Web Design of Maine Blog

This is a review of the 2008 Political Candidate for Presidency Websites only. Web Design of Maine is not associated with any of these candidates or their websites, nor do we endorse any candidates listed herein. Again, these reviews have nothing to do with the candidates and everything to do with their websites.

Overview
For the most part, these websites are all great, which is expected given the heavy budgets available. They are being reviewed and ranked below based on overall appeal, presentation, usability, functionality, use of technologies, Google PageRank, and quality and quantity of content. The best ranked website has a ranking of #1.

#1 - Barack Obama’s Website
http://www.barackobama.com/
This is by far the most astounding presidential candidate website we have seen. The website presents a surreal feel with the effective use of shading, lighting and background imagery. Great use of CSS for text control and presentation, vibrant color scheme, and excellent use of spacing. Suitable speed on the changing news of the home page. Many other sites have this feature, but are slow, causing loss of interest. Only issue noticed was that some web browsers have an auto-fill option for forms (like the top email address box), which turns the form yellow, making the white text too hard to read. Overall, Barack Obama’s Website is the most progressive and best site reviewed.

#2 - Hillary Clinton’s Website
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/
This website is well organized and looks great. Most memorable section is the right menu with colorful icons. Good shading and graphics overall, but top menu background looks strange until the drop downs appear, which have wonderful graphics.

#3 - John Edwards’ Website
http://www.johnedwards.com/
This site has a wealth of information and a well formatted presentation. Nice dynamic content, although being able to change it on demand would be a plus. Mobile updates on your phone is easy to see and understand. The layout is very clean and fairly easy to find everything of importance.

#4 - Mike Huckabee’s Website
http://www.mikehuckabee.com/
Terrific looking site with simple navigation. Clear sections to make it easy to find different items and nice use of colors. Dislikes include top navigation (red) bar spanning entire width of page whereas the rest of the site is a set width, the text does not line up in links for “recent blog posts”, and there is no “Home” link other than the logo.

#5 - Mitt Romney’s Website
http://www.mittromney.com/
This site is very informative, but the overall dark gray colors presents a dismal feel, whereas other presidential candidate sites are brighter. The sub-pages look much cleaner and easier to read. Fixing the color scheme could really improve the look and usability of the Mitt Romney Website.

#6 - Joe Bidden’s Website
http://www.joebiden.com/
The Joe Bidden Website has a very good presentation and effective programming. The dynamic news section works great and I like the flash roll-over effect on the previews. The top navigation looks very professional, until the menu expands down, it becomes hard to see the light blue text on light gray background. It might help if the issues were alphabetized for easier scanning. This site uses “Sitemeter” for statistics whereas many of the well design sites use “Google Analytics”.

#7 - Bill Richardson’s Website
http://www.richardsonforpresident.com/
Bill Richardson’s website is extremely well organized and has such a professional presidential look to it. This site is full of color and appears very lively. The sections of the site are easily differentiated. Some of the blue links are hard to see on the dark blue background of the blog page. Overall, this is a very well thought out design.

#8 - Ron Paul’s Website
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/
The Ron Paul Website has excellent use of spacing, soft shading and is very easy to find information. The graphics look great, and having control over the main content area is great, although if a user does not click on any of the links to the left, they might not see important information, as other sites do automatically. Headings are easily defined, but a slight roll over effect on the links would be nice, since some of the underlined headers in the “upcoming events” section are links and some are not. Lack of good usability for links is a negative for this site.

#9 - Rudy Giuliani’s Website
http://www.joinrudy2008.com/
This website is fairly good with a few minor issues. I liked the innovative use of video accompanying each of the items on the “issues” page. The color scheme is not exactly consistent with some buttons being different shades of red. The Media Center area has strange bullets that might mean something, but there is no key. The different sections do not have much contrast, which makes it hard to look for the headings. Only other suggestion is to have the last name of the candidate in the top header section. I had to scroll down to the media section before seeing the candidates’ full name.

