Website for Review
http://robosapienv2-4mem8.page.tl/

Additional Comments
This is my second web site and it is a hobby site that I have a great passion for, Robotics and Gaming PC's. I would be eternally grateful for a review on this site as you made such good suggestions for my business site. Many thanks.

Nice site, Great Hobby!

Some things I would change:

* I'd make the site fit for 768 * 1024, it'll be fit also for larger resolution...
* on tne main page I think you should try to order the pictures with same size and location
* You have a lot of waste spaces (like the column near the navigation on the main page and all the space under it.
* Can you send me a robot to clean my house?

That will keep your brain busy for a little while...

David

davidbrock: Thanks for your reply, Yes I tend to agree about the wasted space, I am not sure if my editor will allow me to fill in spaces under the nav bar area, I do have some limitations with this D.I.Y builder. As for a home cleaning robot here's a link for one that will do the job for you.!!

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,11685 … ticle.html
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technol … 21569.html
http://www.irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=122

Interesting site there Mike.

I see you put a site map up, good for you.

Just a few comments;

I agree with David on the browser setting issue. A 1024 X 768 setting is currently the most widely used.  Now if most of the people in this industry/hobby or if a high percentage of your visitors use the wider screens than you may be ok.

Maybe remove the very top hit counter. IMHO visible counters serve no real purpose other than to tell a visitor that a site may not be very popular because it has low numbers. If the numbers are artificially set high it then brings the question of "If I contact them am I going to get help or are they going to be too busy"

Navigation links, if you can I would shorten them down to two or three descriptive words for the link. Try to use words that describe the page and that a person might use when searching for the page related information. I think if you do this it will not only help the site pages but will also help the strange /double looking navigation background.

Example "Types of components used in Robotics" could be shortened to something like "Robotic Components" two words and still conveys the same meaning as the six word link.

A lot of images on the home page. This adds a lot to your page file size increasing the download time. I didn't add every picture but I think you will find that the images total are going to be over 500k in size. Here again this may not be a big problem for you if the higher number of visitors you are after will be using a high speed connection. Even on my DSL it still took over 10 seconds for the page to load.

Try optimizing the images to a smaller file size while still maintaining the quality. Usually a jpg around 75 to 80 percent and a 72dpi setting will work great.

Another option is to have a physically smaller thumbnail image and then have this image link to a larger image. Possibly create a gallery page or two.

Ok, I think this will give you plenty to digest for now. Another great start for you.

ColoEagle: Many thanks once again for your review. Great advice and I will work on it. As for the site map, I thought you might be impressed, I uploaded after your last comment on my Salt and pepper site that needed a site map.

Looked at your site and I have seen it somewhere before, but yes loads and loads of content, nice pics, took a while to load, and the forum grabs you and does not let you go, ie the page does not work when you click on back in the browser I guess you put some sort of control there, I did not like it whatever you done. But all in all, a good site, nicely laid out, apart from the pics all on the homepage.

Read quartzy's reply and thought forum, must be new.

Went and had a look and uh-oh, "Houston we have a problem". quartzy hit this one right. Not a good thing at all.

When you hit the back button to return to your site, it automatically forwards you back to the forum page.

Have had a look to check what you have both have stated, Yes there is a small problem if you left click once, If you double left click it works fine. Not sure how to fix this one.
Thanks

Just a little thing really. Cant you change the name of the website, it does not sound too good.

quartzy: Not really, as I rather like the name. It is named as such because when I start building bots I go mad and build several at once. Hence Robotic Madness.

Robosapienv2_4mem8 wrote:

Website for Review
http://robosapienv2-4mem8.page.tl/

Additional Comments
This is my second web site and it is a hobby site that I have a great passion for, Robotics and Gaming PC's. I would be eternally grateful for a review on this site as you made such good suggestions for my business site. Many thanks.

Hi there
Interesting site. Nice to see the creative things people do.

Text Overflow comment.

I am getting some overflow affects on your home page, that I dont see on the ABOUT ME page.

Let me explain
You have three colums. "Navigation" "Home" and "About this page".
On the home page but not the ABOUT ME page I find that the text from the middle "HOME" box is pushing over the right border of that box and into the "ABOUT THIS PAGE "Column.


Images comment.

The are very many images on the front page. Do you need them all on the front page ?

Counter comment.

I think you could leave the counter on the front page but definitly not at the top. The first message should not be about how many visitors, it should be about Robots .It may be that your visitors appreciate knowing how many of your fellow robotic enthusiasts visits the site so on the bottom of the page is more typical . But ColoEagle is right that people will make judgements based on the counter value. 

Totally tedious comments :-)

Dont write  "I have been building robots for over 30 yrs now "
Instead "I have been building robots for over 30 yrs"
i.e. delete the "NOW" it is a tic in speech, and worse in writing :-)

It is very personable of you to write

'"I will endeaver to keep this site updated on a regular basis."

But it is really a statement of no value. Better to say :

"I will update this site once a week"

"I will update this site at least monthly"

or say nothing at all if you are not sure.


Also I have just noticed  "expertease" is spelled incorrectly.


Keep having fun with those projects!

regards
Ron

Ron Pecorry:
Many thanks for you review, Some valid comments also. I will go and change what you have stated as this makes sense. As for overlap I feel this is due to the fact that I use Firefox and not I.E. These problems do not occur in Firefox and I do not know how to change them for I.E viewing.

Have fixed all but the expertease Where did you see this as I am have a problem locating it?.

Also Please could you check another thing for me, I have a forum section, I wish to know from a visitors point of view can you find an area where to join this forum, As I have a feeling it is not showing up and of course as yet nobody has joined. This would be my first time creating a forum and may have missed something in creating it.

Thanks

Hi there! I think your robots are great, and your design will be great also, as soon as you unclutter the main page, and organize everything so that it fits in the areas they are supposed to. Your idea is good though,

jeremyyablan:  I have altered my home page, Let me know what you think Please.

I like the home page much better now. yippee, no horizontal scroll.

Just checked your forum. The register link near the top seemed easy enough to find.

Nice site. Sounds like a cool hobby. At the very top of the site in the middle you have Image hosted by image shack but you have it covered up. When you run your mouse over it the site jumps a bit. Other than that and the images slow to load nice site.

So is it safe to say that you guys dont see the big ugly line going through the text?

Pretty safe on my side, is that with FF or IE

Interesting to see that line waveshopee, I suspect that you are using I.E as FF does not show this, Can anyone explain to me why I.E behaves differently. Is it the way coding is arranged? How can I get it to work well in I.E.
ColoEagle: Thanks for looking at my forum and feedback.
Mr.Mel: I will have a look to see if I see it in FF.

The line is visible in IE (on my laptops as well as my biz machines) and when I looked at the URL listed in the OP... it gave me a 404 error in FF