Hey, I'm looking for any suggestions on this website.

I'm not trying to advertise it here or anything, I'm just trying to get as many suggestions on it as I can. Don't click on it if you don't want to.

http://www.NCSULiving.com

1/11/2006 8:29:24 AM

First, NCSU LIVING needs to be cleaned up. It looks like it's being stretched and rendered huge.

Also you imight want to use some CSS on your side menu. Lets people know if the link is active king of thing. Very easy actually. If you use tables... it's easy

<tr bgcolor="#CCCCCC" onMouseOver="this.style.background='#FFFFFF'" onMouseOut="this.style.background='#CCCCCC'">

Walla. the #CCCCCC is the color you want to normally show up. The #FFFFF is the color you'd want people to see when they move their mouse over it. The last #CCCCCC is the color the cell returns to when the mouse is moved off of it.

Also put a space beween the Affiliated and the non affiliated. Also, it would be nice if you had a comment posting for each apartment complex. Comments make a website more friendly.

Check out Apartmentfinder.com

Cept don't make it as cluttered or full of "helpful" but distracting things. KISS... keep it simple stupid.

1/11/2006 8:53:42 AM

ouch. it hurts my eyes

-ZiP!-

1/11/2006 9:09:18 AM

^^ Thanks for those tips.

Sometimes later on today or tomorrow I'll fix up the links.

I agree with KISS, that was the main goal of my friend and me.

The logo IS stretched, good call on that. I have been meaning to fix that, but was concentrating on other more important things.

Also, good idea about the comment thing. I thought of it back when we were beginning, but it was forgot amongst other things.

1/11/2006 9:59:12 AM

For that logo at the top...Just download a font, write it on a .jpg and use that as your logo. No offense, but it looks like a fifth grader drew that thing.

1/11/2006 10:09:56 AM

first go take a class on design fundamentals.

then buy a book on design fundamentals.

then another book on typography.

then burn that site, remove it from your memory and start completely over.

1/11/2006 10:12:00 AM

^ agreed

but, it IS a good idea

[Edited on January 11, 2006 at 10:24 AM. Reason : ;]

1/11/2006 10:24:15 AM

concerning the "good idea".... haven't there been at least 3 or 4 sites created in the last year or so that do the exact same thing (and look much better doing it?)

1/11/2006 11:31:24 AM

Quote :

"then burn that site, remove it from your memory and start completely over."

1/11/2006 3:11:26 PM

^^yes, I have one that will, hope to god, launch soon

1/11/2006 3:25:59 PM

Yeah, I've seen at least 2 other sites like this.

While they may have the beauty, our site will have the information.

Also, interestingly enough, I just started a Web Design class. So far we've done nothing, though.

1/11/2006 9:51:37 PM

Quote :

"While they may have the beauty, our site will have the information."

1/11/2006 10:12:45 PM

Alright, we have fixed some stuff up.

Still do not have the mouse rollover change colors, but are there any other suggestions for http://www.NCSULiving.com

Thanks Raige for the above recommendations

[Edited on January 13, 2006 at 3:29 AM. Reason : thankee]

1/13/2006 3:29:04 AM

instead of using the ugly and non-useable Google Maps screenshot, embed a real Google Maps. It will be fully dynamic so people can get directions to and from the locations and you can embed basic information about each location in the Maps pop-up. A nice Google Maps implementation will go a long way to make your site more professional and usable.

go here to generate a key for your site and for documentation with plenty of examples of how to get started - http://www.google.com/apis/maps/
Other sites like this will generate a bit of code for you to get started too - http://shiwej.com/sitemapper/
and here is a wiki with everything else you could possibly need to make a good Maps mashup - http://www.mapki.com/

1/13/2006 5:25:12 AM

^ Great suggestions. It is ugly, but it's in the ugly duckling stage, and one day it will be a beautiful swan.

