After speaking with oWn3d, it was decided to post a thread to ask for a little design help and suggestions. I put together a quick mock up of the website for the project. All input is appreciated. http://www.tdprojecthope.org

Looks good so far. I would suggest that the links that lead away from the the site open in a new window. Just add this code in the anchor tag:

target="blank"

Just for aesthetics, space between the second & third lines, expand the margins so that 'diseases' isn't hung out to dry, which BTW is misleading 'cause it's only TSC. Space between the third & fourth lines & an easy link to the forums, centered, below the fourth line.

Oops, there I go again. Where's the thumbs up button on this damn thing?

I will add both of those suggestions. Do You think I should add a separator between the navigation and the body?

Nah, the color change serves that purpose.

Revision 2 is posted. Please check it out.

Excellent!

Hey,
The proposed site is looking good!!! I can help with text if need be.

Kristi

Please do. I need some help on a couple of those blank pages. Also I think more needs to be said on the main page. All suggestions are welcomed.

Edit needed on List of Donations page ( it says "dontations"), sorry didn't know if you needed a spellchecker, but it caught my eye. It is really looking fantastic!!!

:oops: Ooops, yes that is more than welcome. I am a notoriously bad proof reader. Fixed now, thank you.

I propose lilhurricane be official spellchecker. That's a spot on the board that hasn't been filled yet.

but..but i wanted to be official spellchecker!!


Let's have a poll on it :wink: lol.

I like the website! Nice and clean, easy to read and navigate. Good job!

Lol....I'll let you know if I catch anymore...
You're gonna be sorry you asked me...but the Project Information page says discriptions (correct: descriptions) hah!

http://www.tdprojecthope.org/index.html

it's up.

One recommendation I've gotten is to change the font. I imagine we're gonna be doing that once we have some content up. Other than that, it looks great!

Which font, The navigational font of the body text?

The navigation font matches the font nfx used in the graphic. That isn't a super web-safe font, so their browser may be changing it to courier. I guess I could make that a graphic.

The body text is a web-safe font. Is the font they are having a problem with too small?

Should we add meta tags for search bots?

Sure, you want to come up with a few? I will add them tonight.

I'm not too good at this, but here's a stab:

<meta name="keywords" content="united devices, rothberg institute, cancer, childhood diseases, grid computing, distributed computing, team discovery">

I was thinking about the body text. I'm not a big fan of Times New Roman. Anything other than that should be just fun.

how about a hit counter on the main page?

Is there a way to put a link here back to the main page? That way, when things get going it's easier to navigate.

I can make one if needed. Barely takes 2 mins.
Let me know

If you want to write one up, that is fine with me.

oWn3d, is cgi OK with you?. I noticed the bin it there.

I just uploaded a revision http://www.tdprojecthope.org/index.html
Navigation font in a gif.
Changed body font to arial.
Added meta tags for search engines.
Added copyright notice.

CGI is cool, PHP is cool, ASP is cool, Perl is cool.

Use whatever you like... chances are that this has just about everything you need/want set up.

Thanks again for the smooth work!

ok
here is the script

img src="/cgi-sys/Count.cgi?df=Project Hope Hits.dat|display=Counter|ft=6|md=5|frgb=100;139;216|dd=S"

with < before and > after

also,
I like the old font that was used on the homepage...The one now I dislike.
I would suggest changing it back for cleaner, more advanced look.

I think oWn3d will need set up a hit counter from the admin controll panel, because the script is not working. I just tried it on my site, and had to use the code that was generated for me, put it on a page, and then reset the counter before it started to work.
http://www.buckeyeblend.com/TDPH/index2.html

there is no admin control panel.


We'll have to probably find a script somewhere else.

I will run the counter off my webserver then. It should work .

How about just using something like awstats? It scours the logfiles nightly and creates a nice report. Here's a demo - http://awstats.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/awstats.pl I use it on my stats pages and it's great. I don't mind throwing it out there if wanted.

If you need a perl script for a counter, I can do it with perl/ssi or PHP.. whatever. I've got one at work that I made that's pretty nice and easy to use. I probably wouldn't think hosting a counter offsite would be a good idea for multiple reasons. I don't know if they're really necessary to be honest. Something like awstats would wrap it up nicely so we'd know what's up with the site, how many hits the pages get and other cool stuff and counters kind of make pages look a bit amateurish... jmho. Personally I think seeing hits would be cool, but maybe on a seperate page (i.e. awstats). Just a thought.

BTW, I'd shy away from using graphics for the links on the left. For people who like to use their own fonts, especially sizes, they can be a real hinderance. Plus, it's not great for search engines.

Finally, for ideas on meta tags, you can check out the stats page. It's not great, just some thoughts. Also, many search engines don't use the meta tags (i.e. google) and instead use the text in the body (including how often terms occur, what's in heading tags (i.e. <h1>) and how many places link to it.

Those are great suggestions. I will check on the pearl script counter, I like that idea. The one on the main page now is a cgi script, and I do agree with your opinion of making the counter visible on the main page.

The navigation graphics were created because of complaints regarding what I had set the secondary fonts as. I decided I wanted to control the navigation font so it matched the font in the banner logo. Most bots will pick up the linked pages and I can also set a .txt to include and exclude pages for search engines bots.

Update-

Added announcements box.
Hid the hit counter - it's still there, you just can't see it. Kind of a neat little trick. 8)
Added voting registration info to Board Members page.
changed email address for oWn3d to an image.

There should be a link back to TD on the main page.. I might be missing it tho.

Kristi

Added

The link should point to http://www.broadbandreports.com/ instead of http://www.dslreports.com/

I like the addition of the link to the TD main page!

Kristi :-)