SITE REVIEW: TemplateArchives

Hi everyone, i've taken my time to review atleast 3 sites and i'm now really anxious to know your opinion on my site. Please give as much critique as possible..

http://www.asimpletemplate.com

I don't know if its just me, but even on my T1 that still took a little bit to load the pictures. Might just be me.

Yup, slow as a doped up arthritic tortoise on valium..

Unless you currently have 10,000 people on your site (which would be a valid excuse for having a slow site, heh), you might wanna think about getting some decent bandwidth

It may have been a timing thing. Both sites slammed open for me on cable. rosanda, the one thing I particularly like about both sites is the graphics font you used. I'd be curious to know which one that is. Thing that stood out to me was that you took the time to make both sights standards compliant, and with XHTML even. My hat's off to you on that. If I had anything negative to say, they both look a little bit like "templates". (It just seems to resemble an appearance you see a lot of.) I think the cosmetic appearance is sharp and clear on both and a good mix of content and graphics.

Okies, it's loading a bit faster now, but still kinda slow, and the images seem optimized nicely, most of them not more than a K or two...

I think they're both very nice sites, just one thing... It appears you're designing for a resolution of 800x600, which is a GOOD standard practice that most designers I know also follow (myself included), however, on an 800x600 display, your site is going to scroll sideways, as your layout is exactly 800 pixels wide. Even with a maximised browser, once you add scroll bars into the equation, you really want your layout to be 770 pixels wide (give or take a coupla pixels) to prevent the horizontal scrolling

Hi,
I really like the first one. The top navigation could have some mouseover images, that would look sexy. The colors are also nice, but I would make the blue a little more darkish, to the same blue as the other site you got maybe?

The second site looks perfect, but some mouseover images would look good there also

I have finally come up with the second version of my sites layout and its now online.
Please let me know what you think and also let me know the loading time...

http://www.asimpletemplate.com

I like both sites. If I had to chose one, it would be TemplatesArchives.com

Templates... has a "bug" on its rollover menu. When one of the firsts button are in the highlighted state, the rest at the right are moved one or two pixels to the left.

thanks for the advice, i have already solved that one and also solved some other few bugs..

Hi.
I have a lowly modem connection, not only that but it seems to be the slowest modem connection in existance. However, both sites loaded INCREDIBLY fast on my PC. Never known pages open so fast!

I haven't had time to have a good root through the sites yet, I will return, but I liked the look of them. No form over function. I hate all-singing-all-dancing sites with irritating animations and user unfriendly layouts, these didn't seem to suffer from that at all, yet still looked good.

I did notice there are no alt tags on the menu buttons. I'm maybe just being pedantic, just an accessibility thing.

I've bookmarked the sites for future viewing an possibly for future use too.

hi cerio,
you're right about the alt tags, but i seemed to have forgotten to add them on the homepage, the rest were fine, but thanks to you, i've solved it.
I'm happy to hear that the site loads fast..

Thanks for you comment

i like the colour scheme of it ... cool and refreshing .. i would maybe add a few better teaser templates to the mix as this is already a saturated market in my opinion ..

hey i like your choice of colours for the templatearchives site and the graphics and layout. the only thing that i don't think is practical is that there is a 'back' and a 'forward' link on the very first page which is not too practical since there would be no pages on your site to back or forward to..

hi guys,
thanks for the advice, i can see your point Cipher but unfortunately, i am re-using the images on the site and the forward and back button is part of the layout, so i can't just remove it from the front page, and secondly, ik my be used, like if someone was redirected to my site, then he might wanna go back.
Ahhh, just thought i'd give my site something new, something never done before, but i see your point there, its just that i can't do anything on that without redesigning the layout...

I am also asking any one interested on submitting a template, to please send me some.. I would be very happy to add them on their favour...

Template Archives-I like the idea. Try and remove the white border that apears around the buttons (Using Opera Browser)

Web Soltuion Archinve: Perhaps make the banner a bit taller so it does not look as squashed.