ober

If I suggested a fixed width site and then said it had too much white space, wouldn't that be extremely hypocritical of me? Kind of. Maybe you shouldn't assume things about other people. Fixed with sites work on all resolutions to a degree. I'd rather cut out the 640x480 or even 800x600 people than make everyone else read across the entire screen. Look at any news/information site on the web. What format are they using? Oh... fixed width.

No offense, but I still think it looks awful. But looking at your site, I can see that you don't branch out much. It's the same uninspired design that you used on your site. 1) The backgrounds are awful... it's just some grainy awfulness that looks like it came out of mid-90s web design. 2) The buttons for the menu are simple and the shadow effect is poorly done. I like the font used for the menu but you don't use that font anywhere else in the site, so it looks bad side by side. 3) I personally don't appreciate the full-width/expanding sites. On a monitor like the one on my laptop (1600x1050), it looks far too spread out and I have to scan a single line of text across the entire screen to read it. I'd suggesting going to a fixed-width design. 4) I don't understand people that simply throw up an email address and a phone number and call it a contact page. You're using php extensions on your files, but this entire site screams "static" with the exception of maybe the schedule. Use a freaking form. You're inviting spam otherwise when you just place an email address on the website for all the bots to see. A form also lends itself to collecting information and storing it in a DB if you were to want to report or look at a history of comments/questions. 5) The content has a border on 3 sides.... did the 4th side do something to you or your mother? Make it consistent! It looks like you hacked it together in 10 minutes and forgot to add a border there. 6) Remove some of the whitespace. Fit the header image against the top of the window and fit the content against the bottom of the header graphic. It'll make it flow much nicer and it will look more professional. The gaps just make it look disconnected and "random". 7) Pick a color scheme. The header has yellow in it... the menu has brown in it... you use a lot of grey and black in the content section. I'd play up the yellow if that header graphic is going to remain. Right now it just looks like you designed this in sections instead of thinking about the entire look from a higher viewpoint. Start with those and then we'll hit it again. Again, these are all opinions, but I think they're worthwhile to consider.

You could use a "visited" link color... maybe hide the ad header if there are no ads... I'm not sure what else to say... colors are good, layout is blog-like... everything looks proportional... eh?

Looks great... but if this is just a skin for a blog someone else created... I'm not all that impressed. If you built this from the ground up, then I'd be impressed.

And now the big question... how many of you schmucks are actually going to download and play with it?

Yeah.... you apparently missed the point of the thread.

Good color scheme... possibly too much white space... I'll agree it's a ton of text that needs some flowage around some graphics or something. It's kind of hard to judge otherwise until you show us more pages and content.

Actually, there is. In Kayako's suite, when you start to type in the "problem" box, it will keep scanning the knowledge base for answers that match what you're typing. That has solved a few problems for me. Plus I know I'd find other valuable uses for it.

Yeah... that's what I'm leaning towards. My problem is that I'd start working on something like this and end up writing 90 little features into it and never be happy with it. And I'd of course have to throw a bunch of tricky AJAX into it. That's my issue with my current CMS that I've been developing on and off for over a year. I try to get tricky with it and hit a brick wall from time to time and then keep plugging new stuff into it. I've written several modules for it already but by the time I get one to the point where I'm fairly happy, I realize there is something I could add to it or I realize there's another module that would be useful and so now I have like 10 open modules, none of which are completely finished. And then there's that "time" issue. Maybe I should stop sleeping... that's an extra 6-8 hours per day!

It's extremely dark. For a site that dark, I'd expect more of a personal site. If you're looking to get business, I'd go with a lighter approach because it will appeal to the masses.

Well, I'm not really looking for a bug tracker. Again, that's a little overkill for what I'm considering. I just want a simple "post problem, see response" with various status and maybe a knowledge base I can build on. Thanks for the suggestion. EDIT: this is kind of what I'm leaning towards: http://www.troubleticketexpress.com/ or http://www.simpleticket.net/ (there was another one I have bookmarked at home that I can't find now)

A few points: 1) The hover effect in the menu doesn't look right. Flipping the background image isn't the best idea especially when you have a gradient. 2) The effect in the header has a mid-90ish feel too it. 3) I will never understand the site in a site look or the idea of putting scrollbars inside of a site. I just don't see the point.

Alright... off to the races: 1) the lack of upper-cased words isn't working with your current style. It doesn't look professional. 2) the hover effect in the menu is far too simple. change the background color on hover... drop the underline... make the links bold. 3) why do you put your website address all over the place? If people are on your website, they're going to know the address and how to get there. 4) *shudder* at the contact form. Congrats... you're using a table! You don't need to show the stupid borders to everyone! And "query" is going to confuse the average user. You might want to say "comment" or something instead. And your boxes for the "name" and "email" are kind of small compared to the data that might end up in them. 5) "client zone"... sounds like you're 10 and if I login it's going to give me some cheezy javascript flash screen that does some worthless countdown or "tricky" login thing. How about "client login"? That should get you started.

We use bugzilla where I work. I love it, but that's not quite what I'm looking for. I use horde for my webmail through my host and I'm not crazy about that either. It's buggy and slow IMHO. Thanks for the suggestions!

haha... sorry about that. Thanks for pointing it out. We consolidated the PHP boards a while back and I guess we missed that little bit.

1) Too many colors 2) Remove the reference to the resolution and browser. If I wanted your opinion about how I should surf the web, I'd freaking ask. And if you can't design a website that works well in all browsers at all resolutions, then don't design websites. 3) There is no flow to the website. It's just random crap thrown about that doesn't make much sense to anyone. 4) What's with the date? I have a calendar on my computer. I don't need your website to tell me, especially in that format. 5) It looks like you're just trying to get a bunch of advertising. That's annoying. If you can't support a website without 300 ads jamming up the works, then you should stop creating websites. 6) light blue font on a white background... could you make it harder to read? 7) Why do you need a guestbook on a job site? Guestbooks are not only worthless, but they shouldn't be on a professional site.

I like the logo... the rest of the site could use some work... it looks a bit childish and simple compared to the logo.

Some people just either don't want to help or don't have the skills to teach. It's pretty much that simple. You have to be a special kind of person to offer assistance with no reward. That's why probably less than .5% of our members actually answer questions. It's a select few (and usually a good select few) that will take the time to help the lost.

Eh... that runs on Perl (I'm not 100% sure my hosting plan includes Perl) and it's definately overkill in terms of what i'm looking for. My host (ace-host.net) uses Kayako's eSupport platform (I think it's an older version or it's modded) and I love the simplicity of it from a customer perspective. I think in the end I'll probably end up writing my own because I can never find anything I'm comfortable with. The only open source product I've found that I'm happy with is Gallery (menalto).

So I've done a little research and I'm not too happy with any of the options available. So I'm wondering if any of you have used any open source ticket systems for handling client problems and if so, which one and are you happy with it? ??? EDIT: I'm leaning towards writing my own, but time is always an issue. I never have any of it.

Also, can you split the data so it's in 255 char chunks and use multiple cells to represent the data? I guess I'm curious about what kind of data you're storing that's more than 255 chars per cell.

I'm guessing Excel isn't installed on the server? If it is, you can use COM objects to deal with the files in whatever version is installed on the server.

Please do not post in more than one thread. This one will be closed and you can respond in the other one.

Unless you're simply typing an "n" and then a "p" with no spaces in between, it should not be replacing it.

You can never make everyone happy.