Certschool Template Concept Design This is a template that was never coded.

[Xalor 0]

Hey guys, while I've been gone, I've been trying out some new styles, in Photoshop with a design, if it looks good, then I'll usually use a convert it to HTML and use as little CSS as possible and the basic table layout to put in some content. I haven't gotten even to that and the content there is just for natures sake. I hate Lorem Ipsum since it doesn't capture what I like doing. I said that I don't use CSS when I slice, (I save HTML and Images instead of Images Only), because I'd rather keep the files to a minimum when I want to see how it lays out. When it does look good, and after I finish, edits buttons and start on the other core files, like setting up an RSS file, and getting interface done for the media player, and draw up the total concept, and figure out how to or get the PHP Code for forms and other basic stuff to see if its possible or not, then I begin drawing up a template. I've only done simple ones, in the past, and I can do more advanced since I got Expression Web 2, and it pretty much automates PHP and CSS for me, lot easier than coding from scratch. After it works out in there, and I test it in FF, IE and Chrome, don't have Opera, and don't plan on installing it. I then slice larger images into tiny segments so the download time goes down and then I have a template. I generally don't get far, so this is mostly the process that goes on in my head, if its for a site that I expect will do good, I'll spend a lot of time on it. My room is littered with half done mockups of templates on graph paper.

 

For the templates I have below, the design was for my uncle who runs a PMP Online Class for people new to the IT Management World, and want a couple of new certifications and information under their belt. Its located at http://www.certschool.com/. I did a oouple of banners, but I kind of hate doing banners, so I did a mockup for his birthday as a gift. He doesn't want to use black since it doesn't work that well on low power monitors, being that most of his students are rather "cheap", not to be racist, but we Indians, especially students on students Visas, or workers on H1s tend to be cheap, since they are paid less, and pay more for school. Here are the three basic layout pages.

 

Blog and Forums are really hard to actually code, so they were just an idea, the background is different for each one because they would be rotated around, here and there, on every refresh.

 

Home and other Main Pages

 

 

 

Blog

 

 

 

Forums

 

 

 

Those are it, I'm planning on redoing it but for now his site maintains itself with the people who register, and its a lot of content, so I need to a new content based design, probably using a lot of mouseover effects, and I'll start doing some vectors in Inkscape so stay tuned.

[TheDisturbedOne 1]

Those are really good. Usually a lot of dark themes are made poorly and don't come out well, but that one looks very good. I like the logo at the top, and the font used in the body. Are you using Y2k Neophte? Because it looks like that is the font. Great job by the way!

[Tramposch 1]

I just want to make this kind of quick. I think that the theme is too dark to have that style of text (as in it blends to much with the text and may be annoying to read)

 

I hope that helped, maybe change the text colour, or have a text background.