₦airaland Forum

Afam:

As you know, the first thing I like to do on any site for review is check out the forms

1) On the contact page, when you get an error, I see the pink portion at the top. All fine and dandy. However, on the "tell a friend" and "purchase step 1 of 2" and "login" pages, i don't see the same pink portion at the top, if I don't enter valid data. I think they should all behave consistently.

2) On the contact page, I entered the following for phone number "1111111111-111111-111" and "1111111111111111111" and got an error each time. I guess my question here is what is the correct format? Is it possible to tweak the code, for user convenience, to specify that? better yet, maybe below the phone number label, you add the right format in parenthesis.

3) I clicked "review" and "find out more" and "onspeed help" in the header but got a (blank) pop up each time.

4) I think at the very least, the home page deserves a friendly (human) face or two to give it a warm and fuzzy feeling.

5) Viewing source, I noticed that certain files (like js/base.js) were referenced more than once. This could have the adverse effect of slowing down page download time and/or causing code clashes as if a method is called (or worse yet, one of them is changed in the future), the code doesn't know which one to reference.

I would also consider moving those reference to within the HEAD tags, as opposed to within the body of the document, unless instructions call for it to be within the body of the document.

Thanks.

poster:
Your code (which was both PHP and JS by the way, not just JS) came up as spam.  I suggest that you paste your code within the "code" tags and maybe it won't be flagged again.

Based on what I am seeing, I think if you tack on another OR statement to the file types like so: (|| fileType == "mp3" as a start, you can then see if that works and if it doesn't have a baseline from where to continue.

good luck!

Javascript is quite tricky from experience the extension validation code is in a totally different script. Sometimes just changing the extension names doesn't make the script work either.
So u better look for another script that allows .mp3 or if you good at javascript go through the files and edit them to suit you.

inf8nity:
The poster I believe, says that he "has this script" so I don't see where the bolded portion of your quote above makes sense with respect to this post. Or have you seen the script in question? or r you posing as the same person but with 2 different IDs?

I dunno if this will work but perhaps you need to look at the code and see where it is setting the recognized file types then, change it from whatever it is now to mp3. Also make sure that the encoding is set properly.

I have done it for php but not javascript but would imagine the process is the same. Where to find the javascript within your template? Use your cpanel and browse to the template folder and you should see the javascript folder within it.

If my approach doesn't work, google the web for an mp3 upload javascript and add it to your template.

Good luck!

Another green website. I guess every state now wants to jump on the conservation bandwagon or is it the new rebranding for websites?

I can see it now, "Naija websites - green color, great enthusiasm"

I personally can't and won't do any testing unless u hv a bulk of the content and functionality uploaded.  A review is more than saying, "it is cool" and staring at a bunch of ipsum lorem ipiscum.  Sorry.

If you must know though, I prefer this site to the westcodelimited site.

I personally can't and won't do any testing unless u hv a bulk of the content and functionality uploaded. A review is more than saying, "it is cool" and staring at a bunch of ipsum lorem ipiscum. Sorry.

- This site is in essence, is for a sub-group of the church right? If yes, I don't see any correlation b/w the 2. the site as-is resembles something "of the world"

- Font is so small that it is hard to read

- The sections are not laid out properly

- I would expect the contact info to be isolated such that it could be easily found.

Bottomline, given the amount of content on the page, I think you have no choice but to have more than 1 page. Remember: Less is more

Should you need more info on issues with the page and/or would like me to fix them, my company offers website auditing as a service and would be glad to help,

Thanks and good luck!

biggjoe:

Not the point - that you can't or shouldn't use DW

The point - when all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail.

The art director has spoken

biko nu, add a "skip" to that opening animation. I am sure you got mad flash skills but not everyone may want to sit and watch the whole thing play

hmmm, it always baffles me how posts that to me, would lead to us all learning something, end up getting no play, yet site reviews get 1000% undivided attention.

I am beginning to rethink purpose of this board

nitation, afam:

Thanks for bringing this up. When I do, I am often barraged with -ve posts and at some point, I am asked, "can i see your works?"

In my neck of the woods, we had to code in Emacs (unix) and in pascal for our first programming class. Though we hated it as we knew we would never use either in the real world, the point made was that by getting our hands dirty, we would know what to do in the event that our beloved WYSIWYG editor decided to "misbehave".

