₦airaland Forum

So:
I have a 1280x800 resolution screen and all I see is the (very large) carousel at the top. Even when I click a link in the nav, it appears as if the page isn't changing. Only the discerning eye gradually scrolls to the bottom of the screen and then says, "oh, so there is content that is changing per page?"

My suggestion:
There is something called, "above the fold (imagine a newspaper folded in half. the important stuff s in the upper half, if the newspaper guys know what they are doing)" - reduce the size of that carousel so as to bring the content of each page up above the fold. Remember, research has shown that people read a page such that it resembles the letter "F" (left to right, then down). Finally, there is good book you should read called, "Don't Make me Think" by Daniel Krug (I think), now in 2nd edition. Just as the title suggests, give the user what they need to see one-time. Don't make them look for it, or "think" of where it is.

Good luck!

Looks great! Just spice things up on the collection photos page with a slideshow library (you're already doing it on the students page). Also, why the "students" link at the top? It looks out of place.

All the same, good job.

You need to start from scratch and practice what I call, "Incremental coding" - you code one portion (say, the header portion), test it in *all* browsers, then code another portion (say, the navigation), test that out in all browsers, etc etc.

The above may take a longer time but trust me, in the long run, it causes less stress. By coding incrementally, you can easily pin point the cause of a problem.

Good luck...and next time, include a URL

Thanks everyone. Yesterday was indeed special. I got love from all, both those I know and those I don't know.

Now, Oya, back to work!

@Tgirl
Sure. I'll be waiting for your next move(s).

^^^ Thanks or expatiating

@all
Thanks a ton, to those who have written now and those who will write in the future.

@OP
I don't think I have ever seen a thread devoted to wishing any particular member a HBD so I am very honored to have this one dedicated to me

@ace1
Wetin be GGMUB?

@pc_guru
Wouldn't you wanna know. Dem no tell u say 2 things wey u no suppose ask woman na: "How old are you?" and "Are you pregnant?"

^^^ Literally, the same team will work 24 hours straight? Wow! All because of high unemployment. Hmm

Wow! Domain name for 1000+ years? I need to sign up

Come on man! There is no First Baptist Church of Ogbomosho that looks like the one on your site

So are you saying that if I give you N30,000, you will have N1 change for me?

^^^ If the opportunity comes again, will be knocking on your door. Thanks for coming out of semi-hibernation

I too will be waiting for responses here. I have had lots of offers to code ecommerce apps for Nigerian clients and I use openCart for all my ecommerce apps. Unfortunately, I have to turn them down as I only use the PayPal option and that is an option not favorable to my Nigerian target audience.

So, I always take the approach that we aren't, and shouldn't, be code monkeys. Clients are not just paying for us to do a job. They are paying for our (perceived) expertise. That means that just as a Doctor will tell them that as much as they want to drink Red Bull, it isn't good for their health and insist (not merely suggest) that they should stop, you are to insist that your clients not do certain things because of facts that would argue otherwise, even if it means not getting the job.

Maybe it is my nature but when I state something based on fact, I am very adamant. I don't care who you are. I also understand the Nigerian factor part of your argument. I have argued (politely of course) with commissioners, speakers of houses, etc and in 99% of the cases, I have won. Why? Because they have seen my point. In fact some have even said they have been educated and have started noticing things they used to take for granted.

I like to educate my clients as much as I can. I also don't take any payment in the cases where we disagree until we are both in unison on an issue pertaining to their website.

Go back to your client and educate (mind you, I didn't say, "talk to" your client on why having that link there is bad and that a better alternative would be to have him bookmark the link or have it saved in an email somewhere. Better yet, you could create say, a "webmail" folder (or any name you think the client will easily remember) and redirect to the URL you have currently. At the end of the day, if after that they still disagree, you've done your job.

Finally, bear in mind that as we say in my language, d person wey dey shit no dey remember wey im shit, na d person wey rub am for body dey remember - when a potential customer or fellow peer visits a site you've done, they won't know what kind of conversation(s) you've had with a particular client. No, when they ask who did a website, you want it to be for good reasons - they want to give you their next job.

Good luck!

Get rid of the "Admin Email Login", top right. Not necessary.

1) Make the white text portion of the logo more legible
2) Get rid of that envelope on the contact page. It doesn't look professional to me, IMHO
3) Center the text in your nav bar
4) Your li:hover's image is missing (nav bar)
5) You still need to work on the validation for your contact form (both front and back end) to avoid spam.

hmmm, oga OP, as a programmer you should know to take care of all conditions. If you are strictly for african and nigerian markets, then you have to assume that some dumb guy or gal (like me) will want to search for areas not in your market. You then have to account for this in your code. It is only good programming practice.

Again, I would strongly suggest that you first detect where the user is coming from and if not in your target audience area, you give them a kind message telling them why they can't use the site then offer a button to proceed to the actual site. Heck! You could even provide a "cancel" button which might take them to another portion of your site where you could market them something.

Again, merely a suggestion. It's a good site, don't get me wrong. Am just saying it could be better, programmatically speaking.

