Please review my first site

I started this site at the beginning of 1998 and forgot about it for a few years. About five months ago, I decided to revive it and since then I have been tweaking and learning stuff and frankly enjoying myself. This week, I am implementing CSS and I think it improved the look a lot. Please tell me what you think and if possible be as specific as possible in your critique.

This is the new look:

LoanUniverse.com

This is how it used to look:

Old look

I welcome all comments. I am still not too happy about the color scheme or the type of fonts or headings used in the css.

- weird color scheme; i suggest this for you;
http://tomislav.echoechoplus.com/ColorMatch_5K.htm
- have the logo just like the 'riginal for size
- too much text on both designs
- people don't like reading on the computer

I agree w/zion...
the page is VERY long, and I am not a fan of the top banner for two reasons:
1. The graphical part of the banner is not very legible...may need to be anti-aliased.
2.The right part of the banner looks like an advertisement IMO.

If you tweaked the color scheme and reduced the page size, that would improve this site dramatically.

On the new page the word Loan isn't even visable. If you want I can try to make you a logo for free.

Nice clean site just a few things I would tighten up. First the logo is very hard to read. I don't think its compression but rather the original. I'd make sure the text is antialiased and I wouldn't stretch out the word 'loan' so much as it look like 'loon' almost.

Though peachy type colors like that don't make my day its your color palatte the only thing is the right menu with the blue on peach thats difficult to read. Switch to a dark deep burgundy red or even the green you and you would have better legibility and once again I would put some padding between the right and left edge of the text and and the left and right end of the menu.

Adding the CSS has made your text nice clean and legible. I would just suggest you put a little extra gutter space (padding) to the left and right , maybe 10-20 px on each side.

Good job though! :)

SupraPorsche: I would really appreciate it if you could do a logo for my site. The one I am using is the original one, which I shrank with Microsoft paint. :( I did download photoshop over the weekend, but I am a bit confused at all the options, and will take me a few hours to come up with a simple one.

zionlocke: I went to that page for a new color scheme and I will be changing the color from peach to something else soon. I am using PHP <include> for the header, side and footer so it is a matter of changing only 3 files. Anyone has a particular color code that thinks will go better with the site?

However, The first thing I have to do is finishing converthing about a dozen pages to the new format. Some of the files are really old and you wouldn't believe how bloated the html is. I think a few files were done with the original frontpage and I can't believe how much stuff that editor put in the files. CSS is a godsend.

Thanks all for your help.

My .02 Canadian (which I financed and now I owe $17,000,000 as the cost of borrowing)

I definitely prefer the new look to the old look. It's a lot cleaner. I would, however, make a few suggestions.

[list=1][*]Your message board. Put a hyperlink in your menu to the message board rather than leave it on the opening page as it is. It's taking up too much real estate.[*]The right side of the page. A softer more pastel-like orange or a canary yellow wouldn't create as much of a clash effect.[*]The menu. Try putting the menu on the left side instead of the top in order to make your main text column a little narrower.[*]The top section. The logo's been mentioned so there's not much point rehashing it. What I would suggest is to have something like the following: [minicode]<TABLE WIDTH=760 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=3 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF">[/minicode], and if you want a border define a CSS class for the table e.g. TABLE.border and put in a 1 pixel border in whatever colour you like. Anything more than 1 pixel is too thick IMHO.[/list=1]

Welcome to the board, by the way! Hope you can pick up a lot of good stuff from us.

I actually like the old site better.

Changes you HAVE TO MAKE:

1. Scale Your Content - If you're not sure how, learn fast. Amazon is a great example. You have WAY too much content to let it go down your page the way it does. Optimize your use of precious real estate by scaling.
2. Split Your Navigation - Put half on the left, half on the right (again, like Amazon)
3. Increase Navigation Contrast - It's illegible right now. Make the links darker or the boxes they're in lighter. Or, you could follow the Amazon design and just have a border around the box with no bgcolor.
4. Split Up Your Content - Even if you scale your page, there's still WAY too much content for a home page. Only put the most pertinent and/or crucial information on your home page. Link to everything else.

Hope that helps :)

i dont like the salmon colour scheme and there is way too much text - break it up or make it smaller. The logo also needs to be changed it is very poor quality etc. Not bad otherwise :classic:

also put your guestbook on a seperate page.

Just want to say that I have embraced most of the suggestions here and implemented some changes already:

1- whipped a new logo .
2- Changed the color from peach to yellow on the right table cell and footer table.
3- Tweaked the color of the active links.
4- reduced the amount of posts exported from the forum to the main page to 5 from 10 in order to reduce size.

Thanks again for the tips