In the event that I organize a seminar in Nigeria, one thing I will stress up front is that there wil be no dream weaver. you will code from scratch. After that, should you choose to go buy dreamweaver, believe, u will thank me later

I personally won't say much until you are done with all your pages. Till then, consider the following:

1) Change your fonts from whatever it is now (probably times new roman) to a combo of arial, helvetic, sans-serif

2) When I log on, all I see is one big image. It isn't obvious that I have to scroll down to see text. Remove http://www.annonward.com/banner%203.jpg from each page

3) On a page like: http://www.annonward.com/services.htm, remove height from your table cells and remove the empty DIVs. Currently, you hv too much space b/w paragraphs.

4) Since you haven't gone far, this is probably a good time to start from scratch by:
a) Use CSS menus as opposed to images
b) Use P tags as opposed to DIVs with "align=justify"

good luck!

Nice concept. Hopefully, you won't lose steam along the way. I would personally love a site that offers such info.

Back to business, here are the top 6 (of many) things that I noticed on the site. For more and/or help fixing the issues, you will have to pay - my company offers website auditing as a service.

1) http://www.naijaexamsalert.com/web-training.html - layout is black, not green as the rest of the site. why?

2) Contact form, if not filled, takes me to a white page

3) when filled but not correctly, I get "thank you". Learn to validate on front and back ends

4) Is the aim of the site to promote google ads or exam alerts? All I kept seeing was the text around the white section, not the white section itself

5) Get rid of the counter. Get rid of the widget that tells me how many people are online. If all I see is "1", I might be inclined to come back

6) http://www.naijaexamsalert.com/about.html - why is the text blue? why is the text centered? Get rid of the animation at the bottom of the page

Here are ten (of many) things that I noticed on the site.  For more and/or help fixing the issues, you will have to pay - my company offers website auditing as a service.

1) I go to contact page, hit submit and get taken to another page that tells me some fields are missing.  What's worse, the new page is all white (no resemblance to the site's layout). I suggest you at least have front end validation and also "equip" the error page such that its layout is consistent with that of the rest of the site

2) I then fill out fields on the contact page, but not correctly (I entered "fff" in all fields).  Again I get to the white page (expected).  This time though, I get this error:

Warning: mail() [function.mail]: Failed to connect to mailserver at "mail.floridaserver.com" port 25, verify your "SMTP" and "smtp_port" setting in php.ini or use ini_set() in D:\hshome\cellular\cellularsolutionsandsupplies.com\gc_formmail1.php on line 113

Fix it

3) Top section spans the entire screen but not the footer.  I think both should act the same way.

4) Top header (with logo): http://www.cellularsolutionsandsupplies.com/images/movie.gif is 466KB 

5) Cos of the size of #4, it took forever for the site to load on my machine.  What I ended up seeing was the cellular animation.  As it was on the maroon background, all I could see is ghost pixels around the letters.  I suggest you dump the whole thing, as-is and go for flash or some javascript library.

6) Footer reads, "copyright 2008".  Was this done last year or is it a typo?

7) http://www.cellularsolutionsandsupplies.com/partners.html - logos are too large.  They also look blurry, most likely cos you blew them up (photos look better if they r reduced, not increased).  I suggest you go for logo widths of no more than 150px.

8 ) http://www.cellularsolutionsandsupplies.com/amplifiers.html - is this page necessary? If yes, populate.  Currently, it looks weird.

9) http://www.cellularsolutionsandsupplies.com/cdmaamplifiers.html and http://www.cellularsolutionsandsupplies.com/rfcablespec.html - these pages are one big image. why?

10) http://www.cellularsolutionsandsupplies.com/rfcables.html - a page like this I think should have all the info on one page.  One way of dealing with this could be to throw the images in a left column and the specs and apps in a right column.  You could then use javascript to toggle b/w the 2.

smart:

Who would dare forget the greenest website east of the niger?

Here is another (assuming you didn't type it that way on purpose). It is bolded for your convenience:

$LoginRS__query=sprintf("SELECT Username, Paasword FROM login WHERE Username='%s' AND Paasword='%s'",

PAcK SYNDROME IS NOT A BAD THING.

