Have I done the right thing ?

[MalcolmInN]

our other address
,
So we have all angles

yes I did come across the other but bowed to your prerogative and thort a gentle poke might be in order 
,
Yep, including a few on a hyper-cube,

You will of course pass by the armourer for some chain-email before you take up my mission ??

[Tank]

I started coding websites back in 1997, and it's all changed so much.  So many different languages to use, and the possibility of using software.  Absolutely no shame in using software to create a site.  It all depends on the content itself, and where the user places it.

Funnily enough, I have Serif Webplus on my PC here at work, and I decided to learn how to use it a few months ago and create a railway website.  It's in it's early days, and I've certainly found the software's limitations, but it's saved me hours of coding - which is what stopped me making the website in the first place!

Going back to the whole point of this thread though, I didn't see your new website, but the old one looks fine to me.

[Graham Walters]

I've opened the site up again now, after spending more than a few hours on it over the week end.

To say I've tweaked it is an understatement, it's had a complete re-vamp, ony two colours, plus a bit of shading, it may still be considered to be a little heavy on the text side, but that will improve as I get pics of the layouts we have, the other site uses a lot of sliders, and I don't have  access to those pics.

http://andovermodelrailwayclub.co.uk/

[MikeDunn]

Initial thoughts ...

• Lifting the 'location' in the menu bar for the current page looks iffy to me; can this just not be shaded & remain on the same level ?
• Going to Layouts, I see no options for private or club ?  And the text is far too far down the page !
• Top Layouts menu forces me to members layouts - can't access club layouts at all
• Exhibitions - "you need to catch the Saisbury – Andover service " - where's Saisbury 
• Exhibitors table has a lot of wasted space - why not have the Gauge aspect under half of the Exhibit aspect ?  Also, the table doesn't have the cells in fixed widths (again, see Gauges)
• Top menu doesn't have all the pages listed - and as you have a left-side menu why bother with both ?
• Left menu structure changes depending on what page you're at - standardisation required
• Left layouts menu - is this supposed to be hierarchical ?  As it appears rather chaotic
• Categories menu - surely this should be on all pages if you're going to have it (only one category though ?).  And I would say News should be on the main menu system
• Loss of left menu when in Newsletter
• "AMRC in the News" - argh !  menus etc now on right ?
• Dittto BRM !

And no, I don't like the logo either   But at least you're getting close to LNER's blue 

Still needs work; do you have a page template defined ?  If so, you haven't used it all the way through.

[edit] Must wonder why, if the current webmaster only wanted a hosting platform for the current site most here like, you're apparently trying to take over from him ?

[Bealman]

Given the way this is going, we might move it into the computer thread. 

[zwilnik]

I've opened the site up again now, after spending more than a few hours on it over the week end.

To say I've tweaked it is an understatement, it's had a complete re-vamp, ony two colours, plus a bit of shading, it may still be considered to be a little heavy on the text side, but that will improve as I get pics of the layouts we have, the other site uses a lot of sliders, and I don't have  access to those pics.

http://andovermodelrailwayclub.co.uk/

That's  lot more clear and more readable. The pulldown at top right still doesn't work on mobile Safari (and there's no option to not view it in mobile mode, which is a bit of a downer, but I'm guessing that's just an aspect of that particular WordPress plugin). At least it's not a huge scroll down to the menu at the bottom now and it's looks great on desktop.

[MikeDunn]

PS you need a cookie disclaimer (its the law) and an explanation of what you do with your cookies..

https://silktide.com/the-stupid-cookie-law-is-dead-at-last/

[MalcolmInN]

Also these are the errors from your site :-

With luck correcting one or some of the aforementioned will correct the misbehaving under Firefox Zoom.


But since I never expected to visit Andover anyway, I will stop worrying about it 

[Pengi]

My thoughts are that the site could do with some better images.

For example, the most dominating parts of the Frogpool image on the front screen are the cream doors and the back of the piece of wood used for the back scene. If only the photographer had walked a few paces nearer . . .

The picture of Andrew Fendick could be enhanced by cropping out the person walking by or better still getting a close up of what he is doing.

The other two images make it look a bit like a jumble sale  Try and get some more close-ups and of youngsters and women too so as it looks more welcoming.

I also am not sure about the line image in the logo - it is a not immediately obvious what is was (but then I am not a fan of steam)

Just trying to help

[Graham Walters]

My thoughts are that the site could do with some better images.

I totally agree, at the moment I have had to use stock images, rather than orchestrated or posed ones.

For example, the most dominating parts of the Frogpool image on the front screen are the cream doors and the back of the piece of wood used for the back scene. If only the photographer had walked a few paces nearer . . .

See above

The picture of Andrew Fendick could be enhanced by cropping out the person walking by or better still getting a close up of what he is doing.

