deadlyp99 Posted February 4, 2009 Share Posted February 4, 2009 I'm working on a site design for a fps I like to play, and this is what I have so far. I'm more of a "under the hood" kind of guy, meaning I have always prefered the coding side to art. I like art, and i've done a lot of work in several different areas, but I am not great at it. Anyways this is what I have so far, its a work in progress. So if anything is specifically horrendous or could use some fine tuning let me know. Thanks. http://fgc.joshr.info/ Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maq Posted February 4, 2009 Share Posted February 4, 2009 I hate to be the first one to be mean, not that I like being mean after someone else, but I think you should consider redoing the whole site. -The colors are ugly and puky looking. -The header looks plain awful. -The buttons look like they're from 1987, same with the roll-over. -There is not much more to look at cause the only other thing that works is the contact page. Don't mean to be mean, it's supposed to be constructive! :'( Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-754079 Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadlyp99 Posted February 4, 2009 Author Share Posted February 4, 2009 That is ok mate. I bring in the critique. My art skills are crap. And my color scheming has always been bad. But I dont know what to do. I even went as far as to utilize a color scheme tool online and I still failed at it. -.- I'm not keen on the "web 2.0" look, though ajax is nice. I need some suggestions, because if I re-do the site i'm going to be posting another ugly site up here. I dont mind a re-do all that much, but I don't want to sit here and make a pile garbage into a re-arranged pile of garbage. ^^ Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-754083 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maq Posted February 4, 2009 Share Posted February 4, 2009 Why not check out some free templates? If you have access to Photoshop or GIMP there are plenty of good tutorials online on how to make a nice header. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-754084 Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadlyp99 Posted February 4, 2009 Author Share Posted February 4, 2009 I stopped using templates after I lost internet access for a year as well as my computer. So I hid at night with a 300mhz laptop running debian and learned several programming languages including learning html... though thats easy... I learned css just recently, and i've been doing php for near two years. Lol... anyways moral: I am stuck with the mentality that doing it yourself is the only way for it to be any measure of skill. Had I posted a few months back that page would have had only tables. :-] I've come far in my design skills, but i'm not about to take the easy way out. I don't feel as though I've made a website if 99% of it is left to a google search and a download. Consider me a "do it right, use notepad", guy. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-754087 Share on other sites More sharing options...
dropfaith Posted February 4, 2009 Share Posted February 4, 2009 website was unable to load when i tired so i offer advice instead of crit http://www.colorschemer.com/schemes/ helps me alot when slecting color themes that match up decent Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-754183 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maq Posted February 4, 2009 Share Posted February 4, 2009 website was unable to load when i tired so i offer advice instead of crit http://www.colorschemer.com/schemes/ helps me alot when slecting color themes that match up decent Yeah, now it's just hanging there. Looks like I'm the only one who will ever see it... Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-754286 Share on other sites More sharing options...
nrg_alpha Posted February 4, 2009 Share Posted February 4, 2009 Consider me a "do it right, use notepad", guy. Please tell me you mean Notepad++ and not the actual notepad text editor... Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-754331 Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadlyp99 Posted February 4, 2009 Author Share Posted February 4, 2009 Yeah my hosting decided to fluke out on me shortly after I posted this. :-\ I made 2 designs after this one that were completely horrendous. I'm tinkering with a banner/navigation style idea I found, but other than that i'm not sure what to do... And yes, I use plain old notepad. I comment my code well, and so finding anything is pretty much a breeze. I dont need syntax highlight or anything of the like. I've done just fine without. i'll put the banner i'm making up when I finish it to get opinions. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-754619 Share on other sites More sharing options...
