Hello,

I have finally completed the design and layout of my web hosting site which can be found at http://www.prohost.org/.

Any comments, suggestions would be highly appriciated.

Thanks

hi

i really like the graphics on the first page, although i personally dont like sites with black backgrounds, but thats just my opinion. :]

the rest of the site is very well laid out and presented..

nice one :]

JonnyL
http://www.scripts4all.com/

The graphics and stuff are good, but I think you need a bit of color.

I agree that the black background isn't so good.

Actually, I think this site is excellent! I love the buttons. I am using Linux with Netscape. One thing I don't appreciate is this:

"For better retsults, please upgrade your browser to Mozilla or IE, thank you."

If I were you, I would remove that, as most are happy with their browser. :)

Other than that, excellent site.

Just as a side note though, .org is generally used for organizations like a school or a church ... not a for profit company. I would suggest possibly getting a new domain.

It was clean and consistent

but it seemed a little bland. Since the whole site is only black and white

some professional clip art might help spice up the site ;)

It also seemed hard to read. Maybe it was the white on black , or the font type not sure.

later

David

Originally posted by Vincent Paglione
Actually, I think this site is excellent! I love the buttons. I am using Linux with Netscape. One thing I don't appreciate is this:

"For better retsults, please upgrade your browser to Mozilla or IE, thank you."

If I were you, I would remove that, as most are happy with their browser. :)

Other than that, excellent site.

Just as a side note though, .org is generally used for organizations like a school or a church ... not a for profit company. I would suggest possibly getting a new domain.

I have removed the browser message, one of the development items seems to have creeped in into the production version... oops :). You really should try Mozilla for Linux, you'll be pleasantly surprised, I switched from NS to Mozilla on my Linux machine @ home almost entirely now.

As for domain name I actually have a .com domain netshaft.com but I decided to use prohost.org simply because most of the current customers are furmiliar with the prohost.org brand and come to us due to some of the software solutions we offer as part of our service. Prohost is involved is several open source projects and as it so happens many people who use our tools also host with us.

Thanks for the feedback

Originally posted by Vincent Paglione
Just as a side note though, .org is generally used for organizations like a school or a church ... not a for profit company. I would suggest possibly getting a new domain.

Hehe- Yeah, only used for churches and schools. Tell that to everyone who registers any domain name that they can squat on..

I agree, it is supposed to be used for that but it is not generally used.

You asked for comments... so here are my frank comments:

Sorry, but your website fails on many fronts. It seems to be designed by a either a non-professional web-designer OR by a web designer who doesn't know much about effective design and layout.

That was for starters. There are so many other flaws in design, layout, spellings, grammar, the way the content is presented, etc. that may seriously affect your ability to do business successfully. (I mention this categorically because, in my personal opinion, I think you are technially capable of being a fantastic web host.)

I suggest you talk to the following designers (in alphabetical order):

1. BC - He is a moderator of this forum and does good web design. Sorry, I do not have his website URL at the moment, but you can email him by clicking on the email icon under any of his posts here.

2. Greg - another member of this forum at http://www.akashik.com

3. Jaunarajs - A husband & wife team at http://www.jaunarajs.com

There is one *major positive feeling* that your website generates, however, which I must point out here. It is the feeling a viewer gets about your professionalism ie. that you guys know what you are doing.

There is another *major negative feeling* however. That is the strong perception that prohost.org is a very small company without any other staff except the owner himself... which we regular members in this forum know is not necessarily a bad thing... in fact it can often be quite a good thing. I term it as a negative feeling because the internet public doesn't.

That was my professional opinion above. I am an advertising and marketing professional by qualification, in case you are wondering.

My personal opinion is that you are a honest and technically capable hosting company able to satisfy complex needs of your clients. But my personal opinion won't help you in generating business... will it?

Anyways, I wish you luck and hope that you opt for a better designer... that is my sincere advice to you.

