New homepage design

[izwar]

lmme know wut u thiink of the new homepage design i did for my site, more banner and revenue friendly

www.hotclubber.com


one las thing mabie someone could help as the site loads it loads all crazy then comes together i figured out it was cuz the RSS reader any tips on that

[Blue Cat Buxton]

It is very big, and takes a minute and a half for anyone on a 56 K modem. Even 128K broadband has to wait 30 seconds.

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/wso.php?url=http://www.hotclubber.com/

There are also lots of images that probably arent helping. Can you preload some of these? It might stop the toolbar loading last.

The layout thogh is crisp and clean, but some optimisation would probably help keep visitors interested.

[Chris]

I like how its only slightly larger than 728. With that sort of width I think you get good blending with leaderboard ads.

[KelliShaver]

Use CSS instead of tables for layout and you can decrease the filesize of the markup, and the CSS will be cached, so users won't have to reload it each time.

Use javascript for your rounded corners, if you're going to have a lot of them, and text for your nav links and page headings and you can use one image as a background for all of them instead of individual images for each link.

That will cut down a lot on the filesize.

The site looks quite nice, though.

[izwar]

Thanks, thats the next step now to get it optmized my partner and i are learning , so were not exactly familiar with all the tips you jus gave me. How do i preload images, use java for rounded corners deal with that css issue as using css instead of tables?? thanks much appreciated. or any tutorials anywhere or something

[Emancipator]

its an improvement over the past design for sure.

[izwar]

thanks man, but the problem of loading time is a huge problem right now i realized how bad it is, its extremely slow more then any other site ive seen so im trying to work hard right now to make it all smaller, im not the most expeirence PS user so im sure i didnt do the site right, but we did the best we could so a lot of the site is made with images. So first step ima try to drop the quality a tad on all images i think i can speed it up a lot jus by that. After ill move on to more advanced stuff,

will takin out the roll over effect on buttons help with loading time?

[vahsi000]

I think if you experimented with gradients instead of using "bevel & emboss" the template itself would really look better. Try not to make the gradient too heavy either, you want the users of the site to read whats on your page and not look at how good the graphics of your page are.

[izwar]

Thank you i will look into it

just letting everyone konw i went thorugh every dam image on my site and optimized it and lowered a lot of gif colors and i cut loading times by exactly half, isdn is 15 seconds now, t1 is 1. something so its a start. Now mabie can work on other aspects like tables n css and stuff.

[KelliShaver]

Gah, really I wish I had time to sit and pick through it all and optimize it, because I see ways that you can do the same thing with so much less code and so many fewer images. It would be really hard to try and explain it, though, without having an example to compare to, since you're not that familiar with it. I'm just so swamped right now. :( If I get this shopping cart done tomorrow, though, I can try and write up something if you want me to. I'm happy to do it if I can find the time. I know you put a lot of work and heart into this site.

[izwar]

that would be enormousley appreciated, but dont stress it when ever you have some free time. Yea its been a long hard road with this site lol, givin it everything i have but hopefully it will pay off.

[BP2000]

Overall I like the design, however I would improve the 'Bevel & Emboss' effect as it looks very out-dated.

Nice work though, well done and good luck!

[izwar]

which bevel and emboss are u referring to? in what area so i can mess with it

[Nico]

One little comment: you should put your CSS & Javascript in external files, not directly in the source. It'll help make the html easier to read and i believe it will also help the Search Engines.

The site looks good!

Nicolas

[izwar]

i will do that, thank you