Community website review request

Hello All,

I've set up a new website on a budget for my local village show committee - www.knaphillshow.org - and I was hoping for a bit of feedback from you lovely people. I'm particularly interested in legibility and content. Although any of the content can be added to I'm not sure I've covered everything that a punter might want to see there.

Many thanks!

 

Looks good Andy, well done

 

Hmmm, I clicked it and it said that "page cannot be displayed"?

 

Should be www.knaphillshow.org I think.

A couple of comments from a brief glance (I'm using Safari on an ipad in case that makes a difference)

The pictures on the header of the home page are a bit elongated. Either that or the people of Knaphill are particularly tall and thin

I found the home page a bit busy.

But on the whole I think you've done a good job

 

I get the same as Woo

 

Thanks HsuH......that looks better!

 

Yes, I cocked up the address somewhat lol www.knaphillshow.org

Apologies, have also edited first post to correct.

 

Seems to be an issue with mobile browsers, I'm getting it on my phone too. Will see what can be done.
Busy how? Too fast in slideshow, too many sections, too much info?

 

I really don;t mind if you want to tear it apart as long as I find out how it comes across to peeps

 

Constructive criticism. Don't take this the wrong way, because the site is good, but I always think in terms of the lowest common denominator (ie the oldest browser on the worst hardware likely to still be in common use).

Its a bit heavy on the graphics. The slideshow takes up more than half my screen. Ideally, all the important content should be visible without scrolling.

Seeing as you've used a fancy font, there should be an option somewhere easy to find to change the font to something more conventional, for the benefit of those without the best eyesight. I see you've set four font families, with 'jupiter' being the preferred, followed by arial, then helvetica and then sans serif in that order, so there's fallback if someone doesn't have the intended font. That's good practice, but have you checked how it looks if it has to fall back?

The headings on the tiles on the front page are not links. They ought to be. Its not entirely obvious (to someone who is not that up on computers).

Think also about accessibility. All your pictures should make good use of the 'alt' tag, where there should be a short description of what is being shown. This is for two reasons. Firstly, it is for the visually impaired who may be using screen readers, and secondly its a good opportunity to give the search engines a hand in working out how to index your site.

All in all though, well done. Looks good.

 

@Loofah, just got back in after a meeting so here are some more thoughts while I unwind and dry out.

I agree with clueless about the size of the header on the Home page.

The slide show seems to have 2 different controls for moving between slides, ie round arrows at the bottom left and 3 buttons at the bottom right. Personally I don't like scrolling slide shows in the header and I feel this adds to the feeling of busyness.

On the Home page you're using at least four different ways to link to other pages. You've got round arrows as links in some tiles, links from images, "Read More" links and the map has a downward pointing arrow. These also add to the busyness of the Home page.

In the footer, clicking on the logo jumps to the Home page. Clicking on the left or right arrow by the little map jumps to the top of the page. Neither of these was expected and could cause confusion. The footer is also very large.

I'm not sure that the right sidebar on each page except the Home page adds any value.

In "Our First Post" you say: "... the reigns reins and created the show in 2009 ... gets a fantastic show, year on year."

Having built a couple of community websites I know how much work it takes to get it right. Hope my comments are of some help. I'm still "improving" mine and it's approaching its 3rd birthday!

PS we used to live just down the road from Knaphill in Burpham.

 

Brilliant stuff I don't ever (hardly ever) take these things as criticisms, just helpful opportunities for change. It's absolutely required for websites, especially of this nature, as there are such a wide variety of users. I also developed it on a large screen so needed people to view it on smaller ones to see how it renders - mixed it would seem! Again, it was on a small budget so I did what I could and the rest will happen over time; it's also the reason some items are looking a bit unfinished!
I'll try to address a few things -

Graphics & slider; Has to be graphics led as it's a very 'don't you wish you were here' event, but point taken and I'll see what can be done. I think most images have been optimised but that slider could perhaps be replaced with a smaller one. I'll also slow down the slider to stop it being so frantic.

Font; I'll be honest, it's one of the main reasons for asking for input. I'm not convinced it's easy to read by everyone, I may just default it to arial for the body text. There's more than the visible font sets available (not currently seen), I've put a small mix in during testing to get opinion on legibility and may remove the fancy ones altogether.

Front page links; @clueless1 you're right, I should have spotted that.

Alt tags; It's a mix, some have and some haven't.

Links & sidebars; Some still need populating. With regard to side bars (@HsuH ) they'll become more relevant over time and comments and posts are added. I agree at the moment they add little but they need to be there.

Footer; Fair point about it being large. It's driven primarily by the twitter feed parameters although I may be able to reduce it a tad as long as it doesn't become cramped.

Map; Yep, not the best. Will replace with something legible.

Gallery; an issue I'm still attempting to solve! The plugin used to be fantastic and the developer buggered it up recently and is firefighting it back into service.

Sponsors; Had to put some in there for placeholders, others to follow.

Payment; We all have pipe dreams! Financial costs are covered (tight budgets etc) but I won;t be retiring on it.

Overall, broadly speaking and at the end of the day (I could carry that on...) it appears it has gone down OK. Issues over 'business' can be addressed and theres a good few items to be working on in the meantime too.

Huge thanks everyone and if anyone has more comments to make please feel free

 

I couldn't find a 'Results' section.

I found that amusing, being a comment about a website.