YankeeShrine.com Version 2.0 (Feedback please!)

[Maverick]

YankeeShrine.com Version 2.0

Hello Everyone,

I just completely redesigned the site I started and I was wondering if you could give me some feedback on the layout, colors, design ect ect. I there is no content or working links, I just wanted to hear some opinions on the design before I went ahead and started to add content.

Here's the link: http://www.yankeeshrine.com/new_index.asp

Thanks alot!

Oh yeah, and if you want to see the first version of the site go here: http://www.yankeeshrine.com/old site...nkeeshrine.asp .
I personally like the new design because it has a softer, more inviting feel to it. That's my opinion anyway, let's here yours!

[billysielu]

the color on the right need to be less purple and more blue.
the bottom right corner image is too pixelated.
start your document with a doctype.
use css.
put some mouseover and current page effects on your buttons.
put a margin around the image so the text doesnt go right up to it.

you have a good general layout, just need to consider accessibility.

[Maverick]

Just a note to everyone viewing my site:
I just viewed the site through both Opera and Mozilla and saw that they are pretty screwed up. So for now, just base your opinions using IE to view the the site, or if you do happen to view it with Mozilla or opera, and know how to fix the layout problems, without screwing it up for IE please tell me. Thanks!

billysielu,
Thanks for the input. Just a few questions about your reply;

"the color on the right need to be less purple and more blue."
-I don't know if its because I am on a laptop, but the background color to the right of the main page content is an almost sky blue when viewed on my LCD screen. The HTML code for the color is #6666FF, which is very blue on my screen.

"start your document with a doctype."
-what is the advantages of this coding technique and how can I implement it?

"use css."
-Do you mean just for formatting text, or other page attributes too? How would you go about using it?

"put some mouseover and current page effects on your buttons."
-I actually do have mouseover and mousedown effects on all the buttons for the main navigation bar, they are pretty light though, maybe you missed them.
As for current page effects, do you mean make the button of the current page the user is at a different color or something?

"you have a good general layout, just need to consider accessibility."
-What are you refering to with accessibility? Do you mean browser compatibility? Resolution? The site uses no java, or flash , just straight up HTML, so I though it would be pretty accessible that way.
Tell me if you think different.

Thanks again!

[splufdaddy]

I'm not a fan of the background. The colors in it don't look like Yankee colors at all. The rest of the design isn't too bad. If you're making the site a fixed width, it may not be a bad idea to center it. Also, the purple backgrounds for the username/password boxes look out of place. I would expect to see more red in this design. The site does seem softer than the original, but I don't expect to see soft colors when coming to a site about sports. The majority of your visitors will most likely be guys, so they dont want to see pastel colors and daisys on your site. Using the Yankee colors is kind of expected. Trying something different is cool, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. These soft colors don't work for me, but that's just my two cents.

[billysielu]

the login button is sky blue, the area on the right is purple.

i agree with spluff about the login boxes, maybe choose grey instead of purple.

a doctype defined the content of your document, to allow browsers to switch to the correct "mode" to display it. take a look at the www.w3.org XHTML1.0 specification.

i mean for absolutely everything, find yourself a CSS guide, you'll figure it out.

ok i see the mouseovers now, you need to preload them, just take too long to appear.

acessibility, as well as including browser compatability ( which can be acheived through correct use of XHTML1.0) includes things such as: showing hyperlinks clearly ( sort your mouseovers out, and indicate current page), text layout (i'm wondering if the stuff on that first page is the news and updates, or if there should be more underneath it), why do i have to scroll down when there is a big white space in the page ?

[Maverick]

Thanx for the input spluf, billysielu, I have made some changes:

1. Center-justified the entire page
2. Removed background image and replaced with a darker blue.
3. darkened up the login textboxes and submit button
4. Changed the main nav buttons a little. Mouseover and mousedown more noticeable now.
5. Smoothed out the corner images of the page so they are not as pixelated looking.
6. Made new "news & updates" heading bar and new "shrine of the week" and "daily factoid" content boxes.
7. Gave cell with intro paragraph padding so the text did not run right into image.
8. Worked out some of the bugs seen in Mozilla and Opera, there are still a bunch of little problems and if you happen to view the site in either of those browsers and know how to fix them, please let me know.

Thats about it for now, I tried to follow splufdaddy's advice and made the site less "soft" and made the color scheme slighltly darker. As for using more red though, I didn't really want to use too much, because I wanted to steer clear of a Red, White, and Blue patriotic looking site. Plus, the main colors of the Yankees are really only blue and white anyway, red is only used in the "top hat" logo which I have used for my site logo.

As for trying a totally different color scheme as you also mentioned, I thought about it, but decided against it, since my site focuses mainly on Yankee History and memorabilia and I wanted to have a nostalgic feeling to the site, hence the sepia toned header. A scheme using various tones of blue just seemed to go well with that.

Thanx again for the replies and keep 'em coming!

[ironhacker]

I don't like the color scheme. Blue with beige, it just doesn't fit. Try changing it! Good Luck!

[splufdaddy]

I like the changes, a vast improvement IMO. The mouseover color is very subtle. It may not work, but you could try to make the mouseover color a sepia tone to match banner you have. Could look horrible, could look great, I'm not sure w/o seeing it. Nice work.

[Maverick]

Thanx spluf.

Can someone give me some good links to get me started with CSS? I have a basic understanding of it, but I don't quite know how to properly utilize it to its fullest potential.

Thanks

[billysielu]

well, where you've written:

<body topmargin="0" leftmargin="0" rightmargin="0" bottommargin="0" marginwidth="0"

you could write in a seperate css file:

body { margin:0 }

the basic idea is that it takes out so much repetition of simple display things.

and you could use one css file for the whole of your site, so it only needs to be loaded once.

CSS Tutorial: http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp