Thread: My personal website

I agree with Don about the background. Lighter colors typically make the site feel more cheery and typically is easier when reading text.

Thanks guys..... heh, prolly gonna scrap this layout..... Not because of the criticism, which I found very constructive, but because I know I can do better!

The info about copyrights and all really eased my concerns a bit. Not so much for this website, but for the one at work I'm making..... I've used various scripts I've found on the net.

Interesting comments on pictures.... which was my main concern....

Ok, I've taken your suggestions to heart, and here's what I've come up with thus far: sbenj69.com. This was taking the current suggestions to heart and applying them. I like most of it, except the top graphic, and maybe the shade of green. (Here's what the old site looked like: Click here for old site) On the changes, on the old design, I've also changed the colors on the drop downs and the highlighting of hyperlinks.

Again, your thoughts and opinions are valuable to me, and if you don't like something, don't hold back. After all, this is going to be an extension of me. RR, I didn't plan on making the links on the right into buttons, but if you feel it must be done, I can do it.... jmh, the other pages will have much more content, thus not limiting it to a certain amount of pixels. I was thinking I made up for it in size of pictures to occupy space. Again, if you think this is a major issue, I can do it.

Lastly, I have so far, 2 months experience in web-dev, and while I pick things up fast, I require your expert opinions. After all, I know this is what you guys do.

Fire away..........

I like this one sben
I am glad you changed the fonts for "sbenj.com" on top

Personally i think you can reduce the width of your page as you dont really have that much content.

Originally Posted by micky

Personally i think you can reduce the width of your page as you dont really have that much content.

Yeah, I mentioned that in my first post in this thread. A smaller-width style would good for this site.

I am going to be a critical ass here and tell you that I don't like any of it. None of it flows together. The hand holding the lightning bolt is quite frankly cheesy. The colors do not mesh. You should be using gradients or some sort of line to distinguish between the different colors. It looks like you placed a BG on the page and tossed some content on top of it. I would scrap the entire idea and try to find some other ideas from websites on the web. I like this site for ideas:

Tempate Monster

Micky and JMH, what resolution are you looking at this? I've looked at it at 1024x768 and 1280x1024, and it looked ok to me...... granted, at higher resolutions, it's going to look empty, but if I were to center it and base it on an 800x600 resolution, those with higher resolutions would have a hard time reading anything....

Blarche.... I dunno about scrapping the whole thing because the background doesn't mesh..... wouldn't it be easier to change the background? Yeah, the lightning bolt.... dunno either.... so hard to find good graphics..... I had my doubts about the background and the top graphic (as stated in my last post).... those are easy to change.....

Gradient..... hmmmm...... I mean it's not hard, but will it work below the buttons? I've experimented with gradient before on this page, it was worse than this.......

Benji, I'm using 1280x1024...but there just seems to be too much empty space. By using a smaller width layout and a neutral page color (for outside the content area), the focus will be more easily drawn to the content. Also, everything just seems to be huge. I kinda have to sit away from the screen to focus. It should only look huge on smaller resolutions.