Also, there is one question I have for you which confuses me a little. I know you have a valid reason for putting this up at your site, and would like to know your reason...

On your page http://www.prohost.org/policy.php you have mentioned the following:

Free E-mail Accounts - We will not accept accounts from free e-mail providers as the primary contact for your account on the order form, these accounts include hotmail.com, yahoo.com, mailandnews.com, etc.

I hope you take no offense over my comments. You did ask for us to comment. And I would appreciate it if you answered my question above.

Thanks.

Learner

Learner hit some key points with his post.

I persoanlly don't know what to make of it, I love the icons, I think they are cute, but they are in no way or form Icons for a Webhosting company ... expecially the "Clients" one .. you used a Joystick ...

As a webdesigner myself I sometimes create pages that later on I'm not so proud of them, so I delete them completely and start all over .. I believe you need to do exacly that

if you need some help you can contact those great artists Learner mention above, and you can send me an e-mail as well.

Hello Learner,

First of all thanks for the feedback I appreciate the good and bad feedback equally.

Lets me address a few points you have raised.
First of all, you quite correct in saying that prohost.org seems like a small company, it is. Prohost is run an operated by 3 people and to be honest I don't see anything wrong with that. I believe that it is important to make sure that there is a feeling of trust between us and the customer and thus I prefer not to pretend to be a "big mighty" company.
We at prohost cater to specialized needs to people who seek to design dynamic websites and require the latest technology to do so, for example our PHP offering. In itself its nothing unique, however we offering a very wide selections of module already installed, and guarantee to our customers that the latest stable version PHP will be available on our server, same goes for Perl 5.6 running on our server.
As for attracting customers, well to be plainly honest we don't intend to have 1000's of customers, we couldn't possibly handle that kind of a load in a near future. As I have said we cater to rather specialized market. Our goal is to have as many customers as we can make happy, if we can not fulfil the needs of our customer I have no problem of recommending that they try another web hosting company, our web hosting solution is not for everyone.
I'm not sure if this is correct approach but I guess I'll find out :).
Now for your question about free e-mail providers. There are actually several reasons we refuse to accept registrations from people who try to enter an e-mail from a free e-mail provider. There is a lot of sensitive data that is transferred between our customers and us via e-mail, this includes passwords, invoices etc. There I feel there should be good security protecting this information, free e-mail providers often find their systems hacked, if you follow the news there is break into the systems of such providers almost on a monthly basis. Private e-mail tend to be more secure simply because they are a lot more obscure and small or even large ISPs are rarely hack targets compared to free e-mail providers. Second reason for this decision has do with security but rather is about protecting our selves from fraudulent registrations. There are a fair amount of people on the net who are not entirely honest and they often try to use hard to trace free e-mail accounts to acquire services by less then legitimate means. By denying use of such account we don’t protect ourselves entirely from such people however it makes their job a little more difficult. Just like a good car alarm system will not protect the car from an expert thief but it will offer enough protection to scare away an average crook.
I hope this has answered you question.


Once again thank you very much for you feedback.

P.S. If you could perhaps point out some exact flaws with a site such as broken links or typos it would be much appriciated.

As I said earlier, I personally could sense it that you were a very capable company. That is perhaps because I have been around in this forum for many months and have visited hundreds of websites of different hosting companies.

Because when one does this quite often, one tends to notice a generic pattern on certain issues in differences between a good host and a bad host. That is why I personally had positive vibes about your company.

And, just like you, I also am aware that it is better to host with a small web hosting company that with a large one... especially if prompt quality service is expected. I am not saying that the big companies are bad, but I would opine that one cannot build a personal rapport with the staff of such companies. And, for certain people, such a rapport may be necessary with their host.

I myself consciously choose small companies only. And I really don't base my judgements on a few reviews I read on the net. I believe reviews, good or bad, only make sense if they are in made in a large number... by many different people... in several places.

