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ultimatehandyman
regular
Reg'd: Sat
Posts: 256
Loc: Darwen, Lancs, UK
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Hi, I started a DIY website in December last year (http://www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk/) and would like some feedback. I have had over 16000 page views so far but not much feedback has been left in my guestbook. I have not made any money whatsoever from this site as this is not the reason for doing it, I just wanted to share my knowledge with people less fortunate than my self. I'd appreciate any fedback at all!
Thanks, ultimatehandyman.
ultimatehandyman
Edited by ultimatehandyman on 30/04/2005 14:23 (server time).
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Nanook
regular
Reg'd: Tue
Posts: 995
Loc: South East England
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Clicky version:
http://www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk/
(You added two many spaces!) (edit - you fixed it ;))
It is a very busy homepage with lots of information and bright colours
Firefox tells me you have around 35 images on the homepage, this could cause a problem for dialup users, who would have to wait a while to download it all!
There is a wealth of information on this site which would be very helpful for people but it seems quite a trek round the site to find what you need to know.
Maybe have the search function on the site at the top, in the same location on every page to help find information.
When using images, such as the big yellow box, you could do the same effect with CSS and save yourself another image, it is also best not to have text in an image as search engines can not read it, nor can people with images turned off, or using blind-reading browsers.
While the background adds effect most people prefer having a simple solid color background, which is not only eaiser on the eye, it also downloads quicker!
If you can get this site a bit more user friendly it would be brilliant site
*Nanook
http://www.bains007.co.uk
Please post your website address when asking for help!Edited by nanook on 30/04/2005 14:23 (server time).
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ultimatehandyman
regular
Reg'd: Sat
Posts: 256
Loc: Darwen, Lancs, UK
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Thanks Nanook, I'll look into improving it as much as I can. I have no previous experience of building web sites, so I am still learning as I am going along. Thanks for your advice though and the speed at which you replied to my post!
I'll look into improving it asap.
Thanks
chez
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bumpyride
regular
Reg'd: Tue
Posts: 160
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Hi,
my wife and I have just had a good look through your excellent site. There is so much useful content there - I'll bookmark it for sure!
Nanook has covered a lot of the things I would have mentioned - if you work on the layout it would really improve the site since people may be put off spending a lot of time on the site if they judge a book by its cover / a site by its homepage!
But yes, wow! What an excellent resource site. I've also had a lot of help from the people on the SitePoint forum, which is a forum similar to this one, but seems to have a lot more traffic, or at least, a lot more replies on the posts.
A few points anyway, at the risk of repeating Nanook:
1. The overall layout, esp. of the homepage, looks very cluttered. It's not easy to know where to go next.
2. The big list of links down the left (in the form of the images) don't seem to be in any order. It might make more sense to arrange them into sections - since 'Humour' (some of those links are great by the way) doesn't seem to have anything to do with 'electrical' or 'landlords'. Also, if these links were text links it may help with your search engine rankings as they like text links. Also, the actual text would be jucy keywords for the SEs - since the links are images at the moment they don't really help much with SE rankings, plus the other reasons Nanook mentions are good ones for not relying too much on images for links.
2a. It doesn't seem very consistent having a bit list of link images on the left, and then having some text links below there.
2b. The user's experience on the site could really be aided with some clear layout, and more consistent navigation. This may take some time as you have a lot of content, but maybe it'd be better to have fewer links on the homepage, grouped into broad categories. i.e:
i) DIY topics >> links to a bit list of links to all your DIY articles - again this page could group your articles into clear sub headings (building / plumbing / painting etc.)
ii) general >> links to your disclaimer, supplier & tradesmen indexes, safety first etc
iii) other > humour, build a website...
3. It'd be nice to have an 'about' page (in my opinion) so people can read about you, why you set the site up, what your experience is etc.
4. Your header image looks a bit grainy and pixellated, which tends to make the site look a bit amateurish. It's probably best to replace this with a more professional looking logo, or else replace it comepletely with text. (in my opinion!)
All the best
Jim
split figs on the internet
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ultimatehandyman
regular
Reg'd: Sat
Posts: 256
Loc: Darwen, Lancs, UK
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Thanks for that Jim.
I'll bear those points in mind when I re-do the home page. I'm definately going to replace all the picture buttons with text links. I will also creat an "about" page also as this seems to be a good idea. Thanks for your advice I will print both yours and nanook's advice off and use it as a guide line for re-creating my home page.
Thanks
chez
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ultimatehandyman
regular
Reg'd: Sat
Posts: 256
Loc: Darwen, Lancs, UK
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Thanks to Jim and Greg for helping me out here!
I have completely changed my homepage ultimatehandyman
This page should now load far faster for people on slow connections.
It's a lot tidier now (I believe)
Thanks again
chez
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Nanook
regular
Reg'd: Tue
Posts: 995
Loc: South East England
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Looking a lot better
Good luck changing all the other pages to match ;-)
Please post your website address when asking for help!
*Nanook
http://www.bains007.co.ukEdited by TheFatControlleR on 01/05/2005 21:20 (server time).
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greysts
regular
Reg'd: Thu
Posts: 17424
Loc: Colchester
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Things are beginning to look a whole lot better now. I flatter myself that I know quite a bit about DIY but your site is really useful. I have it bookmarked for the next time my wife tells me to get off the computer and do some proper work like decorating the kitchen/dining room/whole house.
