Everything design related website, please rate and review would appreciate it :)

[furiousbullet]

Hello everyone, I am new on here.

I designed and built my own website about two months ago now. It is doing fairly well, but I still would like more active members for future plans. I would also like to further more improve it.

My website is about anything design-y, I, myself, am a product designer. The website has examples of my work and photography and a design blog. I would really like a large community that read my blog so I can do future plans, such as competitions.

Looking forward to hearing your feedback.

Many thanks

[DanExcell]

Interesting, very interesting.

[m3n0tu18]

Design is good, Issues i have are:

It doesn't fit on a 1024 screen horizontally. To fix that make your website a maximum of 1000px wide.
You need a contact form rather than just an email address. This has 2 advantages, 1 - People prefer filling out contact forms than having to open their email type your address in (they can spell it wrong if they arn't careful, ive had that alot with enquiries@) and 2 It can stop spam for you in the future.

Put a link back to your home page, I know it has nothing on it but It can make potential clients feel safe (ive no idea why but all the people ive asked feel that way for some reason.)

With your nav menu, make it do something. Like when you hover over a menu item the background of the hyperlink changes or something. currently its just a bit plain.

last but not least. Add some color to your site. Something that will instantly attract potentials to look at it. And then go "nice picture/color/whatever, ill check out the rest of the site" For instance. Just adding a color picture of you rather than black and white will cause people to instantly look at it then read the blurb. Give it a go, it will make a difference

About me page, personally I would hyperlink items within the blurb for instance Jonathan Ive and Phillippe Starck, if you hyperlink it to their wiki or something (making sure you open the hyperlinks in a _blank page can help potentials to understand what you are meaning) Also try to remove the orphans from your page, they can cause viewers to go, "screw this" and do something else.

Other than those pointers matey, Good work

[furiousbullet]

Thanks for the excellent feedback, will get to work on some of these...thankyou

[m3n0tu18]

Thanks for the excellent feedback, will get to work on some of these...thankyou

No probs man, tell us when you have fixed the issues and well check again

[furiousbullet]

No probs man, tell us when you have fixed the issues and well check again

will do man, just tried looking at the rollover images for the main top banner. It will take me so long to update every single page on there with them so think I will leave that and just apply it to the homepage. Unless you now a nifty trick where I can apply rollover images to multiple areas easily?

[George Dolidze]

will do man, just tried looking at the rollover images for the main top banner. It will take me so long to update every single page on there with them so think I will leave that and just apply it to the homepage. Unless you now a nifty trick where I can apply rollover images to multiple areas easily?

I'm not sure what your question is exactly, but...
You can use PHP includes, make just one navigation bar, and plug it into all the pages.

[AlphaMare]

I'm not sure what your question is exactly, but...
You can use PHP includes, make just one navigation bar, and plug it into all the pages.

By George, I think he's got it!

In fact that's how I do all my navbars, footers, any element that repeats throughout the site, PHP includes all the way.

[George Dolidze]

By George, I think he's got it!

In fact that's how I do all my navbars, footers, any element that repeats throughout the site, PHP includes all the way.

Same here! I started with the portfolio site I'm building currently. Saved me hours of work, took about 30 seconds to learn.

[furiousbullet]

Design is good, Issues i have are:

It doesn't fit on a 1024 screen horizontally. To fix that make your website a maximum of 1000px wide.
You need a contact form rather than just an email address. This has 2 advantages, 1 - People prefer filling out contact forms than having to open their email type your address in (they can spell it wrong if they arn't careful, ive had that alot with enquiries@) and 2 It can stop spam for you in the future.

Put a link back to your home page, I know it has nothing on it but It can make potential clients feel safe (ive no idea why but all the people ive asked feel that way for some reason.)

With your nav menu, make it do something. Like when you hover over a menu item the background of the hyperlink changes or something. currently its just a bit plain.

last but not least. Add some color to your site. Something that will instantly attract potentials to look at it. And then go "nice picture/color/whatever, ill check out the rest of the site" For instance. Just adding a color picture of you rather than black and white will cause people to instantly look at it then read the blurb. Give it a go, it will make a difference

About me page, personally I would hyperlink items within the blurb for instance Jonathan Ive and Phillippe Starck, if you hyperlink it to their wiki or something (making sure you open the hyperlinks in a _blank page can help potentials to understand what you are meaning) Also try to remove the orphans from your page, they can cause viewers to go, "screw this" and do something else.

Other than those pointers matey, Good work

Hi man,
been doing some of the changes you suggested past week.
I have done the following,

-When your on the blog section, photography section etc, that title in the nav bar is orange. This will improve navigation significantly.
-Added some colour to the about me page, removed hyphens and linked phillippe starck and Jonathan Ive with_blanks.
-Used a different image for home pag, more colorful and attractive now!
-Added a contact form to contact me page.
-link to my homepage (click on title)

Hope you enjoy the changes, please leave some more feedback people, its really useful
THanks