Parker — Sat, 01 Jul 2000 05:27:28 +0000

Umm...

- Your main page is way to long. You have to much stuff on it.

- Put the navagation on the left!

- Your logo is nice, its just kinda ugly. The colors on the whole site don't look to good. Spice them up.

- All the lines all over the site are confusing me.

Overall, I think it needs some work but with the work it can be turned into something great.

benc — Wed, 28 Jun 2000 18:59:00 +0000

Going along with most other people, I have a bit of a problem with the nav on the right side. However, if that's not an option to change, so be it. But if were talking about 'standards,' nowadays I see a lot of major heavy traffic sites go to a Yahoo type navigation...

So, that leaves me with a small comments/question about the logo. What I find odd is that the foreground text is shadowed, while the background is not. To me anyway, bothersome. If changing it is an option (which seems entirely not possible), I would say redesign the whole thing...

I do like the clean-up on the opening paragraph though - looks much better with those borders.

When is your site ready?

TWTCommish — Wed, 28 Jun 2000 02:16:00 +0000

Logo is nice...I'd add a mouseover effect to the navbar though...it'll help distinguish the text and make it more legible while adding a little pizzaz at the same time...

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Chris Bowyer
MyCoding.com: Join our Mailing List for Launch Notification!
"I'm not an insomniac, I'm a web designer."

Randall — Tue, 27 Jun 2000 23:09:00 +0000

If the design wasn't finished, then why would you ask for a review?

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Tue, 27 Jun 2000 14:49:00 +0000

Ok Justin, im sorry for my comments

Megan, that is exactly what i wanted, you ripped the hell out of the design, but gave reasons for your comments, its good to know why and not just no. The reason i call it "the design" is because the webmaster before me was a guy i know, he did a sh!t job for years and i was then approached when he was on holidays. I wanted to make it look like i was giving him credit for his part in the work as he does not know i have taken over and his connections are seated high up in the rankings. Forunately i also have some important connections, but its not good to deface the guy, so im slowly changing things. He has done all the graphics, which i am aware that are cheesy but am replacing one by one. He also did the design before mine. The my boss thinks the stuff that the guy did before me was great, but the truth is he has never spent much time at the site, he is familiar with the layout and instead of sparking a revolution i am slowly making the site more "normal"

I know there is alot of politics in this, and im sorry to burden you with it, but as i am now a company i would like to explain the state or underquality of my site, there is a reason why the design is the way it is.

I am not superman and i was aware of some of the flaws but i posted because i believe that a combined opion is the secret to creating a good site, and a compromise of a combined opinion and clients wishes, shoots above the mark and creates a happy customer.

Thank you megan and all for helping me, any more comments?

Megan — Tue, 27 Jun 2000 13:54:00 +0000

The problem with large amounts of text being aligned right or center is that english speaking people read from left to right. It gets really hard to read something when each line is starting at a different spot. Cloughie is right as well - people are used to seing navigation on the left, they're used to reading text that is aligned left. I could understand putting your navigation menu on the right just to be different, but the right aligned text underneath that is a problem.

The bullets on the menu's make the alignment an even bigger problem. Those bullets should line up with each other and you should try to fit the submenu's on no more than one or two lines (on the Childrens page, for example, you can get rid of "Junior" and "children" on the menu, since the user is already on the "Childrens Activities" page that should be self explanitory).

The Calendar page needs a major overhaul to match with the rest of the site. Also watch the position of the menu - it should be in exactly the same spot on every page (valign top in that table cell would do the trick)

YOu need to work on the organizaiton of the content pages. Some of these scroll way too much (particularly the "sports" page). At least provide a link to the top of the page from several spots in the middle of it. On the Womens page, the blue column should be wider, so that the height of the content in the middle and right columns roughly matches up for most of the rows. The rows should be roughly organized into categories (it's really weird how I scroll down the Sports page, starting with traditional sports, then go by Swimming, Library, Fitness room, and then back to more traditional sports, then billiards sneak in there..)

The cheesy border effect you have on some of the photos is not working - get rid of it.

Overall it's alright but not great by any means. By reading the history of the club, this sounds like a very unique place. A good design for this site should reflect the merging of cultures - which would be difficult to do visually.

Justin S — Tue, 27 Jun 2000 13:22:00 +0000

Ok, so maybe normal wasn't the right word. It looks weird (although it's also not normal) to me. If you don't want us to critique a certain part of the site because it has to stay, then please point that out to us. You can always suggest options to your clients though.

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Justin Stayton
· WEB: http://www.j.cx
· EMAIL: justin@j.cx
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Cloughie — Tue, 27 Jun 2000 09:50:00 +0000

you have to remember though, people using the web like to see standardisation amongst sites.

somethings confuse them or look abnormal to THEM otherwise....

Tue, 27 Jun 2000 03:13:00 +0000

You are right, but you cannot say something looks bad because its not normal, who decides normal?

Gem — Tue, 27 Jun 2000 03:05:00 +0000

DoubleOk - You did ask people for an honest critique. Basically a critique means that a person says whether or not the like the thing that they are reviewing, then give reasons why and possibly suggest how to improve it.

Nobody was to know that your clients are putting creative restraints on you before you pointed that out.

Gem
Sifox Design - coming soon.