I tried to get permission for this post from the moderators before the post, but I never heard back from them. So if this entry is breaking rules I am sorry and please delete it immediately. Again, I am not trying to spam this site, I love Bit-Tech and all the forums. Now on with what I was doing. My buddy and I are opening a cafe / repair shop in November but our web site opens this Friday (when we start doing advertising) but I would like you to have a sneek peak of the site and give me your opinion. The store will not be open, so I am not trying to sell you anything. Just get your opinion and hopefully get some of you to submit your mod photos (see the submit link) the shop is called Geeks Toybox, but the main part is the Modder's Playground area. We are having a contests, a forum for tech advice & such (not near what the folks here at bit-tech have) and more. Please if you have a chance check it out and tell me what you think. Thanks, LucSkyywalker Geeks Toybox
Would second that. The modders playground background is awful, fan to hard to read the text and very distracting. Might be an idea to use style sheets as well makes chaging the site much easier and neatens the coding. Another idea would be to use phpBB for the fourms, its free and is MUCH MUCH easier to use that the proboards stuff. The front page is slightly bland as well. This is a personal thing but flash animations get on my tits, especially pointless ones. While not as bad as flashing add banners that one could do with a little work, the links on it were hard to click as well. The site design is good though jsut needs some work if you are wanting to attract customers, doesnt look particularly professional at the moment <edit> this sorta has nothing to do with modding, so program/dev might have been a better forum to put this in</edit>
oh dear, is the hop scotch menu meant to be professional?¿ im sorry i dont mean to be sarcastic, but i wouldnt think of buying anything from that sort of a company. with regards to the colours, i think you should stick to one sort of colour and use different variations of that colour, i.e. midnight blue, sky blue, pale blue etc etc rather than using all the colours from a primary school painting session. i find the background too dark when trying to read the red text on the right handside, possibly lighten if not remove the background. Sorry if this seems a little harsh, its hard to try and be descriptive and type a long explaination when my boss is on the prowl N4N01D
If you have your own webspace why are you hosting the images on a public gallery ? Find someone who knows php and make a new gallery yourself. Or go to www.sourceforge.net and download the code for one. Definitely lose the background, its very annoying. Clean up the graphical buttons, maybe make them smaller. Better yet, lose the buttons altogether and do the page in css. Never use red text, bad. Also never use serif fonts like Times New Roman. Sans Serif fonts like arial, verdana and helvetica are much better for web pages. Try and make the pages consistent over the whole site. Make sure the background, colour scheme, font, and page layout are the same. I'd recommend using templates. Learn css and use it. Its the best thing for building web pages...I dont know why everyone doesn't use it
http://www.geekstoybox.com/moddersplay Change the colour of the red text/background, it's really hard to read at the moment Loose all the font, etc tags and use style sheet(s) The page has no title You seem to have a different theme/design/layout for each page - it seems like each link takes you to a completely different website...
Ok..... Man you guys are harsh!!! No I am kidding , I wanted this type of input. I am changing the blacktop background & the font. As for un-professional, I wanted the modders section to be fun, a place to kick your shoes off. (we are at the beach, after all) The front page is just a coming soon page will be less bland and packed with info about our store as the time gets closer to opening day. Thank you for the advice about the gallery and the forum, we are just using free services to keep our cost down right now. $4 a month godaddy.com hosting won't hold that many pics, that's why I outsourced that. We are going to be looking for another forum today. I am going to spend the day making sure all the pages look alike and more together. Please come back and see our progress. We REALLY needed all the critisim we can get. (the girlfriends aren't good at telling us it looks like poop! ) Thanks and keep em' coming! Luc
phpbb is free (drop me a private message) should be able to sort you out some cheap hosting if you need it
First off, i have to agree that the flash peice is rather useless. The reason the buttons don't work well is that the letters are being used for the hit states. instead try to draw a box around the text on the hit state. I agree with everyone else about the style and feel of the site. I sent the links to my html instructor (he does web site eval for $125/hr here) and i wont repeat what he had to say. Definitely switch to style sheets, they work wonders in building a full site quickly and updating as well. A central color scheme definitely would improve the feel of the site. Again, even tho the modder's side of the site is meant to be laid back, remember that it potentially relates your attitude to the store, making that feel less professional as well. just look at this site, its both professional and laid back all at the same time, the forums are the place for people to relax. I hope that you don't plan on keeping the nave menu on the main site, this looks like a 12 yr old's geocities site. I know its harsh but its always best to hear it. If you'd like any help with the site pm me
Whew..... After a day of work, I have re-done our entire site. I would love each of you that hit it before to take a look at the improvements. The flash peice at the begining will be fixed later tonight. There are a few things that aren't perfect like I forgot to change the title on a few pages and there is one dead link, but besides that should be good. Thank you all again for the comments, got me off my butt at work today to get it fixed.
ummm i had dead links.. also.. dude you need to get a copy of photoshop and head over to http://www.good-tutorials.com/ to fix up the graphics a bit.. also get Studio MX 2004, its slightly better than notepad and paintshop
moved from modding since it is not a discussion about modding at all, its a discussion about a site decided against binning it even though you would have a hard time convincing me you werent trying to get some free advertising
i would suggest getting photoshop and dreamweaverMX. for a beginner webdesigner like me, i came up with this site www.asterixband.com [tell me what you thing for my first attempt ] i made it for my friends band in about 3 days and it was my first attempt at a full website. the only problem i see at all with it so far is the freaking gap between the navbar and the top frame there... but thats irrelevant. go to other modding stores and see what they look like. thats the kind of competition you are going to have man. a quick google turned these up; www.coolerguys.com www - http://www.xpcgear.com/index.html - http://www.crazypc.com/ - http://www.frozencpu.com http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=36692 basically i would order from one of those sites WAY before i ordered from the existing site that you have now. in fact, i dont see you being able to put credit card information on your site to begin with.
Hopefully the cafe should do good b/c its in Murtle Beach. Tourists need to check their email . As for the site, it could definately use some design work. Look for someone whos good with Photoshop and ask if they'll design a site for you and then choose if you like it. Might want to check out DeviantART.com and contact an artist there. Find someone who has a good website gallery and ask if they will do a design for you. Try a teenager, most of them (us) will do it for cheap/free . I've got a design website, phantasm-design.com. My main PC (and photoshop) is down right now though. Good luck.
