Topic: Shedding light

First things first, the link.

http://www.lightworkers-federation.com/

Then, the background. You might have noticed I am now deeply interested in all sorts of spiritual practices. Once upon a time, personal events transformed me in ways I can hardly put into words. My "dan tian" or Kundalini decided to rise spontaneously, and everything I hardly could believe in became - my daily. I found myself able to do Shaolin style things, it freaked me out, brought my rational mind to searching, and searching, and searching for a how. Why my backbone would sometimes feel like a column of fire while my touch could now heal complex pathologies.

Why I seemed to remember things I had never experienced.

And I found out that many had recently experienced a similar shift. We gathered, and decided to propose an alternative take on sustainability.

The LF was born.

But after a year and some living without a salary, spending all of my time researching, educating, and healing, mah php/js skills are a tad rusty, let alone my awareness of web design trends o)

I need your help. In advance thank you.

(Edited by argo_navis on 01-14-2010 04:07)

The way things line up with the "About Us" and then an hr and then "About health and energy" and then an hr, should be a little more consistent I think. My eye kind of wanders around because of the way things wrap around the image with the horizontal rules.

The pinkish color is a little bland for my taste but, that's my taste ;-)

The menu is really boring

There are some issues with the markup but I gotta run to a meeting ATM.

Later,

C:\

That'll be great for starters, thank you CPrompt! (keep it comin' pllease)

Just a few general comments here...

I think the navigation needs some work. In its current location at the bottom right of the page, most Western readers will take a little while to get there (traditionally, it's one of the last places we look on a page). Granted response times here are measured in milliseconds, but I think you could make the user experience a lot smoother but making the navigation more prominent, both in terms of placement and in terms of presentation.

To dig a little deeper into this issue, I think the drop shadows you have on either side of the main content area contribute to this effect. They make the content area pop out, which is good for the content, but the downside is that everything else appears to be in the background and thus secondary. That might be OK for language options and maybe even the search box, but not the main navigation--especially when it is below (again, an indication of "secondariness") these other secondary elements.

Basically, everything I see on that first page tells me that the navigation is the least important element there, but it should be quite the opposite. What would I do to fix this? Well, if you're going to keep the "raised" content area, I would move the navigation onto the content area--a horizontal menu at the top, below the header, would work very nicely, I think. If you're concerned about the menu being too long horizontally, the items could probably be reduced to one word each: About, Library, Feeds, History, News, Solutions, Tutorials, Media, XML (the last four are the same, of course).

Another note on the navigation: I completely missed the fact that the feed aggregator menu item had sub-items beneath it--I took the arrow to be an indicator of the current page, and couldn't figure out why it wasn't pointing at About Us. I think the fact there is only one arrow helped foster this confusion--when I see one menu item that looks different from all other menu items, I assume that it is being distinguished for some reason. Maybe it's just me.

In the sub-sub-menu beneath feed aggregator, there is a section entitled "World News." It appears to be different from the first-level menu item with the same title, but I cannot figure out why or how. The hierarchy of information here is not that clear--why is "World News" a separate first-level menu item?

Also, very minor, but the symbols up at the top right of the header are too tempting--I keep expecting them to respond when I click on them, and find myself disappointed when they don't. You think I would learn after a while.

Well, I guess I'll just go with that for now. Basically, just a bunch of nit-picking about the navigation.


___________________________
Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | the Fellowship of Sup

Coolness! And the feed aggregator link is, originally, an administrative item, something went wrong when I rebuilt the access list for pages o) Apologies. But yeah Suho, thank you. I'll deliver my first simulation to the Holocene Impact Working Group today (I informally collaborate with them, creating water renderings to orient their researches) and then give all these tips a whirl.

Okay.. http://www.lightworkers-federation.com/

I've implemented :

quote:

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I would move the navigation onto the content area--a horizontal menu at the top, below the header, would work very nicely, I think. If you're concerned about the menu being too long horizontally, the items could probably be reduced to one word each: About, Library, Feeds, History, News, Solutions, Tutorials, Media, XML

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How do the colors/nav work for you now?

I've modified the settings for this, (so that they aren't anymore) :

quote:

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(the last four are the same, of course)

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And of course, I added something here too :

quote:

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Also, very minor, but the symbols up at the top right of the header are too tempting--I keep expecting them to respond when I click on them, and find myself disappointed when they don't. You think I would learn after a while.

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Now, I find myself with 3500 questions Where to begin?

And a few notes I'll write here while brainstorming...
...What about a "Google translate" menu with all available languages in the "search / language options" area?

And, I'd like to make the "Library" section a hybrid of sorts, in line with both Wikipedia and the rest of the website itself. How does that sound?

*bump* - again thank you for the feedback so far.

Now, I am going to tightly integrate this part of the site :
http://www.lightworkers-federation.com/wiki/en/index.php/Main_Page

With the rest. And would appreciate pointers and advice - in advance thank you.

The loading time of your website is a little slow. And i think the word on your wensite is a little small.

Edit TP: Spam removed

(Edited by Tyberius Prime on 11-04-2010 21:31)