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Doug
10-05-2004, 08:36 PM
Well, this is the site that I have invested the most time in making ever. Please take a look at it and tell me what you think...

Halo 2 Hints (http://www.halo2hints.com)

I still have something different in mind for the screenshot section but the site is mostly dont... other than the constant updates that I will have to do for the life of the site.

Thanks

Nick
10-05-2004, 09:03 PM
I don't want to discourage you. And don't take this the wrong way, but this is one of the worst designed sites that I have ever seen.

I would recommend that you study the design of sites here:
http://cssvault.com/gallery.php

They arn't the end all be all to web site design, but it's definitely a start.

Shawn
10-05-2004, 10:08 PM
Don't listen to Nick, I love your site.

LuckyShima
10-05-2004, 10:35 PM
Doug, did you know that you can change the style of your adsense display?

You can give it a black background and change the links to green. This might help it blend in better and encourage people to click (thinking it is a natural part of your site), or maybe the way you have it stands out so strongly that it attracts people anyway.

James
10-05-2004, 11:03 PM
I'd say you should revamp the layout to make it more like gaming sites like ign.com and gamespot.com rather than world-of-nintendo.com

Nick
10-06-2004, 12:14 AM
Don't listen to Nick, I love your site.

I'm not trying to be mean. I'm sure he spent a lot of time on the site, and good on him for it. If he wants my honest opinion on what I think of the design though, I can't say that I love it. It has some serious design flaws.

However, I will say that it is an improvement over www.strange-facts.com.

My opinion though, is that the design needs to be worked on. And that link I gave above is really a great place to start.

ozgression
10-06-2004, 12:27 AM
I'm not trying to be mean. I'm sure he spent a lot of time on the site, and good on him for it. If he wants my honest opinion on what I think of the design though, I can't say that I love it. It has some serious design flaws.

Yeah, I agree. It isn't great...
________
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LuckyShima
10-06-2004, 06:21 AM
I think you are being a bit harsh. I agree with you about 'strange-facts', that website certainly has some problems, but Halo seems ok.

It uses the official logo quite well (even though this could cause legal problems), has excellent colour contrast with the black and green, attractive overall look (apart from the wrong color with the adsense). Maybe "home" link should be up the top and there should be a rollover on the links to make sure the green links are distinguished from the normal text. Navigation itself seems ok.

There are a couple of things that I don't like or think could be improved, but overall I think it is a good job, and if I was into Halo 2 it would be a site I would want to explore, I wouldn't be getting uptight about the design.

Some things I would do to improve it:

1/ I don't like the way on the index page the row with the "News" box takes up so much vertical space. I would put this "news" button in a box in the middle column and raise the three columns up to below the introductory text.

2/ make a small version of the logo and repeat it on the inside pages up in the top left or something (with a secret home page link;) ? ) to give the pages some continuity

3/ put a rollover on the menu items. this is not difficult, you just have to learn how to use a style sheet, so where you say <a href="vehicles.html">VEHICLES</a> you code it as <a class="menuitems" href="vehicles.html">VEHICLES</a>

then you have to write a style as:

a.menuitems {color:green; text-decoration:none;}
a.menuitems:link {color:green;}
a.menuitems:active {color:green;}
a.menuitems:hover {color:red; text-decoration:underline;}

where "green" is the hex value of the color you are using ( e.g. #999999)

and you put this inside the head:

<head>
<style type="text/css">
a.menuitems {color:green; text-decoration:none;}
a.menuitems:link {color:green;}
a.menuitems:active {color:green;}
a.menuitems:hover {color:red; text-decoration:underline;}
</style>

</head>

4/ put the home link at the top, this is just normal practice.

Doug, is this written in html? If it is you might have to think about learning ASP if the site is on a windows server or PHP if it is on a linux server. This will make programming much easier and give you much more power as a programmer.

If you use one of these languages you can just write the menu once and then code it so it is included in all the pages just from this one place, without having to use frames.

It takes a while to learn but if you want to fool around with websites it is something you really must know.

Apart from all that, great improvement over the earlier site and the hard work is starting to pay off. Well done.

Chris
10-06-2004, 06:53 AM
Entertainment sites in general are flashier and better designed. If you want to compete at their level you need a comparable look. Even if you just bought a $50 template from Template Monster.

incka
10-06-2004, 08:26 AM
Don't listen to Nick, I love your site.


No need to be sarcastic.

Doug
10-07-2004, 07:51 PM
Thanks for the reviews. I realize the site isn't anthing special but I will be constantly changing it. As for strange-facts... that was kind of a disaster. That originally started out with my doing the research on the information and my friend designing the site. I guess he likes frames and flash where as I dont really like frames and not so much flash either. I went ahead and redid the whole home page of strange-facts but he said he didnt like it so I told him to do it... that was 4 weeks ago. I think I am going to try to salvage that site because it doesnt really look like he is going to do anything. Especially since he found about about the halo site so now he is making a metal gear solid 3 site....

Thanks for all the tips LuckyShima