Travel Site up for Review!

[cgehlhausen]

This is my first site - It's been up for a while, but I haven't advertised it yet. I don't know if it's ready to pursue. Some of the links probably don't work by now. We had our 3rd child and available time left, but it's coming back now.


Check it out and let me know:

http://www.WoodlandsTravel.net


What catches your eye?

Is there anything annoying? Anything worthwhile?

What could be better?


All suggestions and comments are appreciated!

[worstcritic]

Well,

I hate to break it to you but it appears that you've only designed for Internet Explorer. Your site does not display properly in FireFox, which is my browser of choice and that of many many others. I am also turned off by scripture, but if you are targeting Christians that travel I think you're doing ok. I do like the idea of an inspirational "quote of the day" feature, though. You have a couple of things you can fix to appeal to a broader audience.

You do have a site in place, and that is the hardest part. Make sure that your visitors are steered toward your feedback form. Make the link more prominent. In many ways the feedback you get from them is more valuable than feedback you will get here...

I think you could work on your graphics a bit. There is an "edge" right in the middle of your header graphic. Probably just a different approach to your layout. I do like the leaves, though... and the way they change depending upon the page you're on.

I think you have a good start. Let us know how it works out once you start advertising!

Thanks.

[cgehlhausen]

Actually I wasn't planning on keeping the daily devotional. I had a seven-day weather view in that space, but I was going to have to start paying for that feature. I put the devotional there temporarily as a personal usage tool. I actually forgot that I had done that until after I posted for a review.

So the big news - How do I get my pages to work on Firefox? I use FrontPage 2003 to do all my webpages. Do you think Microsoft doesn't support that, or do I just need to know the right HTML? If MS doesn't support it, what's a good tool to create pages without having to type everything in HTML?

I actually have a couple other sites that I'm developing, trying to use the permanent, ongoing information style rather than the one-page sales site that seems to be so popular these days. I'm just wondering if travel sites are simply too common and over-done these days to get another one to be useful. Maybe if I added a forum?

I do like the "Quote of the Day" idea, though - I'm going to look into that.

[worstcritic]

Personally I code my sites by hand, so to speak. I've tried various design tools and I don't like any of them. The HTML and CSS are relatively easy to learn as compared to learning all the features of a WYSIWYG design application. I build my sites to work in FireFox, and as they near completion I start working out the bugs that appear in IE. IE may be the most common browser, but it the least compliant with current web standards. Designing for IE ensures future overhauls. I code the exceptions that need to be made for IE in a seperate style sheet. I refer to a book called "CSS Mastery - Advanced Web Standards Solutions" by Andy Budd. It is a fairly comprehensive look at that bugs you find in the various browsers, and how to code for all of them.

You might have a look at NVU, though. It is a WYSIWYG design tool based on Mozilla Composer. It's free, and not too hard to learn. I personally grew tired of it, but many people have success with it.

[kayceee]

The problem with the site in non-IE browsers is that the HTML is incorrectly coded... FrontPage has been known to do that, and IE forgives it, other browsers don't.

When you have a table, you need things in a particular order:

<table>
<tr> table rows
<td> table cells (can be more than 1) </td>
</tr> close table row
</table> close table

You have at least one <td> outside of any table tag, and a </tr> that follows the close tag for the table it is in, looks like you also have at least 1 paragraph that wasn't closed or was closed out of order. - the problems begin around line #78, after the link for IH-10 East.

Fix the HTML errors and it should display fine .