Should I Get Started, or is it Back to the Drawing Board?

[cfc]

I've created a simple image of what I intend my personal site to look like should I get started on it. Before I get coding, however, I need to know what to change or whether to just come up with something completely different. I'm planning to decide on a content layout after I get started on the site, so this is just basically the outline of how it might look.

[Ryltar]

Doesn't look too bad. I think it would be fine, but the background images that you would need to create that layout may load a bit slow. Are you planning to use frames for the scrollable content? But yah, it looks fine to me.

[cfc]

I have the beginnings of it working in firefox, and working well enough for me at this point (there are no menus as of yet, but that's next on the list of things to learn and apply). IE is butchering the little bit I have at the moment of course, but I'll get on that when I have all of the HTML, CSS and important PHP coding the way I want it.

I basically have a div whose positioning I'll refine later with a transparent PNG of what I posted (subtract placeholder text) as a background, one ul (the nav) and one div (the content) placed within it to fit the image. Without using tables I now have little concept of what is considered good web design technique so stop me before I'm finished if such CSS positioning is considered bad practice. Also, the background image for the div comes to about 74KB and I can't remember if that's acceptable or not becuase it's been so long since I last used a dial-up connection.

I'll post a link tomorrow afternoon, as the page is being served off of my computer which will be offline for the rest of tonight and a good amount of tomorrow, which will also provide me with some time to build on it a little more ;)

[hemebond]

Too ridgid, and wastes a fair amount of space.

[ionsurge]

Back to the drawing board, having a default photoshop pattern set as the background is never a good thing.

Colours are seriously in need of being placed into the design, and your logo does not stand out at all.

I could give you more viewpoints, probably about 15 just on your logo from a print perspective with how it is wrong...

Further, your shadows are much too dark, and if you do plan to use frames, re-think about the idea and start afresh. Mind, you have used way too much shadows, it looks like the main layout (the bit with the background) is floating. That will look seriously wrong if you have content inside...

Without the content area though it is hard to really say anything more.

[cfc]

Back to the drawing board, having a default photoshop pattern set as the background is never a good thing.

Colours are seriously in need of being placed into the design, and your logo does not stand out at all.

I could give you more viewpoints, probably about 15 just on your logo from a print perspective with how it is wrong...

Further, your shadows are much too dark, and if you do plan to use frames, re-think about the idea and start afresh. Mind, you have used way too much shadows, it looks like the main layout (the bit with the background) is floating. That will look seriously wrong if you have content inside...

Without the content area though it is hard to really say anything more.


Good calls all around, as I have been realizing such things myself after working with it a little bit. As I said, I have a serious lack of design sense, but there's only one way to learn :rolleyes:

I'll start working on something else soon.