SITE REVIEW: Hayes Mates

Please could i get your comment on my new page design at http://www.hayesmates.co.uk and http://www.hayesmates.co.uk/forum

It's a fairly new site, set at providing entertainemtn news for the UK, and having a forum community based at 16-24 year old males?

Opinions?

Two Tables at the top: Headlines and Forum Login. May be it's just my browser but i think sizes (height) are different. And the Ad on a right I think is too separate. And one more thing, I think, border (gray a little darker then in bgcolor) of the table wold look better. Everything else is great.

The two tables are the same height, which browser are you using?

I have pulled the ad in as requested, also what border are you reffering to?

Many thanks for your input, more would be appreciated!

I'm getting he same thing with the two boxes being different heights. The Headlines box is about 4 pixels shorter than the Forum Login box.

I don't know what it looked like before, but the ad on the side still seems very detached to me. Sort of as if it was stuck in as an afterthought. I'd have a box go under/over the ad so that it feels as if it's within the borders of the page. I mean, include it as if it were another column within the main area, because if your page is going to be that wide anyway, you may as well strech the content over there where the ad isn't.

The blue stretching everywhere gives me the feeling of stuff just dropped onto the page. I might center the content and make the background a different colour along the sides where it isn't used. Something like this site: http://novaproj.org/. See how the edges of the page are a completely different colour? That way the user doesn't feel like space in their browser is going to waste even though it is.

The blue text is hard on your eyes because of the grey background. Try either making the grey brighter, or making the blue darker.

The site doesn't quite seem like one piece. It seems like a bunch of clumped up icebergs of content. Try placing the site into a border or making the site expand to fit the users screen.

A lot of the other sections of your site (ie. the downloads page). are a different format than your home page. I reccomend coordinating your pages so that they all look alike.

OK that was quite a lot to take in and parts confused me! I cant quite undersatnd why the two tables are differenting in height?

And what is the problem with the advertisiement? You would like that boxed to?

Also the site is in a border? Thanks for your responses so far.

Bad color choice, either use a darker background color, or a darker text color, it real hard to read. Site also seems very incomplete, a lot of the catagories are completely empty, it is a good start if you change the colors a little and add more content you will have a stellar sight.

What colour scheme would you reccomend?
They need to be similar to the current scheme, as my forum template also uses these colours.

The only reason the categories are empty at present is because news hasnt been posted into those filter groups as of yet.

Yea I kinda figured that was the reason.

I would reccomend using a darker font, like replace the Blue with a blue that is a couple shades darker, and maybe try using black text instead of the white.

It is a great start and once it gets a little more active it will be awesome, keep up the good work.

Nice site with poor readability.

I agree with the posts above. Make your fonts a little larger, it is straining especially on large screens. Good Luck!

First time I visited your site I got an Internal server error. Check with your web host to see what's going on. As for the site good design. I would center the store, reduce the anoying ads ( your site reminds of yahoo free email so many annoying banners) and slow down your headlines. It's useless to have it scrolling that fast cause I can't read them.

the headlines scorller will be removed, unless you can reccomend a good alternative. The ads help me with hosting costs, which ads do you reccomend i remove (which a re annoying?)

How do i center the pages?

and im unaware of any server trouble, may have been a one off?

Many thanks for this great input.

i have edited the text styke a bit more, is it better?

Ok my site was offline over Christmas due to server troubles, but its no back with a new look, so if you could re-review that would be highly appreciated!

Okay, I haven't read all the comments so, this may be redundant but, those little graphic header things above the article clips are very hard to read. The site in general, is a bit harsh on the eyes and a bit cluttered on the front page.