I actually have 2 ppl who owe me for a year now...a lot of money. I haven't taken the sites down in part because they are friends and have a history of paying late and in part because I figure it is God's way of letting me know that I really need the money right now and will spend it on useless stuff if i do get it now. It is a tough balance though, I must confess.

If you were sick and went to a doctor but only had part of the money, would it be okay for the doctor to not treat you, even if you were at the point of death? Of course, this question only applies in the Nigerian context as the Hippocratic oath doesn't apply

What you should have done is charge him the normal rate and tell him it was, say, 50%. That way, even if you were no longer paid, you made your money. At any rate, in the future, make sure the main CSS file is hosted on your server. That way, you just turn background color and text black. When they contact you, you feign ignorance or as I do, tell them, "sorry but I usually set sites on an automatic timer that expires if they don't pay. I have so many clients that I don't have the time to monitor the timers individually. The only way the site can get turned on (and it will take 24 hours at best) is for you to pay your balance in full".

Folks, we may not be doctors or store owners but that shouldn't be the reason why we don't get people to appreciate what we do. Have you ever called some boys to build you a house and not pay them at the end of the day? If you have, what normally happens? That's right, they threaten to tear everything they have built down, abi? Why can't we do same, albeit virtually?

^^^ Then I would throw back another question: Why even have it to begin with?

I don't do testimonials personally. In fact, when I see them, I suspect the site big time.

^^^ A lot of javascript...

They layout looks good though I would take out the photo TD Jakes, for those who are not religious. Nothing in the content told me it is a religious site. Again, some might be wondering.

This may not be the same thing but it is similar:

There is a very popular web dev author (I forget the name now) who recently held a seminar. The video is on youtube. He told the audience how they experimented with where to place social media icons on their site. He started off at the top and got a few hits. He then placed them at the bottom and got fewer still. He then placed them right before the first paragraph of each page and he got more hits than ever. In fact, he said that he noticed based on twitter feeds that people were tweeting his blog posts before actually reading the article. This in turn resulted even more hits on his site.

His conclusion? If you want to capture the customer, you need to bring things to them. Sure, this is purely anecdotal and everyone is entitled to his opinion. Having said that, I think his conclusion makes sense. Again, given the fact that a majority of testimonials are not even regarded anymore (when was the last time you saw a testimonial and believed in it...I don't), you need to lend some credibility. If it is at the bottom, where people like me will seldom scroll to, unless I have a good reason to, it has lost its purpose.

Cool. Modify the title of this thread by adding, "resolved" so ppl don't visit it, expecting the issue is unresolved

1) Go to line 9 of your stylesheet. That's the maroon I am talking about:
.red-background, .red-button {
background-color: #610606;
}

2) You can still make them clickable to a category. In other words, they would be the parent, from which floweth children

^^ I dare not mention as it will be lower than Graphic's.

Look at the ref, make improvements and call me back...

Can you upload the actual code somewhere? Base on the image, it could be anything (margin, padding, height, etc)

Site is real simple and responsive. Very Good.

The only things I would change:
- Large header image at the top - Make the height half of what it is now. This will bring the content up to the top
- Maroon header above header image: I think you could do better than that
- Testimonials: This is why I will buy a car from you. Bring it to the top to make it more visible
- Why aren't the car thumbnails clickable?

Good job!

Any naija club music that will get me to bang my head endlessly, thus enabling me to code for hours on end, is good for me.

I am currently listening to "Personally" but PSquare

The background switching is a major turn off and distraction, imho. Check out this site to see how to do similar behavior in a subtle manner:

http://www.austincsi.com/

Wow! This thread is still ongoing? I would have thought the thinking phase is over and actual planning has begun.

Just give me at least 3 month's advanced notice, should this actualize and I will endeavor to be there.

^^^ But of course it is. Having said that, the question is, is it an effective one? Personally, if something is too good to be true, it probably is.

Now, if they said something b/w 30 and 50% (as many others have), I wouldn't even click on the link (thus giving NL ad impression credits) but this one at 85% get as e b o, he he. At 85%, you might as well offer it for free now.

Wow! How do you turn a profit at 85% off? Unless your original price is greater than 170% of what you planned on asking originally, I don't see how you can turn a profit at that kind of discount.

Even with voodoo math, American companies don't offer this kind of deals

^^^ Lesson of the day - don't randomly fill out answers to security questions because it shall come back to haunt you sooner or later

In my case, I had helped a friend send out emails to over 1000 people. Next thing you know, I am told "session expired". I refresh the screen, only to be told to log in. I enter the necessary credentials but to no avail. I then contact Yahoo and am given a temporary password to log in with. Once i do that, I am made to create a new password and after that, everything is back to normal.

It was quite scary considering it never happened to me before. I thought I had been hacked but they said my account was flagged for suspicious activity.

Try contacting them and see if that helps.

good luck!

Nice concept, though:

1) Contact form doesn't validate properly
2) There is an extra "closing DIV" tag beneath the FOOTER tag
3) One of the circles on home page is blocking the "if history..." text
4) I think there are better color combos than green and black
5) I can't click any image unless I click the tiny green circle that shows up on hover - bad usability

I too will give the site 4/10. The issues above, maybe with the exception of #4, are huge IMHO
I will give the site

^^^ maybe but it isn't a state government house of assembly website (for which this thread is aimed).

