Thread: Please Review: www.biologynation.com

Hello Fellow Webmasters,

I have created a sister site to augment my current site, would really like to know what the other webmasters here on the forum think about it.

Please provide as thorough a review as possible, welcome any and all comments or suggestions thanks.

Here is the Link

BiologyNation or www.biologynation.com

Currently www.biologynation.com only has 14 pages and very little content, just began to fully integrate with site with my other site, as integration takes place, more content pages and biology forums will be added. Right now just making sure that the site design is good, internal links, and site structure are working properly first before I expand the site fully

Looks like a good website, overall I would prefer a wider template.. something like a 960 grid.. but thats just me ..

1. The fonts used on the site are too big. Reduce their size.

2. The site is OK but it is plain HTML, not much "design" work involved there. It is looking like old 90's website with not much graphics but just text and HTML links.

3. On the title of the site you have | in the start, you should remove it.

4. The topic you have chose "Biology", it should attract medical students right? you should make it attractive to get their attention and read the info you have there. If your website is not attractive or sober nobody will believe in the content you have.

I hope you understand my point?

Good luck

I think you should probably find a better template to hold that amazing information/content you have. Too many jumbled font but hey thats probably just me.

I would also suggest maybe asking some gurus in forums for quick advice.

Yea I was thinking about changing the template to something else, still unsure as to how I want this site to look and feel.

This was just a starter template, really liked it at first but now I am questioning it's value.

The current template makes it seem that the site is about animals, but in reality the site is meant to be about general biology, health science and medicine. Although I will have some zoology pages, the overall niche of this site is meant to be more research oriented.

Thanks for the suggestions so far, will comtemplate further on how I want to go about making this site better. Thankfully this site is still in it's infancy so I can make all of the changes I wish and not lose any real functionality.

As for the font it is "Tahoma" I like the way this font looks but maybe it would be right to make the font smaller, still thinking about it.

A few things I see:

- Too many font colors

- Fonts too big

- You could use a logo, Ill make you one for free if you want one, I can always use more practice with Adobe Fireworks

- Too much text before you get to the meat, in my opinion, the meat of that page would be the: Biology Nation Site Map, Biology Social Peer Network, and Biology-Nation Site Links. But all those areas are below the fold, should be further up.

- Your type of site and content lend themselves to a CMS, have you looked into this option?, it would make your life a heck of a lot easier.

- You might want to include a copyright notice at the bottom

- It needs to be a bit more visual, maybe widen the template, and include a side bar.

- over all, you just got to polish it up a bit, i think the idea is good

Thanks Mike, good suggestions!

Now if I widen the template, which I am really thinking about doing, then I would have to create a whole new header image which would be large enough to match the dimensions of the new wider template.

I am not very good at all, possess little knowledge about editing or creating images. But if it must be done it must be done right!

Also, most of the content found on my site is not mine, information is scraped from other online resources which I have pulled together and put into my site to make it easier for people wanting to learn about biology, health science and medicine.

This way site visitors need to visit only one site and not have to look all over the internet to get the pertinent information that they need which I have gathered for them, compiled and organized here on my site for them to view, refer to and use.

I always reference the original source, which is mainly wikipedia and other online resources. Now if a page is completely of my own creation and extracted from my own knowledge and personal experience in the field of biology then I do not need to provide a reference link correct? All of the introductions, page titles, subtitles, information tables, data tables, site lists, topics lists, page lists, and page topic explanations are of my own creation, I came up with and wrote all of them, now however, the main content is mainly from other sources.

So am I correct in stating that I cannot claim to copyright this information because it is not of my own creation?

Now if and when I do begin to write and create my own aticles, then I could copyright correct? How could a copyright protect me if most of the information is meant to be open-source? Also the site templates are not of my own creation as well.

Pretty much this site is being built by a web building service which I use, this web builder also provides me with templates that I can then modify and change to my own liking, and also hosts my site for me, my knowledge of HTML, web site design and use of dynamic images is very limited.

Atleast I can admit that there are certain things that I have no clue about, which is why I joined this forum to learn from all of the great webmasters on WebTalkForums who do know what they are talking about.

My thing is biology, health science and medicine lol....Have only been a webmaster for a little over a year.

That is awesome Mike, I went to check on the replies to my thread and BAM there is this image with my website name on it. I was like wow that looks awesome, thanks for the surprise.

Was expecting just a couple of words and comments! Thanks

Hi,

My vote that is worth nothing is go with the wider header.

This page need some more work black line.

Don't know if you knew about it just wanted to be helpful.

:flower:

Sami

Oh Wow, thanks Sami!

Here I am worried about the home page, header and site template....and I completely missed how horribly ugly the internal page that you noticed looked.

Thanks for pointing it out to me, damn, I wonder how long it has been like that for!

Will try and correct in the morning when I have time.

Proof 4

Bigger image on left

Please Be Advised:

Doing a Major Entire Site Template Overhaul and Complete Site Redesign on www.biologynation.com

The site will still be live online, just undergoing major site changes. Do not want to take it offline while doing these changes, so I will be working on only one thing at a time.

Please still feel free to comment and review on my site.

If you notice anything funny or weird looking it may be because I am currently working on it or attempting to fix or redesign current issues.

I know I will not get this redesign done in one day, it will take me some time to get it to where I want it to be.

Thanks all of you here on WebTalkForums for your help, suggestions and valued input so far.

Really Glad I joined this Forum!

I finally figured out how to make the pages take up the full screen!

Thanks to everyones suggestions, who all recommended that I make the template wider and take up more screen space.

In doing so, this also stretched out my content pages, making them much easier to read and look less boxy and chunky.

I really like how just this simple change made a complete difference to all of my sites pages, it turned my website into "an online experience" rather than just a couple of webpages in the middle of the screen. Now site visitors can comfortably move around my site and explore the site content and features.

As I am thinking about how to do it, it reminded me of those old Pontiac Commericials.



I guess in the case of my site template, wider is better....lol

Changed the Navigational Buttons Menu on the left of site.

I like how I designed the navigational buttons menu, now they look like actual separate buttons that will lead you to anywhere you want to go.

made them smaller too, like some here on webtalkforums suggested and also removed the BOLD in them.

Also updated some of the internal content pages already on site.

Also added a Member Privacy Policy Page : Biology Nation Privacy Policy

This brings the total URLs on www.biologynation.com to 16 including the new member privacy policy page

As I solidify the new site design and template, I will then begin to add more pages and fully integrate site with my other domain.

Before i can do that, I need to now begin the arduous task of building, checking and fixing all internal links found on site and internal site pages.

Still tweaking with the site design a bit, as always it is still a work in progress!

Hey BW:

I was looking at your "Help and Donate" page, it seems you are missing the "donate" button, or maybe I missed a link.

Originally Posted by LeenkzMike

missing the "donate" button, or maybe I missed a link.

No you are correct, as of yet there is no donate button...

Have no gotten that far yet, lol

I know that PayPal offers a "Donate" button that can be placed on site. Wondering if there are any others like that?

Then whenever someone does donate to the site, it would go into a paypal account.

I knew that I wanted a donate page, but did not want to wait until I had the button to have it live.

This way the page will be ranked well enough in search engines prior to having the button there. Don't know if my logic is correct on that or not, just one of those things that I set on a lower priority, but will be done.