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siamnaulak
Sat., Nov. 10, 2007, 2:04 am
Dear Friends,

I would like to request all of you to please review or give comments on my new site called Zomi Christian Fellowship (www.zcfdelhi.org (http://www.zcfdelhi.org)).

I am a member in this fellowship and as I am a freelance website designer our Youth Chairman requested me to develop this for our fellowship. Before we used to have website from free hosting provider with a lots of ad and now we managed to buy our own domain & hosting. Though it is finalized I launch it out so that more people (including our fellowship member) can give comments. It will be fully launch by the pastor when it is finalize.

In this site I use FrontPage, and as I a good in HTML I also use my own HTML. All the graphics are done in Photoshop. I also use Flash8 for animated banner, but I am not that good in Flash. I used very simple CSS which I script by myself.

If there are any points I missed out, I am always ready to answer your questions.

Thanks
JackWolfgang
Sat., Nov. 10, 2007, 7:55 pm
I would remove the e-mail address from the page. In this day in age when spammers seek to sell you anatomical enlargement products and illegal software, why not make it harder for them to do so. Use a form!
On the page, it appears you switch languages from English to something else, which I can only guess to be Hindi ("Mangpa misiengthou munchin..."). However, looking at the source code, you make no mention of changing languages. If you are trying to reach multiple linguistic targets (actually, this is important for everyone), it is very important to identify what language your content is in by using the lang attribute. For example, my church's site identifies the content as being in English using the following code:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
Note the xml:lang and lang attributes (I use both because I am using XHTML). The World Wide Web Consortium has a discussion of the lang attribute for HTML 4 (http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/dirlang.html). You may also want to consider two sites: 1 for English, and 1 for the other language (beware of automated translations, because they are typically not good for doing this).
Your Flash picture changer does not degrade nicely for people that do not have Flash or do not have Flash integrated with their primary browser. In my copy of Firefox, I get "Click here to download plugin", and in Safari, I get a blue Lego block with question marks on it. I could figure out why Flash isn't integrated with my Firefox and Safari (it's integrated with Internet Explorer), but I don't have the time or inclination to do so. And neither does the "blind billionaire", Google's search spider.
Many of your images, including those for your bullets and horizontal rules lack alt tags. You'll want to review the following pages from Mark Pilgrim's Dive into Accessibility Site:

Ignoring Spacer Images (http://diveintoaccessibility.org/day_21_ignoring_spacer_images.html)
Using Real Lists (or Faking Them Properly) (http://diveintoaccessibility.org/day_22_using_real_lists_or_faking_them_properly.html)
Provinding Text Equivalents for Images (http://diveintoaccessibility.org/day_23_providing_text_equivalents_for_images.html)
Using Real Horizontal Rules (or Faking Them Properly) (http://diveintoaccessibility.org/day_25_using_real_horizontal_rules_or_faking_them_properly.html)

Validate (http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zcfdelhi.org%2F), Validate, Validate! Your HTML has 90 validations errors in it.


With the exception of the first item, all these have definite benefits for you:

Users with disabilities will be able to use your site better.
Google will be able to index your site better.
Styling your site will be easier with CSS.
siamnaulak
Mon., Nov. 12, 2007, 2:16 am
Dear Jack,

Thanks a lot for the review/comments, I will check all you comments. More review will be always welcome as I have some more times.

Thanks
David Gillaspey
Fri., Nov. 16, 2007, 3:28 am
Hi Siam,

Sorry for the delay in responding to your request for a review.

Here are my comments:

http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/zomi0.jpg

1. (Above) Home page design is nice; there's not much I have to say about changes. The light, patterned background is good because it does not call attention to itself. You are using an attractive color scheme. The rotating photos (that is, photos that change) in the banner emphasize people and not buildings, which is the right thing to do.

However, allow me to point out a few small things about the home page design:

http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/zomi1.jpg

2. (Above) You'll probably want to include a date of some sort for "Weekly News," for example, "Weekly News for November 11-17, 2007" (or however dates are formatted in your country). Also, neither of the items in the screenshot above are, in fact, news. Further, the Christmas greeting is either very old or very early. (There's also Christmas art in the lefthand column, not visible in the screenshot above.)

http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/zomi2.jpg

3. (Above) I encourage churches to add their address and contact information to the home page, so visitors to their website don't have to hunt for this vital information. However, it may be that in your country, where Christians might be persecuted by people of other religions, it may be wiser to not include this information so plainly.

http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/zomi3.jpg

4. (Above) I can see in the source code of the home page that you are still using the old HTML font tag for colors. These tags should not be used. Instead, you should be using CSS to specify the color of type and format other elements of the page design.

(I realize that possibly this is a site that you designed some time ago and you now code your pages to conform to current standards.)

Volunteer church webmasters who don't make a living designing websites may be forgiven for using old ways of doing things (but encouraged nonetheless to use new ways). However, because you operate a business (www.christiansitemaker.com) making websites, you really have no excuse for using the old HTML font tags. Rather, you should only be using CSS to style your sites.

You ought also to be using CSS to lay out web pages and not tables. However, that takes a lot of skill. For now, at least, as I stated, you ought to at least be using CSS for styling elements.

(I see that, on some inside pages, you use a mix of CSS and old HTML font tags to style elements. You should consistently use CSS to style elements.)

***** Inside Pages *****

5. Your site includes an extensive history of the church. I applaud that. However, there are no photos! I encourage you to illustrate the church history with photos.

http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/zomi4.jpg

Also, (above), "Previous" is misspelled.

6. The Youth Department page provides a history of the youth department. While I applaud the presence on the site of a church history, I find no particular value to including a history of the youth department.

Moreover, the Youth Department page is mostly a list of committee members. Visitors to your site really don't care about the chairman, vice chairman, etc., of the Youth Department. They want to know what kind of ministry the Youth Department provides. What happens at Youth Department meetings? What is the mission of the Youth Department?

It seems to me the Youth Department page has completely the wrong focus.

http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/zomi5.jpg

As far as the design is concerned, there should be a margin of white space in the area marked by red above.

7. In the same manner as the Youth Department, the Ladies Department page, the Sunday School Department page, and the Mission Committee page all focus on committee members and tell the visitor next to nothing of value about these ministries. Tell visitors to your site about the ministry, not who the committee members are.

8. Again, the Rules & Regulations are not the kind of information that a visitor to your site is seeking. Instead, use the website to tell visitors about your church and its ministries.

http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/zomi6.jpg

9. (Above) The site's "Useful Links" page includes a link to your own company site. I think that's inappropriate (that is, not the right thing to do).

You also give no explanation to the visitor about what is found on each of these sites.

Those are my comments. I hope they are helpful to you.
siamnaulak
Fri., Nov. 30, 2007, 3:34 am
Hi David,

Thank you so much for the comments, I think what you suggests are very right. I will work on my CSS harder. I may get back to you in my progress on CSS.

Thank a lot once again.