#10 - John McCain’s Website
http://www.johnmccain.com/
The enter page for John McCain’s website is effective but scary. The black and gray colors make me think I’m at the wrong page for a presidential candidate. The main page looks much better, but the black color over the American flag is unusual. The site looks very militaristic and dull, which gives this site a low ranking. However the site does contain a large amount of useful information.

#11 - Chris Dodd’s Website
http://chrisdodd.com/
This website appears rather dry, with very little or poor use of shading, different shades of red and inconsistent button effects. The option to change to Spanish right before an article is unique.

#12 - Dennis Kucinich’s Website
http://www.dennis4president.com/
The Dennis Kucinich website has a pleasant header, although it took a second glace before noticing the to top buttons for contributing and YouTube. The site is pretty basic compared to the others. The shading on the right side buttons looks a little excessive.

#13 - Fred Thompson’s Website
http://www.fred08.com/
Fred Thompson’s website has a fantastic top navigation, but the right side navigation is bleak with dull icons. Reflections for the sub-headers does not seem to fit correctly. More time could have been used to think through the design of this site.

#14 - Mike Gravel’s Website
http://www.gravel2008.us/
This site looks like it was designed back in 1992 (but obviously 2008). The Mike Gravel Website is fairly basic, the different sections are not clearly defined. The navigation bar looks terrible with the repeating background images. Only plus for this site is the mention of the game Second Life, which can be used for additional advertising.

#15 - Duncan Hunter’s Website
http://www.gohunter08.com/
This site loaded very slowly and actually never finished loading even after 10 minutes, even after refreshing the website. Definitely some major issues with this site, which is why it is ranked last.

I went to the myfoxmaine.com website because I saw a commercial for “become a myfoxmaine expert”, but I couldn’t find anything on the site regarding the commercial notice.

MyfoxMaine.com is an informational Maine website, with a lot of dynamic content.

There is a section for Maine blogs. The blog page seems too limited to the categories pre-selected by Fox 23. I wanted to write some blogs and ad content to the site, but there’s no such category for what I want to write about (business, technology, computers, internet, web design, etc). There should be a “Recent Blogs” section or maybe a section for “Other Blogs”. There’s no other option than to be forced to write about news, entertainment, weather, sports, music or politics. Not including other categories can limit the online community.

There needs to be some kind of authentication process to limit spammers. I just joined and noticed a member that has posted tons of spam and indecent pictures (naked women, pot, etc.) for this site. PHPbb forums has a time limit on posts, which might be a useful feature for the site.

Overall, the website looks great. The shading / 3D glare effect on the top navigation is way overused. The buttons look perfect. The quality of the content images is extremely poor. Limiting the layout graphics and increasing the content graphics would make the site look better. The red, white and blue colors look great, but the gray overall theme looks pretty dismal, and makes usability an issue. It’s hard to read some of the text with the gray background colors. Accessibility is not optimized and there are depreciated tags in the programming code.

The header fonts for the sections on the home page are inconsistent, for example “business news” and “sports news” are gray and the headers “Entertainment” and “Spotlight” are black, which also appear to have different spacing (padding values).

There’s an option to toggle a banner ad on and off. I don’t think this will make advertisers too happy. I’m not sure why you’d want this option, although we have all seen the Rachel Ray Dunkin Donuts ad a thousand times (current web ad).

There is an IE bug where resizing the browser window causes all the content except the header to move. This happens on the blog page and forums (community.myfoxmaine.com).

The Metro Guide link seems to be broken: “Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server error ‘80004005′ Cannot open database requested in login ‘MyAreaGuide’. Login fails. /myfoxlocal/channel.asp, line 6”

Also, it’s a bit annoying if you’re writing and have to start all over when the ads reload the page (major issue).

I really like the community blog concept, and the site has a lot of great content. I hope they keep up the good work. and I hope these comments help if they want to improve the site.

Note: Web Design of Maine is not associated with MyFoxMaine.com or Fox Interactive Media. These comments are simply intended to be constructive criticism, and are NOT intended to slander, dissuade usage of myfoxmaine.com or cause any harm to Fox Interactive Media.

