What do you think of my site?

gbh

I have been working on this site for a while and I think it is near completion. Still a few odds and ends to be cleared up.

Would be interested in hearing people's opinions about it and what they think works and doesn't work. I know it doesn't have any graphics yet and I have to decide what graphics i will put on it.

Here is the location:

www.graduaterecruit.ie

Any advice would be helpful, either on this thread or else by pm.

Thanks.

aidan_walsh

Navigation and news boxes are jumping around the place. Keep them constant.

I don't really think you need a log in page when you have log in boxes on every page anyway.

If the login items are going to be stacked, they should be pushed to one side, not under the rest of the header. If they are going to be under the header, then should be in-lined.

The header and boxes just under the navigation are HUGE, and I'm looking at it in 1280*1024. I'd hate to look at it at anything lower, tbh. There is a frankly silly amount of scrolling to get to the actual content.

Search is how you rope people into signing up by showing them what you have. Don't make them sign up to use the search.

The majority of the details on the signup forms are the same, why do I have to select what I want to sign up as first? Can't that be an option on the form, with the rest of the field repopulated based on my choice if needs be?

The actual signup form itself looks different to the rest of the site.

Your formatting is broken in a number of pages (look at the location of the login box on the sitemap page for example).

You're not XHTML STrict compliant, in spite of your DOCTYPE.

forbairt

Initial impression ...

Its a bit all over the place ...

Fonts look ... strange / inconsistent ...

Could do with some padding .. .
Could do with bullet points ? ... instead of "- text<br />"

All the other points Aidan ... mentioned...

charybdis

1. As mentioned before: why use XHTML Strict doctype when you don't use anything approaching valid markup, such as font tags, unclosed div tags etc.
   
   Either improve markup or use a more forgiving doctype (HTML 4.1?, 3.2?).
   
   On the other hand if you used valid markup (close div tags) many page elements might stay put and not leap to the right on certain pages, such as the "bttmbar" of index.html.
   
   
2. Some links go nowhere e.g.: "Profiles"
   
3. Your header is huge.
   
   
4. Menu items on the left could use a bit of padding, although at least they're marked up as a list!
   
   
5. Perhaps most oddly: random php tags cropping up in the source such as:

   <?php 
   include('connect.php');
   include('login.php');
   ?>
   

   
   this is because the page is being served as HTML. You need to change the extension from .html to .php for your server (assuming it has PHP installed) to process the scripts.
   
   Errant PHP tags, especially related to login information, could pose a security threat as they reveal a portion of the underlying architecture of your site's backend.
   
6. Also, I have no idea what puropose this code snippet could serve:
   

   <?php
   }
   ?>
   

Otherwise, I actually quite like some aspects of the design such as the off-white background-border thing and your font and color choices, but I think that these choices would be much better served if you used valid markup, semantic markup ("mdlcol"?) and pure CSS layout removing the need for things such as: "</br></br></br></br></br></br></br></br>".

daryllsheridan

Like the post's before me!

The header is way to big and you should free up the site restrictions a small bit! People should be allowed to browse around the site and see some potential benefit before they are forced to sign up

Hope you can turn it around, graduate myself looking for work at the moment and there is defin a gap in the market for a site like yours.

phil

That site design looks like a vaguely familiar design copied and done poorly. I can't quite place the design though ... Did you try and copy that from somewhere else?

Eoin

This is mostly personal preference, but Times New Roman is an ugly font, and better suited to print than web. The top header is absolutely massive, and doesn't contain nearly enough content to justify it. The light blue text on the white background is quite hard on my eyes. The registration page is really ugly, and doesn't even fit in the same theme.

I'm afraid to say, but I think it need a lot of work. It looks like you used the bones of a CSS template from somewhere like www.oswd.org, but didn't integrate it too well.

If you have written all the back-end stuff, then why not see if someone with more experience in front end design can write you a template?

gbh

phil wrote:

That site design looks like a vaguely familiar design copied and done poorly. I can't quite place the design though ... Did you try and copy that from somewhere else?

Didn't personally try and copy it from somewhere else...tbh I commishioned someone else to design the layout as my design and html skills weren't the best and I gave them a short spec of the design I wanted beforehand...so I really didn't have anything visualised before they presented the end product to me. After that I left the top alone and changed around the lower half but again I didn't copy the changes from elsewhere. I've been trying to make the site look the way I think is right to me if that makes sense.

I admit I don't have years of experience at this and you all are probably more experienced than me. So its a learning curve more than anything else. But taking all your advice on board and hopefully I can iron out the kinks and get it looking and working right.

Seachmall

The recruit.ie dissapears from the top logo and increses in size when I mouse over it in IE7, it doesn't in firefox though. I took a look through your CSS and I think the following might be causing the problem (I might be wrong, my CSS is sketchy at best)

CSS:
<h1 align="center">
<a href="index.html">

HTML:
<font size="7">

Also the bottom left hand corners layout is different in IE7 and firefox. Looks wise, I agree with the others regarding colour and the giant box on top.

I tried some basic injections (SQL,Javascript,PHP) to test security it checked out ok but if your storing personal data you might want to get someone who knows what they're doing to check it out. Maybe ask someone on a hacking site to look over it, ussualy theres a charge but you might find someone for free (you get what you pay for though).

cgarvey

gbh wrote:

I have been working on this site for a while and I think it is near completion.

Lots done, more to do!

Navigation isn't clear, or consistent. Looks waaaaaay too simple (although some minimalist designs work well, yours is lacking). The Top 100 Ireland thing is just embarrassing, lose it. Banner is too big (and contains nothing useful other than, maybe, a login form). Footer (copyright notice) isn't at the bottom (as the news in the left column extends beyond it). Plus lots more

mneylon

You really need to test this on different browsers and at different resolutions.

I really shouldn't have to scroll down.

It's totally lacking in identity.

Yes it is simplistic, but it's also completely forgettable, which for a recruitment site is the worst thing possible