Preserved Topic: Site Check...

Hey folks check out this site give me some feed back please.
http://www.xtremeoz.cjb.net

Thanks,
-BubbaGump

Do you want the good news or the bad news first?

...well, since you can't respond to me before I start this, I'll start with the bad news and move on to the good. <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">

• Lets get one thing clear to everyone: blue text on a med. grey background is virtually unreadable to most people. The gambit of colors there is very close to one another. So, in the case of the text "X-TREME OZ" I would change it to something else. I realize you want to set it apart from the rest of the text, but blue ain't the way to go for it.
• I'd take the bolding off of the top text. On a med. grey, it almost gets blurry.
• Your "logo" at the top is pixelated; ie you've got edges that aren't clean. Take it back into PS and fix that. You'll thank me for it.
• Though orange and blue are opposites on the color wheel, and they make wonderful contrasts...orange text on dk. blue background scares children. I'll leave that up to you if you want to change it. In any case, all the links on the warm gray in orange are completely unreadable.
• The bevel on the "Screen Shot of the Week" is too blurred, doesn't fit in with the feel of the rest of the site. If you are using PS' built-in bevel, take the blur down to at least 2 pixels, perhaps 1.
• I dunno if it's just me, but everything in a border makes me hope that I don't ever tough the site in reality--very pointy.
• I appreciate the clean feel of the site. It really lends itself to content over pretty-pictures. I like that in a site.
• You give off a very a propos feel to the site. It's not pretentious in any way, and again, I appreciate that a lot.

...so there you go!

I found your site to be pretty 'average'. Thats not to say bad, just nothing special going on in your design. the layout is plain but I guess functional. If this site is for gaming primarily, I would go a bit more adventurous, as the majority of your audience will be fellow gamers, which means you can target your layout with them in mind.

All in all theres nothing wrong with it but nothing that I could get excited about either. A website like this is definantely a very personal type of thing, so I would say be a bit more daring with your design.

~Vp~

Thanks for the great comments. I agree with you on a lot of what you said.

I agree about all the text I need to do something about that? This is just a game site I do to keep my skills up..

About the Bevel I wanted it to be soft for some reason it just seem like the thing to do at the time. But now when I do sites I like the bevel to be a little sharper.

Not sure I agree about the background colors. I know the rules but sometimes I think it looks ok. I under stand the med mixed with darks or other meds can be hard to read for a lot of people but I think that has a lot to do with the way their monitors are set.

The site is one of my first to do using nothing but Fireworks 3 and Dreamwever 3. I use Photoshop a lot but when it came to this site I thought I would try something else.

Some things I know look pixilated but I had to do that to keep the site size down a little.

I did another site also, but I?m sure you would say almost the same thing as it?s exactly set up the same way. Feel free to look though I have not messed with it for a long time. www.performance-concepts.com/halflife

If you happen to stop by the Performance Concepts site please turn back as its really bad.. LOL I have not been able to spend a lot of time on it. And I am currently re-designing the whole site in Flash. The PC site was truly my first site? (Laughs)

Thanks,
-BubbaGump

Also here is another site I did last night. What do you thing about the colors? If you would like to see more pages click on the pict of the satellite and the pict of the network cables. When I decide on the color scheme I will add the working links and more content. This is just a brainstorm site.
www.digitalxcellence.com/

Also if you don?t like the color scheme what would you suggest?

Thanks again,
-BubbaGump

Well many of the problems twitch pointed out I didnt have, maybe he just has a better monitor. I agree your site is pretty average. Theres nothing that overlly stands out to me. Its a clean and average site. Not to great. Theres a few jaggies on the main image, thats about it. Clean that up and maybe take some time to check out twitchs complaints.

Thanks Jestah,

I agree with a lot of what twitch said. Yeah most people really like the site; just recently it has become popular with the Half-Life Gaming community. That?s why I posted it here to see what real web designer?s thought of it. It?s definitely not my best work but one of my fastest. Even though it has a basic look to it the site does have some advanced scripting, the first page, member?s page and clan war page is done using ColdFusion as the site is really a database driven site.

