Need a better layout...

[phantom]

meh, I wanted somewhere to waffle so i came up with : http://www.robertjones.me.uk

If you'd be so kind as to take a looksie i'll explain whats up, go on, i'll wait for you :)

Ok, so ya back and i hope you can see the problem..
The title gfx i'm happy with, same goes for the menu (well, it need better coloring but i can work with that when i sort out the rest of the issue) and the copyright lark at the bottom, but i'm kinda lost as to what todo with the text, i dont really like how its layed out but i cant see what todo with it.
So, any ideas people have would be greatfully recived.
Couple of things to keep in mind :
I'm not a great fan of graphics
Keep it simple as thats the idea
Needs to be readable


So, any ideas? :)

[qui]

How about looking around various blogs, most of them use css only, very few graphics and look pretty nifty :)

[phantom]

hmmm its an idea

[D33]

Might want to make it thinner otherwise every time you update you'll have to write a small book to achieve three or four lines.

[phantom]

hmmm got a good point there MrD33, i'll fiddle with the top gfx a bit and do something with it on a thinner trip...

[rychan]

come up with a colour scheme for the section title, should be bold text imho, section title bg,etc,etc

Stylesheets all the way also yayyyyy!

[rychan]

ohh forgot to mention .. if you are developing it as a 'thin' site you might want to look at http://www.orisinal.com/ and centralise the gubbins also.

[phantom]

I made a mild change a few days ago (making the site thinner as D33 said), i've not had much of a chance to go back after making that inital change to center stuff (couldnt be bothered to work it out at the time, hehe)

Its already using a style sheet :)

cheers for that link, i'll have a proper look when i'm not falling sleep as i type ;)

color scheme would be a nice idea, i'm just not too good with colors, i'm a coder not a gfx designer ;)

[Sparky]

You can't avoid graphics forever :oP

Stylesheets are great, but eventually you'll need some graphics (perhaps just a banner?) to give your site that finishing touch.

I'm saying.... you should learn to use a package (say PSP) and become good at gfx design. It's more of a "play with it until it looks good" process rather than the more logical steps needed with coding, but with time and practise you'd get an instinct for it and get better - no matter how graphically retarded you are :o)

I'm not amazing at artwork either, but I'm better than I used to be. It's kind of nice when you come up with something that looks good - why don't you try it?

-Sparky

[phantom]

Aside from the title gfx, W3C links and some [stolen] smilies my last website didnt have any other gfx, the rest was CSS layout and coloring so ya can avoid 'em ;)
(I would show ya but its suffering from a dead host atm)

i dont have the time atm to fiddle with this site, so i'll come back to it later :)

[Sparky]

Take this forum for example - 95% can be done with CSS, but there's still the banner which makes this forum different. Moo.

[rychan]

re: colour schemes

Find one you like, printscreen it
get the hex values
stylesheet it in and wahey!

[JinxM]

Don't worry about looking for inspiration :) Sites that work and that are good are your guide to... well what works and what is good. Take ideas from them by all means (as long as you don't copy 100%!)

If you want to avoid a graphics (I rememer the days of 33.6 modems too, but now?!) make good use of colour instead. White BG with black text is a bit bland and actually hard on the eye. Pick a few colours to use. One for text, one for the main table cell holding the text and one other for everything else. It might be an idea to give the main table cell a color border to separate it from the rest of the page (and all that whiteness).

This is an interesting article I foudn yonks back about colour:

http://www.wpdfd.com/wpdpal3.htm

[phantom]

I'm not the greatest fan of gfx on web pages unless they have a point, i prefer the minimal look.

I'm tempted to use a color scheme i found before, yellow text on blue, it works very well and I even had a couple of color bind people to hand to give feed back on what it was like on the eye...

hmmm in fact, sod it, i'm gonna re-work an old design i had for a clan website ;)

[phantom]

well, i had some 'spare time' and did a fast rework of the site based on an old design I used a few years back;

http://www.robertjones.me.uk

Bit of a change, dont you agree? ;)

[Sparky]

Heh. Strange as it may seem, I preferred it before :oP

[phantom]

heh, bah, no pleasing some people :P

[fab]

If you don't like graphics and aren't very good at doing them, I think it's best to make the site as simple as possible. Make it look more like a document - use simple black and white with maybe a single colour to make certain titles stand out. It'll look good even though your not using many graphics.

The current red yellow and blue dont work well together and it I think it'd look better if you didn't use the boring header-navigation-page arrangement. The navigation bar doesnt even need to exist, there's only one page :)

I'm a graphic designer so maybe you shouldn't listen to me :)

[D33]

Take a photo of long hair like phantom has, make it just about fill the page in a 1024x768 res.

Where the face would be have a longish, vertical rectangular box which again, stops just at the bottom of the screen.

Sorted.

[D33]

http://www.onlinegaminghub.net/misc/example2.jpg

^ kinda what I mean. A quick rushed hack job using old graphics but it's good enough for a small example.

[Korizin]

I made this site for my girlfriend last week, was my first attempt, i think its ok.

http://www10.brinkster.com/vodkashots

In middle of making my own site in php as you will see by the thread below this.

[D33]

Get your own damn thread you hijacking jedi noob :cry:

[Korizin]

:x

[Sparky]

That hosting's a bit steep. Find the right place and £20 will do you for the year (and not just a couple of months).

[JinxM]

phantom, the colour scheme is on the right track but I think you have too many primary colours (or close to). Maybe a mellower blue?


Re Hosting
Hosting for PHP is pretty cheap if you use US servers but then you always have the problem of the servers being so far away. But even in the UK, you can get it pretty cheap. ASP is more expensive but, imo, better in many ways.

[Student]

www.catalyst2.com for hosting, cant fault it