Mattastro.com revamped

[Vega]

Hi All

I've completely revamped my website and wondered if I could have some feedback? Here's some points I'm particularly interested in

- Any functionality issues (desktop and mobile devices)

- Broken URL's 

- Typo's / grammatical errors (I'm not the greatest )

- General look and feel

- Any other suggestions / critisizms welcome 

www.mattastro.com

 

I'm in a quandary about the menu on mobile devices. Should I have it so it is visible when you first visit? Or do people nowadays generally know about the menu button on responsive design websites?

Cheers all

[LukeSkywatcher]

Hi Matt.

Site looks good and works well (on my laptop). Navigation is easy. You are never more than one click away from the home page which is always a good thing. Ill have to test it on my mobile.

The 2 things i will say...............

1/ Make a banner for the top of the site "Mattastro.com" or similar.

2/ The big grey box around your "copyright" at the end of every page...............lose it. Its ugly. 

Im just suggesting a couple of things to you as a CIW webmaster.

 

 

 

 

[LukeSkywatcher]

I just had a test drive of the site on my Sony Xperia. Yep, still easy to navigate.

 

[SilverAstro]

On 16/03/2017 at 12:29, Vega said:

General look and feel

Thanks, interesting site etc&etc but I guess you want to know what is less good ? !

On a 15" laptop Win7 :-

Lots of wasted real-estate, gray and black borders. Left nav area too big in comparison with the interesting information area on the right ( in the old days of forms a mobile bar could be provided so user could drag / shrink it to what (s)he needed to see.)

Agree with Paul, the copyright should go, or at least be minimised.

[Vega]

Thanks for the useful replies. I totally agree with the sidebar size issue it's something I'm still wrangling with in Wordpress. It's not a standard setting that can be altered in the theme (Twentyfifteen theme), so I'll have to work out how to customise this in php  :|||

I'll also work on loosing the copyright bar.

 

p.s. any wordpress coding experts out there? Help! :-)

 

 

 

[wxsatuser]

I use WP but have Portfolio+, I leave coding alone as I like an easy life.

[BeerMe]

Nice site Matt, nicely laid out and easy to navigate. 

The instructions for finding popular targets is good - you've kept it simple which is important imo.  A few more added would be great ;-)

Added to my favourites :-)

[Vega]

On 3/17/2017 at 02:38, SilverAstro said:

Thanks, interesting site etc&etc but I guess you want to know what is less good ? !

On a 15" laptop Win7 :-

Lots of wasted real-estate, gray and black borders. Left nav area too big in comparison with the interesting information area on the right ( in the old days of forms a mobile bar could be provided so user could drag / shrink it to what (s)he needed to see.)

Agree with Paul, the copyright should go, or at least be minimised.

I've had a play. I've managed to reduce the awful padding around the content. I can remove the footer completely but have left it there until I find out how to make the box a bit smaller and stick it to the bottom. Once I post more articles it will go further down anyway. Getting there... 

[LukeSkywatcher]

7 hours ago, Vega said:

I've had a play. I've managed to reduce the awful padding around the content. I can remove the footer completely but have left it there until I find out how to make the box a bit smaller and stick it to the bottom. Once I post more articles it will go further down anyway. Getting there... 

Recent experience of trying to help another member of SGL with their astro website really opened my eyes as to just how limited you are when using online templates to create a website. I suggested a couple of minor changes to him, which would take me seconds to do using HTML. I tried to make those couple of small changes for him but my hands were tied. There was simply nothing i could do apart from downloading each and every page from his website to my system and rehashing it and then uploading it again. He didnt ask me to do this.

I see the same issues with your website as i saw with his. Padding around text boxes, wasted space etc. Nothing too serious,but at the same time........whilst using templates.......out of your control. 

I am all for people creating their own websites online. Its a learning experience and gives them a great sense of pride. As a webmaster/designer though, i am saddened to see just how little creativity these online templates offer people.

Thankfully, there are still enough people/companies out there who want a custom made website. I am still able to put food on the table and pay the bills. 

 

 

[Vega]

I must admit, I used to write my websites in html from scratch in notepad but they looked so 90's :o). I guess over the years, I've gotten lazy with the added ease and features in WP (such as mobile responsiveness, easy customisable galleries etc). With the knowledge that I have, I feel it's 'just' enough to go it alone. For a non-profit website, I don't see the sense in forking out to have it done for you. :|| Granted, it's that very philosophy that gives me the headache of wrangling with some php/css in WP but once sorted in a child theme, it's done and I can carry on easily administering the website without having to write code every time I want to add things to it.