My first Website

Be gentle huh

At 800x600 there is a horziontal scroll bar
I don't think the yellow suits these "Four delightful young gentlemen", maybe a yellow outer border with white background for content sections. Or even a shade of the navigation buttons.
Because the news section is so skinny at 800x600 there is a lot of blank space in the first two columns.
The 'about' link should be 'about me' or 'about the webmistress' as 'about' kind of implies its about the band/group.
You have a extra table code at the bottom of yours pages, if they aren't being used is best to either emoved them or comment them out ( ends it, anything between these tags is not seen on screen)

Points for being valid
You could use less tables in your code, the tables should be split into sections (top, content and bottom if you used it), the content (middle) section can be nested like you have but doesn't need to be, use CSS for the borders etc in the table (td) cells.
The seperate tables will speed up your load time (although isn't to bad as is on dialup) and can make editing/modifying your pages easier.

You could very easily upgrade to XHTML as well, just change the DOC tag, close the meta tags and it should be valid XHTML

And I wasn't gentle you did good for first website

Well it is functional, easy to tell what the site is about, and easy to get around. For your first I would say it is good. I personally like graphics, but you got the basics down.

If you want you site to get some links and notice you need to join some link exchange programs. Here is one it is call Linkmetro.com and it is free. Also join some autosurf programs like Mixcat this is also free to join. These to places will help get your numbers up there.

And of course if you want to look at some templates, look at my site.

Right first off thanks for your critique Busy.

I have done the things you suggested that I could do quickly. Its now About Me and the blank space has been filled a bit more. The empty table cell has gone - I forgot that was there I have only published the index page for now. Going to my bed as its late (after 11pm)

I will look at your other suggestions tomorrow evening and see what I can fathom - still very much a newbie with CSS so its all trial and error at the moment. Will have a look at the colour - I agree with you about there being a lot of yellow but limited brain cells and all that will have to read up on it some more

Once again - thanks for your input - and you were relatively gentle with me

Thanks Altemplates - I will look at those links tomorrow now - As I am learning website building in the age of accessibility I am not going to build a graphic heavy site!

Hey Mag, youre making a Fan Site? Why am I not there? LOL!...

Anyways, Good First site, I see you took time to organize the layout, my concern is that shade of yellow is a bit anemic looking... I think the image on the banner/header area should be removed, make it a little thinner and just put int texts or text-graphics in there...

I think you could rethink the color scheme, and definitely work on those borders since its a bit overwhelming, make it appear it blends together even without those borders, A little gradient of splash of a third color would do your site good...

Good Job on a First site!

Oh Deamonhale *swoon*

Does it come across more of a fan site? I am trying to create a career history rather than just another fawning fan site - there are so many out there for various artists.

Looking at it from different eyes I can see that the *ahem* cream background is a bit - shall we say - garish still. I will spend some more time reading about colour schemes over the next few days and see what comes up. I may know a little about website building but I know naff all about graphic design. That is the next course :blush:

I can easily loose the picture in the title and make it thinner so that is another thing that can be sorted quickly.

Thanks again for your help guy's - for us newbie webmasters its invaluable.

I posted this before, go to this thread...

http://webmaster-forums.net/showthread.php?t=32032

and visit this link:

http://www.wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html

Help you with colors....

Well, there is a lot of empty space in the tables, and the download from all of the images is a little slow. The greenish yellow also bothers me a little. It certainly has potential, and it's pretty good for a first site.

Searchbliss - thank you for your comments - I am working on the colour as we speak. Not sure on a good one but white will figure more :blush:

I am going to fill up the bottom of the tables with more stuff but as pointed out the graphics are somewhat slow to load on dial up so dont want to load the front page with too many. Will have to put my thinking cap on and come up with something.

