Revamped My Site Layout, Review It? Http://isart.co.nr

I was getting tired with my old one so I decided to redo the layouts. Most of the information is still the same but I like the new look.
Just a note:
The comments section does not have any php coding behind it yet, still working on that.

Any comments or suggestions would greatly help me!

Thanks!

* If anyone misses the link in the title here it is http://isart.co.nr/ *

Edited April 28, 2007 by Damen (see edit history)

Site URL?

Site URL?

In the title Imtay!
anywhoo, I must say that I think the design looks fairly nice overall.

1. Maybe try to make the outer solid background grey for your homepage slightly lighter. By this I mean the thick borders either side of the main content area
2. Your homepage takes years to load, this is because you have saved the entire page as tonnes of images! Yeah, I'm on relatively fast broadband, but still it even timed out whilst loading and I had to refresh to get the rest!!!!! This is the largest issue, as most people visiting your site may simply go elsewhere if they can't get it to load within 8 or so seconds (average time people are willing to wait)

For your forums:

1. The ISA top banner image you have for your forums is really nice and clean... I like it! (then again its quite a large image, so maybe try compressing it, as far as possible withought it looking any different.)
KEEP YOUR TOP BANNER IMAGE!!!!!!
2. I don't think the red design of the forum is great though. This could be made better by applying point 1. in my first paragraph here and also try to get less black on the page, or either change the red.

OK, hope this helps!
Basically size of your site +l oading times is the issue, but thats a lot!
Edited April 28, 2007 by Jimmy (see edit history)

In the title Imtay!

Whoops.

Ok i visited the site I must say nice job! 8/10. The one thing I must say that is not all that great is the forum. The red and black does not match the orange and beige color on the main page. Now maybe you can try making a phpBB forum skin that matches you main page! Also, what Jimmy Said, The banner is too big. Try compressing it. Really Nice site dude!

Alright guys,Thanks for the nice comments.I know the largest issue is the images. One thing I am thinking about doing to reduce it is making less of them, or coarse, and maybe trying to bring down the size (kb wise) by turning down the colors.As for the forums. I will end up changing the style to a orange and black. I have it already made but I have to edit it so I don't lose my mods.I will try to bring down the size of my banner(you guys mean memory wise right?), does anyone know the easiest way to do this with a png? I tried making it a gif and removing the matte but it just doesn't look the same.Again thanks for the comments.I will post back when I can get around to changing it up more.

I checked it out, you got some nice artwork up on there and the site looks good.I would make a link from the ISA News in the upper left corner on the homepage to the news page.I like how you got the definition of the website up on their too.Forums are nice too good set up man.

Graphic wise is a nice layout except for that gray bar on the right side that has to go, also its needs some drop shadow as well because the way it looks it is completely flat. I notice you did the guassian trick with the border stroke which is ok but you need some drop shadow.As for slicing their is alot of places where you can reduce the slices because sine your home page is one big image there is no need for all those slices, you did well in the slicing for your other pages just not the home page. I would say you could reduce your slices to 16 from about the 40 slices you have right now. Unless you plan to change some of them with text then ok that your slices should be fine.I would recommend looking at hte smaller slices and see where you can combine them with the larger ones. Also get rid of the frameset especially since your using a full page design that doesn't require frames.

I totally agree SM, I am going to work on that as soon as I can.And I will edit the pages to make the top left news a link to the news page.Thanks again for the suggestions and compliments.Well I made lots of changes to it guys. I made the images universal so they only load once through-out the site. I made the news section on the top left a link to the news page. I removed all the un-needed slices/images. Added a black gradient to the background!took me a bit and some problems along the way but I improved it my my view. thanks for all of your suggestions.Any ones I passed up or any other suggestions?I also got done wit editing the forums color scheme. It now matches the website scheme to a tee. Or as good as I could get it. Now all I have left to do is change the color of the logo at the top.

I really like it. Especially the graphical corners to the boxes on the main page. It all looks pretty smooth and I'm feeling the color schemes. I haven't seen the original site so can't really compare the two....but I like what you've done with this. If you can possibly make your links animate then it will look even crazier. Good work....Don't have much to criticize.

I agree, the red and black logo doesn't really go with the rest of the layout. Other than that, I think it's really good. You should think about making the navigation more user-interactive with css image rollovers and what not. Also, I think it would look better if you made the background image fixed. Those are just my oppinions though.

thanks for the compliments and suggestions. I am going to try and get some rollovers going with the nav when I can. And I am getting on the logo on the forums when I can.thanks

Excellent site layout. However i recomend a change in colors. But I love the overall design and I must say keep up the really good work. Nice graphics!

Thanks mermaid. I am not quite sure a change of color is in the best interest of the site. It would take a week to re-do it all.

Thanks mermaid. I am not quite sure a change of color is in the best interest of the site. It would take a week to re-do it all.

Perhaps a nice green or blue. Did you layer those images? Because i likethe grey keep it. i am talking about the foregroun. if you layered them it shouldnt take lonag at all!

You could just edit all the images in photoshop with colorbalance and then reupload them.