Feel free to create another thread for sites like yours. Remember, the goal is to critique state government websites so it isn't like it isn't appreciated...just not here

Making comments about using a template, imho, is akin to telling the mother of a baby, "your baby is so cute but it is based on the blueprint of another human being, so no big deal". Come on folks! wetin dey to use template? Abi your human body no be template? Anyone can use a template. Very few can however customize it well. Perhaps that's what we should be focusing on.

Anyways, it looks like only the home page is ready. So my score will be based on an extrapolation (which isn't fair but hey, you leave me with no choice) as opposed to a true score based on all pages of the site:

1) Visited links in the footer blend in with the blue footer background
2) White dropdown menu can't be seen when the scrolling image has white background
3) Animation in body of home page. I would get rid of it (a distraction) or at least make it scroll slower
4) The layout looks "chunky (everything is laid out in "sharp" chunks). Consider using a soft background color
5) Minor: You have your vertical scroller js file in a css folder and your jquery and and style.css in an "engine" folder
6) Hovering over the main menu items causes the dropdown menus to "jump". Appears to be some kind of jquery thing.

Based on the above, and based on the fact that only the home page is done, I will give the page 40%. If I am up for it by the time you are actually complete, I might return and give the site as a whole a higher score, depending on what i see.

yeah, also if possible, we need specific details. "Not working again" doesn't exactly help your case. Are you getting an actual error (if so, what is it)? Are you getting a blank page?

I will give you an example of mine that happened about 2 or so years ago:
I wrote a script for a client on my local server and it worked. I then moved it to his server and it didn't work. I narrowed the problem down to a particular page and uploaded the file over 10 times, including print statements to be sure, but to no avail. Then just when I was getting frustrated, I got up, took a walk and returned to upload again. Then in a flash, I noticed that I was uploaded the right file locally to the wrong folder on the client's server. I then uploaded to the right location and everything worked like a charm...albeit hours later.

Give us more details...

databoy:
That is a state government website not a house of assembly website, for which this thread is devoted. I will launch another thread (or you can start it ) dedicated to SG websites.

The layout is way better but I think the 3 columns causes too much scrolling on a mobile device...especially a small one. I know we've talked about this before. However, I think you should consider placing "learn more" buttons after a short summary for each of those columns.

Oops! I forgot to add cross-browser compatibility to the list...

I am hoping this thread will be one of many in helping us learn, become better developers and to hopefully but various institutions on notice that what they are doing is being watched. In today's installment, I would like to start with State House of Assembly websites.

Based on our 36 states, I came up with the following (last year, I could only find 10. I guess we are improving):

http://www.anambrastatehouseofassembly.org/
http://www.akwaibomstatehouseofassembly.org/
http://www.bauchiassembly.info/
http://www.bayelsaparliament.com/
http://www.deltastateassembly.gov.ng/
http://www.kanohouseofassembly.org/
http://www.ktsha-gov.org/
http://www.lagoshouseofassembly.gov.ng/
http://www.oyohouseofassembly.org/
http://www.rsha.gov.ng/

If there are any others, please list them here. Just make sure they aren't facebook pages and they aren't subfoldered on another website

So based on the above, which is your best and worst? Reasons? Here are some possible areas to look at (not in any particular order):
1) Load time
2) Content
3) Layout
4) Mobile Friendly
5) SEO Friendly

Oya, let's go. I have mine in mind but I don't want to start too early to influence your thoughts.
3)

Looks much better. It is even responsive to boot. Way to go!

2 more suggestions and should you choose to accept, you will be good to go:

1) Remove the 2nd sentence, "And we charge almost nothing to offer these services...". I think this is better served on the page they land on

2) Make the font responsive. My thinking here is that especially for those with very small viewports, make the font smaller will make the "learn more" button appear without them having to scroll. Again, you want them to click and you are paying for the facebook ad so you want to maximize clicking potential.

cheers!

I would say that if you get at least 70%, you've done well. That has always been my standard. I mean, we won't use this stuff in every day code and I personally would probably never ask these in an interview. These are what I call "throw off" questions - they get you to pause and think, just when you thought you knew it all

Since u r paying per click/ad, I would think that you should maximize your chances by adding the CTA both at the top and the bottom. Especially on mobile devices, you don't want folks to scroll to eternity before seeing the button.

Either shorten the content or create more opportunities to display the CTA

omni, you still dey?

I missed that one and some other one I don't remember at the moment.

^^^ What do you say about this?

Google for "akwa ibom water company". Go through the at least 3 pages of results. Then go to facebook and check for the the same name. You will see what I mean...and trust me, for this state government alone, I have more examples.

Could it be that it is specific to this state? I can't say as I don't have the time to check the other 35. That notwithstanding, I am sure it is happening with the other states. I can tell you on authority though that 2 years or so ago, I spoke with a state house of assembly speaker and he was pretty upset that upon the amount of money paid to a web guy to do their site, he ended up playing them for fools by creating a "website" on facebook. Apparently, he thought the speaker wasn't web savvy.

So, I have noticed this for a while but decided to post about it - Many governments, at all levels, don't have actual websites but if you go to facebook, it is littered with fan/group pages for such institutions.

Why is this? I can only come up with the following possible reasons and let you all chime in with your answers:

1) They don't want to spend on an actual website, since they can't afford it

2) They get a budget for an actual website, but pocket the money and go for the facebook option

3) The web developer gets the contract but thinks he/she is smart and gives the (usually ignorant) client the facebook page

4) Since probably 99% of Nigerians who are online are on facebook, it makes sense to some people to just kuku patronize facebook, with the fact that it is free, an added plus.

Oya, what are your thoughts here? I would love to hear them.