Website critique

[blue60007]

OK guys, what kind of comments/suggestions/complaints do you guys have on this website?

It's not supposed to be anything fancy, it's not supposed to be but...

Thanks

[rspassey]

Originally Posted by blue60007 OK guys, what kind of comments/suggestions/complaints do you guys have on this website? It's not supposed to be anything fancy, it's not supposed to be but... Thanks

If these are supposed to be links I cannot click on them:
Home
Community
Forums
IRC Channel
Midnight Manhattan
Website
Gallery
1D Productions
Space Taxi 2005
Stompy
GX-Ball
Realms of Kedlar
Stellar Combat
Team
Team Listing
Recruitment
About Us
Downloads
MM Wallpapers
1DP Demos
Support
News Archive
Contact Us
Links
FAQ

Might want to fix that up.

Also I get this error message when trying to open the link from the pictures:

Error 404 Page Not Found

Sorry we could not find the url that you requested

Try searching the forums for what you are looking for, or go back to the Home Page.

[blue60007]

None of the links work, this is just preliminary.

[Jaggannath]

1- Put the credits on their own page, they take up a lot of room and do nothing

2- centre the title and logo, then put the motto and site underneath (although I'd suggest if they're at the site they know the address)

3- Change the font for the motto and website in the header, it looks shoddy (some letters are made of thicker lines than the others)

[blue60007]

Updated.

Thank you for the suggestions thus far

[Alaron]

Just a minor thing, it should be "Navigation"

Looks pretty good to me though.

[TwoRails]

Just curious... Are you Blueprint Games??

[blue60007]

Originally Posted by Alaron Just a minor thing, it should be "Navigation" Looks pretty good to me though.

Lol, thanks

Originally Posted by TwoRails Just curious... Are you Blueprint Games??

I'm the webmaster for Blueprint Games, we are a small indie game development company. Our main project, Midnight Manhattan, a gang-type 3d game, where you/your gang try to be the most powerful gang in Manhattan. We also have a sub-division making 2d games. This is our current website if you're interested...

[thefultonhow]

A couple of things:

• I'm not a big fan of gradients. I'd choose a nice color for the header and just keep it that solid color.
• On both sides of the page, you have bevels on the respective outside edges of the sidebars. I would turn those into shadows that are ouside of the sidebars and also run the length of the page. This would serve to spatially elevate the content above the background.
• The 1dP and Midnight Manhattan logos on the titlebar are distracting. You already have them elsewhere, so I'd just get rid of them.
• An interesting idea that I'm not sure would work -- what if you moved the logo on the left side of the titlebar in between "Blueprint" and "Games"?

[blue60007]

OK, now check it out...
Banner still needs some fiddling with.

[thefultonhow]

Sorry, but I liked the basic design better before. I like the gradient shadows separating the two sidebars from the middle of the page; I'm just saying that you could use something similar on the right and left too instead of that bevel that you had before.

The best way to describe it is by showing you the website I designed:

http://www.utahtc.org/

The shadow on the right separating the gray background from the rest of the page is the one I'm talking about. I'd put it on both sides if I were you -- I just think it makes a page look more professional.

[Statica]

Ok I dont know what exactly you're looking for as a critique: Is it your basic site design? Or is it the openning page?
If it is the openning page, then I'd say that you've got entirely way too much information being fed at the user for the start. There is too much horizontal information that overwhelms the user. It under-utilizes your menu system entirely.
To start with I would suggest keeping the most pertinent information on the first page only. If this is a company that's starting to create awareness of its existence then choose something that highlights the company for a start. If you have products that people already know about and are looking to find out the latest information then provide them with a news page about current devel status etc. Right now it seems like you cannot decide what it is that you want to put out there, so you've got an "about us" as well as "various and "sundry site/product news"... speaking of which, it might be counterproductive to have site news interact with the company news.

Secondly, I think that the menu system could benefit from a bit more refinement. The space between Navigation and the actual navigation is just wasted space (my goal is try to look at the design carefully and see what's out there that is just not functional and that might actually help provide maximum efficiency of a visitor's screen) - the same is true of all other side boxes. It would make for more cleaner, efficient design to remove that one line whitespace. With the navigation, I would also put a bit of hanging space between the left table border and the start of the text. Personally i think that the 1dpProducts project page (http://www.blueprintgames.com/1dp/) does an excellent job of providing a very clean design interface and a finite set of menu items. If you have more menu items as submenus, consider using a script to roll it up. Also make sure you let the visitor know where they are, either through something specific on top or making the active menu item of a different color. Remember that with today's search engines it isn't necessary that a visitor has come to your site right at the homepage, they might enter it through another page, but should know exactly where they are and where they will go to.
The centering of "About Us" text doesn't look consistent with the rest of it of the page items; and consider putting it in a table; or if you want to attract attention, experiment with fonts/colors/ or bgcolors
Consider using good meta tagging. Including doctype declaration and character encoding etc.

[blue60007]

OK, thanks guys, I'm going to take all your suggestions into consideration...

[mairving]

I am going to move this over to the proper forum.

[mairving]

The site is okay. You definitely did some stuff right that always bugs me. You have a logo, yeah. And it is decent, yeah. A lot of sites try to skip that part. There are a few things particularly with the code that I would fix.

-You must declare a document type. You didn't declare any so it is impossible to validate your page. This can be bad.
-Use alt tags for images. This helps you with search engines.
-Make your logo clickable to return you to the home page.
-Use external rather than inline stylesheets. This makes it a bit easier to change things and can improve load times a bit.
-You need to enclose attributes in quotes. valign="center" or in php valign=\"center\" to avoid parse errors.
-Top image is too big. 970 pixels and most of that open space is not necessary. I wouldn't advise making it larger than 760px.
-It isn't usually a good idea to bold a whole paragraph of text on the page. There isn't any reason and it is more difficult to read.
-Post back when you get some links on it.

[blue60007]

Eeep, your not supposed to look at the code yet. Yeah, anyways, it isn't cleaned up yet, it'll get there.

[mairving]

Originally Posted by blue60007 Eeep, your not supposed to look at the code yet. Yeah, anyways, it isn't cleaned up yet, it'll get there.

Sorry can't help that.