redbullmarky

Looks a bit like Courier New to me

i must say though, i'm pretty impressed with the direction things are going generally. When this topic first started, the site was pretty lame and bare, and now it's taking form (both functionally and visually) quite well. there are still issues of too much space up top (notably the header area and 2 grey panels) that need to be sorted out, as the rest of the site is taking a 'busy' form. also just the fact that on one hand you're using gradients, and the other hand it's plain unstyled 2D. try: 1, replace the text in the red panel (About Snippets) with "Welcome, PHP Code Snippets", and get rid of the "Welcome, PHP Code Snippets" from under the logo. This'll gain a nice bit of real estate to pull your main content up a bit. 2, drop the size of the logo area a bit, maybe to about 60-75% of what it is now. as with my first point, this will bring your content up a bit and leave less whitespace next to it to fill. 3, under "New snippets", there's a huge chunk of space. If you reduced the size of the blue "popular snippets" panel to 15 items instead of 20, this would even things out a bit. either way, it's getting better. well done so far.

tis a tricky one for me. i said 10-20, but it's so broken up across the day as I work at home (and hence have the kids to manage too) and work all sorts of crazy hours.

*sigh* 3 sites. 1, freelancebusinessman. looks fairly good, albeit with a 3rd party template (yet STILL uncredited, and that is starting to grind me a bit). lots and lots (and lots) of text, mostly stuff that could be snipped. 2, ppassistant. as with 1 above, but at least it comes with credits 3, the penny has just dropped that this design is the design you've been raving about that's gonna be the dogs nads. it's not bad, but i'm hoping you never paid good (any) money for it. it just seems sometimes that you're not that fussy. given the choice of a couple or 3 really shite designs, you'll pick one of them and use it - rather than just saying "hold on, NONE of these are great - forget them all! I can wait, thank you very much." I just seriously can't believe you find the time to do anything for clients when so much time must be absorbed registering obscure domain names and redesigning your sites over and over and over (god knows how many licks of paint your main site has had) you've registered domain names without thinking about it first, you've thrown out sites without thinking first, you've filled your sites with lots and lots of text without thinking first, you've asked many a question without thinking first. for the 1,000,000 and final time, slow the feck down and think about what you're doing/saying, else we're gonna be churning out the same old crap and walking down the same old road until the worms are eating us. and finally i wish to pre-empt things, just to push you down another road of thought: 1, This is Website critique. Do not mark this topic as solved. Art/design/taste, etc is unsolvable. 2, Please do NOT say "thanks for the advice. I will take it in and now I will...{list 4,000 goals and tasks here}" 3, This is NOT a personal attack. 4, We each were born with 2 ears and just 1 mouth. Use them in that order, and listen (ie, take it in - dont pretend/push under carpet, either) apologies if it's slightly off topic, only I DO want to continue to help and advise, but rather just do it in a single topic rather than chase all your other related topics scattered around the forum. Cheers

i had an outage for 2 days once, and yeah - it was terrible. it's mad how much we take t'internet connection for granted.... there's always a solution tho. i'm sure you'll muster something up

i'd like to see "Last post" info next to the child boards. The main board index is a nice quick glance at what's new, etc, so the "Last Post" info on the main boards is useful. Seeing this on child boards  would be great. Cheers

looking at it closely, $query is not the actual query once it reaches that point. look here: $itemStockQuery = $db->GetAll("SELECT * FROM items WHERE item_id=$item' AND stock > '0' LIMIT 1"); // Error check if (!$itemStockQuery) { queryErrorCheck($itemStockQuery); unless you're doing things differently, $itemStockQuery looks like it contains the RESULTS of a query, not the query itself. try replacing above with: $query = "SELECT * FROM items WHERE item_id=$item' AND stock > '0' LIMIT 1"; $itemStockQuery = $db->GetAll($query); // Error check if (!$itemStockQuery) { queryErrorCheck($query); hope that helps! cheers

just because i'm picky, and seem to remember a similar issue, try replacing: $report = new ErrorReporting; with $report = new ErrorReporting();

agreed. much better font. i can't decide though whether i like the "personal" word blending in with the mouse, like on Chris' mock (which makes the mouse more involved with the logo as opposed to just being on the side), or whether it's tidier your way. hmm. Maybe one to try and see.

