Template Under Construction under construction

[Baniboy 3]

Hi trappers! I've made a template for my website (which I'm planning to launch before Christmas if possible).So what do you think about it? Is it too blue? Is it nice? it's not done yet, I'll have to decide font color and some other adjustments to be done. In the meantime, any suggestions? What I could've done better? and yes I like blue color. Which font color fits the best, the one in the right column or the one used in the left column?Does the navigation bar look smooth like I intended?If you don't like it, tell me why? I personally like it, I can imagine what it looks like when done... I think the layout itself is pretty much done. The navbar will have drop-down menus. And I'll add stuff to the sidebar. I have an idea of what I'll do with it. I thought it would be nice if there is a small "about" thingy in there, which is visible when clicked on a link, and can be vanished by clicking the same link. I'm gonna do that with javascript, not very good at it tho, at all... Don't worry, I'm not gonna spam with my "help me with javascript"-topics, this time I'm gonna learn! The sidebar is also going to contain random things... I don't know yet. I'm keeping all my navigation in the vertical navigation barAre the background images ok? the sidebar background might need some adjustments but I think the page's background is nice, don't you?I'm using arial fonts, then comes helvetica and serif. I don't like serif tho, and I don't know if linux distros offer arial fonts installed by default.Oh and what about the logo, is it OK? I didn't want to make complicated logo. I'm keeping my graphics at minimum. The size of my template's graphics combined is around 62kB for now, I consider making my banner smaller, but first I'll try doing some png optimization(thanks tf for the links you gave me in the other topic:))Anyway, tell me what you think!

Edited October 4, 2009 by Baniboy (see edit history)

[jlhaslip 4]

do you have a link or an image posted somewhere? we can't see what you are talking about.

[Baniboy 3]

do you have a link or an image posted somewhere? we can't see what you are talking about.

Yes I tried to edit it last night but it wasn't approved yet so I couldn't edit and add it to the post. Anyway, the screenshot is added now. Edited October 4, 2009 by Baniboy (see edit history)

[BCD 1]

Nice theme. Clean and simple. I like the readable and legible fonts, nice for a blog. The fonts might be a bit large, but its fine with me. Also, I think there are lots of gradients used on theme. It might a slight distraction from the main theme. And thanks Baniboy for answering my queries.

Edit: For the menus and other javascript things, you can try Jquery. Its nice for starting out quickly.

Edited October 4, 2009 by BCD (see edit history)

[akira550 0]

wow i like the color and the header but add some tweaks on the header a logo or what where you will use that template? what kind of website? the color was nice and good to eye (because i love blue )

[Baniboy 3]

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Nice theme. Clean and simple. I like the readable and legible fonts, nice for a blog. The fonts might be a bit large, but its fine with me. Also, I think there are lots of gradients used on theme. It might a slight distraction from the main theme. And thanks Baniboy for answering my queries.

Thanks. I made the fonts smaller. I have five background gradients, and then the gradients in the logo. I'm using gradients in the design to make it blend together or at least try to. Maybe the distraction is because of the dummy text, since there is no actual content. I made a darker background gradient. I also tried it out without a gradient but it came out to be kinda boring. I want a simple look, not a boring one.
I've made all my graphics with GIMP. ()
 

Quote

wow i like the color and the header but add some tweaks on the header a logo or what where you will use that template? what kind of website? the color was nice and good to eye (because i love blue )

Thanks for replying.
I made a new logo, the last one had horrible font(I don't know if this is good, you tell me!). I don't really want a super-complicated logo with all the fancy things, but a simple one.
I made a footer. It's the reversed of the navigation bar. They kinda create an area for the content together and the white font looks nice on them(tell me if I'm wrong).
I'm going to use this template for my website which will contain tutorials about web-development, educative science articles and I also plan to publish my projects and share source with my visitors. Like make templates and share them for free on my website.

[-Sky- 0]

Wow, Baniboy, your design is very very eye catching and well made! Very good work mate. I just don't understand why people put Latin text in. But overall, very nice work and keep it up. I'm impressed!

[inverse_bloom 0]

I cant remember what you said in the other post, is this your first website? If so, you've got a good knack for balancing the color contrast of all elements within the design. Could i suggest that you reduce the strength of the embossment on "baniboy.com" or another method might be to take the embossment out totally and make the font white.It does look very blue but also unique!, kinda looks aquatic to me, maybe you could use that as an idea to extend the design. You could look at aquatic screen savers and images to see if there are any colors you'd like to put in as outlines, etc. The best feature here is the simplicity, when you begin the process of putting content in it really good if you try to maintain that simplicity as best as possible. Also when you begin putting content on page make sure that there is adequate "white space" on the page. "White space" is redundant space that isn't occupied by text or images. White space is useful for the sake of given readers the opportunity to have somewhere to rest their eyes. It is a concept that is particularly important in designing magazines, but for websites whitespace has to be balanced against the "economy" of a page. Basically not too little, not too much, but just right. Sound's like a kellogg's cereal advert...Good work!

Edited October 4, 2009 by inverse_bloom (see edit history)

[Baniboy 3]

-Sky- said:

Wow, Baniboy, your design is very very eye catching and well made! Very good work mate. I just don't understand why people put Latin text in. But overall, very nice work and keep it up. I'm impressed!

