Review my website

[knight fyre]

I did this website with 2 other group members as a graded project. It was mostly me adding content, structure and style over the past few weeks with 2 rush pages from the other members (game purchases, music). Tell me what you think of the website excluding those two pages. Suggestions and constructive criticisms are welcomed.

web project

[nervegas87]

the font is really hard to read...but the style is cool and grungy.
Perhaps increase the font size.

[abduraooft]

Your DOCTYPE and content has no relation. And using frames is poor coding practice!
See the errors, http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...Inline&group=0

[knight fyre]

Originally Posted by abduraooft

Your DOCTYPE and content has no relation. And using frames is poor coding practice!
See the errors, http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...Inline&group=0

I am against using frames but it is a requirement of the project. All the pages that I did (except the home page) met the xhtml 1.0 transitional standard.

[Andrew Johnson]

Bad presentation.
Bad content.
Doesn't validate.

[gnomeontherun]

I would not recommend that Font. For some reason I have it, but it is not a readable font, especially at such a small size. Your contrasts in colors is very stark, and leads to a difficult site to read.

You didn't use tables! I am joyful!

You use a separate CSS file for each page, which defeats some of the purpose of pulling out the CSS. Make 1 CSS file that has the common elements for every page, and then make a unique CSS file for any other purposes. It would minimize coding and is better practice.

The general critique is usability and readability. Its a relatively difficult site to read, so anything that makes the font easier and the colors less hard on the eyes would increase the sites usability.

[mjlorbet]

wow, your ads are huge in comparison to your content.... stop that

that aside, more contrast, larger font... generally, see above

[knight fyre]

Originally Posted by Andrew Johnson

Bad presentation.
Bad content.
Doesn't validate.

That's constructive criticism?....

Originally Posted by jeremywilken

I would not recommend that Font. For some reason I have it, but it is not a readable font, especially at such a small size. Your contrasts in colors is very stark, and leads to a difficult site to read.

You didn't use tables! I am joyful!

You use a separate CSS file for each page, which defeats some of the purpose of pulling out the CSS. Make 1 CSS file that has the common elements for every page, and then make a unique CSS file for any other purposes. It would minimize coding and is better practice.

The general critique is usability and readability. Its a relatively difficult site to read, so anything that makes the font easier and the colors less hard on the eyes would increase the sites usability.

Working with css layouts is far more interesting that working with tables and more I have control over everything (maybe too much control for a amateur like myself) but it was a great learning experience.

Making one general file was the what I had in mind originally. You may notice that two pages had an additional "main_style.css" file. I had planned to combine all the common elements into that file but at the end but time ran out on me.

Thanks for the comments, I'm not graphic designer but I'll try to add a little more flare and stick to friendlier fonts on my second site.

Originally Posted by mjlorbet

wow, your ads are huge in comparison to your content.... stop that

that aside, more contrast, larger font... generally, see above

Lol, now that you mention it. I'm promoting them more than I'm promoting my own site! I just wanted to fill up the space I had reserved to the right.

[mjlorbet]

smaller ads = more space for ads (more tastefully sized) and possibly more money too, more ads = more potential for clicks, perhaps they would be better served in a bar at the bottom of the page & do some background fx to make the empty areas seem more full

[Andrew Johnson]

Yes it is.

Re-do your website with better content, better presentation and valid code.

[Apostropartheid]

It's the first time I've had to zoom in to see what I was reading here. Painful.
Stick to clean, legible typefaces like Lucida Sans/Luicda Grande, Verdana and Georgia, at a decent size; no less than say 11-12px, at the very minimum, and that's only if you have a lot of content. I'd also change the color to something nicer which doesn't look like a link (like black or grey, or white in your case)

I'd also change the background, as it's very birth-of-the-web type of thing. A solid color would look more professional if you're looking for the same color scheme, or a gradient or something less like, well, that...

It also looks like you unsucessfully tried to centre that navigation bar at the top?

[pilas14]

Originally Posted by Andrew Johnson

Yes it is.

Re-do your website with better content, better presentation and valid code.

I don't know whether you think you are or not, but you're not being helpful. Just plain out rude to be honest. Constructive criticism is where we offer suggestions and not just shout orders. At least try to be helpful. And when he says it's not constructive, then it's obviously not helping him and you should change what you're saying and not just shove it down everyone's throats again. I really dislike rude people and you're showing remarkable amounts of rudeness. Please be more considerate to those who are trying new things. We all make mistakes but that's no reason to be a jerk.

---

Now, honestly, I did love your idea for the updates to flow upward. I think it's a rather ingenious thing, but it's been overdone. I know WHY you used it - because I'm sure your teacher said you had to have a non-static element and that was the easy answer. In the future, I would come to this forum with the initial assignment and toss around ideas with the creative people here. We have some great ideas, most of which we would never use ourselves. Seems like something that couldn't hurt.

Your background is rather Web 1.0 and it reminds me of something Windows would have as a preloaded background. I would go for one style or another. If you want the grunge look, go for something with unclear lines and lots of texture. Make sure your text color, size and font choice matches the initial look of the layout.

I'm telling you now because someone told me when I first started in this business. Don't ever use that color purple. Add red to it. Add blue to it. But that font is just hard on the eyes sweetie.

The white banner at the top doesn't fit, at all. There are ways to add backgrounds to the frames (on both ends - if you know what I mean) and you should choose something that compliments your background. Black would have worked. Just add bgcolor="#00000" or something like that. I'm not sure what the validating standard is, just choose something that looks nice.

Worry about validation afterwards. Honestly, validation isn't all it's cracked up to be. If I worried about validation, my site wouldn't be whatever it is now. I would be worrying about catering to someone I didn't really care about. It just happens, in my case, that I don't cater to IE users. My navigation is totally unusable to those people. But I found (by demographics) that only .3% of my visitors use IE, so that's an acceptable loss for me.

You made this website for school, and so obviously there are some things which are going to be irreversibly horribly. Like frames. We don't like frames. But if you had to use them you had to use them and it shouldn't be held against you as a designer.

I think you did a very nice job combining the various elements of this page and you have some great links on the side (even though they're too big) and you should keep it up. Keep working on it or start over with some great new ideas. You don't have to throw away a project JUST because you had to do it in school.

Keep up the great work sweetie. <3

[mjlorbet]

relatively though, the common demographic for persons using internet explorer is 66%, as not everyone seems to care about browsers that are more standards based, so refusing to add support for internet explorer is not commonly a wise decision. pilas14, that comment was not directed at you, if this is what you've found your actual distribution to be, then i would agree that it is an acceptable loss.

validation, if not pursued in writing your code is much harder to attain after the fact if you're trying to maintain your styling the way it turns out with invalid code. also, valid code will greatly assist you if you're looking for cross-browser, standards-based, consistent rendering. so work out code that is valid from the start and there will be substantially fewer cross-browser layout issues (not counting things done through script, as those are another animal and validation doesn't apply in the same sense).

that aside, the pointers on the color and layout are top notch.

[Talks_44]

great...website...
considering..your traffic..