Design Forums - UK Graphic Design & Web Design Forum

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.