Astronomy Website Critique

My client is a small business, 2 people. They run a mobile observatory
for school kids to stargaze with and learn about astronomy.

They do not currently have a website.

The site will have monthly updates with "this month's" astrological
events such as eclipses, meteor showers, which planets you can see etc.

There are multiple sections taking up approximately 15-20 pages.

I will be doing it to be HTML 4.01 compatable with CSS for the layout
and menus, Photoshop created images, minimal use of javascript (though
should any be necessary, there will be appropriate <noscript> tags to
display the same content but with slightly reduced capability (this may
not be necessary though).

To allow for expansion later, if necessary, the page will be made as PHP.

Client already owns domain name and PHP enabled web hoster, but is
looking for someone to design a site.

I am going to charge between £50 and £100 ($80-$170 USD).

Thoughts, opinions, comments welcome please about the design, concept or
anything I may have missed.

www.dancingborg.co.uk/astronomy.jpg
Is what it would look like on a 800x600 screen although I will make it
as scalable as possible.

TIA.

Weyoun the gowd damn Dominion Vorta who certainly didn't dance wrote:

www.dancingborg.co.uk/astronomy.jpg
Is what it would look like on a 800x600 screen although I will make it
as scalable as possible.

As an after-thought I am thinking of "rounding off" the top left and
bottom left corners of the "frame" (wont be a frame, will be CSS) an an
external SSI.

Weyoun the gowd damn Dominion Vorta who certainly didn't dance wrote:

Weyoun the gowd damn Dominion Vorta who certainly didn't dance wrote:

www.dancingborg.co.uk/astronomy.jpg
Is what it would look like on a 800x600 screen although I will make it
as scalable as possible.


As an after-thought I am thinking of "rounding off" the top left and
bottom left corners of the "frame" (wont be a frame, will be CSS) an an
external SSI.

The buttons will also be changed so the "Emboss" effect is int he same
direction as the nacigational frame, and the colour will be the same as
the frame. This should create the effect of the high-light which almost
looks as if it's floating - it will give a "transparent" effect and will
look better.

"Weyoun the gowd damn Dominion Vorta who certainly didn't dance"
<blah (AT) blah (DOT) blah> wrote

My client is a small business, 2 people. They run a mobile observatory
for school kids to stargaze with and learn about astronomy.

They do not currently have a website.

The site will have monthly updates with "this month's" astrological
events such as eclipses, meteor showers, which planets you can see etc.

There are multiple sections taking up approximately 15-20 pages.

I will be doing it to be HTML 4.01 compatable with CSS for the layout
and menus, Photoshop created images, minimal use of javascript (though
should any be necessary, there will be appropriate <noscript> tags to
display the same content but with slightly reduced capability (this may
not be necessary though).

To allow for expansion later, if necessary, the page will be made as PHP.

Client already owns domain name and PHP enabled web hoster

A big thought here is:
This is one of those sites that people will link to, not for any
commercial reason, but because they want to (schools, other astronomy sites,
astronomy link lists, etc). For that reason I would say off the start that
if they are going to want it to be PHP later, they should probably start off
with it as PHP pages (they don't have to include any server side scripting
in them, just end in the PHP extension)

Reason: the links. If people link to this site and the pages they link
to end in .html and those get changed to .php then the link is potentially
lost. Search engines will index the .html pages (especially if they do get
alot of inbound links from other sites) and therefore those will also be
lost if the site switches to PHP down the road.

I am going to charge between £50 and £100 ($80-$170 USD).

To do the graphic design of the site? All the graphic designers we use
charge us $400-600 (US) for a site layout/template

Thoughts, opinions, comments welcome please about the design, concept or
anything I may have missed.

www.dancingborg.co.uk/astronomy.jpg
Is what it would look like on a 800x600 screen although I will make it
as scalable as possible.

Good clean basic design. You can easily make the top of the site scalable
to larger width browsers.

brucie wrote:

in post: <news%Gbc.7$Xh6.3 (AT) newsfe2-gui (DOT) server.ntli.net
Weyoun the gowd damn Dominion Vorta who certainly didn't dance
blah (AT) blah (DOT) blah> said:


http://www.dancingborg.co.uk/astronomy.jpg


drop down menus are not user friendly.

