First Website

[Noizy Rab]

Originally Posted by Moldiver

I would like to add some design to the bottom right of the background and some animated menus but that will come later.

why animated menus? 9 times out of 10 all they do is cause accessibility problems, the first thing any web design course should do (and most don't) is teach you how to make sure your site can be accessed by as many people as possible with as little difficulty as possible, after all what's the point in a website if you can't actually use it?

[Moldiver]

Originally Posted by Noizy Rab

why animated menus? 9 times out of 10 all they do is cause accessibility problems, the first thing any web design course should do (and most don't) is teach you how to make sure your site can be accessed by as many people as possible with as little difficulty as possible, after all what's the point in a website if you can't actually use it?

Suppose, i will go with stylish or artistic menu buttons them. Mine are just basic text, will look through some tutorials and see what i can see.

[the curiousity]

just, what exactly did you want it to look like? are there any sites you would like this site you're creating to look like, in terms of style/content.

I know it is a first site. but what you should really do when you're designing something, (Regardless of how trivial your assignment may be btw) is consider:

what is this for? (what are you trying to promote here)
who is it for? (who is your target audience, are you creating a site which is aimed at young children, or one to appeal to trendy hipsters?)
what do you want to do with it? (hosting multimedia, or something like just updating the site like a news blog?)

Also, you might want to think about what your colour scheme is suggesting about the site: A good place to maybe look at for ideas would be kuler. You can nab a scheme which someone else has made or create your own, and then your page won't offend my eyes with its yellow/blue contrast so much.

you also have a lot of unactive and broken links, this is just plain bad practice. it's not too hard to just go over your pages and make sure everything links back to one another, of if the page doesn't exist, don't include it in what you're uploading. it will mean anyone browsing the site won't go 'oh, that doesn't work... oh, neither does that' and then giving up on the site altogether, which means they probably won't return. If the intention of the website is to retain traffic (Example www.bbc.co.uk), then you will make sure every page has a way of getting back to the main page, etc.

All page headers should have a relation back to the name of the website. So your welcome page's header would go from "welcome!" which is a thoroughly generic header, and will largely get ignored by search engines; to "West of Scotland Music", then the home page would be something like "West of Scotland Music - Home" etc. Certainly, any search engine bot reading that looking for 'music' and 'west of Scotland' might actually go 'here, this might be a shout'* and pool it in with the other results. Which is something you want for 'discoverability', ie, bringing new users/potential customers/potential sponsors to your website.

i really must ask as well, why did you use those fonts? they're thoroughly at odds with the splash page. though Times New Roman is a standard serif font, i always feel serif fonts look ridiculous on most websites. On screens and in slides/short pieces of text, unless there's real justification for it, i'd avoid using a serif font. You can always specify a family of fonts in your CSS (cascading style sheet) on dreamweaver, which will allow the browser to default back to a second or third choice, if the computer accessing the site doesn't have the exact font which you are using for the Website itself. This also makes your site more accessible for any person using a particularly er, old machine, to be able to view your page.

I'm sorry, i'm sure these are all valid points made by other people already, but you need to have some things to think about, and to build on. I mean, you're making it harder for yourself by saying you want to make animated menus, when you could create a tasteful menu with plain text simply by choosing the colours and font correctly.

I am purely attempting to give constructive criticism, since that's what you asked for.


*i know search engines don't think, but, i'm tired, so shut up.

[starchildspace]

WE're having a similar class on my course (although I'm doing Graphic Design)

we are shown very little HTML, Then we're given 2 tutorials with step by step instructions on how to build these 2 SHITE pre made websites, then told "right, now fuck off and create your own, and it better be nothing less than spectacular"

Most of my class is still like WTF with the program, Myself and 1 other have previous HTML experiance so we're alright, but they def need to spend a little more time teaching us HTML.

[Ghostsuit]

Originally Posted by starchildspace

WE're having a similar class on my course (although I'm doing Graphic Design)

we are shown very little HTML, Then we're given 2 tutorials with step by step instructions on how to build these 2 SHITE pre made websites, then told "right, now fuck off and create your own, and it better be nothing less than spectacular"

Most of my class is still like WTF with the program, Myself and 1 other have previous HTML experiance so we're alright, but they def need to spend a little more time teaching us HTML.

Christ thats like building a house without foundations.

