New Website

[HaywardRotary]

Hi all,
we now have a new website, so please go and look around.

its still at www.mazdarotary.co.uk (http://www.mazdarotary.co.uk)
We think its alot better than the last one, and its still under development, but the basics are there.

Please go and have a look and let us know what you think, and if you spot the deliberate mistakes (ehem) please let Rmaj (rmagictastic) know via PM, and we can get it sorted.

Also, we are going to put up a page on the site for customers cars, so if youve had work done by us, and want to have your car on the site, please PM Rmaj and he will get you to send some pics and details.

Regards

Hayward Rotary

[kev-yorks]

Looking good Carl a big improvement on the old one.
Kevin

[clive]

Well done, Nick, Carl

All this sort of thing helps take the Rotary community forward in the U/K

<a href="http://plugin.smileycentral.com/http%253A%252F%252Fwww.smileycentral.com%252F%253F partner%253DZSzeb008%255FZNxuk101YYGB%2526i%253D23 %252F23%255F11%255F60%2526feat%253Dprof/page.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/23/23_11_60.gif" alt="SmileyCentral.com" border="0"><img border="0" src="http://plugin.smileycentral.com/http%253A%252F%252Fimgfarm%252Ecom%252Fimages%252F nocache%252Ftr%252Ffw%252Fsmiley%252Fsocial%252Egi f%253Fi%253D23%252F23_11_60/image.gif"></a>

[brundish24]

nice web site ten times better than the last very helpful

[LRP]

nice site that has alot of usefull information keepup the good work:D

[Carl]

Thanks to Nick for the website,looks really great.
As Nick said, please feel free to offer constructive criticism,and also if you want your car that we have worked on to be featured on the site send us some pics!
Regards
Carl

[AtomicRex]

Carl

Great new site....was going to offer to do something for you once I had finished my car....

One thing missing though!

Where is the racing section????

[dhracer]

Looks good :Thumbsup!, but I have a few points for you and whoever is maintaining/designing the site. (please don't take them the wrong way they're supposed to be helpful suggestions/criticisms)

What sort of connection are you hosting it on? it's dog slow ( to the point that I wouldn't be prepared to wait for the pages to load, I'd be looking at a competitors site fairly quickly....)

You need to sort out your images or they'll be eating up all your bandwidth once the site gets busy, this is part of the problem why your site is so slow - all the "thumbnail" images are in fact 640x480 pictures that are being scaled down client side. You should be using proper thumbnail images instead - for example on the frontpage the white racing rx3 is 39.83kB in size, by using a proper thumbnail of the right size it is only 5.7kB - over 6x smaller!!! (the black outlined FD is a real offender at 261kB :eek: )

I think you would get better search engine rankings (and the site would be easier to maintain IMO) if the markup was updated, but I guess that would be too much work now (although it would only take a few hours IMO)

Also to add it would be a good idea to validate the html, there are 28 errors on the front page. If you want any help let me know :)

[teabagger]

Looks good so far! :D

Only looked at around half the pages so far as I'm really struggling with loading speed, as mentioned above the images need correct optimisation. As an example, it took two attempts (50 seconds the second time) to load the Tuning page. The first attempt resulted in an error - failure to connect to www. server and the second one loaded but failed to load three of the four images. Ideally each page should only take a couple of seconds to load over the T1 connection I'm using here.

If you need any images optimised let me know. If you chuck the full resolution versions my way with the dimensions you want them in then I can give them back within a few mins of receiving them.

Noticed a misspelling of 'bridge' on the porting page on the second to last line.

The news section on the front page, reading the black text on blue background is quite difficult and the red 'News' text clashes with the background too.

But mostly, where are the pictures of Carl eh? (unless I've not got there yet?) :D :D :D

(edit) ...found it on the 'about us' page but it didn't load

Top work! Big improvement over the old page :)

[grinder]

had a nosey - looks OK apart from the gallery showing a 404 error ( page not found in laymans terms :D )

and when you click the 2 links on the main page - same thing - 404 error

ask the web company if they can provide you with custom 404 error pages - so if it is wrong - you can point the user back into the site :D

[memski]

Much better than before, hopefully your future customers won't get lost going to the old address now... they'd have to be really stupid to do that :o

[Carl]

Thanks for the critical advice about loading speed and the like.
Is it still the same slow speed? Last night it was slow for me too,but today it seems to be fine.I do have broadband though!
Regards
Carl

[rx7veilside]

i have broadband and everything loaded quickly..thought the blue single car looked really good wld look even better with more polished engine bay:yes

[dhracer]

Thanks for the critical advice about loading speed and the like.
Is it still the same slow speed? Last night it was slow for me too,but today it seems to be fine.I do have broadband though!
Regards
Carl It is a fair bit quicker for me today (I have cleared the cache to make sure it's not loading from that), not sure why it was quite so slow yesterday (I have a 10Mb connection). These days I expect instant loading from anything but heavily flash intensive sites (it's not far off today for me, but people on slower broadband connections expect the same). You still need to shrink those pictures if you expect the site to get a lot of hits. If your bandwidth limit per month is 1Gb that's not going to last long when your front page is 0.5MB :Typing

You still need to think about all the people that are only on 2Mb broadband and slower (yep a fair few are still on 56k :eek: ) - they will be happy to wait for a media site but this isn't and it still should load almost instantly IMO

[Clarky]

Agree with dhracer some of the file sizes are far too large, and your bandwidth wont last long, most broadband users are on 2mb, site will just get slower with visitors having a look around, also not quite sure about the coding either, might not get listed very well in the search engines.

