Site critique please

First off, this is not spam. I am about to roll out ny new website, and I
would like some feedback on the site before I do. The site is
http://www.hostingforabuck.com . My main site is currently .net, and I will
park it over the .com domain once I am happy with the .com. thanks in
advance.

Mike

Mike wrote:

First off, this is not spam. I am about to roll out ny new website, and I
would like some feedback on the site before I do. The site is
http://www.hostingforabuck.com . My main site is currently .net, and I
will park it over the .com domain once I am happy with the .com. thanks in
advance.

* You have syntax errors:
In your HTML:
http://validator.w3.org:8001/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A//www.hostingforabuck.com/

And in your CSS:
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?profile=css2&warning=2&uri=http%3A//www.hostingforabuck.com/


* You define font sizes using pt units for use on screen:
http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=UsingPoints

* You have awful alt text:
HostingForaBuck Personal and Small Business H.. (p1 of 3)
[USEMAP:top.gif]

[index_r4_c1.gif]

100 MB of Disk Space

1 GB of Bandwith

MS FrontPage

CGI, PHP, SSI, Pop3

2 MySQL Database

NO SET UP FEE

[index_r9_c1.gif]
[index_r11_c1.gif]
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/%7Eflavell/alt/alt-text.html

* You have a large gap at the bottom of your page for no apparent reason.

* Your header image suffers heavily from "the jaggies" (i.e. the edges of
the letters are anything buy smooth)

* You abuse tables
http://www.allmyfaqs.com/faq.pl?Tableless_layouts

* You have a number of company logos at the bottom of the page. There are
two problems with this.
(1) They aren't links. They feel like they should be links.
(2) There is no mention as to why they are there - do they sponsor you? Are
they a target of a hate campaign run by you? Do you just think the logos
look cute?

* The spacing between the links in the top menu bar isn't great enough. It
is unclear (for example) if you have a link to "support" and a link to
"policies" or just one link to "support policies".

* It is fixed width:
http://www.allmyfaqs.com/faq.pl?AnySizeDesign

* Your prices are images for no apparent reason. The rollover effect can be
achieved with CSS on plain text.

* When I click a link marked "order now" on the compare.htm page it takes
you to a screen asking me to pick a hosting plan. I just did! I clicked on
the "order now" link for the "Buck a Month Plan". - don't make users repeat
themselves.

* You use ".htm" file extensions. This is a legacy of MS DOS and isn't
needed except for hosting on pre-1995 Microsoft platforms. As ".html" is
much more common, this is more likely to cause people to mistype URIs and
get a 404 error.

* Your list at the top of the policies page is double bulleted.

* There are instances of "paragraph<br><br>" being used instead of
"<p>paragraph</p>".

* Your font sizes are inconsistent (e.g. changing from "tiny" to "almost
reasonable" in the middle of the policies page.

* It isn't clear that your Contact Us link is a mailto link. Conventionally
mailto: links have an email address as link text. This aids in copy/pasting
for users of webmail systems and makes it clear that the link will trigger
an email client (if one is available)

* Your support section lacks a FAQ

* Why do you have a "Contact Us" email link and a "Support" link to a form?
I think it would make sense to combine them on to a single page with a
mailto link and a form on it.

* Your contact form lacks <label> elements.

* You use the default text for a submit button on your contact form. If
somebody is entering a comment then "Submit Query" isn't really appropriate
- it isn't a Query.

--
David Dorward <http://blog.dorward.me.uk/> <http://dorward.me.uk/>

"David Dorward" <dorward (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote

Mike wrote:

SNIP

--
David Dorward <http://blog.dorward.me.uk/> <http://dorward.me.uk/

Thank you, now you know why I asked for the critque. I will work on your
suggestions. Anyone else please feel free to add more suggestions/comments.

Mike

In message <1081gtglckn9f30 (AT) corp (DOT) supernews.com>, Mike
<Sales (AT) hostingforabuck (DOT) net> writes

First off, this is not spam. I am about to roll out ny new website, and I
would like some feedback on the site before I do. The site is
http://www.hostingforabuck.com . My main site is currently .net, and I will
park it over the .com domain once I am happy with the .com. thanks in
advance.

Mike

Just a few thoughts:

(a) You need to ensure that *all* your images have alternative text
assigned to them (the alternative text can be ALT="" for things like
spacer .gifs that aren't trying to convey any information).

Otherwise: text-only browsers, graphics browsers with graphics download
turned off, talking browsers, screen-readers,etc. won't be able to use
the site:

e.g. See:

http://www.gododdin.demon.co.uk/ng/HOS1X.JPG (53k)
http://www.gododdin.demon.co.uk/ng/HOS2X.JPG (38k)

A title on the image would be useful too.

