Critique and Advice

[Freakish_05]

Good morning everyone.

I've been trying for a the last 6 months to pull some decent web work out of my arse but I don't think its going too well....

Examples Here, Here, Here and Here.

I've recently tried to get to grips with Code Igniter to get out of the habit of nasty procedural code but there are so many hoops to jump through even for simple tasks like getting images to display on the page I'm just about ready to jack that in. And as you can see, my design skills aren't any better.

Maybe I'm being too hard on myself? Do you guys think I should bother continuing with this stuff? Or should I just jack it in, download wordpress and be done with it?

In dispair,
Freakish_05

 

[dan0r2]

Average really for someone your age.

Are you hoping to make a living from freelancing on your own? If so I personally don't see it happening looking at the current work.

I had a quick look at the sites in IE6 and some are messy with features not working. You can force users to view your sites with firefox. You have to cater for all users.

To be a lone freelance developer you have to stand out from the crowd.

Maybe try getting a junior web dev position in a company and gaining more skills and knowledge that way?

Depends what you want to be in life and how much effort your prepared to put in. Theorectically we can all be anything we like...

 

[furnace]

Anyone can learn anything, it just requires the right teacher. But it takes more than 6 months - you cant just "pull a decent one out of your ****"

Also, you can't go into this thinking "I'm going to learn this because I want to make money". IMHO, I think that's where bad web developers come from. The good ones learn for fun (at first anyway). Also you need to get good at it before you can make money from it!

For example, why not make MoshPitWeb a hobby site which you run for fun? Don't make it a portfolio site. Use it to gain experience in making websites and make it into a really cool site.

I think you're jumping in the deep end before you've learnt to swim

Play with designs - look at how other sites do things. What makes a site look good, and how did they make it? You don't even have to turn the design into HTML - just keep it in your image editor, at least you know how to make it then.

Maybe the design program you're using just isn't your cup of tea. I was actually hindered by PhotoShop making rubbish designs, and made much better designs in Fireworks when I discovered it. I only use PS for photo/bitmap editing now, or the odd thing I can't get done in Fireworks.

Make sure you've read tutorials on using the programs like photoshop/fireworks, figuring stuff out for yourself will - 75% of the time - leave you with little bits of the program you don't understand/use properly.

If you see a button on a site that looks cool, figure out how you can copy it and re-create something similar for your own site.

Things like drawing flames are hard to pull off - you're better off using basic shapes to good effect or even stealing a photo of flames from Google images (not for commercial/paid sites though)

Now on to programming...

Regarding PHP; I'm going to say it... I think Code Igniter, or any other package that does stuff for you, is a bad thing unless you're an experience programmer. How do you expect to learn if you're just using someone elses code? I don't care what insecurities it creates or what anyone says, the only real way to learn to make things is making them yourself. So what someone might hack into the site because you made bad code. Figure out how they did it, and fix it! Just keep your site backed up! It's happened to me before and it's only helped me to learn.

When you're writing code, think to yourself "how would I break this?", and if you think of a way to fluff things up, make it so whatever you thought of doesn't fluff it up. You'll miss things, but as time goes on, ways to break things will become more obvious.

HTML/CSS
I'm glad to see you're using this for layouts, rather than tables Can't moan about that! Your HTML is good - although needs some indenting IMO, if you end up with a large page with no indenting, it'll be a barsta - uh, bar stall.. to figure things out without proper indenting.

I think you should try and keep menus in lists where possible, rather than just <a>'s hunched together (look at the menu with no page style).


...so! I think that's pretty much all the advice I can give! That, and don't give up!

edit; I'm liking the motto in your sig But, unfortunately, you do have to cater for IE users unless there's a very good reason not to.

 

[RandomTom]

MASSIVE HINT: USE THE WEB AS INSPIRATION.

I see too many people designing blind, and end up creating geocities-esque sites that scream late 90s, quite similar to yours unfortunately, everyone can use HTML and CSS if they put their mind to it but you need to know about design theory, grids and structure, colour theory and what's in fashion and what works in the design world.

I'm a bit offended by dan0r2's comment 'for someone your age' because although my designs are pretty mediocre at www.upleft.co.uk I'd say it's all about the above points that help.

 

[Shoseki]

Dude, its fully possible that you are more of a coder than a designer.

Perhaps get a job as a back end programmer or coder of someone else's designs?

I'd say my designs suck sometimes too :S

 

[Freakish_05]

Dude, its fully possible that you are more of a coder than a designer.

Very likey TBH, I've never been good at art and design.

Are there any sites I can get templates from to use with smarty or something that I can just throw my nasty procedural PHP code into?