Web Design of Maine has been found near the top of some of the most popular website design companies in Maine, with a rating an 8 out of 10. Some of the other notable website design companies were Flyte New Media, Slick Fish Studios, FireFly Design, Image Works, and Barnstormer Design. A detailed listing of the Maine web design ratings can be found here.

Great Job to all those who are helping to promote Maine’s businesses through innovative website design and technologies.

I was visiting family over the holiday and a computer issue was brought to my attention by my friend. The problem was that while he was playing Chess on Yahoo games, the game would disappear and an advertisement would appear where the game was. I looked on the Yahoo forums and noticed many people having this same problem.

Problem: A particular Sears advertisement which was a Flash movie apparently had code inside it that either caused the Yahoo game to Stop, Unload, or be set to invisible. This can happen because the ad was a Flash movie, and the Yahoo game was a Flash movie. So when the ad loads, it runs the code to unload any other Flash movies, therefore the Yahoo game disappears. At least this is what I think happened.

Solution: There are several ways to fix this, and since I have a strong website design / development background, I decided to use a common web browser plugin called Firebug, which is used with the web browser Firefox. I installed the plugin and just delete the code for the advertisement. The problem was solved! He also wanted the game to be bigger to see it better, so I showed him how to change the dimensions of Yahoo games Flash movie. Follow the steps below to fix the Yahoo games problem yourself.

Step 1: Make sure to use the web browser Firefox

Anyone who knows anything about computers will typically recommend the web browser (Mozilla) Firefox over other web browsers like (Microsoft) Internet Explorer. You can download Firefox here (click the “download Firefox” button), or go to the next step if you already have Firefox installed.

Step 2: Install the Firefox Plugin “Firebug”

A plugin is just an extra piece of software that can enhance your web browser with new capabilities. You can install Firebug here (Just click the “install now” button). You may need to restart Firefox before moving to the next step.

Step 3: Open your game category (like Chess) in NEW WINDOW
When you go to open any of the the games, there is typically a “Play Now” button. Right click on that button and select “Open in a new window”. This will keep your top tool bar from disappearing.

Step 4: Start playing a new game
Once you start your game, a bunch of ads will show up, usually on the top of the page!

Step 5: Open the Firebug plugin
The easy way to do this is to click the little green circle with white arrow near the lower right of the window, or you can select from the top toolbar - Tools / Firebug / Open Firebug.

Step 6: Delete the ads
When Firebug opens, there will be a new section near the bottom of the web page. This shows the code for the web page. Click once on the word “body”. It will expand a little more code. Then, there is some code that says something like “i frame id = “adframe”. RIGHT click on the word “i frame” and select “delete element”. Poof, the ad is gone! Make sure not to delete the code “div id=”flashgame” “. Then you can just close Firebug to enjoy your game without any ads on the top. There’s a small red “X” near the bottom right to close Firebug.

This might seem like a lot of work, but once you set it up, you only have to do steps 3 through 6, and after a few times, you’ll be amazed at how easy it is. Don’t forget you can use this type of technique for any website!

How to change the game size
Before you close the Firebug plugin, click once on the code for ” div id=”flashgame” “. You can click on the “+” symbol or the word “div”. Now it should say “embed id=”flashchess width=”785″ height=”452″ . . . ” Just click on the numbers for the width and replace the current value with a bigger value, like width=”1000″. Do the same for the height, like height=”700″. This can make it easier for you to see the game so you can enjoy it more. You may notice that some of the images will look distorted, but this is just because of the way the Flash movie renders images as you scale them.

Another useful shortcut
If you like to play a lot of Yahoo games, then when you get to the web page for a game category, like chess, bookmark that page. Then, open your bookmarks and drag that bookmark you just made up into your toolbar. Now, if you are logged into your Yahoo account, you only have to click one link, and you can start playing your games!

Disclaimer: Yahoo, Sears, Firefox, and Firebug are not associated with Web Design of Maine.

Merry Christmas from Web Design of Maine. We hope you have a wonderful holiday season.

Still looking for a gift to give for the holidays? Many people rush out and grab a gift card as a last resort. Gift cards are becoming increasingly popular but the people who receive them stash them away and forget to use them.

