Envizion's Front Page

[DeM0nFiRe 0]

Ok, so I've done a really simple Front Page for my Game Development Team, ENVIZION. I was going for clean and dark, so let me know if this works. If not, I think I'll go with something a little brighter and a bit more intracate.

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

[rvalkass 5]

I have one major problem with your page - I can't see the navigation links. The text colour for non-active links does not contrast nearly enough with the background. On my laptop screen they are impossible to see unless you look at a weird angle, which is not the height of usability Also, the News, Community and Developers text size is very small, so you may want to bump that up a bit.Just to let you know, frames are generally a bad idea. They are hard for search engines to index properly and never look the same between browsers. Look into using DIVs, there are plenty of tutorials about both here on Xisto and elsewhere on the web.

[FLaKes 0]

Its nice but I think it could use more graphics, to make the graphical user interface more friendly. Im sorry but to be honest the navigation links are horrible, I cannot see them, I had to select the text to be able to read them. Well that is my opinion, try using a css menu for the navigation with on hover effects, that would make it more interesting, and edit the text in the main menu, add some margins or something. Its sort of difficult to read text all accros an entire page.

[mattedge 0]

Overall layout is somewhat blandNavigation is hard to seeThe Two Color scheme is also bland, maybe a little more shade stylesMore gfx could also help spice up the site :]It looks good for a planned base to build off of, but it needs a good bit of work

[Aaron2k7 0]

Erm.. The layouts a bit simple - Images would be better to break it up but its okay, As stated in the post before it needs a good bit of work

[OneMinute 0]

Try learning CSS? CSS is really quite simple. Just needa copy and paste? Then edit? Your site is indeed pretty simple, nothing much unique () I suggest you do what i suggested.

[csp4.0 1]

your background is pretty plain, why not a glass effect or something, or a flash box with clolours and stuff, your navigation bar isn't good, actually its terrible, I can barely see what it says, I recommend changing the font color to FFFFFF, but good site overall, just need to change the font on the navigation bar and maybe a few more colours

[elaks 0]

your background is pretty plain, why not a glass effect or something, or a flash box with clolours and stuff, your navigation bar isn't good, actually its terrible, I can barely see what it says, I recommend changing the font color to FFFFFF, but good site overall, just need to change the font on the navigation bar and maybe a few more colours

I agree. Usually a plain site is a good thing as it helps with navigation. But as csp4.0 and others have said; the navigation is so hard to see no attention is drawn to it, therefore wasting such a plain background for nothing.
Overall I think there is a bigger flaw. Upon entering the home page I have no idea what the site is about. There's no FAQ or short introductory paragraph to help new users. I only found out what your site really did when I visited into the developers section and found a few anouncements about heads of teams.

One last tip: I'd recomend not only changing the colour of text in the navigation frame, but also giving the links more recognisable names. I know alot of people think that calling a forum a "Community" is professional looking, but it's complicates navigation even more.

On a plus, it seems you've managed to setup a decent forum. Perhaps lacking in members (Don't worry, I've been a forum admin before. I feel your pain) but you've got a loyal few that post regularly. Good luck in the future.

[Urilockz 0]

I see you went for a simple dark theme, in that context it is effective!Although on your forum I am having trouble reading things clearly; it kind of hurts my eyes (really)!I give your site layout a 6.3/10.

[DeM0nFiRe 0]

Yeah, I'm definitely going to have to re-do it. I'm going to make it more eye appealing and more fonctional. In a couple weeks probably I'll have the new one done. I can't work on it right away because I have alot of other stuff to work on.

[crazyfray 0]

Agree that navigation difficult to see, and that intro text needed. I would also add that underlining makes it seem like your date and news item heading are links. It's not a hard-and-fast rule, but generally underlining is avoided for anything other than linking.Focusing on positives: I like the scrolling links for your affiliates (and I'm normally against scrolling text and images), as it adds a dynamic element that your site needed without being distracting. Logo and logo text are funky too.While frames are generally to be avoided, and if you're looking at web design in any kind of longer term view, it's something to start avoiding now, there's no real pressing need for you to change if (1) it doesn't cause any of the people in your group accessibility issues (like if they're using a text reader) and (2) you're not looking for people to find your site. Seems to me that there are some elements of general good web design practice that aren't absolutely necessary for personal and small audience websites - especially if this site isn't intended on staying around for 2 or more years. After all, they did include a frameset doctype flavour for XHTML 1.0 (not 1.1 tho, which is why I say if it looks like this is going to stay up long term, frames aren't such a good idea).Also, this may seem like a bit of a cheat, but I would recommend adding some news a couple of times a week over the next few weeks. When I see sites with news with 1-3 articles, I think that it's a dead site (when if I look at your forums, you have people posting and viewing there), and I think that many users make this assumption too - it doesn't matter whether your site is new or not, as the users aren't going to look at the last modified info (because we are lazy ).Perhaps add a news item about the fact that you've had some feedback here, and that people can expect to see changes soon?

[DeM0nFiRe 0]

Mm'possibly. At the moment though, everyone in our site just skips through the front page anyway and they just go directly to the forum. I'm going to work on coding in PHP, Javascript, and SQL a set of intergrated scripts for chat, news and things like that. I'd do the forums too, but no one wants to lose our posts

[iGuest 3]

We recently had a big problem (I'm a member of the community) And we are redoing alot of stuff. Stay posted *wink*-reply by MasterBlue