1/13/2006 5:35:17 AM

Quote :

"Also you imight want to use some CSS on your side menu. Lets people know if the link is active king of thing. Very easy actually. If you use tables... it's easy <tr bgcolor="#CCCCCC" onMouseOver="this.style.background='#FFFFFF'" onMouseOut="this.style.background='#CCCCCC'"> "

How are you going to tell the man to use CSS and then give him code that doesn't even really use any of CSS's fundamentals?

You should also figure out why your site has me scrolling horizontally when my resolution is 1600x1200.

[Edited on January 13, 2006 at 8:32 AM. Reason : .]

1/13/2006 8:30:53 AM

Quote :

"first go take a class on design fundamentals. then buy a book on design fundamentals. then another book on typography. then burn that site, remove it from your memory and start completely over."

haha Noen is my favorite poster in Tech Talk - straight keepin' it real, COD style

-ZiP!-

1/13/2006 8:39:00 AM

worst site...

F- if there is one

1/14/2006 6:49:37 PM

ummm...i was looking through your code...did you do this in m$ word? if you did...may i suggest you really take a good long look at learning real code (no sarcasm)...word and frontpage are like web design for dummies...you really should understand the basics of html and css

may i suggest

http://www.w3schools.com/
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/

as some good places to start

1/14/2006 7:15:41 PM

Yeah, I did do most of it in Word. And yes, that makes some sloppy coding.

I have another site that I just coded in notepad, but I did this one in Word so that the other person I'm doing this with can easily modify pages.

1/18/2006 8:19:30 AM

Ah conversion using ms word is HELLA bad. You'll have 10-20 times the code you actually need making pages load slower etc if this becomes high traffic.

I told him the CSS as a quick fix. I didn't get the impression that he was a career web developer so saying "Learn CSS" was about as helpful as Noen's comments are.

http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/

Check that site out man. It shows you the fundamentals. CSS IS something you should learn though even I don't use it since I have to be 100% IE compliant and IE sucks with CSS. Not worth the hassle in my honest opinion yet. Tables and base level CSS is fine.

KISS is VERY important because most sites people go to are so overwhelming with ad's or un-"helpful links" that people just don't use it. Use these rules

1) ALL areas of your website should be 1-3 clicks away. If more than that, redesign your site.
2) There should never be more than 20 links/pictures on your front page. Keep it plain. Anyone who says different doesn't know the target audience their website is for.
3) Functionality is key. What sets you apart from everyone else? You make finding an apartment easy. Think from that standpoint when you look at your front page. What's the first thing you want to do when you come to a site to find an apartment. "Click FIND AN APARTMENT!" Make it jump out at people.

Think of your target audience as a 10 year old.

1/18/2006 8:51:23 AM

Does anyone know of any good online advertising programs besides Google Ads?

I'd like to put some ads up on the website (NOT popup ads)

2/11/2006 6:51:31 PM

ads are the last thing you need to worry about

you won't make any money from ads if you don't have people visiting and using your site

and no one is gonna visit -- let alone, use -- your site if it looks like shit

2/11/2006 9:06:25 PM

how about names instead of just randomly colored dots on the front page. It looks like a map with only two apt complexes listed that don't even fit on the map

2/11/2006 9:24:23 PM

fix your fuckin text based logo. i've been telling billy about that but the fucker won't listen. shit...

2/11/2006 10:21:57 PM

Quote :

"yes, I have one that will, hope to god, launch soon"

you got a link yet? i'd like to see

2/11/2006 11:50:25 PM

my god

it's been an entire month

and it still looks like shit

2/12/2006 12:17:00 AM

while the front end is hideous, this page http://www.ncsuliving.com/Rates%20for%20Apartments%20Close%20to%20NC%20State.htm and the classifieds page are nice and useful

2/12/2006 7:56:33 AM

VERY NICE. Very clean. Not too much clutter. A lot of the time sites like this has billions of adds clogging up the view. There should be more on this page but no blinking animated gif's to draw the attention away from the user.

