• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Tell me how ugly my site is!

Markbnj

Markbnj

Elite Member <br>Moderator Emeritus
Moderator
Hey guys, if you have a moment I would love some feedback on a new site I have been working on. It's nothing of earthshaking impact: just a blog, forums, and file libraries. I've been primarily focused on coding, and still have a few things to do. I should also mention that I am about as visually-challenged as they come. Typically when I dream up a new design I think about it really hard and then do something blue. With a picture!

Anyway, I'm not trying to win any design competitions, but I don't want it to look gross either. So your honest opinion will be appreciated. Two things: I'm still trying to get Network Sol. to resolve an intermittent db error. If you get an error page just refresh. Secondly there is a small drop down at upper left that will load a couple of alternate schemes I have been working on. "Alternate 1" is pretty much dismissed as horrible, but "Alternate 2" might not be too bad. These alternates are only fully-styled for the front page.

Thanks!
 
I like Alternate 2 the best. It's very clean, but a cookie-cutter blog-type layout. Overall I give it a :thumbsup:
 
Thanks for the feedback! I kind of like the second alt as well. The site definitely is not meant to be innovative 🙂. Just a fun place to post my crap and host some files. I have some other ideas that will be more fun, but need to wait until I get this stablized before I go that route.

Thanks for taking the time to look at it.
 
Looks pretty good to me. The only thing I see off is the Account section on the right sticks out past the edge of your content in my browser (Opera 8).

Pic
 
Pretty good, but I would use lighter blues and get rid of that texture on the background. Simple is good.

I like the banner at the top.
 
Wow, thanks for all the feedback guys. Really appreciate it. I have a sense what might be going on with that Opera issue. Looks like the widths of the edit inputs are pushing the bounding box out. I'll dl opera and mess with it tonight. I have been testing in IE and Firefox without any real issues.

Not sure why the link is broken for you Mango. Working for me from corporate network. However, you may just have gotten an internal error caused by the DB error I mentioned in my first post. Did you try refreshing? I have been beating on Network Sol. to fix the damn thing for a month. Starting to get irritated.

Polishwonder... thanks man, appreciate the feedback. Same to Atheus and clamum.
 
Originally posted by: Markbnj
Wow, thanks for all the feedback guys. Really appreciate it. I have a sense what might be going on with that Opera issue. Looks like the widths of the edit inputs are pushing the bounding box out. I'll dl opera and mess with it tonight. I have been testing in IE and Firefox without any real issues.

Not sure why the link is broken for you Mango. Working for me from corporate network. However, you may just have gotten an internal error caused by the DB error I mentioned in my first post. Did you try refreshing? I have been beating on Network Sol. to fix the damn thing for a month. Starting to get irritated.

Polishwonder... thanks man, appreciate the feedback. Same to Atheus and clamum.
Click to expand...


Works now...I tried refreshing multiple times, guess it was just an error. Your site looks good. I don't particulary care for the background texture. But if that's what you like, go for it. It's not that I think it should be plain, though
 
I've got some comments, do what you want with them. =]

1) I see you're using tables and there's nothing wrong with that, however, using pure stylesheets and divs, the code would be cleaner and easier to modify. In addition to that, your source would be significantly shortened, making pages load quicker. Also, pulling all your information from one file each time would lead to faster loading times, thanks to cached styles.

2) The background texture. I'm not a big fan of images/textures as backgrounds, they're somehwat distracting. I'd suggest you fade out towards the sides. With the shading of the main page, it'd blend really well and I think it would look pretty good.

3) The link colours are too close to the colour of the background, navigation should stand out to a degree, I think a lighter colour would be much better.

4) I can some-what see your post devisions, aswell as those of your left and right navigation. I think you should make the lines a little brighter, so they stand out more and show clearer devision.

5) The login field on the right is much brighter than the rest of the page, I'd suggest making it slightly gray.

6) At the very bottom, I can see that some of your footer is cut off.
©2005, POP World Media, LLC
Click to expand...
is barely being displayed, but that might be a problem on my end.

I know you have some "alternate" themes, but I think they both stand out more than they should, there's no real middle ground.

Other than that, great site. Looks nice and user friendly. :thumbsup:
 
Hard to see the links. You need some contrast on that page. The alternate 2 is probably the best, but again, the links blend in too much to the background.
 
Works now...I tried refreshing multiple times, guess it was just an error. Your site looks good. I don't particulary care for the background texture. But if that's what you like, go for it. It's not that I think it should be plain, though
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's a low-level database connectivity error. In SQL Enterprise Manager is shows up as "transport error, the network name is not available." Took me about a month to get it through their heads that nothing I am doing is causing this. They have about a thousand databases on the same server, and aren't getting any other complaints, which makes it tougher. But all their hosting domains are virtualized, and the problem is somewhere in there. They say they are looking at it now but I haven't heard anything for a week.

