Opinions...

Baz_

I would like to know what ye all think about my site, shameless plug and all, but on a design side of things, what can use a bit of improving what can be done without etc, etc. Ye know the drill by now.

tis here

Now just design, not content, and dont laugh...

badboy

I suppose you were inspired by the simple is beautiful motto. I think a number of things could liven up the site.

1) Don't have the text spread 100% across the screen, it's a long read and I could see myself loosing what line I was on while scanning down through it

2) Use any of the page kits on elated and you can't go wrong.

3) One thing positive and impressive thing about your site is the load time. Only one image, being the logo means even Irish webmaster's on dial-up won't have to wait THAT long for it to load

Bard

Sorry, but... design? What design?

Jakob Nielsen would love it.

GoneShootin

we all had to start somewhere

take some design tips from the way a frontpage/dreamweaver etc, get inspriation from way they help the user navigate the site.

other than that keep going, god i remember by first site, what a mess notepad....fun

Enygma

Now I know this post is a bit of a red herring but anyways.
As far as the design goes, what Bard said.
To be honest its a text document with an image and a blue background (sorry no offense )

Perhaps you should think about losing the JS Menu and use a static left/top/right nav instead. To be honest I didn't even know it was a dynamic menu until I read what you wrote.
If you got rid of that you could implement a nice navigation system that would be intuitive and could look nice.
Use more colors, but use only three (I find three complimentary colors can make all the difference). Make you're font one size smaller, you'll fit lots more into the page.
You might want to use some more images but if you're crap at that, like me, be creative with tables and backround colors etc.

Also, from a logical architecture point of view, you've got this blog/news thing going. At the moment there's like 5 or 6 things on the front page. Where is this information going to go when there's 100 or 1000 updates. You should have an archive of what's been said or at least some way for the site to scale. That archive could then be accessible from your new left/right nav.


Perhaps you should think about use a CGI backend. And if you write the backend yourself, you could write a tutorial about it
But there's planty of them out there so you coul easily install something that would fit your needs.

All in all there's a whole load of things that could be done, be creative, mess about with tables and colors especially, add in a few small images to round corners off or whatever and take it from there.

Baz_

Originally posted by Bard
Sorry, but... design? What design?

Nice encouragement Bard, ta.

Baz_

Ta for the helpful answers (prick and enygma, I'm looking at ye).

I was thinking about what prick said alright, about the text being all the way accross the page, and I know it looked bad but I didn't know how to fix that, but enygmas suggestion was a gem, remove the drop down menus and have the overall sections on top, like they are now, and then when sublinks on the left, sounds good. Now, I'll implement it and see if it looks as good as it sounds (doubt it).

About the blog/news thingy (???) I was just going to link to it, as a sort of memorandum of updates, and have some proper news on the front page, like maybe links to newest articles and a small paragraph on what the website is about.

Actually that sounds like a mission statement, and I think I remember reading somewhere that mission statements on websites were not a good thing. Can anyone confirm or deny??

ta for the help, its a think piece.

Baz_

Bard

Originally posted by Baz_


Nice encouragement Bard, ta.

Had I the time (I hadn't!), I'd have written a nice long reply detailing lots of suggestions as to what you could do with the site to implement it in an attractive, well balanced and well designed way.

As it was, I was short on time, as I am now, and could only give a quick and frank critique of the site, and to be honest - there's not much of a 'design' there to comment on.

I didn't mean to be discouraging. The content of the site is very good and very well written... - presentation, of course, counts for a lot these days. If you'd like me to give you a fuller reply with a load of helpful suggestions and recommendations, do let me know. When I said Jacob Nielsen would love it, I wasn't being sarcastic - he would. It's easy to read and to follow and the navigation is simple and painless.

Baz_

much better bard, and yes I would like the aforementioned ideas, and recommendations please.

havok*

Design on paper first,
think about interface design,
content layout,
Mabye design a logo symbol,
Pick ur colour scheme,

Have a look around @ some sites u like and decide what u like (or dislike) about them (quick, ez to use, look's trendy or whatever)

If theres a certin thing u want to copy that on a site, that ur not sure how to do or set up, mail the web waster. Genrally ppl will point u in the right direction.

Bard

Originally posted by Baz_
much better bard, and yes I would like the aforementioned ideas, and recommendations please.

ok - will do ,... but you'll have to remind me... in late January... if you STILL want the input from me then.

I'm totally up the walls with work and other things - barely get 2 minutes to myself.

I don't even have time to finish thi

Pepe LeFrits

I like it, its a bit uh, simplistic but it's quick to load, easy on the eyes and easy to get around.

Do spice it up a little bit though

GoneShootin

I don't even have time to finish thi

lol @ bard

b20uvkft6m5xwg

As someone else pointed out...

Pehaps you should seek to contain & confine your text a little better- ie a 700px wide centered Table w/ all content. - looks fine on both smaller & bigger "res's":)
Also maybe use image files for the horizontal lines as the existing ones colours do not degrade well in older browsers- ie- image w=700px h=2px