I also personally found your buttons to be very cute actually... but as was correctly stated by CRego3D, they are mostly inappropriate for the business image you need to create in your viewers eye. The design appears a little childish... to describe it in haste. Similarly, your text content also suffers from very serious flaws.

Thanks a lot for your answer on my email query :) It was appreciated. I will take the time out later in the day and point out a few anomalies at your site. I did spend time surfing through all your links and didn't come up with any broken links, however.

Please await my next post... probably within 12 hours or so in which I will post some of the mistakes you wished me to point out.

Learner

Hey there prohost...

I kinda like the direction of your site but - The black on black am a bit!

So me thinks - if the mouse over on the icons would show 4 color images, and you had some logo/image watermarked background (maybe that satellite), it would change things dramatically.

Oh and ditch the joystick, looks phallus without significance.

I basically agree with what everyone else said. The site is dark, needs color. I felt like I was viewing the site with a black and white monitor. Thinking I was missing something by not having a color monitor.

The icons don't always match (thus don't make sense). An arrow for contact us, the diskette for support, and the joystick goes without saying.

You kinda expect the log to be in color, and the mouseovers to turn to color. I'm not sure the reason for all black, but I think the site most certainly needs color. Some color at least.

try applying css to the text for mouse over layer effects
the idea is good but off the screen when viewed as large text. also use an invisible spacer at the top when resized your line breaks jump.........

hope this helps

Personally, I like black sites, even in monochrome.

Maybe a little CSS to light up the text links, and a tad of subtle tint work on the image mouseOver's would be a good idea.

If I were doing the design, the one thing I'd probably want to change the most is the navigation images. They have to stand up to the pure white text -- and they seem to back off a bit... a little too dark. Navigation's a crucial element on any site, so you want to do as much as you can to make it work for you.

I think, too, I might stay with one font style (sans serif) throughout. In designs I've done along this line, mixing serif and sans serif fonts always seemed to bust up the purity of the look.

Overall, this is pretty nice work... and it surely looks far better than a good 90%-plus of hosting sites I've seen.



[Edited by etLux on 10-29-2000 at 03:08 AM]

I think ProHost has a winner. I might make the font size for the link descriptions a teency bit bigger and I "might" color shade the buttons (although I think just increasing their constrast would look extremely good as well).

As for Learner's suggested websites...the first one was down an hour ago when I went to look and down a few minutes ago, when I tried to look again. The Jaunarajs site crashed three times before I could view their product. When I did get to the Gallery page, I found several of the links were "under construction" (grrrrrr.) Their artwork is excellent - but we're sort of talking apples and oranges here. Prohost isn't selling art.

I, personally, prefer a simpler site that loads quickly and gives me the information I seek. (I do appreciate that every site has a different goal and audience, but if a visitor can't wait out the download or if the site crashes repeatedly, most won't come back). I think in light of the "goal" and "audience" of ProHost's site, it's an excellent trade off of artsy and useable.

As always, just a $.02 opinion, here.

Originally posted by sheepdip

As for Learner's suggested websites...the first one was down an hour ago when I went to look and down a few minutes ago, when I tried to look again.

May I make a correction to Learner's post.. the website he is refering to should be http://www.akashik.net

As for Prohost's site.. I guess all there is to be said has been said. :) Personally, I just didnt like the navigation. Links are only presented via the images .. what if the images dont load?



[Edited by schweiz on 10-29-2000 at 12:21 AM]

First, thanks for clarifying the URL for akashik.

I guess you're right...if the images don't load, the site would be dead, but that would also be true for sites that rely on Java navigation. If the applet doesn't go, navigation can be tough, however I still rely on Java navigation.

I continue to like the monochromatic site design and I think for ProHost's target audience, it's a breath of fresh air. Most hosting sites are pretty cookie-cutter-ish. This was a big departure from that. It doesn't "need" to be loaded with tons of Flash to be effective and perhaps the non-loading-image issue, will be addressed, since you brought it to light. (In fact, I'll check my own designs for that potential flaw. Thanks!)