Do you mean not compatable with the browser or do you mean that web
users generally do not like them?

If it's the former, it would be done in CSS not JavaScript. If CSS is
not available, the buttons themselves are intended to be links that will
take the user into a page for each button, with the options seen on the
menus with a brief description.

If it is the latter, I am not sure I agree. Many websites have menu
features - I find them useful myself. It is the way most software is
presented through a windows-style computer interface (File, Edit etc). I
think as long as they are not confusing, they are very good navigation
tools for a site.

Could you be more specific so I can look into the problem more please?

TIA

Augustus wrote:

"Weyoun the gowd damn Dominion Vorta who certainly didn't dance"
blah (AT) blah (DOT) blah> wrote in message
news%Gbc.7$Xh6.3 (AT) newsfe2-gui (DOT) server.ntli.net...

My client is a small business, 2 people. They run a mobile observatory
for school kids to stargaze with and learn about astronomy.

They do not currently have a website.

The site will have monthly updates with "this month's" astrological
events such as eclipses, meteor showers, which planets you can see etc.

There are multiple sections taking up approximately 15-20 pages.

I will be doing it to be HTML 4.01 compatable with CSS for the layout
and menus, Photoshop created images, minimal use of javascript (though
should any be necessary, there will be appropriate <noscript> tags to
display the same content but with slightly reduced capability (this may
not be necessary though).

To allow for expansion later, if necessary, the page will be made as PHP.

Client already owns domain name and PHP enabled web hoster


A big thought here is:
This is one of those sites that people will link to, not for any
commercial reason, but because they want to (schools, other astronomy sites,
astronomy link lists, etc). For that reason I would say off the start that
if they are going to want it to be PHP later, they should probably start off
with it as PHP pages (they don't have to include any server side scripting
in them, just end in the PHP extension)

Reason: the links. If people link to this site and the pages they link
to end in .html and those get changed to .php then the link is potentially
lost. Search engines will index the .html pages (especially if they do get
alot of inbound links from other sites) and therefore those will also be
lost if the site switches to PHP down the road.

I entirely agree. As stated above, because it may be necessary in the
future for the site to have more interactive features (as it stands I
could write in with .html extensions and it would work), I will be
coding it so that they are PHP pages. For the client, if I'm in a good
mood, I might also do it in basic ASP as well, for allow for the
contingent that they may in future host it on an IIS server and want it
as such. Since there's no interactive coding on the site, this should be
very very simple to accomplish. The only changes will be to how I
implement SSIs into the site but it's only 2 or 3 changes per page and
then to save them as seperate files. I'll do it as I create the site.

I am going to charge between £50 and £100 ($80-$170 USD).


To do the graphic design of the site? All the graphic designers we use
charge us $400-600 (US) for a site layout/template

£50-£100 for concept design, programming, uploading, search engine
registration (where applicable).

Thoughts, opinions, comments welcome please about the design, concept or
anything I may have missed.

www.dancingborg.co.uk/astronomy.jpg
Is what it would look like on a 800x600 screen although I will make it
as scalable as possible.


Good clean basic design. You can easily make the top of the site scalable
to larger width browsers.

Yes. That's my plan. The only problem is 640x480 monitors. I will look
at the statistics of how many people use a 640x480 monitor in schools
(default is 800x600 in the 4 schools and colleges I've been in) and
notify the client. I will leave it up to them to decide if they wany a
640 compatible website.

brucie wrote:

in post: <news:thHbc.15$Xh6.0 (AT) newsfe2-gui (DOT) server.ntli.net
Weyoun the gowd damn Dominion Vorta who certainly didn't dance
blah (AT) blah (DOT) blah> said:


http://www.dancingborg.co.uk/astronomy.jpg


drop down menus are not user friendly.



Do you mean not compatable with the browser or do you mean that web
users generally do not like them?


not working is an issue but any navigation that wants the user to hunt
around looking for links is not a good idea.