serverman Posted February 4, 2009 Share Posted February 4, 2009 OK doesn't view on a 1680*1050 screen, poor banner, why not validate your css?, nav is kinda strange, No SEO meta tags. notepad+ is good to have once you start coding the PHP so you should get it because it will save you a lot of time (if you use linux Gedit has good code highlight works with .py .php .html .c etc but quanta is great because it also has code completion) your colors are ok but you could do better i think. to sum it all up overhaul needed but good start. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-754662 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maq Posted February 4, 2009 Share Posted February 4, 2009 And yes, I use plain old notepad. I comment my code well, and so finding anything is pretty much a breeze. I dont need syntax highlight or anything of the like. I've done just fine without. But don't you want to be better than just fine... Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-754665 Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadlyp99 Posted February 4, 2009 Author Share Posted February 4, 2009 I threw my css through a validator and it came up with errors for things such as "parse error". Though i'm assuming the sources I got a few things were hack jobs, i'm not to worried about it. It's close in 3.0, and far in 2.1. I tend to worry about those things after its done. I spent 4 hours today in school making a design for a layout. I'm not very good at art but I pieced together some techniques I found online. http://fgc.joshr.info/images/Layout.png I was excited to learn how that stupid 2px horizontal line was done, and I nearly blinded myself playing with stripes on banners. I think striped banners are a good eye hazard... In my gut I do not like it. But I can't think of any other direction to go right now. And the day I NEED anything more than a basic text editor to improve my coding is the day I stop programming. I've done it four years this way and i'm perfectly fine with it. I tried notepad+ at once point and found I don't care for it much. The only thing I liked about it was the brackets an parenthesis would turn red. But... since then I learned how to code in an organized manner. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-754782 Share on other sites More sharing options...
nrg_alpha Posted February 4, 2009 Share Posted February 4, 2009 And the day I NEED anything more than a basic text editor to improve my coding is the day I stop programming. I've done it four years this way and i'm perfectly fine with it. I tried notepad+ at once point and found I don't care for it much. The only thing I liked about it was the brackets an parenthesis would turn red. But... since then I learned how to code in an organized manner. Well, use what you are comfortable with obviously.. but I find odd that someone would use notepad when there are few free IDE's floating around (Notepad++, Netbeans, etc..) Your call ultimately,as you are doing your own code... but notpade is not geared towards stuff like code hints, code navigation, etc.. IDEs are there to make life easier. But again, work with what you want / makes you comfortable. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-754795 Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadlyp99 Posted February 5, 2009 Author Share Posted February 5, 2009 Yeah I know what you mean. But from using dream weaver back in the day I've found everything but syntax highlighting to be annoying. Thats just me. Anyways what do you think of the layout design? Should I even bother cutting it up and doing the code for it? Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-754892 Share on other sites More sharing options...
serverman Posted February 5, 2009 Share Posted February 5, 2009 But from using dream weaver back in the day I've found everything but syntax highlighting to be annoying. Thats just me. back in the day dreamweaver (2004 back) sucked and it was really annoying but it got better (not to much). i dont think you should bother the colors still dont match that well. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-754898 Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadlyp99 Posted February 5, 2009 Author Share Posted February 5, 2009 Hell i'm about to make everything white with no design here in a minute. I used to use dreamweaver 4 before I learned html. Then I used 2004 in school, but didnt use it because it took twice as long to make anything decent as it did via code. School projects... mind you. Umm... is there any way I can learn to use color schemes... better? Like I use online tools but I still manage to have everyone tell me they dont match at all. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-754909 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maq Posted February 5, 2009 Share Posted February 5, 2009 Yeah, dropfaith already posted a link for you... website was unable to load when i tired so i offer advice instead of crit http://www.colorschemer.com/schemes/ helps me alot when slecting color themes that match up decent Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-754914 Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadlyp99 Posted February 5, 2009 Author Share Posted February 5, 2009 Oh yeah -.- How do I use the files? lol... they are all ".cs" and I do not know what to do with them. :-\ Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-754917 Share on other sites More sharing options...
