COMMENTS ON WWW.RIVERSOFALALBAMA.ORG
Nancy Wiltsee – web designer – 5.3.04
 | I would put the colorful map on the home page for more visual interest. |
| Have a “home” link on every page, at top and bottom. I would also have a link to each river on every page. Just words, not a photo. |
| Have “Rivers of Alabama” only prominently at the top of every page. The second is redundant. |
|
Have a site map.
Generally every site with more than 10 pages should have one. I know you
have “Site Headquarters,” but it is not clear. You need to tell people
what to do when they get there. In other words, what would one be
searching for? A site map listing with every page on the site would be
better. I’ll tell you an easy way to do this so you don’t miss any. In
your htm(l) folder, select all the pages. Copy and paste into a spread
sheet program. Tell it to sort, and you will have all the pages in
alphabetical order. You can delete .htm and capitalize appropriately. Then
copy and paste into your Site Map page. This is kind of tedious, but to me
is much easier than typing the names of all the pages. There may be a
better way, but I don’t know what it is. Additionally, when I typed in a keyword, this came up: FrontPage Run-Time Component Page You have submitted a form or followed a link to a page that requires a web server and the FrontPage Server Extensions to function properly. This form or other FrontPage component will work correctly if you publish this web to a web server that has the FrontPage Server Extensions installed. |
Click the <Back> arrow to return to the previous page.
· You don’t need a “click to see rivers” link by itself. Tell on the home page to click on icons (or photos or titles) to see rivers.
· Your “Big Map” graphic is 1008 pixels wide when I opened it in PhotoShop. It should not be wider than 800-850 pixels because nearly everyone will have to scroll from side to side, which is not good. Eight hundred pixels is the preferred maximum width.
· The word “Favorite” is not clear and I don’t know why it’s there. If it’s your favorite page, you should explain why, perhaps on your bio page.
· Your photos are not left aligned or centered on the pages that I have looked at. There is a mixture of both, and they look staggered.
· I would not duplicate photos at the bottom of the page in the same size that you already have running down on the sides. That is confusing. I thought I would see a river when I clicked on a bottom image, but instead, I saw Beth’s Web page. In order to give Beth credit for them, I would acknowledge her, and ask users to go to her site. If you want to put in the ones that she has contributed, make it clear that those links are to her photographs and that they are separate from the links down the sides. Perhaps have line running across over her information. You could make the side photos larger, too.
· The link Connection to Projects for CIS2221 goes nowhere. The same for Soque Connection. It is not clear why either of those are there and there needs to be some explanation.
· On the index_with_basins.htm page, Tallapoosa and Chattahoochee photos are missing.
· Have a Return to Top link on the longer pages so users won’t have to scroll back up.
· I would center the text and images on the individual rivers pages, rather than putting everything to the left.