Site Critique Please

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Dublin Domainer

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I'm not a lad (nor even a lass), but the site looks good to me. Bear in mind, though, that I'm looking from the point of view of a web user rather than a web master.

My complaint? Well, your addressing the post to 'Lads,' I suppose. I've never heard it used in the same way as 'guys' before - this seems to be quite acceptably addressed to both men and women. I thought that there were quite a lot of women farmers these days. :)
 
blueark

blueark

New Member
I only had a quick look at the home page, generally quite good. A few minor points:
  • There are a few things moving on the page. Although not excessive compared to some sites, I did find it distracting. If you compare your site to, say, the BBC News site; BBC has a news ticker too, but it's much slower than yours and less distracting. Also, the ticker is the only thing moving on the BBC site; you have a 'Farm Assist Calculator' animation too. I found that both the ticker and the calculator were both at opposite sides of my peripheral vision, making it really difficult (well, mildly irritating anyway) to read the actual site content in between.
  • The weather forecast at the bottom of the home page was acting a bit strange when I looked at it (maybe you were in the middle of an update or something). When I looked at it in FF, the four tabs were there, then when I clicked on one of the inactive tabs, it gave a 404 error. Then I went to IE, found that the first tab was blank (in FF it had been labelled 'Connaught'), but otherwise they were functional. Went back to FF, and found it was now the same as IE. Tried Chrome, and the first tab worked (but no 'Connaught'), and the others gave a 404 error until I refreshed the page, and then they came back again (but still no 'Connaught').
  • Latest video from RTE: requires a plug-in (RealMedia by the looks of it). I think I had it years ago, but I seem to be getting by just fine without it nowadays. I've really no opinion on whether it's worth downloading or not, a lot of people use it and I'm sure it's great. But many people won't be bothered downloading a new plugin just to view your site. I don't know, maybe I'm one of the very few people who doesn't have a RealMedia plugin (yes, I know it's free, but... meh), but I'm pretty sure that if that media was delivered using Flash, you'd have a much larger audience to show it to.
  • Finally, it looks like you're using DotNetNuke. That framework does provide a lot of functions out of the box, but you really need to think carefully about what's needed. For example, the 'Learn & Connect', 'Book a Hotel' and 'Member Services' boxes all have a 'print' button on them. Why?! Try it and see how pointless it is!
Anyways, that's my nitpicking out of the way. Overall, it's fine, just some fine-tuning really, IMHO.
 
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garycocs

New Member
Hahaha thanks Dublin Domainer, and don't worry I know there are a lot of women farmers, I guess I use guys the same way as you use lads :D

Thanks blueark I'll go through those and come up with a few plans!!

Any more ideas lads/guys? I haven't touched the site yet so don't worry you won't hurt my feelings!!!
 
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