Doing some basic web design services

[jkdbjj]

While I am on the road, I have time to do something I have always been interested in. Building websites. I have a long way to go on the design aesthetics ability, but I keep practicing.
Mainly I am good at the SEO portion of web work, and now I want to get better at all aspects. Primarily for smaller businesses that want local reach.

Anyway, this client orders decals and so forth, and we got talking and I ended up taking on his web work.

Thanks for any feedback, good or negative.

I also like to help others, so if you have questions about your website feel free to ask me.

​http://www.thinkharmonydental.com/

EDIT: there are a couple links and pages that we are still finishing, so I apologize for that. I am just waiting on client for some info.

 

[visual800]

My opinion? Flash is stupid and just a waste of my time. I almost clicked off it waiting for it to finish loading. colors were nice and layout was normal overall nice website

 

[Techman]

long flash loads are long dead. It leads directly to click aways. This one borders on a click away and does nothing to add for the page. They just sit there once loaded.

Yoga?? not for me. Harmony in a Dental office means nothing when I am stressed waiting for the hammer and crow bar treatment. I don't want harmony, I want the gas.

Sliders are whats going on for action on a page. The load fast and creat some movement yet send a message.

And whatever you do , do not use those popups that appear after about 10 seconds.. They are way over used and cause click aways too..

Good page though. Good luck. Its better than I can do.

 

[particleman]

I think the site looks nice.

That slider doesn't use flash btw.

 

[bulldozer]

yea, there is no flash. it's html5. pretty basic stuff.

 

[OADesign]

^^ What they said. Not a drop a flash. Way to jump to conclusions. No disrespect, or thread hijacking, but I gotta wonder if it took long to load for you, what type of device where you viewing it on.

Looks like original poster knows his way around a wp template and css. Creativo s a pretty powerful theme. I like the colors you chose. Nice work.

 

[jkdbjj]

No flash on the site. Just a wordpress site as has been pointed out.
I'm even more impressed with the new NIMVA.

Having powerful themes like that allows novices to really grow and develop.

 

[Techman]

No FLash?

Well there is a spinning while that center graphic loads.. It loads slow whatever it is,,,,, On more than one machine here and from what was posted by others..

 

[shibby]

techman, you might want to invest in faster internet, because the page loaded in an instant for me at our shop....and we have pretty slow speeds.

 

[Techman]

Whatever..meh.

Some have fast loads so any other different experience is irrelevant?
Another person above posted a slow load time as well.
But, I really could not care less. He asked. I pointed it out. Two desperate locations.. Two slow load times where a spinning wheel shows loading something. Plus someone else with a slow load time. If he wants to dismiss it,,, so be it.

Just like the water company recently.. Called them to report a huge water leak. She said "well no one else has reported it". Fine let it run all night.. Next day they had a 6 acre ice rink in the road.

 

[shibby]

It would be more helpful to post the type of online environment you are using in order for him to help troubleshoot his build.

For example (computer I'm viewing it on):

• Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 - 21.5" Monitor @ 1920x1080 - 5.8Mbps Internet
• Safari Version 8.0.3 (10600.3.18)
• Console shows 41 Warnings / Errors in CSS, either from discrepancies or duplicate instances.
• Loadtime 1.62s

Telling him it's "slow" without providing any insight as to why that might be, isn't helpful. But you also thought it was Flash, so there's value in that. It gives us as web developers a better understanding of the reactions certain demographics get when viewing different content online. It's not any different than someone who doesn't know signage. You can look at a wall mounted sign and say "hey that looks good"...but someone who knows the industry can look at it and go "that's gonna fall off".

I think the site loads quick, and has a decent color scheme. The slider's are lightweight so they load pretty quick. Might want to look into a slightly higher rez image for the woman in the homepage slide, she gets a little pixelated on my screen, but fine when the site responsiveness goes in after shrinking the window size. Also, you seem to have page loads being called by post or page number, that are then renamed in the URL to static URLS. Might be something to look into for your SEO purposes.

 

[Techman]

It would be more helpful to post the type of online environment you are using in order for him to help troubleshoot his build.

On the other hand....

