Web Site Review, Please

I'm looking for a review of the following site. Please tear it apart, but keep
in mind that it is meant to be functional:

http://www.share-hodgson.org

Any comments, suggestions, bad things, good things -- all are welcome. Ways to
make it look better, keeping in mind that it's supposed to be functional.

Thanks.

Chris <yes (AT) yes (DOT) ca> wrote in news:3FAEDF3E.923DE22B (AT) yes (DOT) ca:

I'm looking for a review of the following site. Please tear it apart,
but keep in mind that it is meant to be functional:

http://www.share-hodgson.org

Any comments, suggestions, bad things, good things -- all are welcome.
Ways to make it look better, keeping in mind that it's supposed to be
functional.

The homepage reflows nicely, as does the society page. However, the
overview page doesn't; it needs horizontal scrolling if the window is
contracted, even though its visual layout is similar to the society page
which reflows properly.

On both the overview and society pages, many of the contents really need to
be made links. For example, on the society page, in "see •DBaccess or
•FTaccess under our menu section 2a.Research" there should be three links.
Actually, on second though, there should be only two, since if you make
them links you don't have to mention the menu section at all: "see
[DBaccess] or [FTaccess]" should do it (I'm using bracketed text to
represent links). The content shouldn't really have to say a lot about the
mechanics of navigating the site.

The outline-style numbering of the menu strikes me as a little weird. If
that's something considered standard in the genealogy community, then no
problem, but otherwise I'd suggest dropping it. If it's just to make it
easier to refer to menu items in the main text, then that would be better
accomplished by using links as I mentioned above. Again, your content
shouldn't be talking about the mechanics of navigation.

On the welcome page, the list of names is rather ponderous and there has to
be a better way of presenting it, though I'm not sure what that is.

Chris wrote:

I'm looking for a review of the following site. Please tear it apart, but keep
in mind that it is meant to be functional:

http://www.share-hodgson.org

Any comments, suggestions, bad things, good things -- all are welcome. Ways to
make it look better, keeping in mind that it's supposed to be functional.

Thanks.

For the person who wrote the page, it probably seems natural
to associate descriptions in the content section with links at the
left. It is actually very confusing. The description of a link should
be physically close to the link, or structurally related to it.
Rethink how to organize the site; it may help to draw some diagrams.


The links on /FTlinkC3.html are confusing. They all seem to
lead off-site to RootsWeb, where you enter a further search by filling
out a form. Public domain information should be organized on your own
site to fit it's own requirements, and presented in a way that doesn't
require further work by the visitor. Family records and generation
charts should be interlinked by name within the site. Consider using a
preprocessor to create interlinked (X)HTML pages from a gedcom or XML
file (which most genealogy programs can write).

--
Cheers, m at http://www.mbstevens.com/hagerman/

Eric Bohlman wrote:

Chris <yes (AT) yes (DOT) ca> wrote in news:3FAEDF3E.923DE22B (AT) yes (DOT) ca:

I'm looking for a review of the following site. Please tear it apart,
but keep in mind that it is meant to be functional:

http://www.share-hodgson.org

Any comments, suggestions, bad things, good things -- all are welcome.
Ways to make it look better, keeping in mind that it's supposed to be
functional.

The homepage reflows nicely, as does the society page. However, the
overview page doesn't; it needs horizontal scrolling if the window is
contracted, even though its visual layout is similar to the society page
which reflows properly.

On both the overview and society pages, many of the contents really need to
be made links. For example, on the society page, in "see •DBaccess or
•FTaccess under our menu section 2a.Research" there should be three links.
Actually, on second though, there should be only two, since if you make
them links you don't have to mention the menu section at all: "see
[DBaccess] or [FTaccess]" should do it (I'm using bracketed text to
represent links). The content shouldn't really have to say a lot about the
mechanics of navigating the site.

The outline-style numbering of the menu strikes me as a little weird. If
that's something considered standard in the genealogy community, then no
problem, but otherwise I'd suggest dropping it. If it's just to make it
easier to refer to menu items in the main text, then that would be better
accomplished by using links as I mentioned above. Again, your content
shouldn't be talking about the mechanics of navigation.

On the welcome page, the list of names is rather ponderous and there has to
be a better way of presenting it, though I'm not sure what that is.

I passed the above info on to the Webmaster for the site. He sincerely thanks
you for taking the time and interest in critiquing the site. He has already
begun to implement the above suggestions, although they're not ready yet. He
has made a new rule about the content not talking about the mechanics of
navigation.

Again, thank you.