Also on this chart you should include the distance the apartments are from NCSU, if they are RIGHT ON wolfline or if they are near. I fucking hated looking because they would say "Right on the wolfline" which meant "We are 2 mines from the nearest Wolfline".

That's a bit of work on your part looking this up but you get a map from NCSU and use googlemaps or maps.yahoo.com to locate the apartments.

Another REALLY REALLY helpful feature, which requires active work on your part would be to keep in touch with the apartment complexes you have and post DEALS they have. God if I had known about the deal Wildwoods had when I moved in (3 months free), I would have moved in sooner. They don't have that deal anymore (I don't think).

To me what makes an awesome site are features that noone else has. most of the online sites like apartmentfinder.com have base level information about the place that you could get from their site because they let the Apartments enter their OWN information. While this makes life easier on your side it's a real bitch when you're trying to get a straight answer about things.

2/12/2006 9:44:26 AM

Hey, looking for any more thoughts or suggestions on the site.

Any are appreciated.

3/19/2006 9:46:43 PM

~OK...that's really not a well designed site. It works, kind of....but it looks like you've read every book on usability then set out to voilate every possible rule. Annally. :-) And I mean that in a nice way.

~Since you seem to be taking so well to what everyone else is saying, let me give you my thoughts.

~First off: Your HTML doesn't validate!

~Second: I have no idea what your site is about. I see a map and some links. Ok....I'm a smart girl. I guess it's about apartments? Maybe a rating site? Oh, if I click price comparison I get a table...a table that's hard to read and needs explanation.

~Your front page is worthless...with pics. Look, when someone first clicks on your site, the first place they are probally going to will be the front page. You need to grab them from there. Describe your site. What does it have that others don't? Why should I even click another link?

~The interactive Google map is cute an gimicky. This is a bad combination when used inappropriotly. I don't have any context for the map. I can tell it's of the NCSU area...but what does it show? Aparments, I assume? I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO ASSUME.

~You have so so much wasted screen realestate. You need to leverage it more effectivly. Basically, put a blurb abour how cool your site is, with the map below it CENTERED in the table. (Which brings up another point: talbes? WTF. CSS FOREVER.)

~Can you change the color of the adds? They really clash and draw attention away fromt he site. Also, they're the only text on the page, so people are more likely to read them and ignore you.

~Speaking of clashing...what's going on with the links? IT's hard to tell what are links and what arn'y. The cutesy colored underlines are not useful and just look strange. If you want to differentiate between visted and active and normal links, do the whole link in a color--not the underline in one and the text in another. The background change on mouseover is a nice touch, but it does wash out the link. On a screen with less contrast, that's going to be an issue. I'd suggest changing the text to black and the bg to grey on mouseover. That way it's still very readable.

~The AFFILATED and UNAFFLIATED dropdowns are cute...but non-useful. I don't know what they do. The little text under the bar suggests to click on a community name to go to their site...to be honest, I thought it was in reference to the Google map.

~Also--if I'm counting right--you're using THREE different fonts on the front page alone. THat's just confusing. It needs to be nice and uniform, or atleast applied rationally.

~I don't have enough time before work to finish whinning about the front page...much less the two others...so, if I remember, I'll come back tonight and whine some more. Maybe even in a more coherant way!

~(And to be totally fair, I ran accross your site while I was looking for an apartment, and found Parkwood off of it...which is where I'm renting in Aug. So it kind of works...just not very well.)

~(Also, I should mention that I do this kind of thing at my current job and at my last job. I'm a usability geek!)~

3/20/2006 8:34:46 AM

Your site format changes every page, I prefer things to stay the same

you might try a framed site
if there are any disadvantages feel free to strike the suggustion down

But for example, the ece 200 website: http://courses.ncsu.edu/ece200/common/Every_Semester/index.html
the topbar stays the same, but the sidebar and main area change. if you click on laboratory, then click the hardware proj. link on the sidebar it pulls up the spec sheet in the middle as opposed to opening a new page for the spec sheet

For your site you could use frames to open the apartment's home page in your main frame, so visitors could view the apartment's website without leaving your site, as they do now. Keeps visitors on your site and keeps the look of the site uniform

also, as said, use your css and remove the underlines from the links, just looks wierd as is

the source is a little cluttered, as it looks like you're still using word
you might try nvu, its free and works alright


[Edited on March 20, 2006 at 10:42 AM. Reason : asdfjkl;]

3/20/2006 10:40:51 AM

for the love of Dog, please don't use frames. The site already looks like it was built in 1999, adding frames will regress it another two years.