 

[Cheetah Designs]

Very likey TBH, I've never been good at art and design.

Are there any sites I can get templates from to use with smarty or something that I can just throw my nasty procedural PHP code into?

Ditto for me, most of my designs are pretty standard and not 'out of the box' - Clicky!

The best advice i can give is to look at other sites for inspiration.

 

[furnace]

I think you should learn good design though Don't think "ah well I'm just a programmer", try and get to grips with design - don't just forget it.

 

[Shoseki]

I think you should learn good design though Don't think "ah well I'm just a programmer", try and get to grips with design - don't just forget it.

Thats all fine and well, but these things take years, and its not a matter of lining up columns, its the ability to visualise what you want out of a web design and go for it, and playing. Thats not necessarily something you "learn" by mimicking others.

There are reasons why there is such a diverse set of schools for design & art, and computing is pretty much the other end of the spectrum (which is why most websites look pretty similar at the top level).

 

[LazyManc]

Anyone can learn anything, it just requires the right teacher.

Actually I don't think this is strictly true - you can read all the theory books in the world and spend years looking at examples but at the end of the day some peoples brains aren't optimized for certain skills. You can learn something to a passable level but you may never get good at it no matter how much you practice.

The problem with learning web programming rather than say C or Java is that people tend to get caught up with how it looks a lot earlier on, and it distracts from your original goal.

Even though there are some great freelancers / independent developers out there who can do the design and the programming side, you'll find that most larger web teams will have specific designers and coders rather than expecting everyone to do both.

 

[Dureth]

In terms of marketing yourself to prospective customers your 2 blog sites do you no favours. Think about the image that a prospective client will want to see in the person/company they hire.

I'm not saying its bad for a personal site but if your job is to be a website designer/coder then your online prescense must be professional and discrete. Everything you post to the web becomes a potential pitfall when looking for work, every potential client will look you up online, think about what you want them to find.

As others have said concentrate a little on learning design "rules" and colour/layout theory. It's a massive profession in itself however knowing the basics yourself will let your code work with a site rather than fighting against a layout that isn't ever going to look just right.

 

[furnace]

I honestly think anyone can learn anything unless you have learning difficulties or a disability. Some people are naturally better at things, but it doesn't mean others can't learn to do it IMHO..

And yeah, good design does take years to learn. My designs have only gotten to what I would call a "good design" within the last couple of years, and I've been doing this since ~13. But I again, I still think you can learn to make a good design.

 

[Freakish_05]

First I'd like to thank you all for your comments, I really appreciate it.

Based on the advice I got from here and other people, I've gone back to w3schools and learnt XHTML 1.1 Strict (was previously using html 4.01 strict).

This morning I've come up with This which is essetially the re-design of my blog site on a diet.
Most notable point is that I've got rid of that ghastly navbar at the top. I've decided that I'm going to have normal text links down the left hand side and use some javascript to expand the submenus.

Darkness was always my intention with this design as I wanted it to be a reflection of myself as a person. I have no intention of including it in my portfolio, but I will take Dureth's comment under advisement and replace the goofy image with something slightly more mature

Am I heading in the right direction? Also, how do I get i.e. 6 installed? I've got i.e. 7 and whenever it tries to install it throws a wabbly

Assuming I am starting to do things the right way, I plan on heeding furnace's advice and ditching Code Igniter to start building my own View/Controller framework on the fly using Smarty as the base for generating HTML. That is, of course, unless Smarty is frowned upon in the development community?

Edit: I should have checked the design in i.e. first before posting
Edit2: Fixed - Who'd have thought positioning 1 element relatively would cause so much mayhem!!!

My sincere thanks again,
Freakish_05

 

[LazyManc]

Use a <ul> for your navigation - it's a list of links and should be marked up as such. Make sure it works without javascript - read about "progressive enhancement".

Generally most web material is presented in a sans-serif font, it's not a completely hard and fast rule but it tends to look better when there is a lot of close text. If you're set on using a serif font then increase the line-spacing to compensate (and avoid times new roman as it's pig-ugly ).

Get rid of that logo ASAP, it's not pretty. You can create a clean, good looking site using purely text and css, the images can come later if you're not a pro in drawing packages.

<h1> should be used for the main title of your page, not for a secondary element like the navigation title. It does not have to be the first heading in the markup, so you can place it after your nav if need be.

How long have you been coding PHP? Have you got the basics down? Can you write a simple CRUD interface for a database from scratch? If not I would suggest learning this before moving onto more advanced topics like MVC.

Smarty is fine, there's nothing wrong with making use of it. Building your own framework is a little ambitious though if you haven't actually used one before, maybe concentrate on playing with Zend Framework or Symfony once you're up to speed.