Createch London Creative Agency

[Sohail]

Dear X10,

I've not been around here for a couple of years in fact I used to be an Account Manager some time ago. Anyway, I've still been in the same line of work, constantly refining my brand, hereby bringing Createch London. We provide bespoke web design, web development, eCommerce and digital marketing services to the public. I would like to kindly request your thoughts on the website and where there may be room for improvement. Please keep in mind we only launched a few days ago and only the home page is fully complete. Content for the rest of the site should be filled in over the next couple of weeks. For now it should be nice to hear thoughts about the look and feel of the brand.

Regards,

Sohail

 

[LaVee]

Pros

• Fast loading times, good scrolling action.
• Responsive!!
• Unique design element added to the social media buttons; most of them are working.
• Good Colors

However there are a couple of things that need to be fixed.

• The LinkedIn button is not working. It just refreshed the page.
• I needed tilt my monitor screen a bit down to see what the navigation bar said, it blends in the background and hides if I don't do so.
• The about page is just a bit block of text and really straining on the eyes - I didn't stick around to read it, maybe add a picture or break it up somehow?
• The Work page is also just meh, nothing to that really catches the eye, maybe think of presenting it differently.

Overall Score: 8.5/10
Loading times & Responsiveness: 10
Design: 9
Pages: 7
Links working: 8

 

[frankfriend]

Hi, mostly a clear uncluttered site. Easy to read.Could not see the top of the BBC content under the opening galaxy PIC.By the way it is 'bear in mind'

 

[ken.gervais89]

After my first attempt at loading your page, I had no clue what the others are seeing on your site, since for the first few tries (in Firefox), I got a fatal error message. For what it's worth, I got a "Select an installation profile" message in MSIE, Chrome and Opera. (when I tried reloading the page in each browser, I got the same message, except in Opera, where the page loaded fine. So as nice looking as your page is, the errors hint at there being slight glitch in the coding.

Here's what the fatal error message I got in Firefox looked like:

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required '/nfs/c09/h01/mnt/210932/domains/createchlondon.com/html/modules/system/system.install' (include_path='.:/usr/local/php-5.3.29/share/pear') in /nfs/c09/h01/mnt/210932/domains/createchlondon.com/html/includes/install.core.inc on line 241

 

[Sohail]

@LaVee Thanks very much for your kind feedback. I can confirm I have fixed the LinkedIn button. I've made some changes to the navigation so it will follow you down the screen now; should be quite clear to see now. About Us page is on hold for a while until I have some more content. I've just released a new version of the website for the Work page to help filter projects using JavaScript and the structure is displayed more clearly now, please have a look if you get a chance and let us know if you think the improvements are good enough for now?

@frankfriend Sorry I didn't quite understand your message? And @ken.gervais89 hopefully that's just a hiccup that no one else has experienced as this is the first time I've heard of any server related errors. Would you mind letting me know if this happens again? I'm guessing it's fine now. If it does happen again, perhaps you could send me a screenshot of the problem so I can start debugging.

Many thanks for all your feedback.

 

[ken.gervais89]

I cant send you a screenshot, because your site is working great now. As you said, it was very likely a tiny glitch. I wonder what would the Net be like without all the tiny glitches that are part of it. Technology, the more we know, the more swear words we learn...

 

[phclausx]

Hi, loads ok and looks crisp at first glance. Plenty of gimmicks. However, I'm a validation junkie, and since the site fails miserably I'd have my doubts how valid any client sources may be. In addition, you may want to add a proper favicon rather then the stock Joomla thingie.

 

[Sohail]

@phclausx Thanks for your review, I very much appreciate your feedback. In terms of validation, please do another check for HTML5 validation and AC Checker for accessibility validation to AA standards. They should all be green. I have got my PageSpeed for desktop validated with 90/100 so far, I'm a high advocate for these standards. Sometimes it takes a while to perfect your work as I had been eager to get the website launched. I am almost always constantly looking for way to improve the site. I have a CDN being implemented once some final fixes are complete and will be re-designing favicons shortly. Any more feedback is completely welcome.

