Hi Everyone

I am currently addicted to PHP and am learning little bits here and there and as I don't know things "off the top of my head" at the moment I needed a place to store all my snippets and information ect

So I decided to create a site for easy access and in the hope that the bits of code will help others in their projects.

In short; I am creating a kinda scrap book come turorial come snippet collection and would like some feedback on the sites usability and design etc.

The content needs polishing I know and there is a lot of white space here and there as I am not sure what I want to add yet but as the site is in the early stages I guess its time to get some feedback.

The domain is http://freephpscripts.co.uk

Thanks in advance

Oh and the layout is my first scratch built css layout

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I would definitely define what are and what are not links. At the moment, you have blue text used for links and other text, and the only distinction is that links are not bold. The links are fine blue, but I'd change the colour of the other text.

And what about some sort of menu for when it starts to get fuller. Using that format you could end up with extremely long pages, so I'd probably either have a dropdown menu running across the top of the page, or a list of sections to choose from up at the top left of the page.

As it stands now, I can select a script to view and I lose all navigation so I have to use the back button and that makes the site difficult to navigate, as in you're never sure where you are or where you can go.

I would also move the feedback form to a section in your menu as well. Maybe 'Contact Us, Comments & Feedback'. And maybe add a 'Link To Us' option, that provides the code for people to grab and paste into their page. Maybe some banners they could use.

I would probably jazz up the header a bit, too.

And I noticed this:

...we will use reffer.php for an example... One r in refer.

I guess the main thing that I would give importance to is the navigation. As you start to fill it up with your snippets, you want to make sure it doesn't all start to get messy. Get a good, easy to use navigation system in place now and it will save you a lot of headaches later.

I'm doing something similar with audio files but I decided to use a free shopping cart so that people can use its search facility, and so that I can manage all the files/categories, etc., with ease. They simply browse through the store and select the items they want and download them.

You could even consider doing that yourself, but on the 'product' description page you would have your code snippets. Unless you want to code the whole thing yourself, of course - just a thought.

Good luck with it. I know I've given you a few observations but they are just that and I'm not knocking what you've done...

Hi Alan

Thank you for the feedback.

I know there is a lack of navigation, I am planning on creating a menu on the home page that will make it easier to navigate and where the search box is I will probably add a way to get back to the major categories / home page.

Not sure what you mean about the feedback form, the feedback forms are different on each page to allow discussion for that particular snippet.

I will update the typo, I hate that word and always get it wrong lol


With the navigation, I want it to seem like the only way to navigate from the second layer is to either go back to the home page as the only major category is PHP and a couple of sub categories and these can be added to the search bar or right hand side on the home page. This will encourage the use of the search box and genrate a small income also (hopfuly)

I might add breadcrumbs also, not sure yet.

The problem with using a pre made shopping cart is that it goes against the whole concept of using and providing small scripts, I want people to visit the site and see the snippets working without even noticing it like the users online and the page last updated. I would never think about adding them to most sites but it just seems to be the right thing. Plus I plan on making a PHP shopping cart script in a couple of weeks as a project to show the use of sessions etc. I don't like the way the pre made shopping carts don't allow you to change each individual pages meta data, title, description because its normaly one setting for all.

I did have a pre made scripts site very much like hotscripts.com on there but again, I don't want users to add scripts and I wanted total control over the site. My only hate of script sites is that they are full of broken links and in some cases the links lead to off topic sites, just for the backlink / traffic.


Thanks for your feedback I will be thinking over the navigation but could do with some more ideas / opinions.


Dan

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I like the direction you are going in. Keep us posted. No pun intended.

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Alpha7
A low calories diet plan does not mean starvation, it simply means know how much you should be eating - Eddie Lewis

Sounds like a plan...