Design Forums - Graphic Design & Web Design Forums

This is my new site design I have been working on...

Mike Ingham | Design Portfolio - Web & Graphic Designer

Still need to add more work and tweak a few bits but let me know hat you think.

Hay buddy a few things ~
This can be removed ~
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="INDEX,FOLLOW" />

Because that is what search engines do, unless you tell them otherwise, so is a pointless piece of code.

The keywords meta again can be removed as it is not even indexed.

Your menu should be in a list form, it would reduce your code bloat and be semantically correct as it is a list of links.

This ~
<div id="banner"><img src="http://www.designforums.co.uk/images/home.jpg" alt="The Cutting Room Flyer" /></div>

Can be reduced to ~
<img id="banner" src="http://www.designforums.co.uk/images/home.jpg" alt="The Cutting Room Flyer" />

So again reduces your bloat.
hello should start with a capitol as it is a beginning of a sentence.

This whole section can be changed from ~
<div id="hometext">
hello, welcome to my online website which showcases examples of my work within<br />the <h2>web</h2> &amp; <h2>graphic</h2> design field
</div>

to ~

<div id="hometext">
Hello, welcome to my website which
showcases examples of my work within
the <strong>web</strong> &amp; <strong>graphic</strong> design field
</div>

Then give hometext a rule of
#hometext{white-space: pre}

As that will reduce the br tag, change the h2 tags which are heading tags to the correct strong tag which makes it semantically correct.

Your home link shouldn't be active on your home page, leads to confusion to what page they are on.

Create a plain file call it .htaccess and place this code in it ~

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.mikeinghamdesign\.com/ [nc]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mikeinghamdesign.com/$1 [R=301,L]

What this will do is redirect your www. and non www. versions to the www. version.
This in the search engines eyes makes the site 1 site, other wise it is classed as 2 and you will be penalized as a result.

Upload that file to your root directory.

Design wise, simple but I really like it.
Hope it helps
Jaz

Perhaps it's just me, but something sounds funny about "welcome to my online website..."

I think it could be rephrased to sound a bit more formal.

That being said, I like the simplicity of the site.

Heys guys cheers for the comments.

Thanks for taking the time to comment on my code Jazajay, always good to learn new stuff, I used the <h2> tags for the one that one bit for the only reason that it may have a slight benefit in my search rankings. Is there any benefit?

Hay buddy,
My fault ~
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.mikeinghamdesign\.com/ [nc]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mikeinghamdesign.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Should be ~
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.mikeinghamdesign\.com [nc]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mikeinghamdesign.com/$1 [R=301,L]

No trailing slash on line 2, it's giving you a redirection loop because of that error, change it and it should fix it, let me know if it doesn't.

Yes h2 tags do have a minor effect but strong tags also have a minor effect and strong is more semantically correct. It is also very doubtful you make any major difference by keeping them as a h2, so you want them to be semantically correct TBH.

Jaz

Changed that, thanks.

No worries,
Having an off day.

Hi Mike, I like the design only thing I noticed is on your about page you have letter heads as two words (not being picky as I'm rubish at spelling n grammer just guessed you'd missed it.

The site is just great, i love that dark wood grain background. One thing i noticed is the image for 'the cutting room' portfolio item is pixelated and a bit blurry. That is on the home page only, not in the portfolio. Also, on all the pages clicking 'home' takes the user back you your old site, however im sure you will fix this once you implement this as your primary website!

Other than those minor minor things, site looks amazing!

Cheers for the comments guys. keep them coming.

Hey Jazajay, can you explain what you mean by "non www. versions" please? I don't know if I'm just being slow!

I'm really liking the design of the site!

For example, my site would be seen as

www.furtzdesigns.com

AND

furtzdesigns.com

That .htcaccess or whatever its called makes the search engines see both as one website instead of two completely diferent sites.

Hey thanks Furto, I'm kind of grasping it...in what capacity would you have the 'non- www." site name though? Am I just being really stupid haha?

By the way, your signature link is linking to a site other than your own. Just so you know

....unless that's your alter ego?

Yeah Furto pretty much has hit it on the head, TBH.
Basically go to the address bar of your site, if you have not loaded the code up.
Delete the www. section and press enter and you see the same page, now the problem with this, even though it is stupid, is the url is now different, this version doesn't have the www. in, but the content is the same.

Now any equity the search engines give you if they reference the non www. could mean it could be halved this thus effects your rankings as the power you have to rank those pages (equity) is not a strong as it could be.

Now the solution is a 301 redirect which means that the contents of this url now reside at the new www. address. The search engines then pass the equity on to the www. version.
I may be being stupid but you get it when you buy the www. version.

If instead you mean when would you link to the non www. version, well I don't link to the www. version TBH, but it's not nesercarily you who has to.

I'm a competitor, who knows how to rank pages, I look at yours and I see their is no redirect in place I then get 1 link to the non www. version and you then become penalized for duplicate content as you have the same content under two urls, and any equity you get from that link is again not maximized, you then lose a place in the SERPs and I move up, with out doing a thing.

To me it's more of a security thing TBH as well as crossing the T's and dotting all the I's.

Hope that has explained it well enough, let me know if it hasn't. :-)
Jaz

Lol thanks endofgeneric, thats what I get for stealing someone's signature.