 

[phclausx]

Glad to do just that, in particular for those calling London home

AC level 2 AA is green indeed, save for some 100+ manual tests. Personally, I go after Level 2 AAA though. With HTML and CSS validation enabled, it returns 2 HTML errors and (!!!) 730 CSS issues. Those numbers are verified by https://validator.w3.org/unicorn/ch...=(detect automatically)&ucn_task=conformance#

Nothing changes when trying HTML 5, see here https://validator.w3.org/unicorn/ch...=(detect automatically)&ucn_task=conformance#

Your current GTMetrix are 94/94 as reported here https://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.createchlondon.com/dUWhV1XZ

Compared to my own site's 99/98 https://gtmetrix.com/reports/phclaus.eu.org/xWgGywpR

Hope you don't mind a little self-promo

A CDN may help, but not always. My own site is actually slower via CDN, due to near zero images, barely half a line of cosmetic JS, and nothing else fancy. Feel free to report back once you are ready for a fresh spin of validators. Regards.

P. S. While this is off-topic, how is The City these days? Haven't been home since 1992...

 

[Sohail]

@phclausx Thanks for that information I'll find that useful. I will be looking to get my scores to 100/100 soon as well as the validation and AAA compatibility at some point. I am using a CDN now in my case it does really help. I've spent about 2 weeks designing and developing the site so it will be a work in progress for me.

The City is busy as it always is. Everywhere is London is getting busier, especially my area where they're building a new runway at Heathrow. Will be good for the economy but don't think we'll be able to handle all the extra traffic. But anyway everything is good here apart from that.

 

[essellar]

The CSS "issues" are all likely vendor prefixes, alternate rulesets for older browsers, and the like. Similarly, there's nothing wrong with the HTML. Valid is good; W3C validators are a VERY bad way of checking it. (There was a brief, shining period when XHTML 1.0 was king, when it actually worked well.) The diagnostic.css bookmarklet does a much better job both of validating HTML and pointing out accessibility problems. Your site passes without problems.

 

[phclausx]

The CSS "issues" are all likely vendor prefixes, alternate rulesets for older browsers, and the like. Similarly, there's nothing wrong with the HTML. Valid is good; W3C validators are a VERY bad way of checking it. (There was a brief, shining period when XHTML 1.0 was king, when it actually worked well.) The diagnostic.css bookmarklet does a much better job both of validating HTML and pointing out accessibility problems. Your site passes without problems.

No offense, but that's completely ridiculous. It only shows your apparent lack of standards conformity; and the reference to a three year old style sheet double-underlines that. Just out of curiosity, which browser did you use to try the thing? Not doing anything in FFX 42.

 

[essellar]

It works just fine in Chrome (I haven't tried it in FF lately). And I've already laid into you with the validator thing in other threads; they're mostly wrong, particularly where CSS is concerned (mostly because the W3C is well out of sync with browsers). They're also out of step with their own standards where attributes are concerned. Valid HTML isn't difficult to assess by using View->Source and referring to the standard.

 

[phclausx]

Doesn't do on my end with spoogle either. Perhaps a windoze thing of sorts; I'm on Debian, never mind. Not sure if you've ever read through the specs, but there's certainly nothing wrong with neither the validators, nor the standards the check against.

Regarding browsers: They've always been forgiving by means of either ignoring the exotic fancy-bits, or, in rare cases, simply falling back to the lowest common, usually HTML v2. The option to view a pages' source code is primarily aiming at the curious, more often the qualified, who actually know how to read them. Other than that, it has absolutely nothing to do with validation. You can RTFM for as long as you like, but if you fail to grasp the inner workings that's not doing any good at all.

May I suggest I ceasefire? You are obviously happy to produce and promote broken wishful thinking, whereas I've been in the field for a mere 30+ years with all the certificates, expertise, and a proven track record of producing valid -- and ONLY valid -- sources. And, if I may append, my clients wouldn' t have it any other way. That all said, I deem it suitable to withdraw from this brief encounter. Happy coding anyway.

 

[bholdswo]

Awesome,

Thanks for your time,

Beau Holdsworth of www.bholdsworthtech.pcriot.com