take a look at http://www.rickloughman.x10host.com/

[rickloug]

soooo i'm new to hosting... started a small home business last year, one bit of which is selling this goopy electronic cigarette fluid. took it online a couple of months ago with 000webhost (don't even get me started hahaha) and of course - i'm here now. turns out that a host that actually hosts is what you need hahaha

things i'd like reviewing are:
data usage / loading times on a cellphone or slow or expensive connection
any html errors (last time i did this... geocities was all the rage haha)
how better to invite people to the online store aspect at http://www.rickloughman.x10host.com/store.html without exactly *advertising* what i do to any bots or things

i welcome all your comments

 

[ijailbre]

I hear 000webhost is pretty bad. However, I've hosted with both and both were fine. My only complaint with X10 is that it claims I'm using a proxy, VPN, or TOR every time I want to log in... Anyways... load time for page is quick, since its pretty basic. Although your images, sheesh! They take quite a long time to load even on a quick connection.

Looked through the developer console, and found 1 error as follows. Just a simple 404 so no biggy really

http://www.rickloughman.x10host.com/favicon.ico Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 404 (Not Found)

 

[rickloug]

oh no way i've referenced the huge images. thumbnails will be up shortly - thank you for that

the bookmark icon error is because i didn't bother with one haha. maybe i could use a small version of my swooshy squiggle logo

thank-you very much for taking a look - much appreciated

 

[bdistler]

things i'd like reviewing are:
data usage / loading times on a cellphone or slow or expensive connection

with your URL [ http://www.rickloughman.x10host.com/store.html ] size of 8.3 MB - I can not open it on my cellphone - I have a lock at 1 MB
you need to reduce the size of the images - there are 3 with a size of about 3 MB each - way to large
see --> [ https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/c9Q4Uw/www.rickloughman.x10host.com/store.html ]

any html errors

it has a few
see --> [ https://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.rickloughman.x10host.com/store.html&charset=(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&ss=1&group=0&verbose=1&user-agent=W3C_Validator/1.3+http://validator.w3.org/services ]

and read --> [ https://validator.w3.org/docs/help.html#validation_basics ]

a validator is like a dictionary which can check the spelling of a word but not if it is the right word to use

 

[rickloug]

i'm on with the smaller thumbnail images

i'm a little suspicious of a validator that doesn't recognise a line break br or form click actions, though. maybe having them buried inside other things makes it flag up as squiffy?

edit: seems that w3 validator hasn't a clue with the void elements like the breaks. i'm surprised it lets me use img hahaha. possibly doctype japery going on here. it'll have kittens when i put clickable thumbnail pictures in lmao

 

[essellar]

The validator is of the (misguided) opinion that XHTML wasn't a mistake. (Odd, that, since a lot of the things we had to do to turn void elements into containers are actually invalid syntax in XML, but that war's been fought and finished, and the "X" army lost.) It's like a code linter: nice to have, since it catches real errors that your eyes just won't let you see sometimes, but you really need to know more than the tool does in order to use it properly.

My main beef (apart from the fact that ten quid a thirty's a bit much for a single-flavour off-brand) are that:

1. the flavours item(s) are text fields rather than a drop-down (either a collapsible checkbox set or a multi select);
2. the full-stop paragraphs used as section separators look an awful lot like empty unordered lists, and are likely to be perceived as such;
3. your CSS doesn't properly allow for narrow screens (such as mobile devices); and
4. the type's a bit small (we don't live in an 800 x 600 world anymore, and some of us are getting old).

I'd like to see a split, really, into an info page and a product selection/purchase page. The side-by-side 2002-vintage blog layout really doesn't work well here - particularly because it looks and feels old, and there are more than a few defunct e-cig sites out there. Folks are likely to assume that the site hasn't been maintained since the 510 atomizer was a bright, shiny, new technology (and carto tanks will be coming any day now!). If necessary, steal something shamelessly. (Hey, we all learned using View->Source, right?) You probably don't want to look much older than BestCigLiquid or Decadent. (Yaeliq can get away with it, somehow, but they're huge.) It doesn't have to be hip or artsy or anything; it just has to look like you have a newer browser than Netscape 6 or Mozilla Phoenix. (Frankly, I'm less than good at that sort of thing myself, once you get past the wireframes. On the up side, you could probably get someone sufficiently artsy to do it for 600ml of 3mg of an orange cream, which is mostly glycerol anyway.)

 

[rickloug]

maybe i should be typing a space and a forward slash after all the br's. i don't think i can do much with the x-click actions though because of paypal's suckyness

i'm not looking for feedback on the products but i'll certainly look at your suggestions... the reason for the god-awful text field is because we gas synth and mass spec and fire it to a lab. ain't nobody else that can do bacon & dog food flavour and fire it to guernsey next day for a ten-spot ;-P

 

[essellar]

I'm not sure whether they can't or they wouldn't... for decency's sake. The point of the page, though, seems to be sales, and there's a lot of friction there that will prevent sales.

 

[rickloug]

as above - i'm not looking for marketing advice... short order cottage industry... just technical

favicon, spaces and slashes after breaks, thumbnails and layout n resolution - all onboard - thanks for the pointers all in hand

 

[hobanhac]

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