Adoption Website

[gloria06]

Hi, I am not sure as to where to post my advertising of my site, so excuse me if this is not the place and please direct me.
I am the owner and founder of www.adoptionchoiceunlimited.com
and this site speaks for itself as to what I do and why I do it. If I can be of help to anyone you know please let me know.

Also, I am not a pro at designing a site.. this was my first attemp so do not be to hard on me,, ok? I do welcome ideas as how I can improve my site. I do need help in how do I place a file that has music in it in my documents to my folders so that I can add other music to some pages? The home page has music but it came from my old folders and site that were done by another person for me.

Gloria

[ctwjr]

I like the site, but it is evident that it is one of the first sites you have built.  Hopefully we can get you some support here to polish it up a bit.  To start off with, I notice three major points for you.

1) Text:  Your text on the page should have more contrast.  Remember, just because YOU can read the text does not mean everyone else can.  Some people are using monitors without optimized contrast settings or alternative devices like Pocket PC's, etc...  You need good contrast between your text and background.  To achieve this, you can either make the text much darker (like black or navy) or you can put the text in "boxes" that have a solid color in the background.

2) Navigation:  Your mouseover links are spiffy, but if the pictures are broken, just soon stick to static pics or plain text for now until that is squared away. 

3) Sounds:  Sound is always tempting, but don't use it.  All of the net's major sites DO NOT use music and that is for a reason.  For example, I went to visit your site just now and had to quickly click BACK.. My sound was way up from playing a game earlier and my wife was snoozing in the same room!  Other examples are "at work" situations and a host of other reasons NOT to use music and sound.  If you insist to the end, have a "Play" button where a visitor can voluntarily opt to hear the sounds.

[gloria06]

Wow! I really do not know anything about the three topics you mention for me to consider changing or correcting. I will however try to do something about it as you have very nicely laid out some good points on how to do this. I am almost afraid to try and fix anything as it took me four days to repair problems before I finally figured out what Front Page does for a site. It is hard for me to sit and be patient on things like this.

The second point about the buttons and all... can you elaborate?
The music part.. so you add a button and reference that to the music if someone wants to hear it?

Thanks for your help.... trust me I need it!

gloria

[ctwjr]

I am almost afraid to try and fix anything as it took me four days to repair problems before I finally figured out what Front Page does for a site. It is hard for me to sit and be patient on things like this.

What I would recommend to you is to get someone to do a "Site Redesign" job for you on this site using the same web building tool you use (FrontPage).  This will give your site the more crisp look and feel and will allow you to still make the minor changes and such but wont risk you trying the overhaul yourself risking messing up something important.  For example, I recently did a frontpage-based site redesign for a real estate office.  Here is how it used to look
http://web.archive.org/web/20050124045806/http://scenicrealtycompany.com/
and you can see it had good content on there but it just wasnt right.  I spent a few hours on this and got it looking like this:
http://scenicrealtycompany.com/
Now the site has a cleaner look and they can manage it a lot better.  I also made for them basic page templates so it is easier to make new pages in the future.

The second point about the buttons and all... can you elaborate?

When I put the mouse pointer over the button the image goes away.

The music part.. so you add a button and reference that to the music if someone wants to hear it?

Yep.

[gloria06]

The image goes away on the buttons but that is not in my control... they know what page they want before they select.

Now.. what price do you charge to re construct a site? I am not looking for alot of stuff on it... just wanting to get to the points of what I do and why I do them.

[ctwjr]

The rates vary depending on your specific needs. Please contact me on MSN messanger account danno_d_manno(at)yahoo.com to chat with me about what I can do for you.  I have time to get started on your project right away   If you cant get ahold of me there, I work with HostNed so stop by the live chat at hostned.com.

[Dynaweb]

The first suggestion I have for you is to make the text something more traditional as far as font and color.  Font is something you really don't want to stray too far from the heard.  Use other things such as layout, graphics and backgrounds for your "look and feel".