Childbirth Educator's Website

[melissa]

Hi everyone,

Here's the first WB site that I've made that I'm really happy with and proud of.

http://www.julieclarke.com.au

There's one more thing I'd like to achieve with this, and that's to have a little box on the left saying "New articles" or "Most recent updates". Has someone else already done this?

Melissa.

[i2Paq]

I like it!

No fancy stuff, just the info one wants to find when comming to a site like this.

Good job.

[kweitzel]

Melissa, you can be proud of it! It is a nice Site, everything is there and easy to find.

Maybe one thing, in the shopping cart, loose the borders around the products (around the table). To me it looks as if there is one box too much

Keep on with it.

cheers

Klaus

[melissa]

Thanks, Klaus. I'll give that a go. I was wondering whether it was too boxy! And thanks i2Paq for the encouraging praise!

Melissa.

[kweitzel]

definatly better now ... I would have tried to get rid of the other box though ...

actually, looking around the site in total, I would loose it entirely, to stay within the whole design ... and make the heading like the rest (different font & size instead of the read bar).

Makes it look more as part of the site. The box makes it a bit "detached" since you don't use that style element on the other pages ... and you should maybe put it up to the submenu "shopping basket" and "popular products" ...

cheers

Klaus

[melissa]

Oops. Didn't realise I lost my borders around the shopping basket and popular products! Thanks Klaus.

Can I ask another question? Do you like the blue heading or the Georgia + underline heading better?

Melissa.

[kweitzel]

personaly I thin the Georgu plus underline looks better ... it seem to fit better than the blue one. But other people might think different.

cheers

Klaus

[deeve007]

Hi Melissa,

Nice, clean site overall, though a question and a couple of constructive criticisms...

1) Are all 3 of your menus WB generated, or hard coded? I have to look into the two menu thing I've read on this forum somewhere...

2) The background is way too busy. You already have a strong graphic for your logo, then the flower image, plus butterflies in the background. Overkill. I would suggest trying someting more subtle for the background. If you do need to have some sort of pattern, try something based on the flower graphic you have, perhaps with the contrast taken right down.

Subtle is good in this case.

3) I would personally put a little more effort into styling the left hand navigation. Some sort of panel without list style bullets, with changing background colour on rolloever or similar. Make it more like a navigation "panel" rather than just a list of links as it is now.

Anyway, just a few thoughts.

Cheers,
Dave

[melissa]

Hi Dave,

I really appreciate your taking the time to give me some well thought out criticism. I will consider all these things. I agree that it would be nice to style the left nav some more. I had been wondering about the butterflies. I'm a little attached to them. I guess my previous designs had been very bland, and I went all out with this one - perhaps a little too far!

About the menus...

My site has two sections - the WB part and the shop. In the WB part, all three menus are generated using show_menu2 (http://forum.WebsiteBaker.org/index.php/topic,2584.msg16207.html#msg16207).

I have used "multiple menus", which I got some help with sorting out  (http://forum.WebsiteBaker.org/index.php/topic,3352.msg21035.html#msg21035)

To get multiple menus, you need to add each menu in as an option in your template's info file. I have three - Top, Bottom and Main (the default). When you have added a page, you can change the menu option to select which menu you want the page to be visible in.

The Top menu is unlikely to change, so I hardcoded that into the CubeCart template, rather than try to mess too much with getting it to show dynamically.

By the way, does anyone have an opinion on fixed width styling for 800x600 screens versus slightly wider 1024x768? I've been getting Google Analytics, and no one with 800x600 has visited my site yet.

Mel.

[kickarse]

Very nice ! 

I'm very interested in how you integrated CubeCart... any hints for moi?

[melissa]

The CubeCart template system is very easy to use (that is, if you've modified a template before). It uses Smarty, HTML and CSS.

I didn't do any fancy integration work apart from making the WB template and CubeCart template identical, and that was incredibly simple. I'm also using multiple menus in the WB part, and I copied the HTML for the top menu into the main page template for CubeCart. If this isn't making sense, let me know!

I based the whole thing on one of the standard CubeCart templates that is included with the install, just making my own colours, banner and background.

I am pretty happy with CubeCart. After all, it's free. I did spend a bit of money on mods (for Australia Post, and another option). Their forum is unfortunately nowhere near as helpful as here, but if you search, you can generally find the answer to your question.

Melissa.

[mysticcowboy]

Hi Melissa,

I think you've done an excellent job, outstanding for a first site.

I kind of agree with Dave about the background, but not strongly. The background is a bit busy but really doesn't detract from the overall impression, especially considering the subject matter. With babies, cute is good.

I think your bulleted navigation is just fine the way it is. There is such a thing as over styling a site. Simple works well in this case.

I don't quite understand the articles page. Where are the articles? One advantage of WebsiteBaker is that it builds your navigation for you automatically, so you don't need to put under construction or placeholder pages up. If you like it as it is, resources might be a more accurate category name.

One more point. You force the visitor to click through from the Shop link one more time before actually going to the shop. There really isn't a need. And you may confuse visitors with the extra step. If you want to put policy pages up you can do that in CubeCart. And, you already have a description of your courses on the home page.

Still, it's a nice site. I like it,

best,
michael

[melissa]

Re: articles, Julie is planning to write lots of articles. At the moment, there aren't many and she has gone on holidays.

Since you concur with Dave about the background, I will spread out the butterflies a bit more (when I have some free time). My husband liked them more spread out as well.

Thanks for the feedback about two clicks to get to the shop. I'm not quite sure what to do about that, still being a bit of a CubeCart novice. I'll have to fuss around and see if I can find a better starting page from WB.

Melissa.

[kickarse]

The CubeCart template system is very easy to use (that is, if you've modified a template before). It uses Smarty, HTML and CSS.

I didn't do any fancy integration work apart from making the WB template and CubeCart template identical, and that was incredibly simple. I'm also using multiple menus in the WB part, and I copied the HTML for the top menu into the main page template for CubeCart. If this isn't making sense, let me know!

I based the whole thing on one of the standard CubeCart templates that is included with the install, just making my own colours, banner and background.

I am pretty happy with CubeCart. After all, it's free. I did spend a bit of money on mods (for Australia Post, and another option). Their forum is unfortunately nowhere near as helpful as here, but if you search, you can generally find the answer to your question.

Melissa.

Thanks for the reply. I wanted to try CubeCart but was worried about integration. I see it works very well!

[mysticcowboy]

Re: articles, Julie is planning to write lots of articles. At the moment, there aren't many and she has gone on holidays.

Since you concur with Dave about the background, I will spread out the butterflies a bit more (when I have some free time). My husband liked them more spread out as well.

Thanks for the feedback about two clicks to get to the shop. I'm not quite sure what to do about that, still being a bit of a CubeCart novice. I'll have to fuss around and see if I can find a better starting page from WB.

Melissa.

Hi Melissa,

No hurry on the background. It's a minor point, more of something you might try than a something that needs fixing badly.

Why do you need a landing page for CubeCart? WebsiteBaker lets you insert a link on  Pages > Add Page section of  Admin, one of the options under Type is Menu Link. You could let the store link take you directly to CubeCart, which, BTW you did an excellent job of integrating the design with.

best,
michael