I didn't say that

Read my post again. My questions:

- Is there some kind of law out there that requires nigerian-based websites to have the rebrand logo?
- is this something one person started and now others, in the spirit of the animal pack syndrome have decided to copy?
- If you happened to see this logo on a website, would it make a difference to you?

I am probably more interested in answers to the 3rd question. The first is more of sarcasm.

so, stop typing in all caps and join in on the discussion

hmmm, so if I wanted to spend my vacation in bauchi, googled for it and found both sites, which would I believe?

I guess my point is, if one is the official and the other is a trial, why not hide the trial say, via a subdomain or an intranet, pending when trial is over?

It is like www.akwaibomstategov.com and www.aksgonline.com - the latter is the official site but someone who is unfamiliar with the situation would be left confused.

obinna:
1) How can a site be under construction and for sale at the same time?
2) Which is the official site: http://www.bauchistategov.org/ or http://www.bauchistategov.com/

As some of you may know, I am very much into random googling of websites. I do this to see what the competition is doing (and not doing) and to see what I can incorporate into my future web jobs.

Recently, quite a few nigerian-based websites have started displaying the "rebrand nigeria, good people, great nation (or whatever it is)" logo on their sites. In fact, coming to think of it, it reminds me of the "proudly Nigeiran" logos I used to see back in the day.

Is there some kind of law out there that requires nigerian-based websites to have the rebrand logo? or is this something one person started and now others, in the spirit of the animal pack syndrome have decided to copy? If you happened to see this logo on a website, would it make a difference to you?

Let's discuss.

veetubes:

afam i feel you but it looks unrealist for me as a business man now paying 7o% in advance i can only part with 40% in advance and that is what i charge which have been very rewarding though the 40% advancement is not refundable

Different strokes for different folks. I have always charged 60% and it has worked for me thus far. I was actually told that in Nigeria, in order to prevent ppl bolting with your money, you should get at least 75% up front, which is much closer to Afam's %age than yours, Syvalam

Syvalam:
1) It isn't my job to correct him. I am not paid to audit their site. They should have a quality assurance department which either would have caught this b4 site launch or during routine browsing of the site.

2) Even if I were to do it, as a concerned citizen, I visited the contact page and found nothing but phone numbers and a suspicious-looking email address. I can't call cos I am not there and I don't want to waste my time writing an email which, based on experience from other state govt websites, no one will answer

3) Based on previous experience, issues I bring up on this board end up getting to concerned parties so I am used to using this avenue to vent.

Thanks,

I use hostmonster.com and having been using them since 2005, with no problems whatsoever.

1) There is a large space b/w the nav and the text links. why?

2) The background makes it hard for me to read the text links

3) Some of the photos, IMHO need to be replaced on account that they aren't friendly and the fact that it is occupying the entire screen. In other words, I didn't know there was stuff beneath it when the page first loaded, and I use a 1024. Imagine what a 800x600 visitor would see.

Good luck!

connote = match

Gooood

Now, can I make your wrists hurt a lil more by asking that you make the navigation text larger and bolder (I couldn't spot it at first) and move it to the bottom? Or, how about changing the text links to images?

No kill me o, he he. I want this thing to be a full blown app by the time all is said and done

smart:

I purposely am not commenting cos there is no way I can stone you, considering we both live in the same glass house

Afam,

Is it possible to make the photo gallery more interactive by either using a javascript lib or on the pop up, adding "next" and "previous" buttons. Though I would personally go for the latter, either way, I think better interactivity will be something that site visitors would surely appreciate.

In other news, I did a google for your site and though it didn't come up, I noticed that it was referenced at ttp://nigeriavillagesquare.com - by you

Finally, I noticed that you don't have any keywords, description, and the site isn't registered with google webmasters and analytics. Though probably late in the game, all these would surely help in helping the site rank highly. The latter in particular would help you with data gathering would you could further use to sell the site (where hits came from, how long people were on the site, etc).

Thanks.

tell your twin daughters that I say "hi"

Ooops! In my euphoric state, I failed to notice that what you see now is a preview of the content with links to subscribe for the full story.

Oh well, at least some sense has been knocked into their heads. I guess we have to wait another 6 months for them to realize that not all news items should require a subscription

Kudos to them anyways for publishing at least part of their articles.