Website review - seems to be the right place

It doesn't matter if you do all the error checking in the world, or if you have the most beautiful graphics, if your site or application design isn't usable, it's not going to do well. Get input and advice on usability and user interface issues here.

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vicisol
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Website review - seems to be the right place

Post by vicisol »

Ok this looks to be the section im looking for.. if not feel free to tell me and ill remove this post.

I have been having trouble finding people who know what they are talking about to take a quick look at my site and tell me some tips to improve it. (That is, until i found this forum!)

Here is my site: http://www.weboven.net

I realize that I need to centralize/specify the theme a bit, resumes and recipes are not working together, but until I get those split up, (have not decided yet which one will do better) I would love any suggestions or comments on any part of my site!

Thanks
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pickle
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Re: Website review - seems to be the right place

Post by pickle »

1) Soooo many adds. The sides are taking up way too much room. At 1024 x 768, your content only fills up 400px.
2) Your top menu should span the full width of your content area.
3) 'Blogs' has only 1 'g'
4) Get rid of the CNN rss feed & whatever feed is on the left side. If I want CNN news, I'll go to CNN's website
5) Resume's and recipes seem like an odd combination to have a website for. As either an employer or a prospective employee, I don't think I'd look here.
6) You need some more design elements - right now it's just flat blue & white. Look at putting some unobtrusive graphics in there
7) You need a more cohesive design too - your left hand items seem like an afterthought - they should have a definitive section
8) Your blogs, recipes and resumes should all look the same
9) Putting text right up against the side of the windows looks bad
10) To be honest, this website looks like it was designed in 1998 - which is to say it doesn't look like you have a solid grasp on website design. That's perfectly alright - everyone needs to start somewhere. I'd strongly suggest doing some research online about website design.
Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
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superdezign
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Re: Website review - seems to be the right place

Post by superdezign »

Those dropdowns highlight to green... no no no no. That hurt my eyes for a moment. :P

You should look into hiring a designer. :/
vicisol
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Re: Website review - seems to be the right place

Post by vicisol »

ah well im not going to hire a designer, the original purpose of making this site was to learn web design and web programming :P (the pay per click adds came later as an excuse for me to continue with this project, and ya im gunna definately need to cut back on the amount)

Thanks for the reply's, I think ill move a lot of the extra stuff to a different site and work on redesigning the look of this one now.
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Eran
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Re: Website review - seems to be the right place

Post by Eran »

While most people can learn programming, web design is more something you have to have a natural sense for. I hate to break it to you... but you have a long way to go.
You should start by going to this site and tasting a lot of good design - http://www.designmeltdown.com/
Also check out those tutorials from webdesignfromscratch, they're very good - http://webdesignfromscratch.com/graphic-design.cfm

As others have said, get rid of the ads. It's very hard to make real money from google ads, and it can only happen after your site has gained major traffic and traction. Right now those ads are only hurting your site's credibility
matthijs
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Re: Website review - seems to be the right place

Post by matthijs »

vicisol wrote:ah well im not going to hire a designer, the original purpose of making this site was to learn web design and web programming :P (the pay per click adds came later as an excuse for me to continue with this project, and ya im gunna definately need to cut back on the amount)

Thanks for the reply's, I think ill move a lot of the extra stuff to a different site and work on redesigning the look of this one now.
Maybe if you would remove the adds you would at least have something on the page to design in the first place! :wink:

Or were you planning on using the adds as the design? You know, a la Bob Ross, a little blueish text-add here, a little greenish banner there, a happy adsense there :)
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