How can I improve this search usability?
- by Craig Whitley
This is the first real programming attempt of mine, and theres some major flaws. It's a learning project, and I'm currently re-writing the entire thing as my php is is really messy. I really want to get an idea on how I can improve the actual usability and accesibility of the site at the same time though - so I know how to implement it correctly.
The website is basically a comparison website for gameserver hosting. As I mentioned, its a learning project and I don't actually expect any revenue from it. At the moment theres only test data in it, so in the game input box select either 'Battlefied Bad Company 2' or 'Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare' and ignore the actual search results.
http://www.laglessfrag.com
I wasn't really sure how to work the search functionality. Basically when you click a game in the drop down box, it sends an ajax request and finds all the locations available to that specific game in the database. After selecting the country theres another ajax to find all the citys available to the game in that country - which gives me the two unique identifiers I need to create the search results.
One major and fundamental flaw is that without javascript enabled, the site ceases to function. I'll overcome that in the next re-write, but without the ajax functionality stopping the user 'going wrong' - how can I implement a search that requires two fields without creating extra steps in new pages after form submissions?
I'm also no designer so my whole layout and css is a bit rubbish, but this was mainly a learning project as I'm interested in applications / programming rather than design.
It's also slow as its on shared hosting, but if I can get it to work correctly then I'm not impartial to chucking a bit of money at it for faster hosting and maybe a bit of advertising and seeing where it goes (if anywhere!).
Any info appreciated.
