building my first site for someone comment on design and need some advice

Martin_Man · 11 Jun 2009 at 21:11

Hey guys

This is the first time im creating a site for someone other then myself. My dad's friend is offerening me £100 to build up a site for his business which is a project manager. I was just wondering if someone could comment so far on the colours and layout aspect.

Click here

i need some advice now...

when it comes to getting hostage and domain do i have to pay for it or does the person who want me to build it have to pay for it?

Thanks

Martin

reflux · 11 Jun 2009 at 21:17

Looks OK; but you might want to brighten the red a bit to give you some better contrast against the black.

Also you've spelt 'management' and 'interiors' wrong

Martin_Man · 11 Jun 2009 at 21:22

reflux said:
Looks OK; but you might want to brighten the red a bit to give you some better contrast against the black.

Also you've spelt 'management' and 'interiors' wrong

Bad start lol thanks

Well I chose that red as that’s the colour of there company logo. Could it be possible to change the background? Lighter or darker?

Draeger · 11 Jun 2009 at 21:27

Not keen on the colour combo and the design doesn't grab me but that's just my opinion.

Martin_Man said:
when it comes to getting hostage and domain do i have to pay for it or does the person who want me to build it have to pay for it?

Generally you factor in domain name purchase and hosting to the initial quote.

Then an annual fee is charged that will cover your hosting fees and domain name renewal. That's the way I do it anyway. Included in this fee I usually offer any modest updates to the site, text or image changes etc. If you are perhaps going to be doing this regularly you might want to draw up a simple contract that you can use between you and the client. Just covers yourself for anything that could crop up after the site goes live at a later date.

kkbigal · 11 Jun 2009 at 21:28

I think you've done a good job there

Perhaps use a more contrasting text colour than the black though.

Martin_Man · 11 Jun 2009 at 21:41

changing it to white

Draeger · 11 Jun 2009 at 21:45

That certainly stands out a lot better. I would suggest going for a smaller sized font though, that looks too big to me?.

I don't know why but I really like the simplicity of your logo at the top btw. I'd say the "interiors" part should be moved slightly over to the left towards the "e" in "Cove" though?. Looks a bit too far away. :cool:

Martin_Man · 11 Jun 2009 at 21:53

Draeger said:
That certainly stands out a lot better. I would suggest going for a smaller sized font though, that looks too big to me?.

I don't know why but I really like the simplicity of your logo at the top btw. I'd say the "interiors" part should be moved slightly over to the left towards the "e" in "Cove" though?. Looks a bit too far away.

ok working on it now....

hows it now?

Thanks for your advice earlier I get what you mean but once you’ve created the site shouldn’t everything be passed onto the company including domain and hostage?

what do you mean "interiors" part should be moved slightly over to the left towards the "e" in "Cove" ?

kkbigal · 11 Jun 2009 at 21:59

Looking good

Another suggestion would be to just move the black tabs with "Home" written on them slightly up, so they fully join with the black bar and look like proper tabs.

Martin_Man · 11 Jun 2009 at 22:02

I have actually done something even better and created navy bars instead. I just learnt how to do it and it seem’s so much easier to control and maintain

Draeger · 11 Jun 2009 at 22:05

Martin_Man said:
ok working on it now....

hows it now?

Thanks for your advice earlier I get what you mean but once you’ve created the site shouldn’t everything be passed onto the company including domain and hostage?

what do you mean "interiors" part should be moved slightly over to the left towards the "e" in "Cove" ?

Looking better now the font size has been scaled down a bit. :cool:

Where you have "interiors" in the main logo at the top, to my eye it needs moved slightly over to the left nearer to the "e" in "Cove". Not by much, just a small amount, as below :-

Don't pass everything over to the company, no. Because if something goes seriously wrong with the site online, their first port of call will be you to fix it.

So you need access to it not only for that reason but for any updates to the site that may be required. You need to be able to FTP the files up and down to the server hosting and its much quicker and less hassle if you take care of that end of things.

kkbigal · 11 Jun 2009 at 22:08

Yep - looks good mate

One think I've just noticed - it looks like you're using PNG images with alpha transparencies for the background images. These are not going to work in Internet Explorer 6 because it's a crap browser and doesn't support PNGs with transparency; people using IE6 will see some horrid dithering effect.

If I was you, I'd just change the images to have the same grey background as the main page so they blend in and won't have this problem

*Edit*

An idea for when you've finished the deisgn and it's ready to go - consider signing up for a Google analytics account so you can track who visits your site; should be useful for the management

- www.google.com/analytics
It's dead simple to use and comes with full instructions on how to get it working. Once you've signed up for an account, all you have to do is paste about 3 or 4 lines of pre-generated code into the pages you want to track and hey-presto!