Some people are idiots, the bloke knew a pic was being taken, and decided to walk in front of me right at the wrong moment

The other two images make it look a bit like a jumble sale  Try and get some more close-ups and of youngsters and women too so as it looks more welcoming.
That would be great, if we had some younger members, and we don't have a single female member either

I also am not sure about the line image in the logo - it is a not immediately obvious what is was (but then I am not a fan of steam)

Totally agree that the logo is mess, but, they want to keep it, I did try a BR totem, but that didn't go down too well.

Just trying to help

Ive guessed that the average age of members is in the middle to late fifties, but, and it's a big one,  six of the older members are original ones, and they are all approaching or past retirement and can't see the need for change, they are under the impression the club is doing fine, when in reality it isn't, I am the only new member to join in the past 12 months.

Even though this years exhibition made a profit, it was well down on last year, and the comments I've heard at other shows, and read on forums remark that the show lacked atmosphere, and had too many second hand stands, Also it wasn't advertised as well as last year, this time round they seemed to rely more on what they could get for free via forums and the like.

[austinbob]

Ive guessed that the average age of members is in the middle to late fifties, but, and it's a big one,  six of the older members are original ones, and they are all approaching or past retirement and can't see the need for change, they are under the impression the club is doing fine, when in reality it isn't, I am the only new member to join in the past 12 months.

Graham - you do seem to have a fixation on age. I'm not sure that age has anything to do with anything. Now your talking about how the club is doing rather than whether your updated web site is better than the original. Getting a bit off topic here.

[Graham Walters]

Ive guessed that the average age of members is in the middle to late fifties, but, and it's a big one,  six of the older members are original ones, and they are all approaching or past retirement and can't see the need for change, they are under the impression the club is doing fine, when in reality it isn't, I am the only new member to join in the past 12 months.

Graham - you do seem to have a fixation on age. I'm not sure that age has anything to do with anything. Now your talking about how the club is doing rather than whether your updated web site is better than the original. Getting a bit off topic here.

It's not a fixation on age, I myself am 58, I think it's just a coincidence that the longest serving members are also the oldest, and they seem the most loathe to change anything.
This was offered by way of an explanation as to why those six in the main were against changing the club logo, and was not meant to come across as ageist.

[Graham Walters]

So at 58 you are old too then compared to me lol

If thy mocks thy will be mockered back

Oh I don't mind a bit of mockery ! 

[Graham Walters]

I think you should create modify the style sheet, standardise it and apply it to the whole site, so all pages are regular, text is the same style, fiont and size etc, IMO you don't need the same menu at the side that you have at the top, its just clutter, maybe make the side menu clickable so the boxes don't auto jump down all over the place?

PS a bit more blue and you have the Midland Pullman

PS you need a cookie disclaimer (its the law) and an explanation of what you do with your cookies..

Also these are the errors from your site :-

GET http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js
aaron81uk:49 GET http://www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js (anonymous function) @ aaron81uk:49(anonymous function) @ aaron81uk:50
aaron81uk:704 GET http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js (anonymous function) @ aaron81uk:704(anonymous function) @ aaron81uk:705
aaron81uk:1 GET http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel;r=1149316293;a=p-84eFbbejjm53s;fpan=0;fpa...48603;tzo=0;ref=;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.soundboard.com%2Fsb%2Faaron81uk;ogl= 403 (Forbidden)
buttons.js:1 GET http://seg.sharethis.com/getSegment.php?purl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.soundboard.com%2Fsb%2Faaron81uk&jsref=&rnd=1446462848656 403 (Forbidden)stLight.createSegmentFrame @ buttons.js:1stLight.log @ buttons.js:1(anonymous function) @ buttons.js:1(anonymous function) @ buttons.js:1
aaron81uk:1 GET http://l.sharethis.com/pview?event=pview&version=buttons.js&lang=en&fpc=6ed...d%20-%20Soundboard.com%20-%20Free%20Sounds%20%26%20More&ts1446462848655.0= 403 (Forbidden)
buttons.js:1 GET http://edge.sharethis.com/share5x/index.3c401b929c426b4aced880852aeb0d98.html 403 (Forbidden)

After consulting the guru's at Wordpress it would seem these errors are being reported on your computer, most of them are stat gathering.
The soundboard error relates to a site for ringtones.

None of these errors have anything  to do with my wordpress as I don't have those plugins installed.

So in short, the problem is your end not mine.

[Graham Walters]

Whilst maybe some of those are inherent to my cookies, if you run your web address through here, you will see all your coding bugs and bad links, mispelt code..

http://www.websitecleanup.com/test.php

I'm not really concerned with W3C compliance, very few websites do comply, broken links, most of what is being reported is blocked by Robots.txt, so that isn't a biggie either, I know about those.

404 error, I'm not really worried about bots getting lost, this isn't really a site to compete with other sites for an audience, I'm not trying to appeal to Google and other search engines, it will still get indexed no matter what, that's the nature of bots.
If bots were that good you wouldn't see sites that haven't been updated for years at the top of the organic search pages.

500 errors are sever side, so I can't do anything about them.

I never trust a site that finds errors for free, then wants to charge you a fortune to "fix them"