When reading other ppl's reviews (and your own), you should remember that everyone has a different perspective and a different background in terms of web design, so what one may find unusual, another may deem as superbly cutting-edge.

Remember the phrase 'A picture speaks a thousand words?' You could change that to 'A web site speaks a thousand different things to a thousand different people'.

I'm new. I'm sorry if my opinions were, in any way, out of line. I'm certainly not trying to pick a cyber-fight with anyone...I'm making a note to myself to read, re-read, and then perhaps delete my future opinions. I guess I just like the sound of my keyboard - mindlessly clicking away.

My apologies to anyone I may have offended. As you can see, I'm an amateur - but learning pretty darned fast, thanks to the help of you all.

Sheepdip,

Hey... Don't worry if you consider yourself to be out of line - we'll let you know, don't you worry :D Your reviews so far have been very useful to the site reviewees and others dissecting the sites.

Seriously, any and all types of opinions are very welcome in this forum - that's what it's for. As long as you actually point out what you like and don't like about the site then everyone can benefit and the original reviewee can get more info to try and improve the site.

It's when you don't offer info (e.g. offer a one-line review saying I hate it and not offering a further explanation) that we all start getting cranky ;)

In my humble opinion, critiques like this are enormously useful.

As an operator of a fairly heavily trafficked site, I surely do enjoy the kind notes we receive when people like what we do and how we do it.

But the notes I pay the *most* attention to? Those are the ones that tell me what visitors do NOT like.

People will vote with their metaphorical feet if too many things about a site annoy them... so solid criticism is something to be listened to and valued.

whaa? huh?

someone mentioned me! *lol* (and the correction to akashik.net as well thankfully)

Seriously though...

The love black backgrounds. Being a mopey ass goth 80% of my net.life has been spent looking at black screens. Sadly though the rest of the world seems to think black is wrong and hence my pro work is rarely using black *sob* I don't see a reason a black screen won't work, as long as there's something 'colorful' to it to appease everyone else.

The graphics on this site are wonderful in my eyes. I see a few problems though.. I think a lot of the issue would disappear if they didn't have the grey 'fuzz' around them. It's usually a good sign someone doesn't know who to use their 'majick wand' in photoshop and cut out backgrounds effectively.

I recognize that satelite as a dingbat, and have used it myself on occasion, so I presume the other graphics are 'rentals' as well? They could probably stay as is quite happily if you did something with the logo.

That logo is probably the downside of the site (that I saw). The graphics are quite clear below but the log has a gaussian blur thing happening that just ruins the effect. Webhost sites have to be pretty spot-on regarding their graphics as it's a computer generated business, so the images have to relect precise, perfect ability. Sloppy graphics means sloppy production, means sloppy organisation.

Well not really. *I* know tech guys and graphics guys aren't the same thing but the average punter out there wants to think their provider is a God, and can expect everything to be answered and any problem solved. You have to hit them straight away as being 'all things, to all men'. After they sign-up they may be a little more understanding (depending on support), but you've got around 30 seconds to sell your ass to someone before they try somewhere else. The index.html page is always the hardest to nail.

Greg Moore
http://www.akashik.NET :)

I almost forgot... the .org thing is relevant too. It's best avoided where possible. .com is far and way the best, though .net works too. I know I *should* be akashik.com - this thread alone proves it as the error was made once already, but it got registered 2 months before I got around to it... :( In a perfect world you should grab ALL top level domains for your biz just in case someone pokes the wrong TLD to it.

I plan on using akashik.org as a redirect only, or a personal site at best, though I'll no doubt just use ak0.net as my personal one day *lol*

By all I mean just .com, .org, and .net Don't worry about these .ws or .tv domains as no-one really thinks of them as anything. Even with all the B.S. around about the new TLD's, if you have the three main ones you'll be sitting pretty for decades to come.

Greg Moore
http://www.akashik.net