[Moldiver]

Some of the links in the menu don't go anywhere is cause i havn't added contento to those pages yet. Gonna do it tommorw.

What i am getting from what you are saying about the font is that the custom one i am using isn't work, that correct?

The colour scheme was always a problem, i just couldn't settle one one and ended up going with one that i know people won't like, no idea why lol. Wil have a look at that site and see what i can get.

Also will change my headrs to they link back to the main page. Good point, forgot about that.

[Ghostsuit]

Custom fonts generally don't work because most people won't have them on there system. Stick to the basic for standard text. If you really want to use a custom font then the best idea is to save the text as an image but I'd really only do that for headers etc not for content text.

Learn about style sheets they are very very very handy .

Intro page I'd lose it as it's utter pointless at the moment other than creating another click for the user.

Biggest tip I can give - Gain inspiration from other sites...Look for things that work on site, look for thinks you like then use them. The trick is know whats good and whats bad.
Think about whats natural and whats not, whats familiar and whats not. Think about what your doing and then look at other sites doing it then ask why do they do it that way. There will usually be a reason. If the most popular site (doing what you want to do) in the world does it a certain way maybe you should do it that way to so that people coming fromt he site will be familiar with the way things work.

Last tip - Don't use something just cause it's there or possible. Flash gets used to often when it's not needed, flashign text, spinning skulls, flames etc are usually added with no real point or reason. Keep it simple.

[Moldiver]

The splash page is there cause at some point i need to add some sort of flash animation. Will get rid of it untill i get the flash done.

[Ghostsuit]

Originally Posted by Moldiver

The splash page is there cause at some point i need to add some sort of flash animation. Will get rid of it untill i get the flash done.

Please tell me thats because the course work demands it.

[djtoast]

I presume you're working on it at the mo, but the front page being a directory listing is a bit odd

*edit* ah, that's better!

[Moldiver]

Yeah its the class that requires a bit of flash.

yeah was working on it, fixed now.

Think tommorw i will make all pages viewable and ad conten, also create txt images for the page headers and the section headers as i like the header txt.

[the curiousity]

Originally Posted by starchildspace

WE're having a similar class on my course (although I'm doing Graphic Design)

we are shown very little HTML, Then we're given 2 tutorials with step by step instructions on how to build these 2 SHITE pre made websites, then told "right, now fuck off and create your own, and it better be nothing less than spectacular"

Most of my class is still like WTF with the program, Myself and 1 other have previous HTML experiance so we're alright, but they def need to spend a little more time teaching us HTML.

ahh, yikes.

I have a similar problem in my C++ programming course. "Here, make an filter using Z-plane co-ordinates which require only radii of the circle poles and zeroes"

*stares* no really, thats all he's getting from me. and i'm supposed to be quite good at this.

i'm getting there.

Originally Posted by Moldiver

Some of the links in the menu don't go anywhere is cause i havn't added contento to those pages yet. Gonna do it tommorw.

What i am getting from what you are saying about the font is that the custom one i am using isn't work, that correct?

The colour scheme was always a problem, i just couldn't settle one one and ended up going with one that i know people won't like, no idea why lol. Wil have a look at that site and see what i can get.

Also will change my headrs to they link back to the main page. Good point, forgot about that.

what i was pointing out is that you shouldn't have broken links/plain text for pages that don't work yet. And your menu should be consistent on every page. i clicked one link that said about, and on the menu where 'about' should have been, there was a link to bands, clicked that and the menu kept changing. Very confusing for someone who's only just come onto your site by accident.

Yes, the custom one doesn't work, and i was suggesting CSS so that instead of it defaulting straight back to times, you could allow a users browser to substitute for the custom font with something that's similar that is available on that computer. look up something like http://www.html.net/tutorials/css/, which has an ok tutorial/explanation etc.

The point about the Headers is that it adds consistency, and also you can use it to 'tag' the page with relevant keywords which search engines will pick up on, which will make your site more discoverable and thus get you more traffic. which is essentially what will make a good website.

[Zooropa]

See if you have to incorporate flash, I'd recomment a sublte animated logo at the top left of the main menu or something.
Wouldn't have it as a splash screen.

[GreatKingRat]

The only thing that makes a splash screen worse is a splash screen with a Flash intro.

You could actually kill two birds here, if you want custom fonts and need to use Flash then you could try sIFR.

[kimzor]

Splash screens are a big no-no.