Martin_Man · 11 Jun 2009 at 22:15

Draeger said:
Looking better now the font size has been scaled down a bit.

Where you have "interiors" in the main logo at the top, to my eye it needs moved slightly over to the left nearer to the "e" in "Cove". Not by much, just a small amount, as below :-

Don't pass everything over to the company, no. Because if something goes seriously wrong with the site online, their first port of call will be you to fix it.

So you need access to it not only for that reason but for any updates to the site that may be required. You need to be able to FTP the files up and down to the server hosting and its much quicker and less hassle if you take care of that end of things.

Ok I shall sort out the text

I get your point; I shall set it all up in my name and charge an annual fee.

Yep - looks good mate

One think I've just noticed - it looks like you're using PNG images with alpha transparencies for the background images. These are not going to work in Internet Explorer 6 because it's a crap browser and doesn't support PNGs with transparency; people using IE6 will see some horrid dithering effect.

If I was you, I'd just change the images to have the same grey backgackground as the main page so they blend in and won't have this problem

Thanks I never knew that I shall sort that out all tomorrow as it will take to long now.

This may be something really simple but I was just wondering, where I got my nav bar at the top and when you scroll over it nothing happens. I want the text to smoothly fade dark gray. How can I achieve this?

Martin_Man · 11 Jun 2009 at 22:20

kkbigal said:
Yep - looks good mate

An idea for when you've finished the deisgn and it's ready to go - consider signing up for a Google analytics account so you can track who visits your site; should be useful for the management - www.google.com/analytics
It's dead simple to use and comes with full instructions on how to get it working. Once you've signed up for an account, all you have to do is paste about 3 or 4 lines of pre-generated code into the pages you want to track and hey-presto!

when you say useful for the management are you talking about my client?

Draeger · 11 Jun 2009 at 22:23

Martin_Man said:
This may be something really simple but I was just wondering, where I got my nav bar at the top and when you scroll over it nothing happens. I want the text to smoothly fade dark gray. How can I achieve this?

Do you mean "mouseover text"?. So that when a viewer hovers their mouse cursor over the nav bar text it changes colour?.

Also, just out of interest, are you hand coding the site using Notepad or similar or using a WYSIWYG Editor like Dreamweaver CS3?.

Draeger · 11 Jun 2009 at 22:26

kkbigal said:
An idea for when you've finished the deisgn and it's ready to go - consider signing up for a Google analytics account so you can track who visits your site; should be useful for the management - www.google.com/analytics
It's dead simple to use and comes with full instructions on how to get it working. Once you've signed up for an account, all you have to do is paste about 3 or 4 lines of pre-generated code into the pages you want to track and hey-presto!

Good point, I would say also take a look at Google Webmaster Tools :-

http://www.google.com/webmasters/

DJMK4 · 11 Jun 2009 at 22:28

Nice one brother

Martin_Man · 11 Jun 2009 at 22:28

Draeger said:
Do you mean "mouseover text"?. So that when a viewer hovers their mouse cursor over the nav bar text it changes colour?.

Also, just out of interest, are you hand coding the site using Notepad or similar or using a WYSIWYG Editor like Dreamweaver CS3?.

yes once you hit the box the text fades to gray or if you hit the text the the text fades gray one or the other.

to be honest, i am using Dreamweaver CS3 but i've learned to actually code most of the stuff on my own now. Whenever i need help or want to quickly view my work i can. Is this a good or bad thing?

kkbigal · 11 Jun 2009 at 22:29

Martin_Man said:
This may be something really simple but I was just wondering, where I got my nav bar at the top and when you scroll over it nothing happens. I want the text to smoothly fade dark gray. How can I achieve this?

I'm assuming you mean the tabs and you want the white text to change to grey?

try adding something like this to your style sheet:

Code:

.innernav a:link
{
      color:white;
}
.innernav a:hover
{
      color:gray;
}

You can change the "gray" to hex colour like #EEEEEE for a specific shade

Dreamweaver is a great tool - it gives you the ability to edit visually and see the changes it makes to the code, which I think is a great way of learning the actual coding. If you use it often enough, you'll eventually work the other way round, typing in code and then checking the visual output

Martin_Man · 11 Jun 2009 at 22:31

Draeger said:
Good point, I would say also take a look at Google Webmaster Tools :-

http://www.google.com/webmasters/

ok i shall look into both of these and let you know. For now tho i'll bookmark them as i'm to tired and lazy to read through them

I'll let you know how it goes