Topic: Sham-on

Me and my friend have finally reopened our site, with a new layout, and we are rewriting all of our reviews, so they are long, and informational (that's why there aren't many).

Thanks to Bohegeha for hosting us.

I'd like to hear what everone thinks about the layout, content, ect.

http://so.bohegeha.com

(Edited by dubl0two on 05-15-2004 01:32)

anyone?

I always appreciate websites that are easy to navigate. Your layout is real simple and easy to navigate.

I don't care for the box stating how many visitors are online or how fast the page loaded. If you insist on keeping it I'd make it a tad smaller. Actually, you might even want to move it to the footer.

The color scheme is a little bland. You might want to consider adding a little more color then a different shade of gray or blue.

You might want to add more content too

Good job so far.

Bandwagon American Since 9/11/01

Drop the splash page, no reason to have it there.

I'm pretty sure you intended to have the page viewed with a white background color, my current default blueish background color doesn't really match the rest of the page. You should specify the background color, if not the page will look wierd to people like me.

The navigation looks good. Only thing that I notice about is that the difference between the highligted and the non-highlighted elements is very subtle, maybe a bit too subtle. I would either change the color so the difference is bigger, or add a 1px black border around the darker area.

As Jestah said; "the color scheme used is a little bland". It looks good and is easy on the eyes, but to grab the attention of the user you need to add one more color to the mix. Something to create a little bit of contrast with the rest of the page.

The page title should reflect what is on the page. Currently this is not the case. There are two reasons for this; first all it makes it easier for the user to see what page it is (the page title is displayed when the page is tabbed or minimized) and it will have a greater chance to get a good ranking with search engines (Google). I would also drop all the 1337 speak. Personally I can't think of a single good thing about it, but that might just be me...

I agree with Jestah on the counter and loaded speed. Don't mind the information being there, but it is better suited for the footer.

In the review section I would remove the alphabet listing. There aren't enough reviews there yet to justify using it, specially since most of the only say 'None'. Since there are so few reviews there you might also considering having them on one page instead of spread over three pages. If you plan on getting a lot of reviews you might keep the current layout, but with less than 5 reviewes per section you might as well have all of it on one page imo.

You should add some information one the page as to why I should register. Right now you have the 'log in' and 'register' links at the top, but I couldn't find what benefits I get from registering. If you want people to join you should give the some reasons to do so.

On the code side you should drop the tables and use CSS instead. It will make the page load faster, take less bandwith, be easier to maintain etc...

A little bit too tired to read any of the content on the page right now, but from the little bit I skimmed through it seemed to be good stuff

_________________________
"There are 10 kinds of people; those who know binary, those who don't and those who start counting at zero"
- the Golden Ratio - Vim Tutorial -

Clean, simple, straightforward. Always a good start.

Like many around here, I've never been a big fan o' the splash page. Personally, I think it's a waste of space and clickage, but ultimately it comes down to personal opinion.

Asthetically speaking, the site lacks a bit. You've basically got a one-color scheme going on here... a nice highlight color could do wonders if used properly. With blue, you could either go the cool route and toss some green in there, or if you wanted to go a bolder route you could go with complementary orange.

Text-wise, I've got a few beefs. On the home page, you definitely need some wider margins. The text to the right of the central dividing line is flush with the line on the left and flush with the "visitors online" and search boxes on the right. Some line-spacing would also help with readability. Your text definitely needs some room to breathe.

Your default text size comes out a bit small in my browser, but that's OK because I can always change the text size. Unfortunately, the text area increases in width as I increase the text size (haven't taken a look at the source yet, but I'm thinking that maybe you specified your widths in ems...). This doesn't seem to happen on the home page, but it does happen on the other pages.

That's about it for now, I guess. No major problems, but the site doesn't make me wet myself with joy either. Which is probably a good thing, as I seem to be out of adult diapers at the moment.

Just tossed that in to see if you're still paying attention.

___________________________
Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | Keeper of the Juicy Bits

Thanks for all the great reviews!

I was thinking of adding another color (I WAS think orange or green ), but I don't know where to add it. Any suggestions? I like the idea of moving the users/page load to the footer, too. Where in the footer would it look good?

As for the content, we are in the process of rewriting all of our reviews, because they were shite, so the reviews will be back up in a little. The reason we have a splash page is because all of our sections are put in different directories. When you click on the splash it take you to the /home directory. I suppose I could lose the splash page. In fact, I will. For the tabs, would you have the border on the tab that is highlighted, or the one that is not?

I will comment on your color question, since that was something I originally pointed out...

Color is (or should be) a vital part of any site. It is not just decorational, it is also functional--in other words, when considering which colors to use where, you have to think, "What does this color tell the visitor?"

Rather than asking, "Where should I add a new color?" you should ask, "Where would a highlight color be most effective?" One thing that Veneficuz pointed out was the lack of differentiation between active and inactive navigational elements in the menu--rather than attempt to differentiate the current page by using a different shade of the same color, why not use a different color entirely?

In a spirit of helpfulness, I whipped up a quick example using the header graphic.

The original darker blue color was #849BAC, which is HSB 205/23/67. I simply changed the hue to 120, giving me a hex value of #84AC84, and then used this in place of the lighter blue color. It is without a doubt easier to distinguish between active and inactive, and I think it looks nicer aesthetically as well. Just an idea, of course. I'm not saying that you necessarily have to go this route, I'm just trying to offer some possibilities--a way to kill too birds with one stone, in this case.

Perhaps one of the reasons why you're having a hard time figuring out where to use color is that you don't have enough of it on your site. The only real areas of color are the header and the footer. Play around with that green (#84AC84), or maybe even try out an orange (there are no oranges with the same saturation and brightness as the green and blue, so you'd have to go a different route there), and see what you can come up with.

Another idea is to play around with your link colors. You've got the default colors there right now, and they don't really go too well with the rest of the color scheme.

And since I've pretty much drifted entirely into the subject of color, here's some reading for you on the subject:

http://www.webwhirlers.com/colors/
http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs092/VA10/HTML/start.html

___________________________
Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | Keeper of the Juicy Bits

(Edited by Suho1004 on 05-24-2004 04:09)