Topic: Website critique

[Canuck]

I did a little bit of php in a web development course I took, and I thought it would be good to use it on a site to improve my php skills a bit.

A little background information...

My brother and I have been collecting mainly hockey autographs through the mail for a few years.  I made this http://ca.geocities.com/jkranjce@rogers.com/ before I took my web course...Its not that great....  It never got updated, so the whole idea about the new site was to create a site which is easy to update

My new site:
http://www.ttm.kranjcevic.com/index.php

(the main image is random), There is text on the right side which says CHECKLIST, the whole idea was that the lists looked like checklists.

The TTM Gallery is generated from my database, as is the information regarding a player when you click them.

Search successes - the drop downs are automatically generated from the db, and you can click column headings to re-order the listings.

Other autos gallery is similar to the TTM Gallery, except it will contain autos from different sports and hounding autographs.

I have a few minor things to fix with the guestbook, and will post when that is all ready to go, so I can get some feedback on that as well.

The db information isnt up to date, but I will get to that shortly.

Also made an RSS feed for the 20 recent successes just for the hell of it!!

There are no images for the successes yet, have to take some of my recent ones, and upload them.

I just wanted some feedback on it.

Thanks

[ober]

Definately looks a lot better than the origional!

Personally, I'm not a fan of the wishy-washy "I'm full width... except for my content!" idea.  Pick one and stick with it.  I like fixed-width because it allows you to kill off some of the extra white-space.  Again, just a personal opinion.

I do like the fonts/colors/use of graphics.  I think it all flows very good, except for the above issue.

Good job!

[Canuck]

Just to clarify, you are saying if I have full width style page the content should be full width, and if Im fixed width, the content should be as such?

I had never designed a page which was full width, so I thought I would give it a shot, I think Ill change it to fixed width and see how it looks

Thanks!

[ober]

That's exactly what I'm saying.

[Canuck]

Well I went with your suggestion and made it a fixed width, I think it looks better.  I also put the up the guestbook, what do you think?  I did client side validation with JS and serverside with PHP, and got the image validation going.  I think it turned out pretty good.

[ober]

A few problems with your input form:

1) you require the website and email for submission, but they're not marked as required fields (they shouldn't be required and you should only be doing verification on those fields if something is in them).

2) Filling in everything but the verification field from the image results in the page being sent to a verification that my URL is wrong (it's not) and I haven't filled in the verification field.  And it doesn't show me the form again and there's no obvious way to go back to the form other than the back button.

3) Even when I do enter the verification code, it doesn't like my URL, even though I'm using the format you specify.

Other than those 3 things, it looks pretty good.

[Canuck]

>>1) you require the website and email for submission, but they're not marked as required fields (they shouldn't be required and you should only be doing verification on those fields if something is in them).

I dont require them for submission, if you enter something into them which is wrong I propmt you to fix the errors, I dont want someone to submit an email or url that is formed in correctly.  Otherwise you can submit an entry with just your name and comment.

>>2) Filling in everything but the verification field from the image results in the page being sent to a verification that my URL is wrong (it's not) and I haven't filled in the verification field. And it doesn't show me the form again and there's no obvious way to go back to the form other than the back button.

Instead of calling the same php file for server side validation, it goes to another page, I guess I could change that, but below the error was a link that says return to guestbook.

>>3) Even when I do enter the verification code, it doesn't like my URL, even though I'm using the format you specify.

I have to check my regular expression then.

Thanks!

[ober]

Another suggestion... put the input form at the top of the display page.  What if I want to look at the guestbook without submitting an entry?