DPS Computing

[DPS Computing]

Hello everyone!

Feel free to review my website hosting - http://www.dpscomputing.com

I know in certain sections the content is lacking but the website hosting is very much work in progress!

Sadly most of our content was lost when our last host (god help me if I was still with them! problem after problem) had a catestrophic failure on the server where my website hosting was hosted and I was a very silly boy and did not keep backups! (I have learnt that lesson now and always have a current backup!). As it was only a part time hobby I cancelled the account, lost the domain and didn't bother resetting up (I didnt really have the time to work on the site) Also due to the fact the website hosting was rebranded, had a new domain and was offline for over 12 months I have lost most of the visitors .

Anyway, I decided to revive it and am working to get the content back up to what it used to be!

Any comments / reviews are greatly appreciated! Thank you!

[eUKhost.com]

You need some good images on your website hosting. as a visitor I may not visit the website hosting again as it has no magnet in it to retain a visitor. I may not bookmark your website hosting or come back again on your website hosting.

I am not trying to make any harsh comments but this is what came to my mind after opening your website hosting and watching for 10 seconds. You need to wait for comments which will come from experienced webmasters as they know what exactly you need to change.

[paul]

DPS,
Sad to hear that you lost the content and domain name, it is always important to buy the domain name from reputed registrar or host and choose a good hosting company to avoid such instance. Looking on your website hosting, I would suggest you to make your font size little smaller and change the white background within the Iframe, yea you should also add some image preferably on the header.

[esnail]

The light-blue turquoise of your background is too harsh for the amount you have. The un-styled blue link text in your menu does not sit well at all with the background and is difficult to read. Your header looks like an afterthought and should really blend in better with your background scheme. The scrolling text at the top is annoying and unnecessary. These features are simply never used in contemporary web design. Personally I don't need to know how many times I've visited your website hosting, nor do I want to have to wait for the entire text to scroll past before I know whether I need that information or not.
A website hosting in my view is about providing information simply and effectively - yet after hanging around your website hosting for a lot longer than I would have if I wasn't looking to make comments for you, I still don't know who you are, what you do, or what the purpose of the website hosting is.
I know these comments may sound harsh, but believe me they could have been harsher and you have to be admired for putting it out there to be judged.
I am assuming you are not a web designer, so I'll never expect a great website hosting but there are a few things you need to address in order to make this website hosting at least viewable.

the logo needs redoing - get rid of the jagged edges and have its background at least match or compliment the website hosting background.
Change the colour scheme of the website hosting and apply some link colour styling. Try somewhere like, http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html for ideas.
I would reduce the size of the no-spam/no-adware etc area, their current size suggests that they are more important than your content.
I would be inclined to reduce the number of links on the home page and perhaps categorize these links into subsections. Don't confuse the visitor or given them too much choice.

I hope you can take these comments in a positive and constructive way and develop your website hosting. It can be difficult to receive criticism.

[sabian1982]

Frames are BAD, that combined with the colours makes it a very 90's/frontpage style website hosting.

If your planning on using your website hosting to sell computing services and make a profit then you definately need to look at getting something a little more professional. If its still just a hobby though then its unlikely it will get many visitors so the design isnt so much of an issue - content though, is key!

[DPS Computing]

Firstly, may I say thank you to you all that have commented / reviewed so far and I look forward to any re-reviews (after changes are made) or new peoples reviews or comments.

I will try and answer the points raised in some kind of order.

1. With regards to images on the website hosting, yes I would like to be able to include a lot more. The problem for me is finding images that I can use as at the moment I have very few and my image creating abilities are severly modest to say the least .

2. With regards to making the font size smaller, I was told that under the DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) 2005 that website hostings had to use a certain font size to be complient. I have used size 12. Any lower would apparently make the website hosting inaccessible to certain people, therefore not complying with this act. Also, I am assured by not complying with this act it would greatly offend many people and lead many people not to visit the website hosting.

3. With regards to the white background, I thought this made the text easier to read - any further comments on this would be useful.

4. Regarding the image in the header? - There are 2 images in the header, or are you refering to something else?

5. RE: Blue background - ok point taken, willing to consider different background colours.

6. RE: Unstlyled link menu - this used to be buttons but I was unable to upload the the menu page after adding them, there was some kind of problem with the javascript that prevented it being uploaded - I am currently in progress changing this to another set of buttons to see if it works, this was a temporary measure to get the menu back online.

7. RE: Header - I agree could be improved, will deffo look into that.

8. RE: All scrolling text issues - unsure on this one. I agree the way I have implemented it might have been outdated but I still see it used a lot. The main difference that I see is that flash is used and it seems more "spectacular" and eye catching. Unfortnuately my knowledge in this area is lacking.

9. RE: Who, what, where, when, why - I agree, the introduction, among other things, is undergoing a rewrite for clairy and simplicities sake.

10. RE: Being harsher - I didn't tell anyone to hold back on there comments. However I don't take kindly to insults as they are not useful in anyway shape or form. So if by this you meant you had more critisisms, like the ones you have listed, then feel free.

11. RE: Assuming I'm not a web designer - spot on, my field is software programming - C, C++, Visual Basic mainly.

12. RE: Logo needing redoing - I agree. Logo is used from our old website hosting, probably why it looks a bit out of place!

13. RE: Web site hosting colour scheme - I am looking into new colour schemes. Anything specific you think I should choose / avoid?

14. RE: Reducing size of No Spam / Adware etc - Agreed - I was lazy and just left them at their standard size.

15. RE: Reducing links on menu / categorise - I will at least categorise the links so to make it easier (I have already partially done this!)

16. RE: Taking the comments positively and constructivly - I can do this, I very much want to learn about something I don't know a lot about, just as I give out comments to people in my field of expertise, that sometimes sound harsh.