At Web Design of Maine, we offer you the ability to buy a Maine web design gift package for someone you know, or if you’re really feeling generous, you can buy a Maine web design gift card that can be used for any non-profit of your choice! This can be a great way to give back to the Maine community and it may also be a tax deduction for you.

A Maine web design can help a business grow and help the Maine economy. Please contact Web Design of Maine for more information on the purchase of gift cards for web services.

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndicate”. Ok, so if it’s so simple then how come everyone I ask what it is, they really don’t know?

You may have seen the little RSS image that looks like this:

So what does this do? If there is content on different websites, you have to spend time loading the website, navigating to the blog, news or podcast you want to see again. With an RSS feed, all those items that you like to see all the time are summarized into one format or document online.  A syndicate is a something that publishes the same information to different places, like the same news story to different newspapers. Online, you can add an RSS feed option to your website, to let people sign up for the content that you regularly update on your website. This is good because it makes it easier to persuade people to visit your site, and buy your products or services.

Winter in the Northeast can be brutally cold and leave lots of ice, sleet, and snow to enjoy… or despise. It’s a great time to hunker-down and think about how you can improve your business.

If you’re reading this Maine web design blog, then you’re inherently savvy about learning more about website strategies. After you’ve learned a few things, don’t hesitate to show off your knowledge to someone who’s not as technical. Maybe they would be interested in learning about website design as well for their business. Have them contact Web Design of Maine for more information.

So, lets talk about a few things that you can do for your website.

1. Check the website for outdated information - Remove it or update the information
2. Make sure that all your links still work - Broken links can show people you don’t take care of your website, and it’s frustrating for your users
3. Take a look at your statistics - Most hosting companies offer statistics (stats) about how many people are visiting your website, what pages they visit, and so on. Usually this is free information for you to look up. Don’t be afraid to be blunt with your web designer and tell them you want to see stats and not be charged for it. You’ll get nickeled and dimed otherwise. If you notice you had 1000 visitors one month and the next is was only 300, go back and check what changed on your website that may have caused your search engine ranking to change or maybe someone else removed their link to your website so you have less traffic.
4. If you’re generating traffic to your website, why not make some money by adding Google advertisements? If you already to then great, make sure you optimize the site for the ads. If you don’t use Google ads, then go to www.google.com/adsense/ to learn more about it. It’s really easy to implement.
5. Update your site for the holidays - Change graphics for the holidays throughout the year. Keep your stardard graphics up most of the time though. Try not to overdo the holiday spirit too much.
6. Ask some friends to look at your website and give you feedback, honest feedback. You can also look for website review site and submit your website link. This is usually a forum of people who design websites, and they may give you some valuable information about how to improve your website.
7. Search online for directories that are relevant to your business and see if you can add you website link to those directories. If you sell dog toys, search for “pet store directories” or something similar. This will significantly help your search engine ranking so more people will find your website.

There’s so much more to talk about, maybe you can think of other ideas on how to improve your website. If you need help implementing any of these ideas or would like to learn more about having a website designed for your business, please contact Web Design of Maine.

As the holidays come and go, many people like to decorate their businesses with festive items. Tinsel and snowflakes line hallways, Christmas trees and lights glow bright. This is great for your businesses  employees, but what about your customers? Why not share the holidays with the people who visit your business online? A simple “Happy Holidays” or holiday image can make the difference between another visit to your website and a visit with a smile. It shows that you care about your customers, that you’re not just another mindless corporation, and that you make regular updates to your website (important for people who may return to your website several times). You can also send out holiday cards or festive marketing postcards.

If you need maintenance to your website to help your customers enjoy the holidays, please contact Web Design of Maine for graphic design, print material and any other professional Maine website services you may need!

Fairpoint Communications plans to acquire Verizon land lines in Maine with the goal of helping more areas in rural Maine get connect online. As high speed internet access becomes more available across Maine, the expectation is that this will stimulate the Maine economy because more people will grow their business online. But what good does that do for businesses if you don’t have a website? That’s where we can help! If you’re ready to get your Maine business on the internet with a professionally designed website, please contact us to get started.