I've finally finished stage 2 of my site redesign - stage 2 has much the same look as the original version but a navigation strip has been added to the left-hand side of the 2 main pages and I've tried to optimise SEO to some degree ("tried" being the operative word here), and the page-top logos have been moved to left where people tend to expect them to be.
And thanks to these forums I "found" rounded corners for my div boxes, I hope I haven't overdone it though.

The site was done in CC Editor, I used CSS Menu Designer for the side navigation strip, CC Form Builder for the Contact Us page, and CC Sitemapper.
I will look into the optimisation service touted in CC's Website Optimization tab (is it a service, or software, or both?).
I'm still using CSE HTML Validator though.

Stage 3 is to use CSS for page layout instead of tables - sometime in the future.

Looking at my home page I'm wondering if the navigation is overkill - most of the text are links and visitors have a choice of the menu strip along the top, the side menu and a site map.
The strip menu was in place because my original side menu was all-javascript, after discovering CSS Menu Designer I decided to leave it there as a form of separation between the page-top area and the rest of the home page.
I'm also wondering if the pure blue side bar is a bit garish alongside the softer colour scheme of the rest of the page.

I'd appreciate any comments.

Zipper,

I quite like your site. It has a LOT of useful information, which is what I'd be looking for on a site like that!
I think that adds credibility.

The information is also easily found from the home page since, as you said, most of the text has links.

I enjoyed your 'trivia piece' about "Why do we drive on the left..."
I thought I knew something about the subject, since I am one of those Swedes who had to switch from driving on the left to driving on the right back in 1967, but there was a lot I didn't know!
So, if it hadn't been for Napoleon, we'd all be driving on the left?!
Here in Mozambique, where I live now, we also drive on the left, simply because all the surrounding countries do so, having been influenced by the more powerful colonial power - the British!

Just from a quick look I think the pages look great. My one bone to pick would be the lack of navigation on the pages other than the Home page.

I was frustrated having to either click back to Home or the Sitemap to go anywhere from other pages.

Navigation needs to be easy and accessible on all pages.

Most visitors won't make a lot of effort to get through a website that isn't quick and easy to navigate unless they really really really want the information and can't get it quicker somewhere else....lazy lot that we are

Clearly, I became too engrossed in the "driving on the left..." issue and did not get far past the Home page!
But now that I went back and took a look, I must agree with Tassie that the navigation needs to be beefed up on the remaining pages, for example by repeating the top horizontal menu on all pages.

I also noticed now that you used a somewhat sneaky way ( ) of making two websites in one: "Connies Driving School" and "Zipper's Driving School".
I first found this a bit confusing and I was never entirely sure which one I was reading about - except for on the Home page(s). Maybe the choice between the two schools should be made first, in a separate, 'higher level' menu with just the two choices? Just a thought...

You can blame MY laziness for the lack of navigation - I thought I'd be smart and avoid updating a menu in each of the 20-odd "minor" pages but I've always had the nagging background thought that I could be losing visitors. Your comments confirm this.
Now that I think about it, the basic top menu is much less likely to need updating than the detailed side menu, and if I used Editor's snippet feature to store the code I shouldn't have much trouble updating it in each file. It'll give me something to do on a quiet evening.

Per I'm very interested in your comments about the dual home pages.
I wanted to give my respected colleague Connie her own home page and wasn't sure the best way to go about it.
When I first put my site up I half-expected a broadside from my hosting service, a local company with the personal touch, for sneaking in 2 home pages on the one account! It didn't eventuate, perhaps they didn't notice, but you have caught me out !

The "index.html" home page carries my own business logo, Connie's page has her logo, and the pages relevant to both driving schools carry both - the general info pages (driving tips, news, trivia etc) have only my logo.
By doing this I hoped to reduce confusion but it seems its not working as well as I wanted.
Perhaps I should remove the "home" description from Connies page ?

Thanks for your comments everyone, there's nothing that can beat looking at your own work through someone else's eyes!

And I now see I've made a boo-boo on Connie's page, the top item in the side menu is meant to link back to "Zipper's Driving School", instead it links to itself (obviously I forgot to change this when I copied the menu code over from my page to hers - it's easily fixed in CC Editor though)

Sometimes its hard to see what else needs to be done when you are so close to the design as you see what you expect to see...so always good to get others to have a look and pretend to be visitors.

I think its a great site Zipper and I love the extra fun and informative bits you have added.

It is going to be even better with a few tweaks.

Zipper....just a thought, but perhaps you could change all pages to the php tag (as opposed to html) and you can add the menus and sections of pages which repeat as separate files...like so:

include('header.php');

include('topmenu.php');

include('sidemenu.php');

include('footer.php');

The "parent" pages will have to be .php as well as the "includes", ie, index.php etc....

Naturally, your host would have to have php installed (do any not have php now?). The benefits of doing it this way are minimal files to update when a change needs to be made...all you must update is the topmenu.php or the sidemenu.php - Makes work more streamlined!

You have a few errors in the page (I use http://validator.w3.org/check) and have the Web Developer Add on from Firefox (so the validation is only a click away)...

Melanie

Ps...giggles....don't check my personal sites for validation, other than wehaveasite...kind of like the cobbler kid's feet have no shoes...

That sounds great Melanie, I've always yearned for the type of functionality where I could update a seperate 'include file' instead of each page, but I have no experience at all with PHP.

Hey! It looks like I got frozen out of editing my previous post in mid-edit, perhaps I went past the time allowed?
I was going to add this ...

I had a look for FireFox validators, there's more than one.
I downloaded the one at the top of the list, I can't remember which one it is but I'm using a "tidy HTML" option.
Interesting validation results ...
Apparently I'm using self-closing tags ( <blah /> instead of <blah> ) when they shouldn't be used because of my doctype declarations. Come to think of it, I remember starting off the original pages in one doctype then changing it by overlaying the doctype declaration from the original site, retaining the original self-closing metatags.

And it picked up things like: <a name="top"></a> being on the same line as the <body> tag, and I shouldn't be using the "cols" attribute for tables - boy, html can be touchy!