Heres a showcase of something a little different to what you are used to

Check out the newly optimised Circle Design

My site is the same minimalist, simple site. With a slightly newer header (smaller and on the horixontal axis rather than vertical)

It has been recoded with Server Side Includes, all images have been optimised. The coding has been trimmed back to bare bones. The written content is all brand new, with emphasis on certain keywords and getting the visitor passionate about contacting me.

The whole site is validated tableless xhtml/css except the sitemap pages xhtml. I am having trouble trying to get nested lists validated in xhtml. A little more research should fix this though.

The home page is 20.429kb and loads in 4.27 seconds on a 56kb connection. Once the images and css is cached the page loads in 1.4 seconds. You can view the whole site speed report here.

Comments based on the above would be appreciated, also if you are considering optimising your site, contact me if you would like to talk about how I did it. I am applying the same techniques to all the sites I administer, and all the new sites I am designing.

oh that's sweet man. Really clean coding. I'll be talking to you soon when I'm optimizing mine.

looks good but I would suggest you change the "i" icon at the bottom to give it your own flair and make it look more fitting. I also don't really like the site map-looking thing that isnt.

looks nice but for the navigation the quality on the image is very bad. btw im a sucker for green lol..

Only thing I saw is that you use the center tag, which is deprecated. And as aLx said, the navigation scheme's aliasing is pretty annoying, but I guess it's a side effect of the optimization.

About the actual design, I don't really like the right column stretching the page, and that the navigation takes a lot of attention and the logo is harder to find and define.

Lol, I am not asking for a review based on the design, but on the speed, written content and all round optimising.

Thanks to all who have commented so far, you help me to see things from different perspectives and it is very appreciated.

Thanks Depthskins.

Thanks Northpark, the "i" icon is made to resemble a road sign for information, so is the arrow icon and the main navigation resembles a round-a-bout road sign. I am working on the sitemap page, as I said in my post.

Thanks aLx, I am interested in seeing a screenshot of the image from your perspective, it looks clean and smooth on my monitor, on my partners monitor, on my work monitor, on my friends laptop monitor, on the mac online browser monitor. There is some very slight antialiasing on the circular white section, but it is very minor, even when viewed at 800 x 600 resolution. If you think the text is antialiased then please consider that it is written text in the Arial Black font, it is intentionally in this font because it is a standard font that can display reasonably well fat and large on most browsers. It does look jagged at larger sizes, but I am not willing to compromise text links with image links.

Flez, thanks for your great comments!. I know I have used the center tag flez, this tag is deprecated but allowable in XHTML 1.0 transitional. I have used it for a specific reason, so that my site will display properly in IE 5.01 and IE 5.5 sp2. I should use an alternate stylesheet for this but dont want to make hacks to allow for almost obsolete browsers. I am considering removing the famous quotes from the right column, which will reduce it's length.

About the navigation: it is intentionally large and bold, it is a core feature of the site, it is unusual and "outside the square" of normal navigations. It features a circle (Circle Design), it is also a graphical representation of real-time navigation that all drivers see every single day. It is also unique, I have never seen it before. It is supposed to draw the visitors attention to it, and make it a fun way of navigating with a system all road users navigate by. If it is making the logo pale in comparison then it is doing it's job. My logo is only a secondary part of my website.

So any comments on the speed, written content and all round optimising?

"So any comments on the speed, written content and all round optimising?"

I think that you have great writing skills, at least also for search engines. I particularly like this page: http://www.circle.co.nz/new-zealands...-designer.html

The speed is pretty amazing, not much to say there.
All around I think this is a fantastic website. Maybe not super duper beautiful, but I am sure it sells the product, and that's what count in the last end, isn't it?

Thanks Alex, that page is a trial I am currently doing with search engine optimising.

My sites aren't drop dead gorgeous, but they are super simple, functional and fast!

Originally Posted by Julian My sites aren't drop dead gorgeous, but they are super simple, functional and fast!

Just as they should be

Just optimised another site I maintain, chopped 7kb off every page, equates to 1.4 second speed gain on a 56kb connection.