyword phrases like "holidays in west cork"

Also if you do want to rank well in organic search engine listings you
will probably need to dispense with your use of frames. Search engines
struggle to index sites that use frames.

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What is a stylesheet?

I think the package I used(Net Fusion 8) can only use Frames.

Its probable back to the drawing board

Can anyone recomend another web authoring programme that is easy to use?

Thanks for your feedback

Lisboyboy

css tutorials - Google Search= for css

try dreamweaver. I think they still do the 30 days trial version.
Macromedia - Dreamweaver 8

Personally I feel if you are serious about learning how to become a competent web designer I would recommend not using any web authoring software.
You really need to learn how to do it by hand i.e. using a bog standard
editor like notepad ( in windows ) and marking up your site yourself.

this will mean becoming expert in at least html and css. css stands for
"cascading style sheet" , this is a way of separating your content from
the layout and "look and feel" of your website.

Once you have become proficient in html and css you can move onto
more complex areas such as javascript, php etc.

But as a starting point you can create a compelling site with just html
and css.

Once things become more complicated you could consider using something
like dreamweaver. But I wouldn't recommend this as a starting point as
you have already experienced with netfusion you don't really have a
grasp on the basics and using packages such as these don't really
give you the ground level of knowledege that you will need if you are
to become a competent web designer.

Also consider buying magazines such as .net ( easons stocks it ) which
will keep you up todate with whats going on in the web design sphere.

Don't be too daunted, you've had the courage to ask for advice. Everyone
has to start somewhere. The fact that you have a web site live on the
internet is a pretty good start.

I'd go along with some people here, but not to the same degree.

If you really want to become competent then I suggest getting a good Visual Editor which outputs standards-compliant code such as Dreamweaver.
Then you should look up tutorials on HTML and CSS (after HTML).

You've got to start from the ground up - make sure you know the basis and the structure behind HTML and you'll get better in no time.

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I think you made a good first start. However you made some basic web design no-nos from the get go. If you are serious about web design, I think you should learn the fundamentals first.

I learned the fundamentals in college from, in my opinion, the best resource on Web Design. W3Schools Online Web Tutorials

Take a look and do their tests. Learn the basics of XHTML first. Code from hand.

If you need some help, PM me.

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The first step in web design and development is taking the plunge and doing a site. Well done.

I would agree with a lot of the posts above. While hand-coding is the ideal way to go, it is easier to use a WYSIWYG editor at the beginning. But they do tend to push you down wrong paths [for example, using framesets when they aren't necessary].

Do learn CSS. It is a way of applying rules to your coding, and in the long term will save you a lot of trouble. Apart from anything else, it is the future of coding.

For example, if you look through your code, you'll see a lot of "<font face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-serif,sans-serif">" chunks. Suppose you want to change your font? You have to change every one of those lines on every page.
If you insert a piece of CSS in the header -
then you can scrap all the <font face=...... bits. And if you want to change the font, then you only have one line to modify. However, you will have to insert the above code into every page.

So even better is to create a separate file [call it something like 'style.css'] which contains the text
You then insert one line into every header - <link href="style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">

Now if you want to change the font throughout the site, you just change the line in 'style.css'.

The above example just uses the body/font element, but you can use CSS to control just about any aspect of a design. In fact you can do a lot of things that can't be done in raw HTML.

With regard to your photos, I would make them a bit smaller, and maybe have less on the front page. The images on that page alone add up to well over 130kb which will be very slow to download on dial-up. And separate images that are side by side. At the moment they run into each other which looks a bit strange.

Keep at it. You've made a start. And we all had to start somewhere.

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