New website - criticism wanted
 

I just finished a new Wordpress website and do still have some things to finish like posting all the weddings to the new blog. However, I'd like any feedback and criticism you may have.

RNB Weddings | DJ or Video for Weddings

Fire away!

Re: New website - criticism wanted
 

Nice job. There's plenty to keep one's interest on the site and your contact info is handy. I like the availability calendar.

Re: New website - criticism wanted
 

Nice for a first attempt. Lots of things that I would address if I were you. Please keep in mind I understand the difficulties in putting up a site and I sympathize.

You should resize photos on reviews page and everywhere else. They are much much too large. You have chosen photos that are quite large and are fitting them into a box so that they are resized by browser. You need instead to resize the photos yourself, remove the old ones and reinsert them into WP. You can use the same names, but I would change the names as well to be safe.

Your home page photos take much too long to load. The photos are probably not optimized for the web.

One particular photo on your blog is 5400x3600, it probably doesn't need to be wider than 500 pixels, though I have no idea what it should be. Just giving you an idea of what you need to look at and adjust.

Your header images are rather unclear/blurry. Wedding wire award thingys look very rough, but really all of the images in header look of very poor quality. You might consider updating your logo or going to a logo without an image in it.

Websites are a ton of work, so hang in. I'm in the process of putting up a new site myself. Even though I'm working with a web site builder it's been so time consuming!

Last tip, don't forget to use alt tags for your photos, I notice you are not using them on any of your photos.

Your site can work for you, but I'd look at more sites and start to get an idea of what you can do to clean things up.


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Re: New website - criticism wanted
 

I thought the website is brilliant. Plenty to look at, loaded fast and it was informative without information overload.

Re: New website - criticism wanted
 

Jeff, may I ask what you used to view the site: desktop/laptop or a tablet or mobile device? I ask because the header *shouldn't* be blurry. In any case, thank you. I can't believe I didn't notice the picture sizing.

As for ALT tags, Wordpress keeps claiming it's doing it for me so I may have to code the HTML for that myself.

Just to be clear, this is my first wordpress site, not my first website. I am used to coding HTML sites, but needed to upgrade since it's not 2006 and we need to have a responsive site that resized for iPads and such. I have never worked with CSS before so it's a very different experience.

Re: New website - criticism wanted
 

Yes, James, I agree Robert's site has many good features. And if a viewer has a high speed connection, the size of the images won't be a problem. Those on phones and those with slower internet connections speeds will notice the issue more.

The rotating slider has one image ("Sunshine") for example, that is 5.47mb in size, for example. That image could easily be reduced to below 1/20th that size.

Re: New website - criticism wanted
 

Robert, I viewed it on a phone and my desktop, on both Chrome and IE. BTW, if you are going for responsive, you know the slider is currently not resizing for phones, right?

My site did the same thing, the slider would not downsize properly. I don't know how my web guy fixed it, but he did.

I understand going from HTML to WP is challenge. I hated trying to figure it out, so I'm having my new site done for me, then I'll learn as I go whilst doing maintenance on the finished site.

Re: New website - criticism wanted
 

The header issue I'll have to work on, but the picture sizing is easy.

As for the slider, the great thing about wordpress is you can find your answer via Google. I'll work on it in the morning.

Re: New website - criticism wanted
 

my hat's off to you for even attempting A WP site. I found the interface so confusing, it's supposed to be easier to use but I was just so used to Dreamweaver. Good luck with slider!

Re: New website - criticism wanted
 

it looks grand and yeah optimise for web use, in Photoshop export for the web - that'll give you the opportunity to shrink the file size way down but keep the IQ pretty ok, it can be done with Fireworks too.

As far as WP is concerned I too couldn't make anything out of it at all!! I'm a single page Dreamweaver operator ;-)

Re: New website - criticism wanted
 

I too agree the header image looks blurry. IMHO I'd just go with H1 tags for your company name, maybe a logo pic but I think the current logo is a bit hmmmmm. Well I just don't think you need your names & where you live, let alone your ph# & email address up there, usually that's in the footer. Secondly I would change your background color to a light grey (#CCCCCC or #999999), rather than white. And finally I think your have too many selections for your main menu, I would keep it at 4-5 & put is as

Home
About Us
__Reviews
__Availability
__Rates
DJ
__Lighting
Videography
Photo Booth
Wedding Blog
__How to Hire a DJ

The indented ones are submenus. Just go into your Dashboard & goto Appearance > Menus & then drag your sub menu into the main menus tab, it should auto adjust. Finally in your Reviews section I would change up the text of the couples names versus the words they are saying. Try pasting their names and when & where in between the following <h4 style="font-weight:bold"> </h4> or change it to h3 or so. You've got the foundation, and that's the nice thing with WP, tweaking it while tedious can be done mostly with alot of trial and error, and google searching. Just my $.02 but I think it would help tidy it up a bit.