I am trying to redesign my site and would appreciate any suggestions you might have.

Thank you for your time.

Pages for Children

__________________
Pages for Children sends books and cards to sick children while in the hospital.
Prints by Olivia

I find the "paw print" background distracting.
I prefer Arial for headings as it is a much cleaner font than Verdana.
76 HTML validation errors on the homepage.
Dump the Google ads unless you are making a fortune from them. Why send people AWAY from your site.

__________________
Dave Barnes
+1.303.744.9024
http://www.marketingtactics.com
sitting in my basement with my iMac

First I would like to start off by saying I admire what you are doing and wish you the best of luck in your efforts.

Looking at your code I see that you used Dreamweaver to create the static html files and you also are using templates to edit these pages. To help you in your efforts and ease of edibility of the pages, I would recommend using a program like WordPress and create your site with it as it may be alot easier to manage.

Also looking at your code I have noticed a few things that you may want to consider.
1. Your meta name="copyright" says 2006. This should be updated.
2. Your meta name= distribution, revist-after, robots can be removed as they do not do any good.
3. You have 2 styles in the head of your code.
4. I wholeheartedly agree with Dave regarding the handprint background. I think you added this background to give your page some color and fun, but in doing so you made the navigation difficult to read and also made your page appear fragmented as some elements have a white background, some others have a tan or transparent. With your page dealing with children that are hospitalized, I would guess you would want it to be viewable and navigatable by all, especially not knowing their particular injury or ailment. With that in mind, you may want to add title attributes to your text links and use an arial font as it is easier to read.
5. It appears that you want to take people away from your page. Besides the Google ads doing this, you also have navigational links to a different site that open in the same window. These links should open in a new tab or window.
6. Your About Us page I did not like at all. Your visitors do not care about you. They are interested in what you are doing and what your organization is doing. I did not see where you gave reason for what your organization is doing. I also did not see any call to action for people to help. I would have expected to have found organizational background information "when was it started, why was it started, where was it started, your non-profit status, when was it obtained, a call to action for those who want to help, your location".
7. The only call to action prompt I saw was on your donations page. This individual link gets lost with the rest of your navigation. I also thought this page contained more information about you than your about us page.
8. You may want to include a sitemap.xml file and submit it to Google, Yahoo and MSN.
9. Your contact us form does not appear to be working properly. I hit send with a blank form and my email client opened with the following:
name=
email=
address=
city=
state=
zip=
phone=
services=
submit=submit
10. On your coloring pages you need to proofread and check your grammar. Also, the link December 2008 is broken. You also have links on this page that make people leave your site.
11. I noticed only your home page has a page rank. I also noticed several of your other pages have more outbound links than anything else. Some of these external links go to totally unrelated pages. You may want to consider the use of rel="nofollow" on some of these links and linking to irrelevant sites will not help you.

Hope this helps.

__________________
The Sensual Touch Lingerie | High Heels | High Heel Blog

Thank you for taking the time to help me. I've fixed the errors and am working on the rest of the suggestions you have given.

Your time is greatly appreciated.

__________________
Pages for Children sends books and cards to sick children while in the hospital.
Prints by Olivia

I suggest you use some CMS like Wordpress or Joomla it will be for the better of both you and the reader

__________________
Dan David WE Blog
Scams

While I would love to, I can't seem to get the hang of php, so I'll leave that alone for now. But thank you for the suggestion. I'll definitely keep that in mind if I can ever learn php.

I've also changed some of the things that were mentioned earlier. As far as the background, I've changed the picture some but right now, don't want to get rid of it completely. Everything else, I've tried to do as instructed. You have given me some wonderful ideas and helped me learn in the process. Thank you very much.

