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Site critique requested.

jeremy.king

jeremy.king

macrumors 603
Original poster
Jul 23, 2002
5,479
1
Holly Springs, NC
Hello all,

So out sick from work yesterday, so I finished my website redesign. My first pass at table-less design (well, as much as I could control). Just wanted any comments on look and feel and whatever floats your boat.

Please one visitor at a time, my home webserver is really struggling with my site and some portal software I am running that seems to want all the CPU cycles. Anyone use Liferay?

Link is
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good use of CSS.

The design looks nice although it may not have enough color. Personally I think it is fine.

The embossing of "Jeremy Ron King" in the header picture looks bad IMO. Make the text readable, but don't make it too stylized. Same goes for "a view in the life of a King."

Your header is colorful and the rest of you site isn't so it makes the header stand out too much IMO.

I think it looks really good though, and you used CSS quite nicely. I didn't know about that IE5 hack for centering a div... I've been using negative margins on my sites.

Keep up the good work,

scem0
 
Thanks for being honest. I too am not happy with my header. I love the photo I used (taken by me) but couldn't come up with some text I liked. I'll work on it.

Anyone else?
 
Tried to get in earlier, but couldn't...scem0 must've been using the one connection. ;)

I pretty much concur with scem0 - good use of CSS and structural HTML. Could use some color and a definite header redesign. Not sure about that huge JS script for the random image - I'd do that server-side, but that's just me.

My one suggestion is to find a color scheme/header image you like and use that palette/theme throughout. Right now it's a bit too disjointed between the orange header, green navigation rollovers, and blue/purple text, icons and search box.

Good luck! :)
 
Nice site. :) I'm of two minds on the color scheme. I admit it's not glaringly obvious that the colors are related, but they basically are. I'm not sure how important it is.

I agree about the banner. It's a nice picture, but really, the name should have jumped out at me, and it didn't. The title's there, yes, but I wasn't thinking, "Hey, I'm on the Jeremy Ron page!" when I loaded it, which is something you'd want people to think, I'd think.

Um, are you planning to link the Photos, Software, and Tips & Tricks on the homepage? Because the first thing I did was to try and click one, and it's not linked.

Edit: Oops, yeah, I hadn't paid attention to the rollover being green. I'm not going to attempt to advise on rollover color, though, because I really hate trying to figure out how to make colors work with each other and with the background.
 
I don't know if you know any PHP, but you could write a very simple PHP script to do the random image thing and it'd be server-side :).

I made one for the computer club at my high school, take a look at my code:
Code: 
<?php $x = rand(1,5);
echo "http://emoonline.com/img/header/";
echo $x;
echo ".jpg";
?>

That is about as simple as a program can be. There are 5 header images in a folder called "header" on my server, named "1.jpg", "2.jpg"... "5.jpg". This script simply tells the server to put "http://emoonline.com/img/header/", a random number between 1 and 5, and then ".jpg". That way I get a random image for the header each time.

Just add that script to your HTML and it looks a lil' like this:
Code: 
<div id="img">
    <img src="<?php $x = rand(1,5);
echo "http://emoonline.com/img/header/";
echo $x;
echo ".jpg";
?>" alt="header image" style="z-index: 9;">
</div>

Easy, server-side randomization.

However it gets a little more complicated with images in different folders, and with different file names.

Still very easy to do though.

Good Luck,

scem0
 
The javascript is for a browser safe mouseover for pictures with descriptions longer than 75 characters. The random image is done with Gallery's block-random.php script.

Thanks for the input. I'll see what I can do with the header.
 
I changed web hosts, so the site is mucho faster! I also changed the header graphic, but since I have no sense of color, does it blend into the content more?

Thanks for the input people, I love criticism!
 
kingjr3 said:
Thanks for the input people, I love criticism!
Click to expand...

ok, then here I go.