**************RE: Frames are BAD*****************
Depending on who you ask, frames are bad, tables are bad, any style formatting is bad, link bars on the website hosting are bad (tabled, framed or otherwise). So how do you win. I chose frames because I'm not going for website hosting of the year award and they make my life easier!!! Other website hostings that I have tried to where I have avoided frames for SOOOO long have been so hard for me to maintain with regards to navigation menus etc.

RE: Selling computer services - not on my mind currently, I base that work offline, this is meant originally as a hobby to provide information and help me with my web design and related skills. If I could make money out of it in the end, that would be a bonus!

RE: Content - I am working on it, though I have a very busy life! - it is very work in progress!

Once again, I thank you all for your comments and reviews and more are certainly welcome. I will appreciate more feedback and reviews especially after changes have been made.

Thank you very much!

[sabian1982]

Originally Posted by DPS Computing

2. With regards to making the font size smaller, I was told that under the DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) 2005 that website hostings had to use a certain font size to be complient. I have used size 12. Any lower would apparently make the website hosting inaccessible to certain people, therefore not complying with this act. Also, I am assured by not complying with this act it would greatly offend many people and lead many people not to visit the website hosting.

Hmmm, there are 3 levels for DDA, a font size 10 or 12 is fine, ideally fonts should be defined in em instead of px. The text itself can be read by a screen reader so there isnt a major DDA issue in regards to the font size. The other DDA related issue that is sort of key is giving images proper alt tags describing what that the images shows.

Originally Posted by DPS Computing

**************RE: Frames are BAD*****************
Depending on who you ask, frames are bad, tables are bad, any style formatting is bad, link bars on the website hosting are bad (tabled, framed or otherwise). So how do you win. I chose frames because I'm not going for website hosting of the year award and they make my life easier!!! Other website hostings that I have tried to where I have avoided frames for SOOOO long have been so hard for me to maintain with regards to navigation menus etc.

I agree with you on that... ideally everyone should use pure css design and layout although obviously thats not always possible. The thinking behind frames being bad is purely based on a search engine point of view rather than a design side...

At the end of the day the main thing is that your happy with your website hosting, if others are happy, thats just a bonus.

Best of luck!

[DPS Computing]

Thank you for a quick and helpful reply once again.

My biggest problem with not using frames is the upadating of core items that are on every page such as the navigation menu.

For example, at the moment my website hosting is a few hundred pages, say I wanted to add one item to the navigation menu, how would I do it. Would I have to manually add this to all of the few hundred pages? This would be what frustrated me!?!?! because it would take me hours and hours to do something which at the moment takes me seconds!!

Thank you in advance for your replies

[sabian1982]

Originally Posted by DPS Computing

For example, at the moment my website hosting is a few hundred pages, say I wanted to add one item to the navigation menu, how would I do it. Would I have to manually add this to all of the few hundred pages?

The simplest option is to use what are called include files.

You create a simply file with your navigation in:

ie navigation.inc.php or navigation.inc or navigation.php (the first options is the most secure from a php point of view although as your not using dynamic data it isn't really an issue).

Then you add it in the specific location using the following code:

Take a look at this tutorial, i think it pretty much sums up the best way to do it...

http://www.tizag.com/phpT/include.php

[DPS Computing]

Once again, thank you very much for the quick reply!

Ah right, that makes things a lot better for me. I am going to keep my current website hosting up but try and implement these things into a new website hosting and begin a transition hopefully in the end to a website hosting that is better!!

Any more replies / comments are greatly appreciated!

[DPS Computing]

Just as an update for everyone who has commented so far.

I have started work on a new website hosting which fixes or is going to fix many of the problems above - however I am going to focus mainly on getting the content up and running (which will mean the frames and other critical things may be there a little longer. But I will start to make the alternative website hosting available soon when it has some of the content and migrate it.

The one thing that I don't understand is if its got content, surly that is all that matters, irrelevant of how it displayed, how many flash images you can get on it etc.

I have seen so many fancy website hostings that look like feats of design work but have no useful content. Anyway, at least I'm making an effort on both!

Also, is using tables in page design a huge no no as well? I can't see what is so bad about them and most website hostings I have seen, including supposidly well designed ones, use tables for layout purposes.

Thank you in advance for your response(s)!

[flesso]

Tables are made for tabular data only, that was meant to be their origional purpose only, whoever worked out they could build the whole page was an idiot.

With tables you are limited to what you can do, with divs and lists and other things like that, they can be fully controlled via css, and you can get the positioning exact. Sites that use tables are normally outdated these days or are converting.

[esnail]

the modern, and correct way of writing a web page is to use (x)HTML to semantically structure the informational elements of your page, and use CSS to take care of the display elements. This ensures that the page loads efficiently, is more accessible to screen readers, it better searched by search engines and, if there are many pages with similar template or elements, makes them much easier to update.

Tables if used, should only be used for tabular data and NOT for cosmetic styling. If you create pages in this manner you will not only be adhering to web standards and have pages which validate with W3C, but you will have the structure in place to allow your pages to be accessed via webTV, mobi-phones and printers - simply by providing a relevant style sheet.

Its about separating the design from the information structure. Tables mix the two and cause problems in the long run.

[sabian1982]

Take a look at this article i wrote a while back:

http://www.michaelthorn.co.uk/021106.php

[rocklee0891]

It's a nice website hosting and easy to navigate through... But the colours don't go together... it lacks style. You should fix it up a bit. Give it a personal touch. lol

[DPS Computing]

Thank you all yet again for these useful comments. I promise I am taking them all on board and should lead to many improvements in my website hosting. Also thank you for the links to articles provided. They are proving very useful.

As I have said previously, web design and related areas are not my strong point so any and all help is appreciated from everyone.

Thank you once again!