__________________
Pages for Children sends books and cards to sick children while in the hospital.
Prints by Olivia

While I understand that you have put a lot of effort and dedication to this website, I honestly think that you are better off using a pre-made template with minor tweaks and customizations that you can make to fit your needs. I find this necessary for the following reasons;

a) Currently, although your website has lots of useful and relevant content, it is not organized in a manner that is friendly to your users. That is to say, some of the most important content (i.e making donations and reading about your organization) is hidden away and hard to find, while other "not so significant" content occupies "prime real estate" on your web page.

b) As a user, your website failed to gain my trust. While I have no doubts at all about the reputation and legitimacy of your organization, the visual aspect alone turned me away from your cause. This is primarly because your website looks very amateur and not trust worthy. Please do not take offence to this, but I am being completely honest with you.

c) A more organized, clean and visually appealing layout would not only attract more traffic to your website, but would allow users to be more comofortable within your web environment. I can almost guarantee you that by adopting a more "professional" look, not only will you have increase traffic, but your donations will also increase as well.

d) A pre-made layout, preferably with an external CSS file, would allow your website to have a sense of consistency. This means that all your headings, sub-headings, hyperlinks, quotes etc. will have the same formatting and make your website look a lot more professional.

e) Lastly, and definitly most importantly, a professional look will establish trust with your users. This is single handedly the most important aspect of any website, let alone any organization. Once again, establishing trust accomplishes the bigger objective at hand, collecting donations to support your cause.

Overall, as mentioned above, I think you have plenty of useful and relevant content, however it isn't organized as it needs to be. To make your life a little easier, I have included a few links you can check out for some free and professional looking templates that you can use.

Of course if you choose to go this route, you will need to dedicate a little more time to transfer all of your content over to the new template, but at the end of the day, I personally believe it will be worth it.

I hope this helps.

Links:

Free Website Templates There are plenty of good looking templates on this website.
Free HTML Website Templates - TemplateYes.com

Also, you do not have to use these templates 100%. You can download them and modify them accordingly to your needs. However, they will definitely allow you to organize your content a lot better.

Cheers.

__________________
www.rtmediasolutions.com

Never worry about hurting my feelings, I asked for an honest opinion and that's what I want. If my feelings get hurt, then I shouldn't be asking for help.

I will definite go over your suggestions and use them. I already have an external css, but I'm sure it can be better. I'll also, check out the site you mentioned and see what I can find. Thanks for that.

I'm probably does look kind of amateurish since I am one, but that's where people like you come in and aren't afraid to be honest and tell me what is wrong.

Thank you for being honest. Have a great day.

__________________
Pages for Children sends books and cards to sick children while in the hospital.
Prints by Olivia

You can simply use some simple website design templates that are available for free. From professional point of view, this site has to make a overhaul change in the entire structure. But simplicity should be retained so that donors can negative in this website without facing any challenges.

__________________
Website Design | Website Design Company | Web Development

I agree with the comments and suggestions of the previous posters. If you are reluctant to get rid of the hand print/smiles background, consider making a banner using those elements and eliminate them from the rest of the page. They are much too distracting in the background when trying to read your web pages. Get rid of the Google ads too.

adjust the text next to the top central main picture, it needs a gap.

I agree. Try something like the below. Remember, pictures should have borders. It enhances the colours in the picture.

<img style="float: left; border: 2px solid grey; margin: 0 8px 8px 0;" src="images/childhospital.jpg" alt="Child in hospital" width="200" height="150" /><p>Everyone knows that having to stay in the hospital is never any fun, but for thousand of children and teens there is no choice. Some are there for an illness that there is no known cure for or if there is a cure, it's sometimes worse than the illness itself. Some are there for other reasons, surgeries, a cold, and many other reasons. It really doesn't matter why these children are in the hospital, we all know that having to stay in bed for long periods of time isn't enjoyable. Now while we can't keep them from having to stay in the hospital, maybe we can make that stay a little more fun.</p>

__________________
ICmyhotel Web Design for Hotels | York Web Design Yorkshire

The paw prints on the site are distracting. I would also try to line up the text and put the google ads either at the site or the bottom. It seems strange to be right in the middle of the page while someone is trying to read the content.