Website, comment so far and improvement ideas!

Stellios

Stellios

Stellios

Soldato
Joined
27 Aug 2004
Posts
17,108
Location
Geordieland
www.tmet73.co.uk

My mate has asked me to create him a website. Im not the best for creating websites and this is only my second proper site. Anyone got and ideas what i can do to improve it or to help make it look more professional.

Ive got very little PHP experience, hence most of it being HTML.

Any critisism very welcome, i need to know what im doing wrong.

Thanks
 
Hi

What do you plan to do, I get the impression that you are going to sell srvers, if so I would design it a lot different.

The first thing I would change is that Welcome text at the tope, change the font to something like Arial, Times New Romans looks horrid/

I personally think the red stands out a mile, i dont like it, pehaps just scrap the whole border.

The buttons are ok, but I am sure they are default in dreamweaver, if it is for professional use it looks a bit unprofessional using default buttons.
 
Stellios said:
Ive got very little PHP experience, hence most of it being HTML.
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I'll just clear up this bit for you :)

HTML is a markup language - "Between these tags is a paragraph: <p>hello world</p>" - so it's not really a programming language as such. It just gives content some structure.

PHP on the other hand is a programming language, so for example...."If it's Thursady, let's output "<p>It's Thursday today!"</p> to the page" - in other words, it spits out HTML as a result of variables, input and so on. It can be used to produce dynamic pages whose content changes based on variables, conditions and so on.

You don't need PHP to make a website because PHP doesn't "make websites" - infact you can use PHP and never produce a website, because it's a good programming language in its own right (sort of).

"Websites" consist of the content, the HTML to organise that content by wrapping it in tags (<p>, <h1> and so on), and then CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to tell the browser what the different tags (elements) should look like.

In terms of learning web design, I'd take a look at W3Schools for some nice guides. But before that, I'd change the font from Times New Roman, add some more graphics, make the header image more engaging, and write some content. Yes - do the content first, *then* design the website. In my opinion, anyway :)

Al has some good info here which I think also applies to you, and if you search this forum you'll also find others in your situation and you should be able to gleam some useful info from the posts :)
 
Some of it i am planning on changing, when i get time the crappy flash buttons which are dreamweaver defaults will be made into rollover images and the text at the top is only where while i can do something with it. At the minute all the text is just what dreamweaver defaults to.

At the minute its just a basic template, i just wanted to get some views on it before spending the rest of the day on it.

Yeah, it is a small server hosting company that im creating the site for.
 
A styled list is the best way to do navigation like that. It won't take very long to do.

The fonts need some consideration too.

bump this thread when you've got some content.
 
Thanks for the reply Beansprout :)

Ill certainly have a read of those links you gave me, thanks muchly for those :)

So far, the only reason that the site has no content is because my mate hasnt given me any yet :o Im going to get it off him wen he gets in from work at 4 and try to get as much there as possible. I do agree that you should do the content first, my problem is i dont have any as of yet.

Also, thanks for clearing HTML up for me, whilst ive been at college my lecturer always called it a programming language, but he was about as useful as a chocolate poker sometimes.

CSS is something ive never really had to deal with, so ill have a read through those links and have a go at using it :)
 
Trigger said:
Indeed because the PHP coding for the contact form is some I did for you for another site :p

Like the site design though :)
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I was going to say that, but i couldnt remember who it was that coded it for me :( Got a memory like a sieve sometimes.

I only used it because i had it off my last site, i hope your OK with me using it again? If not ill take it off.
 
Stellios said:
I was going to say that, but i couldnt remember who it was that coded it for me :( Got a memory like a sieve sometimes.

I only used it because i had it off my last site, i hope your OK with me using it again? If not ill take it off.
Click to expand...

Haha, course not, it's absolutley fine mate :) Would definatley look at some CSS though to do your formatting so you can get rid of those tables. w3schools would be your best place to start :cool:
 
OK thanks :)

Yeah, gonna check out CSS coding and have a shot at it, but ill do it another day as ive been on solid since 1 so need a break :)

-Flash buttons replaced by rollovers
-Content added bar a few pages
-Had a play around with the headings, ariel seems to look the best. Changed colour on it also.


Im not creating the content for the order page, thats gonna be done by someone else as he wants an online order system.
 
The colour scheme doesn't work very well in my opinion, there's way too much contrast there - black, red, orange, yellow, light grey, dark grey and white :eek:

Some ideas/comments:
  • Reduce the overall contrast, use colours that are similar to eachother, and don't use very bright or saturated colours, e.g. pure red.
  • A black background for the main page container gives a feeling of emptiness to the page. White text on a black background doesn't look good either.
  • Don't cut the page up with lots of borders. Possibly make them thinner and less obstructive as well.
  • Make sure the padding and margins for divs/cells are consistent and tidy.
  • Try not to use a lot of different colours; come up with a colour scheme and stick to it, i.e. one colour for headers, another for content etc.
  • Change the link colour from its default, it looks very ugly on black!
  • Change the box on the welcome page - the text is rather difficult to read.

Just suggestions of course, but it would make the site look nicer in my opnion.

Anyway, that's all I can think of at the moment, but I'm sure someone like iCraig could give you much better advice than I could :p
 
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