Review a disheartened designers sites plz

[Denis_dh]

Hi,
I've been designing average websites as a profitable hobby for a while but have never felt they matched up to others (still got paid though ) I'm now playing with some templates just to actually make something I like.

I have something that I can see potential in @

http://www.thebelfry.ie/test

but I can't see where to go from here (as a template only).

On a separate note I just finished a site for my rugby league club @

http://www.dublinblues.com

which has a powerful backend from etomite that I like but still don't feel fully happy with the frontend.

All criticism welcome!
Cheers,
Denis

[NancyJ]

Well its better than average... (especially given some of the sites put up for review here)
Standard CSS box design, nice clean layout, nice clean code, decent amount of padding and line-height (though theres a little more padding on the left than on the right in the main box)

I dont like the dark blue background ...or the turquoise( it looks a bit 'system color') maybe try a light blue or grey - or even a simple graphic of some sort - diagonal lines are very 'in' right now ;)

Its very generic, its not an objectional design but it lacks 'wow factor'. Its pleasant enough and is a good generic design but a well designed graphics would make a huge improvement.
At the moment I'd say it was more of a layout than a template design.

[Denis_dh]

Thanks for that! I'm playing around with creating some bg's in photoshop now. Any idea of somewhere to go so some tips and suggestions on that front? Also I seem to have a terrible eye for colour schemes :S!!

Thanks for the input!
Denis

[NancyJ]

for colours...
http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html

http://dev.sessions.edu/ilu/ilu_1.html

http://colorblender.com

for the background, something fairly plain and not too distracting.
there are a lot of options - paisley seems to be the 'new thing' ofcourse you cant go wrong with a simple gradient, fake drop shadow or some simple diagonal lines ;)