I think people in this thread (surprisingly, actually) have been over-generous. In my honest opinion, the site is junk. I'm sorry - i know you're working hard and have good intentions and a good idea, but it looks and works like crap. You may have some good stuff going on in the backend, but the overall design needs to be scraped and started over.

If I were you, I would look for some free design templates that fit your basic feel. Get a couple and tweak them to see what you can get closest to what you want, then pick one and rehaul it with your own data. You should keep the overall layout because it will probably have good CSS design and templating.
You can find plenty of free, beautiful, standards compliant site templates at places like
http://www.oswd.org/
http://openwebdesign.org/

If you go that route, then you need to move to a real development platform like Dreamweaver. Create a DW template to hold the overall structure of the site, then create all the subpages. This will guarantee that you have a consistent look and feel throughout the site and will make site management much easier.

The 2nd option would be to start over using a Content Managment System, or CMS, which would probably be a good idea. A CMS will provide templating for you, and will allow easy adding and editing of housing options. Your kind of site is what CMS's were made for - you have lots of similar, but unique data-sets that you want to display in attractive and editable pages. Once you get through the (possibly significant) one time cost of setup and configuration, your life will be much easier for adding, editing and deleting information.
What CMS to use is a whole other conversation, and there have been several on TWW in the past year or two - Drupal, Mambo, EzPublish, would all work. there's dozens available - http://www.cmsmatrix.org/

3/20/2006 11:03:45 AM

^ the oswd site you linked to uses frames to preview the websites, keeps the user from leaving their site.

that is different from designing the whole site around frames, true

but really though, other than its been around for a while, why not use frames? the ece 200 website is clean and serves its purpose well...

3/20/2006 11:27:27 AM

because there's no need for frames in a well designed site.

3/20/2006 11:44:41 AM

I'm still trying to figure out how they're letting you get away with the %NCSU% in your url.

3/20/2006 11:47:13 AM

^^^you're right - it does use frames. But it uses frames so it can show a completely different, fully functioning website inside an existing website, while still maintaining control over the user-experience. It works well for them because they are just showing you samples.

I would argue that it does NOT work well on 99% of pages, even for the ECE200 website. Ignoring that the top frame is a fixed-width that is way too wide, there are many other problems.
The biggest problem with frames, which is very true for ECE200, is that you can't direct-link to a page. For example, what if I was the teacher and wanted to send a link around to my class reemphasizing the FAQs for the class. I would have to send a link to
http://courses.ncsu.edu/ece200/common/Every_Semester/index.html
then say, "click FAQ on the top-right side, then click 'homework assignments' on the left hand side".
Alternatively, I could send a direct link to the homework FAQ site -
http://courses.ncsu.edu/ece200/common/Every_Semester/html/FAQ/FAQ_Right.htm#hw
But if you go there.... then what? you can't get back to the main page at all.

If it was non-framed, you could send a link directly to any page in the site.

Secondly, this is a particularly horrible implementation of frames in that each link on the top frame loads a page in the left frame, but there is no default page that loads in the main frame. For example, if i click Syllabus in the top frame, then Office Hours in the left frame, the office hours page loads in the main frame.
But then I click Exams in the top frame, and the left frame loads the exams - but the main frame still contains the office hours!!

Third, by using top and/or side frames, you are overly restricting the page-viewing area for the main frame, or the main content of the site. When I scroll down, I don't want 1/3 of my screen to remain static with the header frame - if i want to see the header, i'll scroll back up. In the meantime, I'm interesting in using as much screen real-estate as possible for the actual content of the site, not meta and navigation.

