Please review my new site

[solidgold]

Hi,
I've made an update to my site that allows people to have a look at all the things i've made, currently it only features one thing, but as i add more items i can do it easily, the address is the same as always - http://www.aesthetic-design.co.uk
in short, what do you think? what can i improve on?
thanks a lot,
Solidgold

[Ferro]

I don't like the "Aesthetic" logo or the way it sits on the picture box. Is that Golden Cockerel? Nice, but perhaps the letters look a bit lacklustre to me, put them in bold with some slight drop shadow or reflection or something like that......
Then give a few pixels space between the logo and the picture box.

Change the arrow to a hand for rolling over "updates, examples" etc. also give these a rollover state - perhaps to the red of "blog stats"?.

You have a few unescaped/unknown entities in the code my verifier tells me.

I love the way the tabs open up - same ones as I'm talking about above.

Move "blog stats" down from "links" slightly.

That's about it for now.....

Not sure about having an "enter" button - perhaps a menu instead or something?

It's nice and clean with good colours - I really like it so far it seems well worth continuing with IMHO.

[Ferro]

Change the arrow to a hand for rolling over "updates, examples" etc. also give these a rollover state - perhaps to the red of "blog stats"?.

Actually if you give them a rollover state I wouldn't have thought the hand thing was so important.

[solidgold]

don't like the "Aesthetic" logo or the way it sits on the picture box. Is that Golden Cockerel? Nice, but perhaps the letters look a bit lacklustre to me, put them in bold with some slight drop shadow or reflection or something like that......
Then give a few pixels space between the logo and the picture box.

i always have a bit of a problem with identity in my sites, mainly because i have almost no software for making logos etc except paint.net, im not sure what golden cockrel is, so i'm guessing no.

Change the arrow to a hand for rolling over "updates, examples" etc. also give these a rollover state - perhaps to the red of "blog stats"?.

the blog stats is an advert from my statistic company - because i can't afford good hosting

You have a few unescaped/unknown entities in the code my verifier tells me.

the coding is pretty awful i know, one of the main errors is the make poverty history thing.

thanks a lot for your time and opinions, i'll take them into consideration when i continue updating!

[-chris-]

Are you working on things right now? When I looked earlier, visitors got the grey page, clicked enter, and went to a page with the details about the modal box, but now that doesn't happen.

Why do you have an entry page? Is the rest of the site going to look the same as that page? I can't give a full review because there is one image that is not downloading at all, which seems to be the statcounter.

I do recommend getting better hosting, though I understand wanting to stay cheap. Brinkster does offer free hosting, with a subdomain (you.brinkster.com) that would get rid of the ads while you ar testing, and looking for a good, inexpensive host.

[solidgold]

it's not an entry page, thats how the entire site will look when its finished, i've just not got round to updating them yet - i hoped not going to the modal box info page would solve this problem - obviously not!
Statcounter is going to be scrapped i think, its driving me mad. my hosting is ok, but it doesn't have any kind of stat counting facilities - hence statcounter.
thanks a lot,
Solidgold

[-chris-]

Why not use Clicky or Google Analytics?

[solidgold]

i honestly don't know...
by the way, do you find the new way of doing things on the site a bit better?

[solidgold]

i decided to go with that clicky one, it seems pretty good

[-chris-]

It's what I use, and include for my clients. They are all very satisfied with it, especially the spy service.