My first Dreamweaver website!

[Cheddaa]

Hey guys,

Wasn't sure where exactly this type of post would be approriate to post so here i am.  I am one year out of college and taught myself basically Dreamweaver and this is my very first major website.  I would just like to see what anybody would have to say about it.  ALSO if you could i would like to hear the price range of what this site would usually cost if you were to do it.  It's about 160 pages and all pictures were provided.  Thanks!

[John Waller]

What is the website address?

[Cheddaa]

totally forgot to post the link! haha www.Calabrocheese.com

[Ben M · Accepted solution]

I agree with Nancy.  160 pages is way too many for a static site to maintain.

The homepage isn't bad.  There are no link colors/actions so it's hard to always tell when I am hovering what is a link and what is not.  Black for links is not really a good idea.  Also on the second tier pages, the left hand menu is not really noticeable.

Then for the Find Us, I feel like I get left at a dead end where I see a list of companies, but then I'm left without knowing how to find the products any further.

Overall, I would say this is impressive for a first site, but there is still work and critiquing that could should be done to optimize the user experience.

[Nancy OShea]

What Ben said.

It's a good 1st effort and I don't want to nitpick too much.   But I'm not wild about the menu.   The Find Us section is where a database would have helped you.  One detail page populated with info from the MySQL would significantly cut down on the number of pages to build & maintain. 

Eventually this will have to be retrofitted with a database & server-side code to support a shopping cart.   Or moved to a platform like Business Catalyst with the e-commerce module. 

Nancy

[osgood_]

robertpiconedesigns  wrote

totally forgot to post the link! haha www.Calabrocheese.com

I think its nearly there. Looks fairly clean. Probably could do with some brief introduction text on the homepage, just a few lines. Not too keen on the greyish looking footer, I think that could have been in the same red as the navbar. At the moment it looks like it belongs to another website. As has been mentioned I'm not keen on the navigation down the left side of the 'product' pages, seems like an after-thought to me, probably a requirement by the client. Images are quite large in terms of file size and need to be opitimised for quicker download time and less bandwith consumption on mobile devices. Never really liked the tacky 'history' gallery, they always look amaterish to me but again probably a requirement of the client. I think a few images included in the 'About Us' section would have been enough.

In general though it's not offensive and taken as a whole a good job, which requires a few simple tweaks to tighten the overall appearance/presentation up a bit, that's what I think anyway.

[Nancy OShea]

Prices vary  by region, so I can't  say other than it's worth what someone is willing to pay.   Keep track of your hours.  And calculate what you need per year to meet your expenses.

When you're starting out, you typically do projects for much less in order to develop a respectable portfolio.  But don't give your work away.  If you do, it's not a sustainable career.

160 pages is quite large for a static site.  I don't inflict that kind of pain on myself anymore.  Once a site reaches 50 pages, it's got to be dynamically generated with databases and scripts.  No more static HTML.

It's nice that the client provided their own images but graphic services are in addition to the site design, development, testing, deployment & maintenance.   So whatever price you agreed upon at onset should take that into consideration. 

Nancy