1. Your site seems to be too busy. Not that you have alot of content, but each element is competing for attention. My eye doesn't know what to focus on. Prioritize and then re-organize the elements. Create a logical pattern for the eye to follow.

2. Header graphic- the color of the text seems out of left field, try pulling one of the colors from the sky, the font is not very emotional or dynamic.

3. Rewrite the welcome copy. It goes from "my" to "us" to "I" and "my".


Design is a bitch, ain't it?!?
 
makisushi said:
ok, then here I go.

1. Your site seems to be too busy. Not that you have alot of content, but each element is competing for attention. My eye doesn't know what to focus on. Prioritize and then re-organize the elements. Create a logical pattern for the eye to follow.
Click to expand...

Would it help to make the search box grey instead of blue/purple?

makisushi said:
2. Header graphic- the color of the text seems out of left field, try pulling one of the colors from the sky, the font is not very emotional or dynamic.
Click to expand...
Believe it or not, that color is out of the header image. Please do suggest a better color :D

makisushi said:
3. Rewrite the welcome copy. It goes from "my" to "us" to "I" and "my".
Click to expand...
Sometimes I forget I am married :D Its only been 3 years, you'd think I would have this down by now!

makisushi said:
Design is a bitch, ain't it?!?
Click to expand...
Yes, dang it! I am a programmer, what the hell do I know about design...obviously nothing!
 
kingjr3 said:
Would it help to make the search box grey instead of blue/purple?
Click to expand...
I think the better option is to move it to the bottom. It isn't the reason people are visitng your site.

kingjr3 said:
Believe it or not, that color is out of the header image. Please do suggest a better color :D
Click to expand...
hehe...it could be my monitor, but the text looks yellowish to me. The sky gives me an overall impression of pink, purple and blue.


kingjr3 said:
Sometimes I forget I am married :D Its only been 3 years, you'd think I would have this down by now!
Click to expand...
Yikes...LOL make sure your wife doesn't see this comment...


kingjr3 said:
Yes, dang it! I am a programmer, what the hell do I know about design...obviously nothing!
Click to expand...
Probably about as much programming as I know.

I noticed many fishing pics on your site. I am an avid fly fisher, do you ever get into that?
 
makisushi said:
I noticed many fishing pics on your site. I am an avid fly fisher, do you ever get into that?
Click to expand...

I grew up in MN - you know the land of 100000000000 lakes - and now that I have settled in Southeast WI - aka the land of 10 lakes, I have considered taking up fly fishing. Mostly for the two big runs (Spring Steelies and Fall Salmon) in the Root River, not too far from me. The biggest issue is the cost of the gear, so once i get the extra pennies, I will probably take it up then.

Anyways, thanks for the feedback. I will try to get some updates in tonight.
 
Seems like at one time you had a cutout image of yourself in the background. At least I think that was you.

Anyway, if it was you, I liked the image. It gave the page some spunk. As I remember, a lot of people said it sucked. And perhaps it did, but it was fun. Not every Web site should look like a corporate, sanitized portal.

Otherwise, I could knit pick, but I won't. It's ten times better designed than the majority of personal Web sites I visit. s.n.goat
 
superninjagoat said:
Seems like at one time you had a cutout image of yourself in the background. At least I think that was you.
Click to expand...

Are you referring to this image? I liked it a lot, about the only clever thing I figured out how to do in Photoshop, but I couldn't find a home in the new site for it. I haven't had much time to put into the site, but I will.

I am really trying to focus on work and learning Obj-C so I can write some killer apps for the mac.
 

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I don't think so. I believe it was a yellow shirt and the perspective was from above. I could be FAR off. More than I remember a particular image, I remember the look and feel. And that's what I liked. It was ballsy and fun.

You have to excuse me. It was a few months back, and I was critiquing a lot of sites in the forums at the time. I'll search the forums and see what I come up with. s.n.goat
 
I looked back at my posts and your posts containing Web or site. I didn't come up with anything. Could be that I'm nuts. That's probably it.
 
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