One thing I would urge is to scan the site with a spell checker. You've got one or two howlers including one on the main banner of your home page - TOTALY should be TOTALLY. I know it's not a big thing these days but I always regard web pages with incorrect spelling as indicating a poor site. Wrong, in your case, but you know what I mean. I would also get someone to run through it for grammatical errors. For example under Brickwork you've got a sentence 'if you house was built an hundred years ago' which should read 'if your house was built a hundred years ago'. Sorry to be picky but it goes with my age. 
Do you know that we're all in line for succession to the throne? Really?
Well, if forty-eight million, two hundred thousand, seven hundred and one people died I'd be Queen.
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ultimatehandyman
regular
Reg'd: Sat
Posts: 256
Loc: Darwen, Lancs, UK
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Thanks for that Greysts and well spotted!
I'm always putting "an" instead of "a" and I never noticed it on the page that you mentioned!
I will change it ASAP
I will change the banner also!
Thanks again
chez
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Nanook
regular
Reg'd: Tue
Posts: 995
Loc: South East England
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If you have the capabilities I would like to suggest using PHP or SSI to include different sections of your page on every page, this makes updating a lot easier.
What you do is make a new page, say navigation.html, and then on the main page 'tell it' to include the file navigation.html, then when you need to update the navigation simply change the navigation.html file and all pages using it get the new navigation!
Example PHP code:
<?php include 'navigation.html'; ?>
Please post your website address when asking for help!
*Nanook
http://www.bains007.co.ukEdited by TheFatControlleR on 01/05/2005 21:22 (server time).
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ultimatehandyman
regular
Reg'd: Sat
Posts: 256
Loc: Darwen, Lancs, UK
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Thanks Greg, I'll take a closer look at that when I have more time.
Thanks
chez
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ultimatehandyman
regular
Reg'd: Sat
Posts: 256
Loc: Darwen, Lancs, UK
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Thanks Greg
That little tip has saved me loads of work!
I no longer need to edit each page individually.
Thanks
chez
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Nanook
regular
Reg'd: Tue
Posts: 995
Loc: South East England
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No problem
I would show you a more complicated example but unfourtunately my site is down!
If you have one page, say index.php, you could then ask it to call a variable, say page name
for example have www.site.com/index.php?page=main
and then you can have one page that you need to update and then display the requested page in that, for example have a banner, side navigation on one page, and then in the main content display whatever page was requested, be it main.html or plumping.html for example.
If you are interested in that then reply below and I can give you the code I wrote to do this
Please post your website address when asking for help!
*Nanook
http://www.bains007.co.uk << Under redevelopment
Donate via PayPal
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ultimatehandyman
regular
Reg'd: Sat
Posts: 256
Loc: Darwen, Lancs, UK
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Hi Greg
That would be useful!, If you could show me the that code I'd appreciate it!
I've not had many probs with my site being down, think it has happened once, but can imagine how annoying it is especially if you are trying to update it.
Thanks
chez
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Nanook
regular
Reg'd: Tue
Posts: 995
Loc: South East England
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OK to do this you will need a minimum of 3 files. One .php and two .html.
The idea is that a page is requested in the URL, for example www.site.com/index.php?page=plumbing.
In the PHP file you need to first find out what page is requested. So in the <head> tag we first do a command to find the value for 'page'.
<?php
$page = $_GET['page'];
$html = ".html";
if ($page == '') {
$page2 = 'main';
} else {
$page2 = $page;
}
?>
What this does is first opens up PHP, next it finds the value for 'page'. It assigns this value to the variable $page. The next part assigns a value to the variable $html.
After this an 'if' statement is run which checks to see if 'page' has a value, if it does then it assigns the value of 'page' to 'page2', if it doesn't have a value then it assigns a default value, such as main (which would load main.html in the main part).
Then were you want the requested page to show put this code
<?php
include "$page2" . "$html";
?>
Which tells the server to include the value of page2.html. Which means that it finds the variable 'page2' and adds .html to the end and asks it to be shown.
Just a note that if you don't have the page that is requested (i.e. there is a typo) you will get a php error because I haven't written the part to check it displays properly.
The next part is to make the files which will be included. All you need to do is make a page like normal, but omit everything but what is in the <body> tags. So for example if your page is
<html>
<head>
<title>Example</title>
</head>
<body>
Example text
</body>
</html>
you need to change it to
Example text.
Hope this helps
Please post your website address when asking for help!
*Nanook
http://www.bains007.co.uk << Under redevelopment
Donate via PayPal
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epicentre
new user
Reg'd: Fri
Posts: 15
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I just like to say the humour section is worth the site on it's own!
I did take a look at the plumbing as well and thought it looked really useful.
I will be bookmarking for future reference.
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heidi
regular
Reg'd: Sun
Posts: 246
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I agree with epicentre - the "humour" section is a fun addition to the site! Really useful and easy to find information. In my bookmarks for ongoing reference! (in the middle of house/garden overhaul!)
heidi
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ask4help.org.uk
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ultimatehandyman
regular
Reg'd: Sat
Posts: 256
Loc: Darwen, Lancs, UK
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Thanks for those comments!
When web user magazine featured my site in issue 111 they criticised me slightly for having a humour section mixed in with the DIY, I have since moved the link away from the diy links, I'm relly glad that epicentre and hiedi have left these comments. I have been neglecting the humour section recently but I will add more to that section asap.
Thanks
ultimatehandyman
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DIY
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ultimatehandyman
regular
Reg'd: Sat
Posts: 256
Loc: Darwen, Lancs, UK
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The humour section has now been updated, there is still lots of work to be done and I will get there eventually!
http://www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk/humour.htm
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DIY
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