Agreed. The simpler the way, the more likely they will click.

think back to when you first got a new bit of fun giggly software. how
long did it take you to learn where the menu selections were without
having to hunt around looking for them? don't expect your visitors who
spend most of their time on other sites to learn your navigation.

I don't intend to. The buttons themselves will, if clicked on, take you
to a page containing the links. There's over 25 pages in total, I can't
put them all on the front page. They are under their own subsections and
headings, much like the Yahoo "Catagories" is.

75% of your visitors will leave if what they're looking for is not
immediately apparent.

&

how many visitors are going to hunt through your menus looking for
"teaching aids"?

If the perosn browsing was a teacher, they would see "schools" and if
they didnt want to use the menu, clicking on that will take them to a
page dedicated to the school's section.

If they are a parent looking to arrange a show they would either click
on "shows" or move over the shows menu and goto "Private Events".

how many will hit their back button before the menu (and images) have
even finished downloading?

The menu will be text CSS. It should load almost instantaneously.

if the link to "teaching aids" was on the actual page how many would
hit it before the page has finished downloading to go to the page they
want?

Well... how would anyone on any site click on something that hasn't
downloaded? This site isn't one giant Jpeg, the only images are the
borders, the title, the left "News" titles and the pics of the events.

This is a brochure site, it has to have some graphics and look
attractive else people will think they aren't good at presentation. And
since this is about a live presentation I want to make it look
attractive. Each page will not be more than 50kn in size I hope. In any
case once the title (probably about 25k) is downloaded once, it should
stay in the browser cache.

If it is the latter, I am not sure I agree. Many websites have menu
features


"everyone else does it" is not a reason to do it

I didn't say everyone does it. I said many. even if 50% of websites use
menus, then 50% dont right? So if I dont have menus, you could use the
"everyone else does it is not a reason to do it" excuse that way.

I am using menus.

I find them useful myself.


your visitors don't give a shit what you like.

Out of interested, if I had not put menus there to begin with, would you
be telling me to use them because they weren't there?

I have to compromise between having many pages and making it easy and
quick to find the area you want. The menu headings allow for individual
pages of the site, but the major sections/catagories are immediately
available. Yahoo, the worlds most popular website, functions in this way.

brucie wrote:

I find them useful myself.


your visitors don't give a shit what you like.

btw:

www.bbc.co.uk/science/space
www.startrek.com
www.nasa.gov

all have menu systems. the NASA and BBC sites dont even offer a visual

menu. You have no choice but to click on the button before a sub menu
appears. Mine will do that *and* offer "shortcuts" in a popup menu.

Those two sites have to be in the Top 10 for astronomy sites in UK searches.

Weyoun the gowd damn Dominion Vorta who certainly didn't dance
<blah (AT) blah (DOT) blah> wrote:

brucie wrote:

I find them useful myself.


your visitors don't give a shit what you like.

btw:

www.bbc.co.uk/science/space
www.startrek.com
www.nasa.gov

all have menu systems.

Where? Every link I click on takes me to a new page. I don't see any
sort of popup/dropdown/magic menu anywhere.

Steve

--
"My theories appal you, my heresies outrage you,
I never answer letters and you don't like my tie." - The Doctor

Steve Pugh <steve (AT) pugh (DOT) net> <http://steve.pugh.net/>

In article <imHbc.17$Xh6.14 (AT) newsfe2-gui (DOT) server.ntli.net>,
Weyoun the gowd damn Dominion Vorta who certainly didn't dance
<blah (AT) blah (DOT) blah> wrote:

If people link to this site and the pages they link
to end in .html and those get changed to .php then the link is potentially
lost.

For the client, if I'm in a good
mood, I might also do it in basic ASP as well

Then don't do
www.domain.com/contact.html
or
www.domain.com/contact.php
but
www.domain.com/contact/
where inside the directory 'contact' the default index document sits,
like index.html, index.php or index.asp.

--
Kris
<kristiaan (AT) xs4all (DOT) netherlands> (nl)
<http://www.cinnamon.nl/>