Maybe a piccy of Demonhale or summat

It's a nice layout and I like the menu, except that your layout doesn't have any graphics in it. It's only lines.

bfbf99 for body colour (on hover colour of navigation)
cccc99 for outer table colour (normal colour of navigation)
white for content areas

When you find a layout you like but the colours are wrong, what I do is take a screen capture of the page and in paint shop pro (or photo shop or whatever) chop and change the colour combinations until your happy. Some times it takes 100 attempts, other times you get it within half a dozen. Sometimes you have to walk away from it for a while and let it come to you.

*limps into room mopping sweat from brow*

Right!!! Total new look with the same content. New colours - edited layout - borders removed - instead padding (bet that is wrong )

No white empty spaces to speak of - fits ish into 800x600 - new smaller header - News gone but not forgotten. Now in navigation (which I know needs readjusting for prioritising)

Didnt do too much in the css as I am still not that great with it but will continue to 'fiddle' over the weekend.

Hope I done better this time :blush:

Oh forgot to say - I got my colour scheme from slayeroffice.com

oooops G4 Central :blush:

Looks quite ok now, you still need to amend the boxy feel... although it looks really ok now...

Oh my!!! Quite ok!!! Really ok!!! High praise indeed!!!

In all seriousness folks thanks for your help. It is no point in having a website for all to view if it looks wrong. It was scary submitting my site for you guy's to critique. To have the views of professionals/more experienced/younger builders/designers is great. This sort of feedback would never come if places like this didnt exsist.

Now I have an outside view and I feel quite - no - very proud of the look of my site.

Thanks for all your help and advice. I really do appreciate it

Not my taste for content but hey .

It's a nice clean layout, although the colours are a little bland. Sometimes your graphics could do with a few touches but in general it's a well-crafted, easy-to-use website.

Good job and good luck for your future websites!

I am new to these boards so don't know how critical or praising you should be, I would be more than happy to have produced something of that quality as my first site.
Have to admit G4 would not be my first choice in music ( cue my xmas pressie from my uncle and aunty G4 and friends ) I am not joking.
Anyway back to the review, I think you have a fantastic layout and colour scheme, it gives the impression of a professional site and is " classy looking " as the members of g4 are there looking smart in suits I think it balances nicely.
Out of interest how long have you studied to reach this level and how long did it take you to construct the site?

I own a site www.jokingaround.co.uk ( I have posted a review my site if you would like to look )
This site was done for me by a company as I didn't know a thing about e commerce a couple of years ago, am probably an amateur by some standards now.
Cheers
Martin

Thanks xepio. Its always nice to get an outside view from people who either know what they are talking about or dont belong to my family and think everything on the net is brilliant

As for the content - you keep you hands off them - they are delightful young gentlemen with voices of angels *sigh*

I love this. It is alot better then the yellow. You are learning quick.

Mags a good learner, much like me... Anyways, do something with the box feel k? TC...

IE does support XHTML. It is web standards that IE doesn't support, never has and probably never will sadly.
XHTML has been released since 2000

As the 'technical consultant' you should know keeping valid code is the smart thing to do, XHTML has levels like anything, we are not suggesting using XML (although works in IE), just meerly XHTML which is nothing more than clean properly nested HTML - all tags lower case, all values quoted, all single tags end (which work backwards to version 4 browsers and below with the help of the space - older browser ignore the slash).
I would hate for you to hold your mum back, she has done very well and has improved in leaps and bonds. Waiting for IE to wake up, your mum might as well go back to using frontpage and forget everything she has learnt here

XHTML is the next level of HTML, after HTML4 came XHTML, I could direct you to w3c.org but that site is confusing to anyone. do a search for XHTML basics and you will see there is no issues with browser problems.
It is CSS that has browser issues, but even then only when full CSS is used, most of it even works in NS4.* though.

Don't let your mum go backwards, be proud of what she's done, support her and allow her to at least stay valid using XHTML which has been around for 6 years already. As you should know, 6 years in computer terms is like decades.

