constructive criticism on my website design.

I just created a website and would like some contructive criticism as i a new designer.

 

a link would be nice

 

pm me your link and I'll check it out

 

or PM us.

 

sorry about not stating the site. It is www.trivester.com

 

It's pretty bland and cluttered right now. It looks like you have the right idea in terms of information, you just need to think of a better way to arrange it.

 

I agree with manofmany... I'm seeing some decent content, but really no organization in its presentation. I see menu's that are broken from eachother, different colors, etc. Go with a color scheme of no more than 4 colors, including backgrounds, etc. Sketch something out for the design that works regardless of how much content is there, or limit your content for the front page. Your events part is pushing down part of what appears to be your main menu.

 

Thanks for the replies, i've taken the comments and made some changes thanks again.

 

Puts on the Simon Cowell hat.

The layout is has MAJOR issues on 120dpi/large font machines - with elements running over/atop each-other. I agree with the others that it's a bit of a jumble visually, while the code... well...

STOP USING FRONTPAGE.

You've got an assload of VML doing NOTHING for you, and the code is a bloated disaster from hell. We're talking 107K of HTML for 3.6k of actual CONTENT... WORST CASE I'd say the page should take 13k, and real word I'd be AMAZED to see it cross the 8k mark. You've got TEN TIMES the markup that should be used for such a piss simple design. There's no feasable way to clean up the 139 validation errors in a reasonable amount of time - My advice would be as usual to chuck it ALL, and start over in notepad with clean semantic markup.

 

Deathshadow, I did use a relative of frontpage, that is ms publisher. i used the wusiwug method because i am new to this and don't understand HTML as yet.

 

Would dreamweaver be a good alternative in the interim?

 

What's the url to your site?

 

No. Same damned thing.

 

I agree with deathshadow, but wouldn't you be better off using a cms? Even WordPress would be appropriate in your case, don't think of it just as a mere blogging platform. You'll need to get familiar with css and some xhtml so you can adapt an existing theme to your needs, other than that everything is ready, just copy and paste the content and you are set. I think it's gonna be easier to organize/change/update the site and with the multitude of plugins available you can add functionalities in the future.

 

ditto! Wordpress would probably be a much better option for you at a minimum. Plenty of sites powered by wordpress do not appear in blog formatting.

 

and have as many problems in their code as the crap turned out by WYSIWYGS.

 

I took a look at the wordpress, and i think i would prefer the website interface. I am not sure if a blog would allow me to provide downloading capabilties from the site. Is there any software that could remove the bloat code from wysiwyg websites? i have also started a book for html beginners.

For the those asking the site is trivester.com

 

Hi,
please pm link for review...

Art

 

I've taken some of the advice and remodelled my site. i have found a program called expression web which has done it for me. What i need now is to place a textured or coloured background on which my page seem to float. Any ideas?

www.trivester.com

 

Oh, I have seen one site written with Publisher in a Vector Markup Language... which no browser but IE could see : )

Design-wise... I never saw the first one so I can't say if it's better, but if all the blank areas are going to be filled with content, it may still look cluttered.

First, the little picture on the top is cute-- and dark. As the rest of the page is white, I'd make the footer also dark, to kinda tie the page in visually.

You'll still need something to seperate the different areas visually-- it's not bad to add more space between stuff. Like, your menu at the top. The content doesn't have to hug right up to it (at least, in my old FireFox it's hugging).

If your are building a website, you really have 2 options: get someone who knows to code it for you (using your design or whatever) or learning the stuff the right way and building it yourself. It's been at least 9 months for me learning from ZERO to where I am now-- it's not a fast thing to learn (well, HTML is kinda fast, but the CSS...).

The problem with using a programme to write the page for you is, if you don't know what you're doing, trying to change stuff/fix stuff later gets very difficult. Watching software build a website is like watching a robot dance. They just don't do it very well. You'll find yourself stumbling along in dreambeaver or publisher or whatever and pulling your hair out because some browser makes your site look like crap one day and another the next and it can easily become a nightmare.

If you need a site up fast, either get someone to code it for you or try out one of the pre-made thingies with blogs 'n dogs 'n stuff. This is only until you get your feet under you. I recommend this book:
Build Your Own Web Site The Right Way Using HTML and CSS by Ian Lloyd. It's old enough that it should be sitting at your public library for free (check the link to the website in the Errata seciton, some errors got into the earlier print editions).

He starts at What's HTML and what do I need to write it? to a nice little site (www.bubbbleunder.com). It doesn't turn you into a coding genius, but it gets you well on your way.