It would be more helpful if you would clear your browser cache before you test the site again and make comments that may or may not be dead wrong.. Of course it will load instantly once the site is visited. Your browser stores data from all visited sites to get them to load much faster. Testing a site once visited without clearing the cache will always give a false test result. Especially a speed test.

All real webmasters know this when testing a site.

 

[shibby]

Knows what "cache" is but can't tell the difference between Flash and HTML5

I'll step out of this thread since I'm the newbie on the forums compared to you, and I merely wanted to be useful instead of starting a thread-flame-war.

 

[jkdbjj]

Hi TECHMAN, I do care if it is slow. My only comment so far, was it is not flash.
I appreciate your feedback.

I will do some more tests on it, to see what I can do about any delays. It might just be I can optimize the slider some more.

 

[truckgraphics]

Great Job

Wasn't slow to load on my computer.

Great job!

I just started messing around with WordPress. Very Powerful! Haven't reached your level yet, but working on it !

 

[GAC05]

Keep at it and get good.
You never know, I hear there may be openings in the IT/web development team of a certain presidential candidate any day now.........

wayne k
guam usa

 

[visual800]

I was looking at it on the pc and I had no idea it was not flash, however time after time after time i have learned that little thing spinning and me waiting results in flash. So what ever it is why cant it load with the rest of the page?

 

[shibby]

I was looking at it on the pc and I had no idea it was not flash, however time after time after time i have learned that little thing spinning and me waiting results in flash. So what ever it is why cant it load with the rest of the page?

Most of the page is text with some smaller graphics, so they load quickly and what seems to be all together. They are static in size, the images used won't get any larger or any smaller, same with the text. When the screen resolution changes, the website "responsiveness" simply re-arranges the text or graphics on the page. So there isn't any dynamic content to display.

The slider OP is using on his site is formatted to go full width, so the page is coded to force that slider to the edge of the browser regardless of the screen resolution. Inherently, that requires a larger resolution image in order to ensure the slider looks crisp and unpixelated on larger browsing resolutions, which gives you your slower load time. When you have the browser full screen, the content of the slider adapts to stay full width, scaling the images down or up to fit the new resolution of the browsing window whenever the size of the browser window changes.

I would assume the slider OP is using is likely not using whats referred to as "lazy load". In "lazy load" the contents of the slider will load individually as the files are fetched from the server. This will give you a slider that appears in sections rather than one complete presentation. How he has it setup now is for everything to load in a group. The entire content of the slider must finish loading before the slider itself is presented. This will slow down the arrival of the slider on the page, but it will appear complete when it first loads, rather than showing up in sections.

Some developers prefer to use lazy load so people visiting the page know that content in the slider is loading, rather than.....perhaps....thinking its flash, that way they at least know the page is loading, even though the slider might look a little sloppier than it is originally designed to look. Other developers prefer to maintain the integrity of the slider, and prefer to have it load as it is intended to appear, so the user gets a nicer looking slider. It's entirely up to the preference of the developer in this case, as it only really impacts a small group of visitors. It's not that you don't want to build content suitable for ALL browsing environments, but you CAN'T build one that will adapt to EVERY combination there is. There will ALWAYS be shortcomings.

Just my two cents. Hope this helped explain.

 

[nomad]

I know this is a dead thread, but I figured I'd throw in my two cents. The "slow" load time is related more to the theme, than to the content you've added. Creativo 5.0 (The theme you're using) uses multiple javascripts, which is compounded even more if you're using plugins that have their own javascripts. This is a factor that will somewhat negatively effect the SEO of the site.

Also, I don't know if you're using the back-end editor to build pages or not. If so, this may also increase load times. When I say increase, I don't mean huge increases.

Aside from that, I'm not a real big fan of captcha-less forms, unless you're using a honeypot. I still prefer to use a captcha, and a honeypot to reduce spam and bots.

The only other thing I notice, is that from a HCI/UI standpoint, the purple links are a little hard to pick out. The a:hover color on the purple links is also a little hard to distinguish. It's standard practice to have a distinguishable change on hover to signify something is clickable.

I think you did a really nice job adjusting the color palette of the theme, and the sliders you've built look very good.