1, paragraphs 2, padding. the text sits right on the edge of the box, which is made even worse by the fact that the rest of the page is empty. 3, grammar (they're instead of there), punctuation, etc. 4, how many times do you need to say the same thing in various different ways? most people, even those that aren't coders, know what a network is, even in its non-technical sense, so it just kinda seems a little bit patronising - but ultimately seems like you saw some space to fill and sure as hell tried to fill it. this is the same problem as your main business site. 5, couldnt you have chosen a shorter domain name? most of your clients will be pushing up the daisies by the time they've finished typing it. it's ok for us, cos you've provided a link for us to click on. but if you came up to me and said "go visit freelancebusinessmannetwork dot com", you'd never get any visits from me. 6, you seem to be a fan of large fonts, but maybe you should try notching it down a little bit. ok, so big text takes up more space and fills things up a bit - but it just looks bland. the design itself looks ok, but the way you've used it (ie, my points above) have just kinda ruined it. but here's a few thoughts: 1, you admit yourself you suck at design 2, you're fine with using templates 3, you like to type lots If I was you, personally I wouldn't see any shame in downloading a copy of WordPress or Serendipity. The designs look good (and professional), and then you can just concentrate on knocking yourself out with writing stuff. There's space for 'About Me' pages, download pages, the lot. And it's becoming more common for coders who could possibly write one of these systems for their own needs standing on their heads to use them anyway. Personally, because I'm lazy and I also suck at design, I might even look at using on of them myself when I eventually realease my own code/framework. I'd rather see a freelancer site coded in one of these babies and look good, rather than one that looks a bit dodgy. Cheers

nope. crashed on me, regardless of whether i specified a local server or not. As soon as I get past that prompt, I get "SmartPHP has encountered a problem and needs to close..." and it's goodnight from SmartPHP. Tried a few times, but no go. Running on Windows XP Pro SP2

well i'm no expert, but 1, what i tried failed (then again, so did the validation when registering, so...) so seems secure enough. 2, the advice you have been given (about a fake bug) to me just sounds ridiculously sloppy. Why would anyone create a bug to hide the real bug, when they can just use their time and efforts to fix the real one?

i saw a moon too, but Chris' spin on things definitely keeps the same overall effect but without that initial perception. However - I don't mean to sound overly harsh or critical here, as I'm pretty terrible when it comes to design and logos - but it seems more appropriate to a Solicitors or a funeral directors than an IT company, and I thing it's definitely the font that's doing it. Don't get me wrong - it's a fantastic logo - but not for what you're trying to achieve.

dude, you don't seem to have acknowledged a pretty fantastic link AndyB provided: http://www.oswd.org . Even if you don't take one of their templates, you should at least find some inspiration for something that looks quite nice. This kinda just looks awful and is really painful on the eyes, as has been mentioned. It runs MUCH deeper than JUST colour and font. It's the whole ticket - colour, font, layout, valid coding, etc. sit back and take a look at the site yourself. Are YOU happy with it? ok, so the layout looks a little better in IE, but you really shouldn't be having these cross-browser issues anyway with something so simple. Looking at the HTML source, it has no DOCTYPE and things are all over the place. It's no wonder things are a mess and no wonder that it doesn't validate. Personally, I'd drop what you're doing right now and put it down to experience, and move on. You will really struggle to turn what you have into something that appeals.

my GF bought me this mouse since I first posted: http://www.teleadapt.com/retail/products.php It's really good - 2 buttons and a clickable rollerwheel, wireless, infrared, USB (no drivers needed for either PC or Mac), My only gripe is that when you're recharging it, you need to use 2 USB ports (one for the reciever and one for the power lead), but even still, it's fantastic.

to be honest, if you've got a good understanding of OOP on PHP5, you'll find PHP4's OOP quite easy to get your head around. The only real noticable difference is the form that constructors are defined (same name as the class, not __construct) and the scope of vars/function is not specified (public/private/protected, etc) - i believe all the vars and methods are just assumed to be public. I've not strictly moved on to PHP5, just dribs and drabs, as I'm still very aware that most hosts are still set up on PHP4. Cake has some nice tricks up its sleeve to simulate many of the useful features. Either way, don't be put off from visiting these frameworks at all - they're extremely powerful and shouldnt be underestimated because of their support for v4. TBH, I don't see much special about v5 anyway, apart from its 'autoload' function. I don't really do much with other languages these days, so can't really answer that, but I have a "general" approach when it comes to programming anyway, so yeah it probably would. At least for web coding anyway. As for template engines, seriously give the one in the article I mentioned a go (not the bTemplate one he mentions, but the one at the bottom of the page). My own template engine within my framework is based on the ideas in that, and I've just built on it from there. Cheers

can you give an idea of what your site will be? that would possibly change things. personally (regardless of the site), i see a black/dark blue gradient where the green is right now, and the "Random" standing out in colour (sunset/flames/etc). Like a proper sky with something glowing in it. It looks good as it is tho, I just dunno how it fits around the site and intended content. Then it might be a different story altogether. Cheers

