need some opinions on updation

[<h1>]

Hey there..
A while ago a built a go-karting site for a mate who owned the karting company. This was my first formal website contract I had managed to hook up so i put in a lot of effort. Recently I decided to upgrade my semi-decent interface to a paid professional one and i reckon its made a load of difference.

So here's the link:
www.sportstar.co.za
- The interface and banner is not mine, although I did make the left menu graphx. ;)
- The update included re-working all the html to XHTML1.0 Transional. (one day soon will convert to Strict..i think its only the div center positioning I need to change).
- Converted (most) tables to CSS position elements.
- Used a more CSS orientated menu compared to the old JS menu
- Recently added a slick forum (hopefully the members will come)
- Powered by news management script and includes for menu etc .. works off a multi-dimensional array which keys are acquired through url.

From the emails coming through from large corporates I reckon this site is making the KKC a lotta money. Pagerank is 4 and has top rank for some "karting" keywords, if searching google south africa.
So please let me know what you think, or if there are any improvements you think should be done. :)
peace, Rich

[nathanbarlow]

hey

Nice design, original and looks professional. One thing, on dial-up, the site looks horrid untill all the images have loaded, try either coding so img load before txt (is this possible ppl?) or make imgs smaller . ..takes quite a while for the grey img behind heading to load . .i initially thought u had black txt on dark grey bg . . .

Reckon nav links could be in a better order, most ppl expect contact us to be last. You want to provide info and content first, which gives them a reason to contact you. Putting contact first comes across as jumping the gun in my opinion.

Also, "copywrite" is spelt "copyright", and i dont think u need the "xthml 1.0"

All in all, nice design, with some minor niggles

[<h1>]

thanx for the reply nathanbarlow.. yes I haven't really optimized the site for dial-up but not sure how to load images first. I will see if I can compress the images smaller. Perhaps I can use cookies to determine if u've visted before, if not then load images before main site. Will see what method is best.
Your nav links recommendation makes absolute sense wonder why ive never thought about that. Will change that order asap. Will also change the copyright...damn all these small lil errors i would never have picked up. Very helpful reply thanx ;)

[-i-dont-know-]

Good proffesional site, only thing you might change is the colour of the text as it can be hard to read in some places.

[erisco]

Text could be white. It validates though, yay.

I see this as a look good site, but not bandwidth friendly. AKA, a website designed for people with high speed.... that is the problem with the Internet... you have to design for so many aspects...

Good site :D

[<h1>]

thanx fir your comments -i-dont-know- and erisco..
can you give me any recommendations or methods to decrease amount of data to load to make it more accessible to dial up users?
I think its mainly the images and once the first page is chached is it not easier to load the rest of the site?
This is quite an issue as I think still a very large portion of SA internet users are on dialup. Not sure what to do..

[erisco]

138KB, is not terribly bad. Honestly. You have used good compression methods, I am just saying it could be better. Lots of headers and backgrounds and everything looks great, so I do not suggest you do anything. Great job =)

Any JavaScript really delays download time... maybe that was giving me the few seconds extra that seemed abnormal.