TOPIC:

Would love to get some constructive criticism thanks in advance

sophiaenergy.toastmastersclubs.org/

Martin,

I am looking at this only as a visitor.

I like the layout! Nice color combinations, very Toastmasters Brand like.

I like that your next meeting is listed, although it was yesterday. I'd be worried if it was more than one day out of date.

Your meeting information/directions page show a nice picture of the meeting building.

It would be nice to see more members on the Meet Our Members page.

The club calendar shows that you plan in advance, but I would add Area/Division/District events with links as well.

Your public downloads have some out of date PDFs. But if you rename them to Past Toastmasters Leadership Institute and Past District Conference, you could still use them as a teaser instead of outdated info.

On Our Officials page, I was thinking I would see club officials. Maybe rename the link to District Officials.

I would move the archive links as well as the TM - Toastmasters Tools and DCP Club Report to Members Only. The TM Tools and DCP are not going to mean anything to visitors and most Toastmasters that want that information about your club can already find it.

For some reason, using Google Chrome, your open house pictures have a white rectangle in the lower right corner (I have checked on two different computers). When I scroll in Chrome, I get a checkerboard pattern that is displayed briefly, then goes away.

Great job!

Not even a year old. You are doing well
How do you get the pictures to rotate. That is a great idea.
The DCP link. I am borrowing that idea.
My suggestion would be to get your president to make his picture public and write something welcoming in his bio
Keep working on it

There are two things on your site that jumped out to me right away... two things that I liked. First was the way you combined the "Main Menu" and the "Members Only" menu tabbed together together. This is a great idea and one that I will certainly try to use on my own club web site. I'm thinking what I may try is to do as you did, and add a combined tabbed section below the "Logins" for "Toastmasters" and "Non Toastmasters" (or perhaps "Visitors"). The second thing that really jumped out at me was the photo gallery that is at the top of your page. That's a GREAT idea. Your section on "What are the meetings like" is also another positive for your site. It reaches out to those looking to find out information about Toastmasters. My club's site is more attuned to members, not the casual observer, something that has been indirectly pointed out to me by other reviewers.

You make good use of the page space by putting two events in each row, rather than using cells (one row) for each event. This is another feature I'm going to look at for our site.

It was suggested that my site get rid of the accordion links at the bottom of the page. I agree, and think you should also consider it. I'm planning on putting images of what they show (an actual URL isn't available) and showing them under the new "Visitors" tab.
I liked your putting the photo of your meeting location with the map and directions on the "Meeting Information/Directions" frame. I've been advised to do the same... think I will do it, now that I've seen an example.

Great site. OK, so what would I suggest?

1. Lose the accordion links at the bottom, I doubt anyone ever goes there anyway.
2. You need more members listed on the "Meet Our Members" page (especially club officers). Be sure to include photos and brief bios.
3. I really don't think you need that "Officials" page. Who would actually be interested in that info anyway? The site is about your club, not higher levels in the organization.
4. Having the "What are the Meetings Like" appear on the home page and an "Archive" page is redundant. I think it's better suited to the home page and not the "Archive".

Greetings,

So not to repeat what has already been listed I have only one observation. First, ditto on all the super comments. Great job sharing a lot about your club.

Only problem I found is that the main page is very slow to load when I am using my tablet. The longest to load are the slideshows. You may want to consider putting some of the content on another page.

Stay warm ~ Catherine

Greetings Toastmasters!

I want to thank each of you for the feedback I have received so far. I have made some changes based from the feedback. the site is still a work in progress. I am really pushing for member photos and even a brief BIO so those visting website have a face to see and if they decide to come to a meeting they can match that face to someone. Give them some sort of comfort.

Really great feedback from each of you.

Thank you for taking time to visit the site.

I'm not gonna say much.. just that I really like your use of color. it impressed me because it isn't just so rubber stamp

I also like your use of table sections to put all your various topics..

trying to think of any ways to improve -- other than maybe things already mentioned (and you've done some of those already), I just am really impressed..

Good good work!

Darlene 154.toastmastersclubs.org

Nicely done! Your site is one of the more visually sites I've seen.

I agree that more members need to get their profiles up.

Your Twitter link returns a page does not exist error.

The slide shows are nice. They are slow to load, however. They also seem to reload each time I return to the homepage rather than using the cache. I am using Chrome.

Nice job!