Real simple need advice

[SharkBait]

The usual: www.tingram.ca

Looking to see what could be improved upon. I am really wanting to get into the design/layout/graphic side of web development and as you can see from the above its pretty simplistic. It's more of a test site than anything I suppose.

I guess really all it is a blog now isnt it?

The text/font doesn't really seem right, content wise I mean. (yea the header text is a bit.. boring too).  What are the better fonts to use?

Colouring: Perhaps a slight shade difference between blog entries?  Perhaps spruce up the guestbook/comments etc?

[redbullmarky]

it's very clean, and the colours so far are good, but ulitimately at the moment it looks very plain. too much text and too much whitespace:

- maybe it'd be worth looking at a few 'warmer' colours (to add to your current, rather than replace) just to bring things up a touch. i've seen orangey colours work very well with blue in the past.
- i think your header needs some sort of graphic - not necessarily something too prominent, but just to make it less plain. maybe a part-opaque background image.
- when i visit sites and see the domain name in the header written in relatively plain text like that, i'm always reminded of those 'domain parking' sites. maybe a non-domain title might be worth looking at. if the 'CA' is important, I'm sure you could think of a nice way to still incorporate it.
- you definitely need some additional stuff in the left column, as your 4-tier nav looks a little lost there on its own and kinda draws attention to a large empty space.

i think it's a good start but it definitely needs livening up a little, IMO.
Cheers
Mark

[steviewdr]

Its a good start.

I would like to see the text indented more, and/or the Navigation fixed up better.

A little more styling is required - in your top Heading bar, and also in your content.

Some suggestions for styling -> have a "images" and "quote" div/area in your blog entries to make the stand out more.
Perhaps put "Todays" date somewhere on the top of the page - styled in appropriately.
Because the page is quite long -> perhaps put a Table of Contents - or the last 5 entries. Take the title of the last 5 entries and put them below the Navigation?

Just ideas. It needs something more IMO (in my opinion)

-steve

[SharkBait]

Thanks for the replies.

For the page beinga bit long, I will be pagnating it, just have not gotten around to doing so.

I definately think the title/header should be a bit more.. something, the text title is boring and blah.  It was just a filler I guess till I can think of something better. I'll look into adding an opaque image or something too.

Indenting will be good too, I'll add that to the css for <p> tags.

Thanks again :)

[Daniel0]

Make sure your HTML validates:
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tingram.ca%2F

32 errors when I validated it.

[SharkBait]

They seem to be all the <p> tags I though it was just <p>Something here</p> between paragraphs, isnt this correct??

[Daniel0]

I think it is because you place paragraphs (<p>) inside paragraphs. I do not think you can do that.

[SharkBait]

Ahh I see where I did that. I have a <p> </p> on either side of my nl2br() which pulled from the database which has the <p> already inserted in it.

Thanks :) Now to add the alt tags to my images, and then do the things mentioned above.

[yana]

Not bad. Nice and clean look.

Though I would change the left menu. The buttons look a bit unprofessional - too bulgy, too Photoshop embossed.

Create a distinct 2-column layout by changing the background colour of left column.

The actual blog entries, I would decrease the font size to maybe 10px, increase line height and maybe change font style to Verdana.

[redbullmarky]

have not checked it until now since my last comments, but definitely improved greatly - especially the header (logo). as yana said, your left menu could do with a bit of work, but otherwise its getting there!

cheers
Mark