Read my past posts above and check out the other sites I did and let me know what you think also.

Thanks,
-BubbaGump

you did'nt use the colors well enough as they said, I can feel it,but I can't really give you any comments on this part, cuz I can never get colors to match well.

the layout is neat.

Well, keeping in that I am a jerk and wish to propogate that, I'll go ahead and put together some comments on the other two (2) sites you put up here, starting with the half-life site...

• Putting aside all commentary about "plain design" or "completely uninteresting side-bar navigation," keep these pointers in mind.
• I don't like how all the text is bolded. Historically, we bold what is important. When everything is said to be important, then whats the point of having value to a word or phrase?
• Your color choices here are very standard for the gaming community, and I appreciate it for that. Otherwise, sat'd yellow on gray would make me vomit. But it's still a good combo. For your own edification, it is said that when comparing two colors, it is best to put them on a medium gray background--the gray pulls out the true hue, as opposed to the two interacting and bringing out eachother in themselves. If you get that, you win a cookie.
• The one, single phrase, "[BIO]--BubbaGump--" is ... awful. Colors like that make me wretch.
• Again, you've utilized opposite colors (orange for the buttons, blue for the rollover). This is, again, not a bad thing. I just warn everyone about high-contrast imaging. YOu'll often get yourself in trouble later on.
• Quickie: It's "GAMING" not "GAMMING."
• I like that the table is split into three colums, with text on two of them. It makes sense to do that if you're going to completely segregate your text; ie, this column is about purple, and this column is about communist Russia. So, I guess I can handle it here.
• The water-marked, beveled logo for half-life is nice up in the corner...i guess. I don't know why I don't like it, so I won't even dare to ask you to change it.

And now on to Digital Xcellence...*shudder*

• I suppose it wasn't you that chose to spell excellence that way... but it's still cheesy. I'd direct them away from that. but that's me.
• The colors are fine--again, high contrast (yellow and orange are close neighbors, if we remember correctly). Be careful not to overuse them. You may be teetering on the edge of too-much-contrast-makes-my-eyes-bleed. But you're okay for now.
• The photo objects you've used are nice. Well placed, good overall feel. The satellite and the cabling, I mean. <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">
• Going on to the rest of the images on the site...When I clicked on the satellite, I was brough to this page...that...scared...::me::.. The images to the right of the page do not correspond with anything else that is going on, it seems. They're perfectly fine images, but it seems more like a "web developer gone mad with ego decides he deserves space for his images on everyone's sites," than anything else. Though I am certain that was not the problem, they still don't fit with the rest of the site.
• Otherwise, a dandy site for a dandy business. I just hope they're okay with high-contrast primaries. <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">

...I think i am finished now.

Ok well I?m not even going to defend my self on that first site (Half-Life). It was just the first site I did using Fireworks. So I went a little crazy.

Twitch?
Yeah I designed the logo but he came up with the name, so not a whole lot I could do about that.

I did have a lot of problems trying to come up with a color scheme but I think I?m ok with it for now plus the owner really likes it.

I had a hard time trying to find photos of a satellite system or something that would seem to go with the scheme of the site. So I just used what I could find. I am probably going to remove the bottom two photos and place an out-lined box with some additional text in it. If you know of any good resources of free photos besides photodisk.com let me know.

PS. I hope you don?t think that I think that you?re a Jerk? I really appreciate you comments they are the most true and descriptive that I have yet to see in this forum. I think more people should speak up like this it?s really helpful. Thanks

Ok well if you have any links or resources like this one please feel free to toss a few my way? Thanks?

-BubbaGump

duuuude...
www.istockphoto.com is a nice one...
www.freefoto.com is okay...
www.1stopstock.com is not free, but pools together all the best stock photo galleries on the net for searching.
www.eyewire.com is another commerce-driven site, but still has wonderful images.

...fuck the client, make 'em buy the images. Photographers gotta make money too.