Phils website magic seeder website, input appreciated

[roiphil]

As you might know i also sell plants from my website, along with each sale i like to supply a bare root plant guide and a care guide for the plant which i normally print out and send with plants, now obviously this takes time and paper and ink etc, these care guides and bare root planting guide i have converted into PDF and i could do with some advice, options below

1, i prefer printed items sent
2, i dont mind downloading from website and printing myself that way if i lose it i can re download it

With the care guides which one do you feel is best Brizia Media IGPRO one or my own one Brizia Media 2

website link to relevant page for downloads http://www.magicseeder-ie.com/main/page_yearly_garden_planner_bare_root_care_guides.html

whilst your on my site do you think the home page is cluttered http://www.magicseederireland.com, what about the colour used in places being a garden related site i have used green for the item products description boxes do you think this is ok http://www.magicseeder-ie.com/main/page_bare_root_plants_ornamental_grasses.html and http://www.magicseeder-ie.com/main/page_web_shop__vegetable_seeds_.html

Thanks in advance for looking, May not get online much this weekend putting flooring down in my new office and hopefully moving into it
Phil

[NightHawk]

I've had a look at your web site Phil and I don't think it looks cluttered.

The colours you have chosen are very pleasing on the eye and don't clash with each other.

The only problem I have found is with some of the links on your menu bar.

(a)  The Home link tab does not work when trying to get back there from any of the other pages.
(b)  The How To Use and Wholesale Gardens\Allotments tabs - you have to have your cursor in a certain place on both of these tabs for the link to work correctly.  They don't always turn white when you hover your cursor over them, until you hit just the right spot.

Other than that, you've done a great job with your web site.

I'm not familiar with Brizia Media you mentioned for the care guides so I can't comment on that aspect.

Laurie.

[roiphil]

Laurie

Thanks for your input i have gone over the points you mention, and all is fine my end, the site is  built using a site builder from the hosting company and the tabs at the top are case sensitive to many letters and they dont work, or in the home tab case you have to have your cursor directly over the word home if it is not the tab will not work, so not enough letters and it makes the tab hard to go back to and to many letters and the tab will not work hence i have tried to find a happy compromise but i decided to keep the word HOME as everyone asociates that word with the home page

How to use tab you are right the cursor only works when it is on the how word
wholesale garden\allotments tab same again cursor only works when it is on the wholesale garden words unfortunately there is nothing i can do about this unless i can think of some better wordings for those 2 tabs

glad your find colours ok

on the care guides sheet its not if you know the plant but what would you prefer if you purchased one, a printed out care guide or downloadable one and which version is better out of the 2 Brizia Media IGPRO one or my own one Brizia Media 2

[NightHawk]

Phil, I have to confess that I am not a great fan of web site builder software.  It's good for people who are either not comfortable with coding in HTML or do not have the time to do it manually themselves.

You are limited as to what you can do to configure the look of your site when working within the parameters of the web site builder.

At the moment I don't have time to be able to look through the HTML coding of your site and give advice as to how you could make changes to get the Tab Links working better for you.

The downside of this though is that, if you wanted to make any future changes, you would again be using the web site builder and it would undo any manual changes I had given you.

I started my HTML coding the 'hard way' by first using Windows Notepad and typing in everything manually.  I don't regret this as it gave me a good grounding in web site construction and made me better understand what each element of HTML actually did.
I, and Kathy, later progressed to becoming web site designers and offered this as a paying service on the Internet.  We no longer do this as we don't have the time, and it become more and more frustrating as people were becoming more picky as to what they wanted.

Our web site designing is now confined to our own personal Labels, Graphics and Gardening web sites.

Good luck with your site.

Laurie.

[roiphil]

thanks for info, i chose the site builder due to my lack of website building skills plus it has built in shopping cart aswell, but the downside is, as you are correct, any changes i make to the html of it will be undone when i republish via site builder, but for now it is doing its job, thanks for looking

[ideasguy]

Just keep working at it Phil. Its fine apart from those links.
As Laure says, the best way to learn is the "hard way" starting from scratch with something as simple as Notepad.
Its essential to get a good book on HTML, or of course hunt the net. It has loads of examples .

When you use a Web Builder program then you are usually limited to what it does and how much you can master its interface.
The more you read up on its help and samples, the better the website you will produce.
I use Net Objects Fusion. Ive pulled out a lot of hair over the years in frustration when it doesn't do what I "think" Ive told it to do!
Most Web Builder programs throw in a lot of extra code which can take a lot of work and patience to get to grips with.
e.g. The effects you get when you pass the mouse over a link, click a link etc etc.

As for the data (Briza)
Personally, I shy away from opening pdf's as they take so long to open.
Mind you, once the first one is opened, and Adobe Reader is active, then its great.

You've done a good job using BS027 in IG Pro.
Mind you, it wasn't meant for that purpose but if it does the job then great!

The alternative is to present the data in HTML pages.
I could put a button on the GA027 page so that it would create a HTML document for you. It will be after Bank Genie though

[roiphil]

The alternative is to present the data in HTML pages.
I could put a button on the GA027 page so that it would create a HTML document for you. It will be after Bank Genie though

Thanks for input george, if you could do the button as suggested above sometime (no rush) that would be great, as for the site i was considering an oscommerce store, but i wont be able to have any of the the info i have at present on a oscommerce, but at present site is doing the job
Thanks
Phil