http://www.chili-chili.net

http://www.chili-chili.net

Hi,

what do you think of this one?

Thanks, Matt

I'm not qualified to critique the HTML side of things, but I'll tell what I like and don't like as Joe Websurfer.

I do like the simplicity of the page... no 57 flashy .gifs and animations cluttering things up. Nice and clean, which is nice.

The intro is not intrusive, but maybe you might want to up the pitch just a little... you don't want it to disappear completely into the background.

I would also like to see a commentary beside each menu choice, like a one-liner review of the chili being presented behind the link.

Your recipes are formatted well... got the serving-size upfront, which is good, but again, a little commentary would be nice, even if it's "I found this recipe on the road to Tuscon when I had a flat and this nice old lady let me use her phone and gave me this chili while I waited for the tow-truck" kind of thing. It adds flavor to the site, as it were.

An addition to your site, since we are talking recipes here, would be a common measurements-conversion page or link. I mean, if I had the intent of feeding fifteen people and your recipe serves four, then I'd want to know how many teaspoons fit into a tablespoon or a cup.

Do you plan on accepting recipes from site visitors, letting the visitors who use your recipes to rate and/or comment on the recipes?

For that matter, I see no contact the webmaster icon... you always want the users to have a way to contact you as the owner of the site so they can tell you how it works in Opera or your code got corrupted and a link falls dead or anything of that nature.

In summary, the utilitarian side of me finds the site pleasantly uncluttered and clean, but it's a tad boring to the consumer side. You could add more functionality and I highly recommend you put in a means for users to contact you for site-related problems.

Looking at the design, I really like it... straight to the point, ads don't get in the way... very clean...

As for code, you are three errors away from validated html, and they are really quick fixes. Just a couple alt tags in images, and a background image that should be in your CSS. See here. I would encourage you to fix them.
The only CSS errors are those IE scrollbar attributes that aren't standard. CSS here.

The previous poster has some good ideas on how to make the site more interesting. Implementing those will probably get you more traffic too.

Thanks for the comments! I don't really have any stories behind these recipes, I just bought the rights to them. I will add a contact link so visitors can contact me. I didn't plan on accepting recipes from viewers or having a rating system, but I like the idea .

Thanks, Matt

I had a quick look and was reading thru' a couple of the recipes (they sound real nice!! )...but i was trying to image wat they'd be like

I think you need some images of the final product

(sorry if its been mentioed, I dint read the other posts)

EDIT: also, the links on the left could be a little more focused, maybe a 1px border or something