web site critique please

[anzagi]

Hi everyone,

I posted here a few weeks back as I was redesigning a site, well the redesign is 99.5% complete now, I would love to hear your thoughts, ideas and feedback, good and bad.

Tranquil Seas / Location

Many thanks

Have a good Monday!

[Arkady]

The reflection is all wrong.

[anzagi]

yes, I actually thought of this the other day and is something i need to decide on. because if the reflection was correct, you wouldn't actually see the reflection of the palm on most screens.....so I think I need to remove that

[tommylogic]

Looks to be a site that you intend to edit in Contribute? A little plain, not bad though... at least its all nice valid code. You've got some room to grow in this one.

[anzagi]

Thanks for the feedback....no intention of editing in contribute, I have just tried to keep it simple and clean, any suggestions on how I could expand on it? I didnt want it to look to overcrowded or complicated you see

[tommylogic]

why did you create editable regions then?

[anzagi]

? for me to update the site if I need to, Build a template, make all pages from that template with only the editable regions that are different...how do you do it..?

[tommylogic]

Yeah, thats pretty much the process for making a Contribute site {in order to edit through it, you need to establish editable regions & lock others)... otherwise you can skip the template phase and just create your straight forward html pages.
If you really wanted, you could create library items for menus and such. That lets you edit a single file and updates all the pages it's used on {but even that is overkill imo}.

[anzagi]

Oh i see what you mean, its just habit I guess. I have always built my web pages based on a single template, regardless of whether or not contribute is being used. So what your saying is you just create a page and then save as and duplicate that page as required. But then, if you want to change a menu item for example you have to change on all pages instead just the template right?

[tommylogic]

No I believe a template change prompts you to update all pages as well... It was Macromedias intention originally to have site authors create templates in a team environment. The editable regions was a means for locking certain page items so the copywriters could insert their content without disrupting the layout or formatting. A library item was similar concept, allowing a team or member to create a single item and be inserted on several pages. The changes to that single item were separate from other page elements.

Contribute was an early CMS from Macromedia intended for end users. Realizing that if pages were created as above that a remote operator could also edit their own content as well as create new pages from the templates. If you're used to creating sites in this workflow environment then Contribute is a reasonable solution for your end users. I bundle it's cost with the site and market it as a CMS for most of the flat sites I do. I despise writing content for people.