[HaywardRotary]

OK guys,
thanks for the heads up, as you may have guessed im not a web designer hehehehehe!!
i am going to optimise the images, but didnt have time as we wanted to get something up and running.

the coding should be ok for the search engines, but i know i have to alter some of the ALT tags.

im getting a web geek mate to look over the site to do the techy stuff for me.

Generally its the content that i want to make sure is right...

so suggestions please.

cheers

Rmaj

Hayward Rotary

[HaywardRotary]

cheers guys just optimised the images hahahahaha.....they was mahooosive.

will load later today.

also going to validate html

[HaywardRotary]

piccys optimised, can you have a look and see if thats quicker

cheers

Rmaj

Hayward Rotary

[HaywardRotary]

katy, get back to work....

N

[teabagger]

That's lightning-fast for me now. Nice one :)

[HaywardRotary]

bagger,

mail me mate, nick.rushton@arup.com i want your car for new page

Rmaj

[dhracer]

OK guys,
thanks for the heads up, as you may have guessed im not a web designer hehehehehe!!
i am going to optimise the images, but didnt have time as we wanted to get something up and running.

the coding should be ok for the search engines, but i know i have to alter some of the ALT tags.

im getting a web geek mate to look over the site to do the techy stuff for me.

Generally its the content that i want to make sure is right...

so suggestions please.

cheers

Rmaj

Hayward Rotary The site is a thousand times quicker now you've sorted the images, nice one :)

I think alt tags are the least of your worries code wise :o (I am a web geek) but I'm sure your web mate will tell you all that and re-write everything for you :D

It would look nicer if you'd center the site in the middle of the page and have a background of some sort so there isn't a chasm of nothing for the people with larger screens.

I know you're still adding to the site but please please please include prices wherever you can, even if it's just typical examples - I will always go to someone who's site does this over someone's who doesn't unless their reputation astounding. For example you list your most popular services - why not outline the typical costs of an oil change, compression testing, single turbo conversion etc etc - as a potential customer this information is very helpful for me

Your V-mount intercooler/radiator page http://www.mazdarotary.co.uk/haywardproducts.html where it says contact us for detail of this product. Please put a link in here so that you can click and it will take you to the contact us page - as a customer I don't want to have to do the work in finding out how to buy this product (always in the back of your mind you should be thinking that your website visitors are stupid, lazy sods who should have to do as little as possible to get what they need or they'll most likely end up in the wrong place - your competitors' site :Laugh )

[HaywardRotary]

thank you for the tips mate, i will have a look at it all and update as soon as i can!!!!

cheers

Rmaj

Hayward Rotary

[Mave]

Good stuff, much nicer site than the old one :)

[moosey]

Pretty nice job there and a vast improvment on the old one.
You should add a guest book that all us Hayward Rotary
disciples can sign to testify to your collective brilliance though!

[rmagictastic]

good idea moosey, will look into it mate.

Rmaj

[Brett]

Websites looking good :)

Just one question though, whats a bride port? ;)

[iaint]

Just one question though, whats a bride port? ;)

You're far too young and innocent to know that. :D

[Carl]

Websites looking good :)

Just one question though, whats a bride port? ;)


That is one that has to Marry up to a stock port!
Regards
Carl

[rmagictastic]

ooooops, typo tastic, its just to keep you on your toes, well spotted.

there is another obvious mistake 1st to spot it gets a beer at RS4, carl asked me to cahnge it but i havent yet...

Rmaj

[rmagictastic]

That is one that has to Marry up to a stock port!
Regards
Carl


you never cease to amaze me with you jokes...

N

[E.B.King]

Hi Carl, just wondering if u recieved my PM? Also been trying to phone ur shop for the past week and had no luck, is this the correct number? 01635846598

[rmagictastic]

Hi Carl, just wondering if u recieved my PM? Also been trying to phone ur shop for the past week and had no luck, is this the correct number? 01635846598

call the mobile number matey.

Rmaj

[E.B.King]

cheers mate i'll try it after work!

[JohnnyP]

Only a small thing, but I couldn't find your opening hours.

[scooby_si]

not working or is it my interweb mullered?
Ta
Si

[Draco]

your right Si It is not working

[HaywardRotary]

Thanks for the notifying us,will get onto it first thing Monday.
Regards
Carl

[Mobilemick]

Homepage down for me :(

[rmagictastic]

desperately trying to get on to provider, theyre very busy, so im guessing its theyre fault, i will endeavour to get it going asap.


Rmaj

[Mobilemick]

Have u tried getting onto providers website, see if it works,

Who`s your provider BTW ??

Mick

[Carl]

Have had a reply that they know there is a problem and are trying to resolve it.
Regards
Carl

[Mobilemick]

Site now working :)

Change this in index.html or index.php<table width="780" border="0" cellspacing="0" background="hrlibrary/top.JPG" cellpadding="0">

to <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" background="hrlibrary/top.JPG" cellpadding="0">


MAKE SURE YOU BACKUP THE FILE, BEFORE YOU CHANGE IT

[Mobilemick]

Naaa forget that, still doesnt look right lol