Please Review My New Site Design / Layout / Test In Opera Much Appreciated

[Blessed 0]

really professional sitepropz

[Saint_Michael 3]

So is it possible to mix PHP coding with some xhtml, for example <div>s...?

Yes you can mix in (x)html into PHP here is an example of how it would be done

<?php// Our log file;$counter = "stats.txt";// Date logging;$today = getdate();$month = $today[month];$mday = $today[mday];$year = $today[year];$current_date = $mday . $month . $year;// Log visit;$fp = fopen($counter, "a");$line = $REMOTE_ADDR . "|" . $mday . $month . $year . "\n";$size = strlen($line);fputs($fp, $line, $size);fclose($fp);// Read log file into array;$contents = file($counter);// Total hits;$total_hits = sizeof($contents);// Daily hits;$daily_hits = array();for ($i=0;$i<sizeof($contents);$i++) {	$entry = explode("|", $contents[$i]);	if ($current_date == chop($entry[1])) {		array_push($daily_hits, $entry[0]);	}}$daily_hits_size = sizeof($daily_hits);// Daily hosts;$daily_hosts = array();for ($i=0;$i<sizeof($contents);$i++) {	$entry = explode("|", $contents[$i]);	if ($current_date == chop($entry[1])) {		array_push($daily_hosts, $entry[0]);	}}$daily_hosts_size = sizeof(array_unique($daily_hosts));?><? echo "<b><font color='#FF0000'>Page Hits:</font></b><b> " . $total_hits . "</b>"?>

This is the html that the php script will display when someone goes to your website

<? echo "<b><font color='#FF0000'>Page Hits:</font></b><b> " . $total_hits . "</b>"?>

It's funny that people mention about going to xhtml heres the thing XHTML code is design for XML use and from what my teacher told me html 4.01 strict is the same as XHTML 1.0 transitional. So youdon't really need to go to xhtml unless your trying to have your site keep up in current coding. As long as you follow the standards to HTML 4.01 you can display very same thing as you would in xhtml.

Because if you wanted to make your site xhtml you would have to do it by scratch, since is coming from a validation test in xhtml trans in which you have 181 errors to fix, so I would go with coding to html 4.01 strict standards in which you only have 7 errors to fix.

Yeah XHTML is the new standard but thats because of the XML applications people are using for their websites (mostly businesses) and that XHTML used more for structure then actual design. Like I said you can do the same thing with regular html (albeit with a lot more code) but that is what CSS was designed for so you can remove most of that code and put it onto another file for universal means.

Although most of thats a bit contradictory due to the fact I don't code in html anymore, but that's me.

Also another that is worth mentioning is that you don't need get away from tables, the only reason people say get away from tables is do to the fact that if you design a site in tables you have to do deal with a lot of code and tweak it just to perfect in pretty much everything. But thats for business/professional sites.

for personal/portfolio sites as long as you keep the design simple and try not to get all bizzaro world on it then tables will be fine, especially if your design and slice temple stick with tables it generates. Im working on perfecting my skills of converting tables to divs in psd templates it's challanging because of all the tweaking, but it will worth it in the end.


But pertaining to yoursite I would fix/add the following things

-that background gradient get rid of the white and go with a lighter color then just the white to bluish color
-with the background border you have at the top move it down to image you have in your site (of course adjust the size to fit)
-add a drop shadow to your site either on the sides or on the bottom.
-with your toppic1.jpg and toppic2.jpg combine them into one image, with that you save on load time and some space
--I would change that grey to a gradient effect to go with the background bar you have

Other then those recommendations it's a clean looking design.

[Jimmy 0]

Thanks for all that advice saint m. and thanks blessed for the positive notes and good bumping

OK Here's whats new:

-that background gradient get rid of the white and go with a lighter color then just the white to bluish color

As you suggested, i think I understand you right that you mean to change the entire background colour to nearer to white, I've done that and I must say... it helps
I combined the two title images and a lot of the other template images in my redesign as suggested by you - This helps in two ways, it did easily make the files smaller overall and it was way, way easier to recode my whole site down to the barebones (looks no different )!

-add a drop shadow to your site either on the sides or on the bottom.

Right... I see where your going... and I agree! this would be a nice direction to take. i will be working on this for the coming days... trying to do it withought destroying the rest of my page!
Also, in a twisted, double dagger effect of removing useless images! - I managed (really don't know how) to get the colums nice and have those page headings like "home page" and "my photos" to be coded into the browser instead of using images. I'm pleased with the result! the colours look nicer and it definitely makes it easier to modify for new pages.

-with the background border you have at the top move it down to image you have in your site (of course adjust the size to fit)

Hmmm I'm really not sure what you meant for this one... sorry about that! could you maybe explain it a little clearer with a quick ms paint knockup of the sort of thing that you mean!!!
THE SITE HAS BEEN COMPLETELY RECODED DOWN TO BAREBONES! I managed to do this withought changing any of the layout at all and it really shortened the code, removed most of the complicated tables and converted things to divs!
Don't forget to check out my photos page!! I found a really neat JS for photo views and it allows captions and html pages in it, resizes the window and everything, and best of all its clean looking, free and no links or marking! - PM me if you would like the link to get it I bet you will!
Please tell me what you think of the changes

James
Edited April 4, 2007 by Jimmy (see edit history)