Check out my new site

[mike7727]

This is only my second site so please be gentle:

www.mrchipssigns.com/test.shtml

[jason]

I'm personally not crazy about the colors, but it works for the industry and the type of message you wnat to convey. My main criticism is that all of the text on the site exists as graphic images. There are several reasons why this is a bad idea. First, anyone who is blind or visually impaired and is using a text-to-speech reader will not be able to get anything out of the site. Even more importantly, search engines won't be able to index any of the text. Using all graphics also makes the page download slower, so people with dialup connections may not wait around until everything downloads. Also, on several of the pages (the About page being the worst), the text is on top of the blue curvy thing and/or its shadow, which makes it hard to read and gives the siute a more amaturish look. For maximum readability, all text should be on a single background. I would also move the "About Mr. Chips" button to below that element.

Other than those two things, the site looks good. The graphics are well amde and eye catching. Nice job.

--Jason

[mike7727]

Jason, thanks for the input. I guess I've got to learn some CSS to figure out how to put the type on top of the graphic. I hadn't considered the search engine issue or the accessability issue either (did occur to me that it wasn't the most efficient design though)

[jason]

CSS and layers is certainly the best way to go if you want to stay within what's considered current standards. Any new sites I work on I am trying to do with CSS and layers. Right now you are using a table-based layout, and that would work for you as well, though. It looks like you have one large image on each page where the main content is. You can substitute that image with the text. To wrap the text around images, insert an <IMG> tag in about the place where you want the image to appear and add align="left" or align="right to it. For example:

<img src="mrchip.gif" alt="Mr. Chip" align="right">

Hope this helps.

--Jason

[Connie]

Mike, I'm certainly no web designer. I agree with the comments Jason made.

I have 1 other suggestion. Get rid of the
click to enter page. Make that your entry page with all the links.

I generally leave a site whose entry page
is click here to enter.

Just my opinion.

[lookout]

Originally posted by clssam
Get rid of the click to enter page.

I agree. Could be worse though, forcing visitors to wait out a long flash intro sales pitch as some sites do. Some of suggestions above should help make the site more accommodating to the indexing robots out there too.

[Vin DSL]

Not bad, but it needs some T&A...

[Zacrifice]

Ok, in general it works, it looks alright, its sorta usable!

to deal with people who are heard of sit then you use ALT tags on images, for links, just use its name, for images length discriptions!

Change the buttons on the left tho, they don't fit in with the overall theme of the website, they need to look more fun like the rest of the site instead of being utilitariun (Oh don't you just love my spelling hahaha)

[mike7727]

I appreciate all the feedback. Have implemented some of your suggestions and here is the result:

http://www.mrchipssigns.com

[dkadave]

Well, here's my comment.

The work on the stuff is awesome, not to sure if that's you're work or not. But it's awesome.

But then the site just looks totally different. Not so awesome. I was hoping it would match the quality of the stuff made.

[mike7727]

I didn't actually do the painting. I think I see what you mean. Perhaps I'll start with redoing the buttons as Zacrifice suggested.

[dkadave]

That's a good idea.

[Gwaihir]

Yeah, "custom paint" the buttons (and shape them a bit different too). That would be a major improvement to that site.