I can only talk from personal experience, as MVC/OOP (in PHP, at least) are still relatively new to me. When I first starting coding in PHP, I downloaded a copy of phpBB to learn from, as it was pretty much the only obvious php package I knew of back at the time. I remember being confused. Very confused. Last year, I downloaded a copy of Cake and tried to use it. Again, I was extremely confused by it - it introduced many new concepts to me, as I was still used to using dreamweaver's templates and throwing all my PHP code at the top of the page. The whole idea of coding at least 2 or 3 files to render 1 page (Controller, Template and possibly a Model, depending on the nature) just didn't sink in. I had a look at Smarty, as i'd been reading about seperation of business and presentation logic. However, learning a whole new syntax put me off until I found this article: http://www.massassi.com/php/articles/template_engines/ . Once I'd understood the reasons behind seperation, and after playing around with my own little "template engine", I moved on to CodeIgniter (http://www.codeigniter.com ) and found both the source and the manual quite refreshing - and learnt TONNES from it. Not just about OOP practices, but the whole MVC concept relative to what I was doing with template engines. When I then revisited Cake, it was a million times easier to understand. Deciding to code my own framework, I took the best bits from what I picked up from those two and that's pretty much it. the hardest thing I find about these large frameworks is trying to get your head around the "core", as it's very often lost underneath lots and lots of bells and whistles. Also, trying to find out the whole flow, from the beginning when the page has been requested, through to the end where the view is output, can be a little daunting, not to mention time consuming. Another fantastic article helped me jump straight into Cake with a better understanding of what I was supposed to be looking for: http://www.thinkingphp.org/2006/09/25/learning-from-the-cakephp-source-code-part-i/ I'd definitely recommend playing around with BOTH CodeIgniter and Cake (in that order) and taking a good look at their manuals. I have a personal dislike for Zend framework, as I see it as far to bulky, and more of a "best practice showcase" than something I'd like to use for my projects. Having said that, I'm sure there's plenty of little tricks and tips that could be picked up from it. In summary: 1, start with template engines to get your head around basic OOP and seperation of business/presentation logic. at it's simplest, MVC is then only an extra degree of seperation. 2, Play with CodeIgniter/Cake. Both are so similar, they may as well have sprung from the same core, but both have their own quirks. Look at the screencasts too. Worth also looking at the Ruby on Rails screencasts due to the similarities with Cake. 3, Get stuck in to your own! Apologies for the life story, but hope it helps Cheers

c'mon chap, you've been around long enough to know to take note of the stickies before posting... One right at the top of the 'Editors' board is this: http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php/topic,119433.0.html

agreed, SA. one of the reasons i can't work properly for full projects on my Powerbook is the compact keyboard (understandable) and lack of decent mouse. A full size keyboard and a infrared mouse with a clickable scroll wheel make things a million times quicker to develop stuff. They're both the models I got originally with the PC, so high quality and expensive isn't really that important to me, but still.

it does look tonnes better than the other one - so nice one for heading in the right direction. i think my personal tastes will always dislike it though, as i'm not much a fan of gradients and "pill" buttons. Apple (www.apple.com) are the only chaps that have done it in a way i like out of any site i've seen so far

you'd be looking at storing the username and / or user id in the $_SESSION array just after the login has been confirmed to be valid. a call to session_start() at the top of each of your pages will make this info available. <?php session_start(); if (isset($_SESSION['user_id']) && $_SESSION['user_id'] > 0) { echo 'Hello ' . $_SESSION['user_name'] . '!'; } ?> obviously a lame example, but it should give you an idea to get started.

yeah definitely, and i really appreciate the effort too. what I would say is i'd probably be keen to keep many of the colour variations on the panel headers, although the way you've taken the panel background colour off and it still manages to keep to clearly defined sections - that's good. I'd also say i'll probably still keep the black up top. i originally had the search box running across where the Lego banner is (on the site itself) and it didnt look too bad, but putting it up top definitely takes away some of that whitespace jcombs mentioned previously. i do like the lego down the bottom right corner. i'd just have to look at how much it'd impact different pages (in terms of overlaying content not being visible, etc) but i'm keen to play around with it, as with the bullets.

ha yeah quite funny. i'll have to think things through anyway when i get around to sorting through what's already there and making tweaks, etc.

y'know what, you're right - it is crude, but there are some nifty little ideas in there, like the bullets on the links and the lack of background colour on the panels (ie, just the header). like i say, i need to play with the homepage anyway, as there are a few bits to go on there still, but by all means some of those ideas might be worth at least giving a go. cheers!