3/20/2006 11:50:07 AM

^ true. thanks for the reasoning

google image search works in more or less the same way as oswd.. leaves a fairly unobtrusive way for the user to get back to originating site
possibly ncsuliving could implement something similar?

3/20/2006 12:20:46 PM

looks much better now, but your classifieds navigation is still clunky and slow

3/20/2006 12:38:07 PM

Quote :

"for the love of Dog, please don't use frames. The site already looks like it was built in 1999, adding frames will regress it another two years."

i hate it when people strike down frames...you can tell the people who did web design back in last century because they're terrified of frames...i do web design (and while i don't have my own company, i have enough business to pay for my schooling here at state)...and frames done well is significantly more usable than reproducing menus and such on every freakin' page

unless, of course, you're referring strictly to his site and are concerned about his ability to integrate frames seamlessly...otherwise, discounting frames simply because they're frames is retarded

3/20/2006 12:46:36 PM

"Reproducing menus on every page" It's called a server-side include. Welcome to 1998.

Or maybe you have heard of php/asp/jsp/frontpage extensions/cold fusion?

Frames are for people who have no clue what the hell they are doing.

[Edited on March 20, 2006 at 12:53 PM. Reason : .]

3/20/2006 12:52:44 PM

lol

if you're using frames to avoid "reproducing code" then you need a new job

3/20/2006 12:53:48 PM

actually I think most of the problems with frames have been resolved except the search engine issue and to some extent navigational backtracking

that being said I don't use them

3/20/2006 1:00:15 PM

Quote :

"Or maybe you have heard of php/asp/jsp/frontpage extensions/cold fusion? Frames are for people who have no clue what the hell they are doing."

Quote :

"if you're using frames to avoid "reproducing code" then you need a new job"

who learns php/asp/jsp/cf just for the heck of it? for those people who design for a.) fun, or b.) small companies who just need a web presence without doing actual business online, then frames are more than sufficient...for those people who do NOT spend every day writing code for web use, frames are perfect (when done well)

and you listed frontpage extensions as an option for people who HAVE a clue as to what they are doing? are you serious? that's truly pathetic...what a complete idiot

[Edited on March 20, 2006 at 2:53 PM. Reason : ...]

3/20/2006 2:52:16 PM

NO, YOU'RE A DOODYHEAD!

3/20/2006 2:55:09 PM

^^I listed it to be as complete as possible in the ALTERNATIVES to frames.

And, once again, you are being stupid. Using PHP/ASP/CF to do includes or for a basic templating system is CHEAPER than using frames to manage content. I can teach someone how to do includes in 5 minutes or less. If you know html, you can do serverside includes in a heartbeat.

It's MUCH faster and easier to maintain, not to mention faster to develop in the first place.

AND it's accessible to handicap users, which your frames are not.

3/20/2006 4:24:22 PM

Quote :

"I'm still trying to figure out how they're letting you get away with the %NCSU% in your url."

They seem to be fine with it. It's on this page.
http://www.csc.ncsu.edu/academics/students_housing.php

Dang, now it's time to read all the other comments. All I know is, no frames were used in the production of this website.

3/20/2006 7:24:22 PM

I don't see any % signs on URLs in that page.
I think what he was getting at was just the names of your pages in general. When you link to an HTML page, it's very good practice to use short filenames with no spaces or special characters. If you need to use multiple words in the file name, use CamelCase, hypens, or underscores instead of spaces.

3/21/2006 2:33:27 AM

i think he was talking about copyright or trademark issues - whatever the right one is in this case, but i'm leaning towards trademark.

3/21/2006 4:04:21 AM

oh, right - i forgot that it was directly in the domain name.
nevermind then!
I thought I saw some URLs of the type I was talking about on his page, but I can't find any anymore, so I guess i was thinking of another page.

3/21/2006 4:32:13 AM