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I need some Critics.

J

Jator

Golden Member
I am looking to start a small web hosting and network support venture on the side. I have been working in the health care industry for several years now, and I have gotten to know many physician practices in the area I live. I am hoping to convince many of them to choose me to provide technical support to their practice, including providing Web hosting.

I have a general layout that I have designed, with some input from select TAers, but I would like to throw it out there for the general populace to take a look at and tell me where I can improve.

I will be adding a asp page linked to a SQL databse to provide some billing information to these practices, but that is about 2 months off (I just ordered the SQL book. 😉 ).

Anyway, the link is Follow the yellow brick road.The address will be www.MDOrlando.com once I get a static IP address up.

Thanks for any comments, both good and bad.

Jay

***Edit*** Forgot to mention, this will be hosted from my home at first on a ADSL line (1.5/256). Once I get enough customers, I might look into co-hosting this as a local ISP. I would like to possible move it to a LINUX box eventually, but I need to learn a lot more about Linux first. (You listening Brad.) 😉
 
I....
Like it,

bigger font might be better though, hard to read with my old (21 years!) eyes at 1024x768 res... looks just fine in IE 5.0something and loaded quite fast.
 
I like the overall feel of the site - it feel serious (in a "corporate" way, without feeling corporate). The color scheme works well too😀

Two little nit-picky things: The part at the bottom of the page where it says "Website Designed by
Jay Simmons
" Is too light for the current background.

On the "about MD Orlando" page, why is everything bolded? It makes me think, after looking at the other pages which have only parts bolded, that you're screaming at me 🙂

G'luck jay!

[EDIT] FWIW - it looked EXACTLY the same in Opera 5.0, Netscape 6.0, and IE 5.01😀
 
BK,

Thanks for checking the other browsers, I hadn't even thought of that, but it's very important. I'll check the About page, the font shouldn't be bolded, or maybe I'll just make it all bold to match.

Jay

EDIT - The bold has been removed from the About page. I'll work on the footer later. I know IIS has the ability to put in a default footer, so I might just go with that, or maybe when I learn ASP, I can just make a call to as footer file.
 
It has a nice look to it Jay.

A couple of comments.
Watch the typos. I saw at least three.

Don't depend on a DSL connection for e-commerce. They are not at the level of reliability that you really need. The ISP route will be the best, especially since you can do everything from home except reboot a frozen machine.

The ISP where a buddy of mine works has dozens of customer servers everywhere. The whole place is on a UPS, and 100baseTX internet connectivity is a patch cord away. This makes a VERY good sales point as well, since there are many websites are hosted on these "entertainment grade" network connections.

One of my clients has the office on DSL, and the off-site server is on DSL as well. The office people scream when either is down, and intermittant outages are all too common. DNS service is another consideration. A DNS outage is just as bad.

As for the concept, I think you may be on to something.

best of luck!

viz
 
Another comment: I'm using Netscape 4.76 and the text on the individual pages are BLACK making them extremely hard to read on the blue->black background! 😛 (And I made sure that Netscape is set to use the colors of the remote site, not any pre-determined colors.. 🙂)
 
I like it 🙂
It also gives me an idea.
I may just follow you in my local area, I will complete my MCSE in March. ( Tests and God willing ) 😛
MD Terre Haute, Hmmm might just work 🙂
 
Viz,

I will do the co-locate once I have enough sites to cover the cost of it. The co-host I am looking at is about $150 at a local ISP for 256/256 I believe. Not too bad. If I charge around $20-$30 per host, means I need about 7-8 sites before I cover my costs.

Jay

EDIT - I will have to take down my game server once this thing goes live. I can't have you guys sucking up my clients bandwidth. 😛
 
Nice site Jay.🙂 Luckily for you, I really can't think of too much that hasn't been allready covered, so I'd say you're good. Though on second thought, don't use the word "solution" on the about page, it sounds slick in a bad way.😱

PS If I promiss not to come down there with BK and beat the snot out of ya, will you keep the gameserver up?😉
 
Hmm, BK and you huh? We'll see about that.

BTW, I haven't seen you on my game server in awhile. Too busy?
 
Jator,

I'm using Netscape 4.7 on Windows NT and I can't see the right two-thirds of the black text because it is totally lost in the black background.

/0
 
/me points to the person who's behind that cow icon above

I don't know that man! I have never seen him in my life! I'm innocent! Innocent I tell you!

/me screams as he's being taken away in chains for the beating of Jator's computer 😉
 
Jay - noticed the same as others with Netscape (4.76), ie., the black lettering disappearing. Maybe neon yellow lettering! 😉 Otherwise, it looks great!

Also, something you might want to think about as the OS for hosting. I know you'd like to one day make it a Linux box but also consider what most big hosters use - a *BSD, most specifically, FreeBSD. I've found that after learning Linux, I could apply that knowledge to the *BSDs (I have NetBSD myself), without much if any difficulty. FreeBSD probably has the largest share of running internet sites, eg., Yahoo runs on it...

 
Can someone post a screen shot of the black lettering dissapearing?

Thanks.

Jay

EDIT I still need the screen shot, but I think I know what is happening. In the 'about' box, where the body of the text is, the border is supposed to be a blue to black fade, but the bos inside the table is white (at least with IE it is.) If someone can send me a screen shot, I'll know for sure.
 
Jay - I'm now at work looking at it with IE and WOW! It is VERY different looking than how Netscape displayed it. I do see what you're saying about the background of the box supposedly being all white and the lettering black (and the box bordered). The box in IE is also more squarish. With Netscape, the box was a thin rectangle, solid colored blue fading to black, with black lettering on it - basically a bigger version of the link graphics on your main page.

Hopefully someone will get you a screenshot...
 
Jay - didn't see anyone else post a screenshot so I got one for you here. Note the difference in how Netscape sees it?

Hope this helps. 🙂
 
Just as a note: I emailed screenshots of all of the pages in Netscape 4.76 to Jay this morning, so that should be taken care of.. 🙂
 
Thanks for the screen shot. Not sure how to fix that, IE likes it as well as NS6. Not sure why 4.xx is beig so difficult. If anyone has ant suggestions, I am listening.

Jay
 
NS 4.x is a junk Jay, just make it work with NS6 and IE and you'll be fine.🙂
 
The problem with just ignoring one of the most widely used versions of one of the most popular browsers is that you will be losing a good portion of your potential client base simply because they can't read your site.. 😛
 
Bah, there are only 3 people are left in the world that use NS 4.x anymore.😉
 
I definetly don't want to exclude NS 4.xx users. But I finally found a look I like, I don't want to have to change it!!!!

Jay
 
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