Topic: Any Beta testers out there?

[seaweb11]

As has been said before, our membership here is a wide cross section of life
A favour from you all.............  I need some opinions good or bad............

I am just finishing up a couple of months work a new web format for my business:
 "The Playground Directory"

The site is very well known through out this Industry, but now that the US dollar conversion is bad, and the economy in the states is depressing I decided against publishing my hard copy book for the 1st time in 16 years and completely redo what has always paid the bills. My Web Interface!!

Here is the new site. Still tweaking it, but it's close.
 http://www.playgrounddirectory.com/indexTEST.php

The user is someone who comes in on a search for park equipment, commercial Playgrounds, school playgrounds, daycares, playground safety surfacing, Park furnishings, or even backyard swing sets.

If you have a few moments to revue
 http://www.playgrounddirectory.com/indexTEST.php  I would appreciate any and all feed back on the navigation, look, links, contact info etc.

I know you guys wont let me down

[BobbyR]

I managed a bunch of IBM sites back in the day. This is an old school site. That is a good thing. The navigation is very straightforward there is not a lot of crap eating up the real estate. You can quickly see what is available. The old rule was you had 8 seconds to hold the visitor. If site is too busy I move on. Well hot chicks may hold me longer, but that is not what you are selling here. I like it.   

[Industrial Cafe]

what is this?

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adip

Sed placerat turpis ac turpis tincidunt a
 pellentesque metus fringilla. Fusce nec
ipsum ut lectus pulvinar aliquet.
Nam neque arcu, mattis lacinia

[seaweb11]

............that area was just some text box ideas..............I was hoping you would scroll around a bit at the top and click through to some product categories.... Ignore the boxes at the bottom..............but point made, gibberish at the bottom of the page is distracting

[Zaipai]

I agree with Bobbyr, also I can tell you that under Firefox 3.5.x under Linux it comes up just great, links and all.. Nice work.

[seaweb11]

Thanks for the feedback Zaipai....great idea      
............adding your platform / browser view was very helpful.

[Industrial Cafe]

that gibberish must be a pre-programmed button, cause it's all over google.

other than that, the detailed little pictures kept me on the page long enough to click around the links.
 I didn't have any problems using winxp and firefox 3.0.15

[Jerry Rxman Griffin aka MuthaF'er]

I think you need to add a link to Bobby's sites 

[mrblasty]

Safari 4.0.3 loads up fine, I noticed a bit of lag when the content from the drop down menus was loading but nothing excessive.  I'm connected through a cable modem.  Someone on dial up might get bored waiting.  Nicely organized.

[demon78]

Seaweb wife made a suggestion that maybe the pieces of equipment on page could be pointer (can't think of term) to different product groups for ease of searching.
Bill the demon.

[BobbyR]

what is this?

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adip

Sed placerat turpis ac turpis tincidunt a
 pellentesque metus fringilla. Fusce nec
ipsum ut lectus pulvinar aliquet.
Nam neque arcu, mattis lacinia

They call that printers greek it just is a place holder to show where the actual text goes, it is used during layout.

I was using firefox running on Vista.

[Steve F]

Yeah, I tested some BETA's a while ago, ended up with a VHS.

[Blasbo]

I like it, simple and easy to navigate. My only comment is that when you click on one of the navigation links (Commercial, Residential, etc.) it looks kind of blank. Will there be general text or graphics in the white space?

[seaweb11]

Seaweb wife made a suggestion that maybe the pieces of equipment on page could be pointer (can't think of term) to different product groups for ease of searching.
Bill the demon.

"A bit map" Interesting idea 

I like it, simple and easy to navigate. My only comment is that when you click on one of the navigation links (Commercial, Residential, etc.) it looks kind of blank. Will there be general text or graphics in the white space?

I wondered if anyone would do that? ............. Glad you did, it will a FULL PAGE ad area for clients with deep pockets

Thanks for the support guys.

[medic09]

I used Safari 4.0.4.  Site looks good.  Loaded up fast using DSL.  Colors are pleasant.  Uncluttered look.  Very easy to find things, easy navigation.  Nothing to add, really, to previous suggestions.

You're missing mention of the most important toys and playground transportation:  SOHC4s.   

[Laminar]

Yeah, I tested some BETA's a while ago, ended up with a VHS.

I tested some Bettas a while ago, ended up with a goldfish.

[manjisann]

Welcome to the Playground Equipment Directory Here you will find the largest content of information about companies in the playground industry including playground equipment, playground safety surfacing, park site furnishings, playground safety as well as complete listings and links to Residential Backyard Playground equipment.

This part seems like it's missing punctuation or something, not sure what, just doesn't seem quite right.

Other than that, I liked it. I really liked how the different companies were layed out, very easy to view.

HTH,

Brandon

[seaweb11]

Welcome to the Playground Equipment Directory Here you will find the largest content of information about companies in the playground industry including playground equipment, playground safety surfacing, park site furnishings, playground safety as well as complete listings and links to Residential Backyard Playground equipment.

This part seems like it's missing punctuation or something, not sure what, just doesn't seem quite right.

Other than that, I liked it. I really liked how the different companies were layed out, very easy to view.

Brandon

  The text you are referring to is an old trick to get search engines to pay more attention to your site if the text on the page in "readable format"  duplicates or "verifies" the content you have used in your titles and Meta tags.  It's based on the 1st few words or sentence.

I should make it smaller so you don't even bother   It's a run on sentence, thank you for pointing out that you actually read the whole thing.  I may take another run at it

[Industrial Cafe]

put that stuff somewhere white, and use white text.
like pr0n sites do.
 

[seaweb11]

Actual Humans from Google and other Search engines do look at sites from time to time that fall in the top 10 of key word searches. If you cheat that much they tend to ignore or worse.......throw you out all together.

"I did it 14 years ago, but not now." 

[Industrial Cafe]

ah, makes sense.

[GammaFlat]

Bounced around with Firefox 3.6b3 (beta).  So... beta on beta.

I'm jealous of the folks running linux.  I must do that soon.  

Everything seemed snappy.  I think some of that is the fact that I'm running the beta version of Firefox... having said that, it seems faster than the SOHC4 site.  I guess it is kind of internet "old school" in terms of layout and navigation but that suits me fine and I prefer it.  

My brother is deeply in SEO (search engine optimization).  There's gold in them there hills.  

Regards,

John

[DaytonGuy]

I like it, simple and easy to navigate. My only comment is that when you click on one of the navigation links (Commercial, Residential, etc.) it looks kind of blank. Will there be general text or graphics in the white space?

I wondered if anyone would do that? ............. Glad you did, it will a FULL PAGE ad area for clients with deep pockets

Thanks for the support guys.

I did that and had the same suggestion.

[gregimotis]

I registered for the forum under gregimotis

[Zaipai]

I spend 90% of my time in Ubuntu and the other 10% in Win7, WindowsXP and Vista and OSX.. I would be Linux only but I make my money fixing Windows and Mac servers and the odd Solars box.. ;-) When you have Linux running on a PC meant for it its a beautiful thing!