Site Critique Wanted

Too wide. Without sufficient proximity or some other designed divider or congolmerating device (like a shaded column or a vertical separator) the bright white text spaced out all over the jet black background isn’t workin’ for ya.

Mute the bright white. Narrow it down (800 recommended but you can let it increase in size to fit the browser). Better wrap your text areas so that things look cohesive.

Keep trying… I like darker themes. ??

i agree

It’s doesn’t look bad at all really, however I’ll have to agree with the others also on the width and stuff.. Being that I use the 800×600 res because my eyes suck! lol =)

spencerp

Thanks for your feedback. I will look into making the sidebars and the middle column all narrower… I’m not exactly sure how to do it with the theme I have.

Other thoughts?

One thing I was thinking of doing was to get rid of the rounded rectangle around the top, and instead put a rounded rectangle around the entire middle column (of course I’m not actually sure how to do this yet).

Do you think that would help or hurt?

help.

ok. thanks!

Um. Too black, too contrasty text-color-wise, too spread-out, too diffuse….

Hmm. I think that’s all repetitive – the other guys pretty much said the same. Yes, make a rounded corner thingy for your maincolumn posting area (the whole thing, not just the separate posts!) to match the header, then repeat for the footer.

And use some of the color from the header borderline, make rounded rectangles for the sidebars…. maybe a slightly different color for each – extend the color the length of the sidebar areas….

Now, THAT would “pop”!

I like the layout and while the black background makes the pictures stand out, really well, for an informational site (i.e. if you’re going to have lots of text rather than brief text and lots of graphics) I find white text on black uncomfortable to read. Still that’s only me. Looks good.
Not sure that it’s too wide. ??

Looks pretty good to me, although some may find your template little plain perhaps.

Hi,

such a graphically rather simple banner image should never have 40+kb! Here the results of proper compression thru Fireworks (Adobe Photoshop or free software achieve similar results) as gif and a middle quality jpg:

10kb jpg – https://img85.imageshack.us/img85/1364/popbanner9tg.jpg

7kb gif – https://img71.imageshack.us/img71/8628/popbanner4ps.gif

Even with graphics intense banners of larger size I rarely reach more than 25kb. Many, MANY people still access the internet on a modem. If a page takes ages to load already regarding graphics they wander on before you page is visible.

I guess you tried to go for a “fresh” and easy look with a dark background. However I too think that this white/yellow on black is a tad too hefty. Take the edge off the black a bit (dark anthrazite or dark blue also are dark, but not that unremitting) or go for a milder yellow (= one more into the red range like corn or wheat yellow instead of this bright citrus kadmium one) and a broken (= eggshell or greyish) white.

If you have 3 columns, USE them!

You put all the links left and have little on the right. Depending on whether or not you need your advertisements (I’d quickly lose them) try for a format less invasive and place some content instead on the right column. E.g. place all the “non-blog” links on the right, or do it vice versa.

Coming with this advice is the other that maybe you should shed a bit of the “clutter”, there are countless off site links which could just as well go into a links page instead, or you could make several links pages linking only what you currently have as headings on the columns themselves.

I agree with this “too wide” impression, wide and stretchy works better for different types of design. Give the user a bit of space where to rest his eyes, give them a bit of a margin/padding with nothing, like the page of a book.

Too many posts are visible as well, try doing only 5 or only 10 teasers mostly then without the photos (or make them clickable thumbnails).

But, all put together it’s not truly bad, the concrete idea and line are there, which is actually most important.

Greetings

LHK