www.naturebeyond.com help needed

[nomad28]

The site is about traveling to eastern himalaya

I launched the site about a year back and have relaunched it recently. I know there is a problem with the javascript menubar. Trying to fix it (not very good in this coding). Any other suggestion will be of great help.

Thanks to everyone in advance

[matauri]

Because you have said that you are working ont he javascript menu, I wont bother with that side of things, except to say...make sure you have alternate links to what is in that menu for people who dont use javascript.

There were a couple of things that hit me straight away. You have the page aligned to the left, with the rest a black background. If you want the black background I would center the page. Otherwise, go for a more neutral background such as maybe a slight shade darker than the colour of your existing table background.

Also, there page appears cluttered by all the underlined links & bullets. I think you should reformat your menu a bit better. I notice that you have a few sections of Destintions, maybe these could be incorporate into one section? At the moment you have to read all over the page to find what you want, which doesn't lend itself to easy navigation.

Your weather report needs to be formatted a lot better too.

And put the counter at the end of the site rather than in the middle where it is. To be honest, the neon green counter doesn't co-ordinate with the rest of the page. Try finding a counter that works better with your page.

Your text images for your menu on subsequent pages is blurry.

There are a few other things that need tightening, but dont like to overwhelm people with this & that. Because you will find that once you make a few changes, the rest will start to (hopefully) fall into place. :-)

Good Luck! Interesting site :-)


Cindy

[tjdesigns]

great domain name
Picture conversion is poor leading to colour merging and poor quality pictures, this is a real shame, as the pictures should be beautiful. Dont think it is a good idea to have the drop down menu above the main banner, underneath is better. The links are not very well organised, put them into directory boxes, or something to categorise them better, at least. AVOID HIT COUNTERS AT ALL COSTS. And center align your page.
Hope this helps.

Regards,
Thom of TJDesigns.org

[tikanet]

My first criticism is that it is not immediately clear that the site has to do with the eastern Himalayas. What country? Is it Napal? There's just no indication. Unless a visitor recognizes location names such as Sikkim, or Dooars, most folks wouldn't have a clue. Some people know Darjeeling as only a type of tea.

Because your site contains a tremendous amount of information, have you considered employing some sort of Content Management System? With it, pages could be consitantly formatted and dynamically generated, your search results page could be branded, your travel news items would not error out with a generic 404 message, and the list of advantages goes on and on...

You should, whether or not a CMS is ever employed, develop a style sheet (CSS) and link to it with every page you have created or will ever create. It will assure consistancy of font and margins (which you desperately need), just to name a few of the many advantages.

Your banner, or top image, /photo/home/topbar.jpg, is of very poor quality. The text is blotchy, in that way that only a jpeg can achieve. The photographic images are of mixed sharpness and resolution. This is the most important graphical element of the entire site, not just because it's your branding mark, but because it is, or should be, repeated on every page of the site.

Oh, and dump the hit counter. Such features are passee. They may be alright for personal web sites but have no place on a site such as yours.

Good luck to you. Your site has tremendous potential and will be of doubtless benefit to tourists and the eastern Himalaya region in general.

[nomad28]

It was really great and much more than what I had expected. Actually the problem with my site is that I am the only person working on it and I dont have much of an idea about the tech part.
So when I hear "Content Management System" I simply go to google and search for the term. :-)

The counter is removed already and the topbar will also be changed ASAP. But the more important issue is about the general quality of pictures, as you can see I have used about 500 pictures in the site. Now I am worried that increased size of the pictures might make the site too slow. I am trying to keep the page size at less than 50 kb in most cases. That comes down to pictures of 6-7 kb on average. How can I manage that without hampering quality?

About the javascript part, I am simply at a loss to find the problem, why is it not working with Netscape? I have asked a few techy friends of mine and hope to find an answer to the problem soon.

Organising the site is a real issue here. Actually I started the site about a year back and at that time did not have any idea how big it is going to grow. Now reorganising means changing links in each and every page. That is a really scary idea.

All the other ideas are highly appreciated and I will definitely implement almost all of them.

Please provide me with more suggestions and if possible an answer the confusions that I have mentioned above

[matauri]

The reason in doesnt work in Netscape is because of this:(works only in IE4+) which is on your page at the top. It doesnt work in Firebird, Netscape or Mozilla either.

You can find menu scripts that are compatible for most browsers here:

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex1/

Good luck!


Cindy

[nomad28]

Thanks Matauri
I thought what "works only in ie4" mean is that the page will not be dynamic in other browsers. In all the pages except for the home page, the menu bar moves as you scroll down the page. I think thats the feature that is available only in IE4.
The menu is working fine with mozila (although it is not dynamic there).
I will spend a few more days trying to fix it. Otherwise I probably have to change the entire script.

[MaineWeb]

I used the menu at Dynamic Drive: http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex1/hvmenu/index.htm
It does everything! The only problem I've had with it is that it does not seem to be Mac compatible. It crashes Macs. If anyone knows of a way to fix this I would be grateful.

You can see mine at http://64.179.21.94. The site is not live yet (will replace www.MainResource.com), but you can see what you could do with it (graphics for background, multiple levels, etc.)

As for the many links, maybe you could use this: http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex1/popit.htm so you can have one top link, ie., "Hotels" and when a viewer mouses over the link, the sublinks appear. Might make it a little less cramped. Don't know if it will look right, but you could try it!

[nomad28]

Here is a new query, if you havent had enough of it already. I guess the root cause of many problems with naturebeyond site is that I am too cautious about page size. I wouldnt let it go beyond 50-70 kb.
Now I find the code that mainweb suggests is about 50 kb in itself.
How important is the size of your pages? Is it ok to put a menu of that size (the features are really great). Is it Ok is my pages have excellent quality pictures but that runs into 150-200 kb.
Is there any standard that I should follow here?

[MaineWeb]

If anyone knows of a similar (but smaller) menu program, I'd like to try it out. My pages are small, but this menu really does put them over the top. I really need these features, but if no one will wait for the page to load it might not be worth it. Thoughts?
www.MainResource.com

[nomad28]

Hi, I made some of the changes recommended. For example the menu now works and has a better style (although I havent updated the whole site so in parts you get to face the old problem). The structure has been changed slightly, the topbar has changed etc. etc.
What else do you people think I need to do to make naturebeyond even better.
I am thinking of launching a french and german version of the site, although I dont know either. Is their any free software that can be of assistance?
Thanks as always for your help

[nomad28]

Hi, I made some of the changes recommended. For example the menu now works and has a better style (although I havent updated the whole site so in parts you get to face the old problem). The structure or the site has been changed slightly, the topbar has changed etc. etc.
What else do you people think I need to do to make naturebeyond even better.
I am thinking of launching a french and german version of the site, although I dont know either. Is their any free software that can be of assistance?
Thanks as always for your help