Website Review needed.. (1 Viewer)

[DeathStar1]

Wasn't sure where to put this one, but here goes.

I'm planning on advertising it soon, but I need reviews on how easy it is to navigate, message board setup, especially message board colors and how they appear on different monitor setups, etc.

I did have a message board skin, but it was encoded in a way that vbulletin couldn't import re:Not xml, so I had to redoo the board, but the sights graphics where done by a web designer, and it's good enough for a year or two .

www.shreddersdojo.com is the site.

 

[Chris Lockwood]

When I click any of the links under News, the pages it goes to look odd, because there is a post in the middle that takes up only about 1/3 of the width of the screen, with a huge gray empty area on both sides of it.

Then there are several little boxes below that (posting rules, active users, etc.)- I wonder if they are supposed to be beside the post.

This is viewed with IE 6. In Firefox it looks a lot better, since the post takes up 3/4 of the screen width.

 

[Alon Goldberg]

I'm using Firefox 1.5, with a screen resolution of 1280x1024. Here's my constructive criticism.

The page looks a bit odd with so much real estate available on the left and right sides of the page (approx 2" on each side!). This will make forum postings very tight and frustrating.

Also, the background colour on the main page is black, but when I click on a menu feature it changes to red, which doesn't make for a smooth interface transition. I'd recommend keeping BGCOLOR consistent.

Some of the text in the forum is white on grey - this isn't legible.

I don't see a link to navigate back to the home page.

 

[DeathStar1]

Hmm, sigh. I see what you mean. Everything looks fine, and images are popping up OK in Firefox, but in Internet Explorer, it's a mess

 

[DeathStar1]

I spent about 40 minutes redoing the entire page and image set.

Hows that look?

 

[Alf S]

The header looks cool..but the whole left panel, and center jammed together links looks bland..generic text, all shifted too far left....

Maybe you can jazz it up in that area....

 

[Andrew Pratt]

I'm not a fan of the cyan color in the forum log in area and I agree that the headers should be the same width as the forum body where possible. What's going to go into the red bar on the top left hand corner?

 

[Lew Crippen]

It is much better in Safari (also) since you made the change Neil.

I am not a fan of your color scheme, but I’m sure that is personal preference.

 

[Scott L]

I remember your other web sites Neil. You've definitely come a long way and the improvement really shows. Good job

 

[Chu Gai]

Fix your spelling mistakes.

 

[Holadem]

There has to be a more attractive font than Times New Roman for the items on the front page.

--
H

 

[DeathStar1]

Ive tried other ones, but nothing else has looked interesting enough, so I just stuck with a basic font. I know I can't please everyone with the colors, but just so long as they arn't too bright that they cause headaches, that's what I'm looking out for.

 

[DeathStar1]

I hate just plain old black and white, it just looks so boring as it's on alot of websites out there, so I try to add some kind of color into it. That, and as a kid, all our cars where ALWAYS white, or tan, rooms where always painted white, so I'm kind of tired of looking at it .

I'm thinking of adding a background gradient, but I don't know how to get it to cover the entire screen without adding a big ass gif file in there.

 

[Lew Crippen]

I checked again and I have less objection to the colors now that the borders are not so big. Since you have so much art work and so many screen captures, the boldness of the colors, combined with the wide margins clashed with what you were presenting.

Much better with less area given over to margins.

 

[Andrew Pratt]

Try Trebuchet MS as its a nice smooth looking font. As for the gradient you could build a suitable one in an image editor and then take a thin sliver of it to use on the website...you just need to stretch it out to fill the area.

 

[Lew Crippen]

Barrels is misspelled and you need a space between ‘of’ and ‘you’.

I could go on, but I’m sure that you get the idea. I have two suggestions: get someone to read what you write before you make it a part of your site, or write in a word processor with a spelling checker. Microsoft Word is pretty good and it will also help with your grammar (although it is far from perfect).

But even using a spell checker won’t save you from some types of letter transposition such as writing form when you meant to write from. You really need to reread what you wrote in order to catch this kind of error.

Good luck, and I hope that you took this criticism in the spirit that it was intended, which was to be helpful.

 

[DeathStar1]

Yeah, I know. I'm going to have to go back and redoo all of them. Keep in mind, though, that when I originally wrote these, I was doing them fast and furious, just to get the completed, becuase I knew if I stopped halfway through, it might take another month before I had time to get back to them.

You can especially see that in the comic book reviews. I was so bored th at I just put short incomplete sentances up on some of them just to get them done.