#justSaying

Also, the "forecast" button doesn't seem to be working. I tried this on my phone, tablet and on my desktop

1) Website may be vulnerable: http://weather9ja.com/view.php?name='

2) If this is for Nigeria, then you might want to detect this in advance and offer a message for non-Nigerian cities: I am not in Nigeria, but I did click on "find me (which it did)" but I got totally off weather conditions (I even compared to weather.com)

3) For the foreigners/tourists/visitors in Nigeria, maybe you offer a Fahrenheit-to-Celsius conversion ability

4) General statement: Only Nigerians (and the few who know about us) know about "naija" and "9ja". IMHO, using either of the slangs as part of a url for a site of this nature is not professional. A url like weathernigeria.com looks and sounds way better, and I am sure you would agree

Good job though!

Two more things:
- Especially on the "teachers" page, consider adding their names. That will make it more personal.
- On the page with pictures, get rid of the header image at the top. This will give the page more real estate and make it look less busy

IMHO, of all the sites you have submitted here for review, this is the best!

1) On the home page fading photos section, the first photo features a boy in green with pot belly. I think his presence in that photo spoils the whole thing. I would take it out.

2) Contact form submit button goes to a broken page

3) Photos section: Just name the nav bar, "photos" and use one of the many free jquery (for instance) slideshow plugings. The way you are going about it now, if they have 1,000 photos, that page will be super long. Besides, such plugins will make the page more attractive.

Good job!

OP, I would actually be very happy that slyrox did what he did (and 2 posts later, you have). Besides, what he did isn't permanent. He simply modified what was in your title name/value pair. I am sure that he could have done much worse without leaving a trail

Folks,

There is a lady who, many years ago on American Idol, was rejected by Simon Cowell. That same year, she featured in a movie and won an Oscar. Now she is hot cake.

Just because Mr. A rejects you doesn't mean you are no good. It just means (as I see it) that you aren't a good fit/match for Mr. A. It doesn't mean Mr. B will see you the same way.

No need to say, "see me today. You think say i no go make am". Besides, we don't know tomorrow. Thank God for where you are today and use the opportunity to help others. Period!

It doesn't look like this site was done using a CMS tool, which would be ideal, given the type of site this is.

If I am right:
I understand that sometimes as coders we want to prove to ourselves that we can code but come on, we need to work smart and not hard. Many of the CMS tools out there arleady have built-in security, for instance and also offer free upgrades from time to time. Even the CNNs of this world don't code their sites from scratch so who are you?

If I am wrong:
Take a serious look at your web security.

The website doesn't seem to be secure:
http://www.persecondnews.com/search?t=%27&s=0

^^^ In this day and age, it is possible that maybe they want to order food or want catering services. If this is the case, it is okay for them to sign up for accounts so that their basic info is saved.

Of course I am playing Devil's Advocate here, and not defending OP. The "members" reference could definitely be reworded, to avoid confusion.

In general:
1) It looks like you are gradually taking over the web dev market in Nigeria. Na your request for reviews full this place

2) I like the very first image of the "fading photos". Makes me want to visit the joint. I do think though that you could achieve the same result by cutting each image in half. Remember, we are also talking bandwidth here and with majority of Nigerians on mobile, unless your website has a responsive design, boiz go dey pay big time for bandwidth. This is a perfect example: http://www.healthyliciousng.com/images/abt-banner-1.jpg

3) Facebook and Twitter icons not working

4) All pages with the gray background in the left column: It should be made to grow/shrink with content. The way you have it now, it's of a fixed height. I shouldn't have to scroll if I don't have to.

5) Logo and catchphrase are a little "oily" - think of someone with bean cake mistakenly handling a page of your notebook.

Home page:
1) Make the "read more" buttons line up either by adding same number of lines or by giving the content above it a fixed height
2) The 2nd and 3rd tabs aren't that obvious to me.

About Us:
The black text against a dark green background is hard to read

Contact:
Phone number field not validating properly

Good luck!

He he, we all know that even if OP were to actually delete their profile, they would be back here in no time, under an alias

Maybe something like this (I am using inline CSS but in your code, add this to a CSS files):

<div style="float: left; width: 300px;border: 1px solid red;">content for DIV 1</div>
<div style="float: left; width: 300px;border: 1px solid red;">content for DIV 2</div>
<div style="float: left; width: 300px;border: 1px solid red;">content for DIV 3</div>
<br style="clear: both;" />

Note:
1) The widths could be anything you want it to be, and not necessarily 300px
2) I am only adding the border color for visualization purposes
3) You always want to "clear" floated elements so that flow returns to the page

Good luck!

^^^ you don't want hackers and your competitors to see what your code is doing. Why? The former will use your code to harm your site and the latter will improve upon what you have and use that to steal business from you.

So now you have narrowed your question, it makes more sense.

What you need to do is use PHP, or any other back end language to do that. Javascript (even in obfuscated form) is readable as it is client-side and I am sure you don't want to expose your proprietary business logic to the public and to bad apples in the coding world.

Good luck!

IMHO, this question is like asking, "I know why I have to wipe my nyash when using the toilet but how do I know when to wipe my nyash?", or, "how do I know when - it doesn't make sense.

If you want to validate a form, you use/write a script that validates forms...Period! As for learning it, there are no secrets though there are good ways and bad ways of writing any code in general. Google for javascript tutorials, maybe starting with the w3schools version and go from there. Also consider looking at the code that others have written on sites that you like visiting. Finally, if you look at code that you have copied from elsewhere, change a few things about it to see how it will react afterwards. That's how you learn.

Good luck!