(b) On the Compare Plans page, mark up the table as a table -- otherwise
it makes it difficult for talking browsers and screen readers to
navigate it.

(c) 'Contact Us' just links to my email client -- shouldn't this be
'Email Us' ?

(d) Make the input fields (name/email) on the support page longer so
that the user doesn't have to scroll them to check they entered the data
correctly.

regards
--
Jake

John Dunlop <usenet+2004 (AT) john (DOT) dunlop.name> wrote:

Changing URIs isn't a viable solution [2]: we all benefit
from short, meaningful, persistent and durable URIs, whereas we're
discommoded by long or ephemeral ones.

I just _have_ to share this observation: document [2], "Cool URIs don't
change", although it mainly deals with the stability of URLs, also
mentions Nielsen's classic "URL as UI"
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990321.html
which says that URLs should be short and easy-to-type and should
visualize the site structure and be "hackable" to allow users to move to
higher levels of the information architecture by hacking off the end of
the URL.

It was interesting to note how the site of the organization that awarded
the "Millennium award" to Sir Tim Berners-Lee applies such principles:
<http://www.technologyawards.org/index.php?technologyawards=
54639713f869939ab57102876dc1adbd&article_id=3932&_ _from_id__=3907>

When serving HTML files, is appending
".html" to URIs still recommended?

I have mixed feelings about this. As far as I know, there's no
recommendation, just habit. And I suppose that when authors don't touch
the settings of servers, ".html" or ".htm" is usually what they have to
use.

But I'm afraid that users may get confused if you tell them URLs that
don't end with .html or .htm or anything else that they could recognize
as "file type". They might think .html is missing. This should cause
little harm if things are set up so that appending .html produces a
working URL too, pointing to the same resource. But users might also
start wondering what's wrong and suspecting they got the URL _all wrong_.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

On a practical level, how many hosting companies provide e.g.
mod-rewrite (or a similar mechanism) to permit leaving "extensions" off
uris?

Almost all that use Apache instead of IIS. I know we offer it and every
other host that I can think of does too.

--
Edward Alfert - http://www.rootmode.com/
Coupon Code (Recurring $5/month Discount): newsgroup
Multiple Domain Hosting * Private Label Nameservers

Brian <usenet3 (AT) julietremblay (DOT) com.invalid> wrote in
news:10840u5fvfr5cdd (AT) corp (DOT) supernews.com:

Edward Alfert wrote:

On a practical level, how many hosting companies provide e.g.
mod-rewrite (or a similar mechanism) to permit leaving "extensions"
off uris?

Almost all that use Apache instead of IIS. I know we offer it and
every other host that I can think of does too.

That may be true, but how many offer mod_rewrite? My hosting company
uses Apache 1.3/Linux, but does not offer mod_rewrite. And that tends to
limit my options, and leaves me to keep a pretty close file-to-uri match.

I am not aware of any security issues with mod_rewrite. We offer it.

--
Edward Alfert - http://www.rootmode.com/
Coupon Code (Recurring $5/month Discount): newsgroup
Multiple Domain Hosting * Private Label Nameservers

On Sat, 17 Apr 2004, Brian wrote:

On a practical level, how many hosting companies provide e.g.
mod-rewrite (or a similar mechanism) to permit leaving "extensions" off
uris?

I'm considering only Apache(-derived) servers in what follows.

MultiViews is standard; they'd have to take a deliberate action to
deny it. It's remarkably easy to use, and its pitfalls IMHO are found
only when the requirements are rather sophisticated. For the most
part, naive users can just turn it on and use it. MultiViews works
(i.e to supply missing filename extension/s) even when there's only
one Content-Type variant available.

mod_rewrite on the other hand is potentially complex and, like any
complex mechanism, can get naive users into a mess (e.g infinite
rewrite loops). It wouldn't surprise me if a hosting company decided
that they didn't need that kind of hassle from their customers.

I don't have any statistics on what they really do, though. Only
anecdotal evidence - which includes a number of cases where the
provider's support had told them there was no way of doing what they
wanted, but they tried what I suggested, and - to their surprise and
that of the user support - found that it worked just like it 'said on
the tin' in the Apache documentation.

First impressions count - more care on colour combinations - it looks like a
bad acid trip. Consistency with fonts etc. Graphic missing from page.
Currently I wouldn't buy a service from you. However, I'm sure you'll do
better after a little reflection....


"Mike" <Sales (AT) hostingforabuck (DOT) net> wrote

First off, this is not spam. I am about to roll out ny new website, and I
would like some feedback on the site before I do. The site is
http://www.hostingforabuck.com . My main site is currently .net, and I
will
park it over the .com domain once I am happy with the .com. thanks in
advance.

Mike