Wow, thanks! I have to admit tho, the finding of those colors was an accident, I don't think I'm capable of doing that with other colors, gotta try some time tho. Well, the dummy text's purpose is to just inform that "content here" or something like that. Thanks for replying
 

inverse_bloom said:

I cant remember what you said in the other post, is this your first website? If so, you've got a good knack for balancing the color contrast of all elements within the design. Could i suggest that you reduce the strength of the embossment on "baniboy.com" or another method might be to take the embossment out totally and make the font white.
It does look very blue but also unique!, kinda looks aquatic to me, maybe you could use that as an idea to extend the design. You could look at aquatic screen savers and images to see if there are any colors you'd like to put in as outlines, etc.

The best feature here is the simplicity, when you begin the process of putting content in it really good if you try to maintain that simplicity as best as possible. Also when you begin putting content on page make sure that there is adequate "white space" on the page. "White space" is redundant space that isn't occupied by text or images.

White space is useful for the sake of given readers the opportunity to have somewhere to rest their eyes. It is a concept that is particularly important in designing magazines, but for websites whitespace has to be balanced against the "economy" of a page. Basically not too little, not too much, but just right.

Sound's like a kellogg's cereal advert...

Good work!

This is my third website. But I didn't make the template myself for the other two, I used WordPress and it's themes(I did modify the code and graphics tho). This is the 4th template I've done if I remember correctly. The graphics load is now around 56 kB
Thanks for the advice. I'll make sure I have enough whitespace between my content.
I made two headers, don't know if they are "aquatic", but hey, I tried I want to know which one looks better, one has drop shadow and the other one doesn't(dial-up alert):

Tell me what you think... They are both partially transparent.

[jlhaslip 4]

I think I like the second one better. Not sure why.And nice colours there. Blue is my favourite colour and is very professional looking.Is this coded into html yet? or photoshopped?

[Baniboy 3]

I think I like the second one better. Not sure why.And nice colours there. Blue is my favourite colour and is very professional looking.
Is this coded into html yet? or photoshopped?

Nope, I don't photoshop my designs, I just code it out. It's the form of XHTML and CSS now. Think I'm going add some javascript later.
Thanks for replying

[Baniboy 3]

So, that's it? No more suggestions? Like which banner looks better?I'm going to start doing some other stuff on it like content management, but any ideas on how to improve the look are welcome during that time. I'll also upload the final look for everyone to see when everything is done.

[Quatrux 4]

The second banner looks better in my opinion, the design is simple and readable, I like it, the only thing I would continue to work on would be the banner, it's just to plain, even though it might be alright if you would fins aomekind of cool font and would work with it, maybe it would look better.I always think that copyright bottom text needs to be smaller than all the other text, so you could make it smaller, but it's just my opinion, I'm used to see it smaller.

[Nameless_ 1]

Aw... what? Why didn't I see this thread earlier? I'd be spamming this thread with "Congratulations!!!" in big capital letters. But anyway...I just can't believe you made the whole thing yourself!!! Wow!!! You must be pro. I just take a good template off the internet and work from there. But wow... so, are you going to use that on Drupal, Joomla or Wordpress? Or are you just going to do everything yourself? Then that will be REALLY cool... but I'm not helping your with anything, Am I? I'll have to give you some constructive comments...(About your first post... are you implying that I spam the forum too much with my "Help on Drupal!!!" threads?) - Just joking... :POK, here goes the constructive criticism comments:I do believe that there is too much blue... maybe you can mix it with some other colour apart from blue and white? I don't know, you can just add a colour that complements with the light blue that you have chosen. I just think that that is a bit too much blue, that's all... and it just maybe degrades the site down a bit. It does look a bit homemade (not that I can make anything near or like that myself in the first place...).Um... I agree with someone that posted on this thread earlier... the text IS a little too big. And some graphics might be good as well... You made your website actually look like a blog template, so I'm implying that you will be using that as a blog? If not, you might want to change that too...I suggest you to go online and look at different blog templates to get some ideas for your own template, because currently it looks just a little and a slightly too plain and simple in my opinion.I'm trying to be honest with you, because I would like it if I receive more criticism than praises when I make my own thread like this... The buttons are a little too big and plain too, so you might want to look into that. I have no suggestions for the logo though, because you can only successfully see your logo after you have finished the template of your site. Because what I've found is that your logo actually changes as you change your template so that it suits your site, and I have actually already made many different versions of the same logo for my blog as I experimented with different templates, so I can't tell you anything about the logo right now, apart that it looks very good and it suits your site...And that's it for now, I guess. You might also want to put those meta block thingys under the main content of your site, which is currently what I am trying to do right now without any success.And that's all, I guess. I hope my post has helped you... I like giving constructive comments, though most of the time, if not all, the website that I am reviewing is always better than anything that I can ever hope to make. Including yours... You're really pro to me. I hope that that will change soon though, and that I will be able to be good enough to make my own template, or at least customise the template to whatever I want it to look like, and not what my limitations allow me to change. And so far I've only been able to correct some minor typo errors, which is pretty lame and stupid. But anyway... keep up the good work and keep us updated with the progress of your site for more comments!!! I like it.

[rpgsearcherz 5]

All I can really judge about it is what I can currently see. So I must say the colors really aren't that bad. I prefer a darker (such as blue) background than a white one because it's easier on the eyes (especially at night).When you have a more complete version (possibly already uploaded for more testing?) I'll be able to better evaluate it.