Thanks for clarifying that, GDVS. This is something that has come up relatively recently from what I've seen and there's a lot of debate around it. It's not something that's part on the mainstream knoweldge-base yet, and I think that's partly because a lot of people don't understand it (myself included to an extent).

It's all quite confusing actulally, especially since for so long the experts were telling us to do XHTML and now a lot of them are reversing their course. So what's a web designer to do? Many of us don't want to be bothered with the nitty gritty debates about the technology, we just want to design our sites. And do it according to the specifications - now we don't know which specification to use anymore!

nice website design, though you could avoid worldpay fees and go with paypal.com which is cheaper and better in alot of ways.

Just do some validation, whatever it might be, as long as youve tried the necessary steps, sometimes I like strict or transitional, html or xhtml, as long as I try to validate...

Mag has the basic instinct of a designer, a small polish here and there and some good backup of a coder behind her, what could possibly stop Mag from learning more...

First of all: this is very nice site. Clean and simple. For the first web site, it is very good.

I have two suggestions:

1) Header may need some changes.
2) Selected menu should be highlighted somehow.

This is how it could be done

It's simple, it's clean, and easy to navigate. I think the site does exactly what you want it to without being too much. I think you did a good job!

Krash

Krash - thanks for your nice comments - I am now working on making it interactive instead of just flat pages. The php is coming on slowly but the sql is errrrrrrrrrr well errrrrrrrrrr even slower. I can do the data base now all I need to do is to link everything together. With the help of GVDS (or whatever he called himself) I will get there but do want to have a go myself first.

Once again - thanks to all who helped me to improve the look of my site

Ok folks - resurrecting this thread as I now have moved to a CMS (joomla). Took some doing as I didn't have a clue about CMS but I am now getting there. Spent a couple of days finding the right template and adjusting it to the right colours 'n stuff.

My problem is that now I am not W3C compliant!!! Is this a normal problem with CMS or is it the template - I may have learned a lot but I know I still have a lot to learn.

Demonhale - Help!!!!

Hey just got back from a month long (maybe more) break. Just checked out the site, and your validation problem is quite minimal. You only have 4 errors. The first one is that you have Two tags... just erase the second one. The other problem is that you put a tag inside the tag without closing the tag... and pretty much everything else will get fixed. The problems are not closing your tags...

Using a CMS like joomla! instantly makes a site look and feel more organized and professional. From your first site to this is a major leap forward. I hope you'll continually learn more as you go...

Good looking site!

Excellent navigation.

I don't like how large the header is on your forum it takes up half of my browser vertically.

Good luck with it...

Thanks for your wonderful comments folks - I felt very proud of my baby when I first submitted it and now I feel like a dog with 5 tails - I don't know which to wag first All that hair pulling and head scratching over CSS was sure worth it Next project is maybe to create my own template and see what I can to with that. Mind you with all the many thousands of free ones available I am not sure it is worth all the hassle. Just download an open source one and fiddle away

This semester has been all about building, configuring and networking puters so I have done very little on the website front. I do like the CMS system though and plan to learn much more about it. At the base level it is very easy and adding components couldn't be simpler.

For anyone wanting to produce something for themselves just download the manual and read away. It really is that easy once you get your head round the difference between categories and content.

Demonhale - your going to have to look to your laurels - I think I'm in love with Joomla :eek:

Magnolia wrote: Demonhale - your going to have to look to your laurels...

Your in love with joomla, im in love with joomla before when it was mambo... but now I'm in love with somebody else.... Drupal...

Skint - the CSS was edited in Dreamweaver but the content is all done through Joomla - There are many CMS out there you just need to find the one you like. My son did some development with Mambo and when one of the best developers left to create Joomla he defected at the same time. Its a good, stable environment that is easy to edit both back and front end

As for the purple - on my monitor it is blue:rolleyes:

Looks good but why G4 ? lol

Thanks folks - Oh and RNWEBDIR - Why not G4