SITE REVIEW: Conorific.com

This is a site I've had for a while, and it never occurred to me to post it for review. But anything you can give me will be appreciated. Rip it apart or praise it, it'll be fine, as long as it's not unfounded.

I know that the current design probably won't appeal to most people, but it IS a personal site, I'm not making any profit on this. I also know that it looks horrendous in Mozilla and Opera; and also in Linux. I'm fixing this. Please, please, don't say anything about it.

Thanks for your time!

What is that ? ha ha just joking.
Your site needs a lot of work to make it a beautiful one. I think the top image is boring ( if you change its tone to grey, it will appear fine ). divide you left table and name the each section i.e. 1.) me and my work, 2.) my friends, 3.) biography etc. and change the background color of the table different than the table on the right site (you can use any shade of grey ). Rest is

Anyway a nice site. good luck



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http://www.himachalpradesh.us

Hey conorific!

creative:
When I got to your content, the first thing that struck me was that there was no padding around content blocks. This, combined with your font family and size selection made the content and it's divisions hard to discern.

I liked the image of the couple kissing at the top. However, I don't think you've really framed it to emphasize the dramatic qualities. I would approach that problem with color theory, first, and layout second. You obvioulsy got some understanding of what I'm talking about since your text mouseover/accent color looks like it was sampled from the photo. I would want to sample some other colors from the photo though. I would also experiment with different hues and saturations on the photo. I could blather on at length about this, but, I think you already know most of what I would tell you.

In my eyes, the script fonts aren't reading well at all.

To be honest, it looks to me like you're just not putting your whole self (effort) into the creative side. My advice is to sketch your ideas on paper. Build the visual in a static Photoshop image, all the way down to the footer. Use that image to create individual graphics. Then, and only then, go and build your HTML/CSS stuff and/or backend.


technical:
I'm glad to see you're using CSS for this. Unfortunately, you don't seem to be comfortable using it. This page works fine in IE, but it's broke in Mozilla(NS, and I assume Safari). It works in Opera, but with caveats.

HTH!

That helps lots. If anyone has anything else to say, it's greatly appreciated...

I fixed the compatibility and color issues, so if you would like to see it now: http://conorific.com

It's simple now, and I'll elaborate on it later. But this is just for basis and compatibility.

Thanks!

It's kind of boring now, I think that I liked the layout with the couples kissing at the top better. There's an over-abundance of white and nothing to really capture the attention. Hehe, the splash page could use a bit of help too.

I can't say that I'm too excited about the navigation either. The links are pretty small and squished together, and the strike-through is annoying. Why make it harder for the viewer to read?

Keep at it, and as dM said, try to throw all of your creativity into it! I wish you much luck! (-:

Yeah, I'm with Geekette, that strikethrough on links you've visited is annoying...

I didn't even realise the links up the top were navigation links. It appeared like it was a sentence, or phrase (or maybe a site slogan) just by a quick glance without actually reading it.

Also, like dM said, some cell-padding on the content table would be nice

Good luck!

See now, that's a problem. I have all this creativity, I have ideas, but I can't do most of them because they look screwy in different browsers and stuff. I can't get anything I write to look decent in Linux...I mean, how am I supposed to be creative if only people with IE can read it??? That's a big problem for me, and it's why I don't 'unleash my creativity.'

Well, I'm using IE, as are more than 95% of other people out there (if the stats of my various websites are anything to go by - which between them all totals about 50K page views per day)...

So, I wouldn't be too bothered about it. You could do a dumbed-down version for non-IE browsers though. Just have your script detect whether it's IE or not, and display the content accordingly.

Ever since Lieven posted a link to this site a while ago I've been looking on it often for inspiration:
http://www.csszengarden.com/

The designs there are really gorgeous examples of how you can make something original using CSS that will be compliant with most browsers. Don't worry about getting everything perfect for each and every browser, just make sure that there isn't anything terribly messed up in the minority browsers and focus on getting it close to perfect in IE an Mozilla. With a bit of research and practice, it's not too difficult.

Unleashing your creativity is something that will come with a little homework and a lot of practice. When you get a handle on 'best practices' with HTML/CSS, you'll be able to translate your ideas more directly and efficiently.

Learning these tools is no different than learning the tools of traditional art. Take a pencil for instance. Anybody with a hand and minimal dexterity can USE a pencil. Very few will ever learn to control it like Rembrandt.

How comfortable are you with your graphics software? Do you feel that you could make a jpg, a 'mock-up', of what you'd like your website to look like without feeling restricted by technology?

I'd be happy to help anyway I could. If you want to make a mock-up and post it, we could discuss some strategies and tactics of how to turn your ideas into a web page.

?

I could definitely do that. I can't afford PS, so I have PSP7. It does the job and I'm pretty good with it. So, next post, I'll have a mock-up. Thank you so much for helping me with this!

Mkay. I made it a gif and it looks just fine. Tell me what you think. It's sized 800*600, think of it as being in a browser window, even though i know it's not that size. Thanks so much!!!!!

http://conorific.com/conor.gif

This is actually fairly easy. The translucent headings will be the only tricky part, but there are a couple different ways of addressing that.

Where you thinking of having this floating in the middle of the page?

Mmmkay. Thanks.



Uhm...do you mean, was I thinking of having it there? Then yes. Or do you mean, what was I thinking of? If so, then...I like it there. But it can be changed.