Can anyone recommend another reasonably priced ASP.Net host with SQL Server? I pay about $140/year for 10 gigs of disk, 20 gigs/mo. bandwidth, a 40 meg. SQL server instance (too small really), and 100 email boxes (that I don't use).

1) I see you're using tables and there's nothing wrong with that, however, using pure stylesheets and divs, the code would be cleaner and easier to modify. In addition to that, your source would be significantly shortened, making pages load quicker. Also, pulling all your information from one file each time would lead to faster loading times, thanks to cached styles.
Click to expand...

Thanks a lot for the feedback, Loke. The forum framework that I modified, which is PopForums, generates a table-based layout. I heavily modified that, and wrapped it in a 3-column centered style, but I didn't feel like completely reworking the UI to get rid of the tables. I agree with your point completely.

The background texture. I'm not a big fan of images/textures as backgrounds, they're somehwat distracting. I'd suggest you fade out towards the sides. With the shading of the main page, it'd blend really well and I think it would look pretty good.
Click to expand...

I hear you guys on the background texture. I think I will try a couple of different approaches.

On your other comments basically relating to contrast: I will try bumping up the brightness of a couple of those elements and see how it looks.

Thanks again, folks.
 
Hey what a coincidence. I just started a website with ASP.NET as well.. lol.

Anyway, as said above, using stylesheets/divs saves a considerable amount of space and its much easier to modify once you get the hang of it. I've been using Tables until now but once I tried CSS, the difference was night and day. I understand that you are running a prebuilt software and modifying the UI can be a pain but I suggest playing around with CSS for the parts that are not part of the software because its that good.

And I'm using 1and1 for ASP.NET hosting. $120/year with ASP.NET/SQL Server 2k and so far its been working fine for me. Their support is, for the most part, top notch (although their English can be a little hard to understand) and its 24 hours via phone/email.
Anyway, check it out... its the MS Business Plan and comes with:
* 3 domain names
* 100 GB web space
* 2,000 e-mail accounts
* 1,000 GB traffic
I got 5 free .info domains as well but I think that offer is over.

Anyway, if you are thinking of moving over to them I'd appreciate it if you could use the referral link on my website (in my sig) which is on the website footer. I'll supposedly get $30 for it, and I'll split the earnings with you.. ie, $15.
 
Thanks for the recommendation. I'll definitely have a look. As for the CSS vs. tables debate... no debate there 🙂. But I really do not want to modify the UI that the framework provides as long as it works.

As an aside on the debate, substituting tables for styled DIVs is appropriate where the tables are being used to achieve positioning effects. Where the tables are being using to present tabular data, i.e. in the forum, then a table structure is still appropriate.
 
Well, I think there were "Get Internet Explorer" link logos for about the last ten years 🙂.
 
Other than the small problems that others have mentioned, I like it. I think my preference is for original. I almost like alternate 1, but something about the colors bothers me. I think if you left alt 1 generally the same but tweaked the colors a touch it would look fine.
 
Thanks for having look. I thought I was going to like alt1, but I think the orange is wrong. You're right, though, with a little tweaking it might not be too bad.
 
I just finished making a number of changes based on the suggestions in this thread. There are still some Firefox tweaks needed, and I haven't fixed the problem with the login form in Opera yet.

Thanks for your help everybody.

Site here!
 
Yep, the colors seem well co-ordinated. Oh and the split image in the header seems a little out of place, the leftmost image (ml🙂 seems like it would be better if it touched the right images, but the seperation between the menu and the top (modallogica.com) is fine.
The footer also seems to be cutting off on Firefox.
Besides that it looks good.
 
Don't know if it's supposed to be like that, but the three images that make out the logo/top nav bar have little spaces in between them.
I imagine it's not supposed to be like that, seeing as it's an image that gets broken up.
Looks like that in Firefox/linux and IE/WinXP.

Also, a small thing that's purely a matter of taste I guess, but I've always found white text on bright blue backgrounds a tad tiring for the eyes.
I have a feeling the text would be easier on the eyes if written on the side background color instead(which looks quite like the Win2K default bg color, and I rather liked that one).
Again, just a personal opinion though 🙂

Those little things aside, it looks great 🙂
 
Hey Dawg, I linked you up and dropped a comment on your site. I like the way you used AJAX for the chat box. I'm thinking of something similar.

The spaces between the images in the banner are intended to delineate the horizontal menu, and the left column. I'm still not sure if it works either but will probably run with it for a bit. I think I will definitely keep the horizontal one.

As for the colors... I think I am going to provide two or three themes, maybe add a grey theme and a red theme, but that's down the road.
 
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