nrg_alpha Posted February 5, 2009 Share Posted February 5, 2009 ...what do you think of the layout design? Should I even bother cutting it up and doing the code for it? I think I would plan it out more.. hammer out the content, and see how it plays along with the rest. When I do mockups (which hasn't been many), I tend to do everything in Photoshop (but you can use GIMP by example), and just see how everthing plays along. The current look reminds me of the good ol DOS days.. when I run Norton Ghost, (which boots in DOS using my trusty floppy disc), the look you have reminds me of it (I think it is the colours, background and drop shadow from the panels), which can in itself be style if you are striving for a more older nostalgic look / feel. If yu are honestly not looking for this look, then perhaps examining some templates for some ideas of graphic design and layout. I would consider unifying the widths of everything, as your header and footer sections are wider than your content (main body). Perhaps merge the body and footer into one section? A note on the header.. as I notice your site is a fluid-based design, it gets tricky with the the way you have it currently set up. As the header's size both in width and height changes depending on the size of the browser window. The result is that you get your image inside cut off if the resolution is too small, and you see it tile if the resolution is too large.. To rectify this, I would consider making your header a fixed height (but not width), have some nice gradient as a background, and have header logotype or something (that can blend into the background) in it's left hand side. This way, no matter the screen resolution / browser window size, the header will stay consistent (aside from varying width, which is ok because of the tiling background it would have). Perhaps revamping the menu system (again, looking at what templates out there are doing for some ideas).. But I would mock it up in some image editing program first and just see how it all plays together.. member jcombs_31 deos this.. he'll post an image representation of the site first and ask for ideas and whatnot.. then when he's happy with what he has in conjunction with feedback, he'll hammer out the actual site. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-754933 Share on other sites More sharing options...
serverman Posted February 5, 2009 Share Posted February 5, 2009 First i Did and DNS look up on your website only to figure out if your hosting it your self and your domain has a lot of info in it some of witch i wouldn't want to share with the world. still can till if your using ONE-DOLLAR-HOSTING or just them for the domain but i would tell them or if you can set it yourself not to do this http://fgc.joshr.info/images/ because then you can fish up SQL info and then you are wide open to get hacked to high hell. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-754951 Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheFilmGod Posted February 5, 2009 Share Posted February 5, 2009 I don't want to go off topic - but does notepad++ have code completion? I use it a lot, but I'm not very good with its advanced features. On topic - combine the hover image background into the current state background image of the nav. You can use css to change the background image position. Otherwise, the browser needs to fetch the hover image and it takes some time to load. Looks bad like that. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-755032 Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadlyp99 Posted February 5, 2009 Author Share Posted February 5, 2009 Header css method noted. Thanks for that tip, it makes enough sense. But what happens if someone on a small, or larger resolution? Won't the image on a low resolution monitor be all squashed, where a high resolution monitor will show a really wide skinny banner... 0.0 Sidenote - I coded the site taking turns in FF and IE, and the only differences I came across were the custom div scroll colors dont work in FF (which I knew, but i'm not even going to use it). But other than that the colors in Firefox were darker than in IE... Which is above all the most annoying. To my knowledge notepad+ does NOT have code completion, though its got syntax highlighting for many languages. I really like the button idea, and I will definitely adopt that practice. It was a concern of mine with dynamic content, and extra content period. Because I do know it takes time to fetch the image, and I could preload all extra content like I did on this project, but then you have an increased filesize load when no all uses will be using all the extra pre-loaded content. lol... http://www.joshr.info/rpg/rotate_test/index.php press "W" or "S" http://www.joshr.info/rpg/v_0_0_1/rotate_test/index.php press "A" or "D" I found a layout online I really like that i'm gonna try mimic. I'll post a new thread whenever I get it up. The hard part about this is I'm trying to design a fps-geared sight, and not a lot of sites that I find have anything other than media images from the site and/or only a forum. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-755054 Share on other sites More sharing options...
dropfaith Posted February 6, 2009 Share Posted February 6, 2009 Oh yeah -.- How do I use the files? lol... they are all ".cs" and I do not know what to do with them. :-\ theres a program with that site but i havent downloaded it just i just brose the pages find a decent color scheme and over the colors will you you the hex for that color.. http://www.colorschemer.com/index.php is more about the program ColorSchemer Studio 2 is a professional color matching application for anyone from hobbyists to advanced professionals. Work with a dynamic visual color wheel, instantly explore harmony relationships and even let ColorSchemer Studio intelligently suggest color schemes for you! Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-755767 Share on other sites More sharing options...
serverman Posted February 6, 2009 Share Posted February 6, 2009 new layout looks good but set background not to repeat. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-755948 Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadlyp99 Posted February 6, 2009 Author Share Posted February 6, 2009 I found I could just open up firebug and plug the rgb into the gimp. I thought they were images, but they aren't. I like the new layout more than the one I made after it. I didnt show you guys and I dont plan to lol. The concept was good, but the design wasn't coming out well. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/143720-making-a-gaming-site/#findComment-756064 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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