[SOLVED] Which layout

[Ninjakreborn]

I was wondering, which layout do you like the most.  I am trying to find out which one is the best.
http://www.freelancebusinessman.com/temp/
I already had opinions on one of these here, I was hoping to get an idea of which of these layout/logo combinations would be the best to go with, or should I get a few more ideas together.

[steviewdr]

Layout 2: The main menu and featured services panels look as if they are post-its stuck onto the left side of the webpage. These take away/distract from the website. I would prefer to see NO shadow - with perhaps a subtle rounding of corners instead.

Layout 3: Not too bad - but needs work. The text in the header (php code) must be faded a good deal more. Im not also sure about the spiral design in the header. If this was on the right of the top banner (and to remain on the right on a fluid width) it may work better.

Layout 4: Same as #3, but with different colours. The gradient in the header is TOO severe/extreme.

Layout 5: Im not a fan of mad/deep red, especially at that large quantity.

Id go for the first - with a redesign/makeover of the left divs.

-steve

[redbullmarky]

number 4 is awful, something about 2 is not good but cant put my finger on it.
it's between 3 and 5, if i had to choose.

3) is quite clean. maybe needs a touch of colour to liven it up a little.

5) too red (or disregarding the colour, too monotone). you need something else to break it up. some may hate this one, but i love bright colours when used properly.

however, i'm not keen on your nav. a bit too 'text' for me.

[Ninjakreborn]

The navigation, was just showing text as an example.  When I actually code the layout he created, then I am going to cut down on the text, I am going to relay some of these messages to him, and see if he can work on some of that, get me a few more designs together, and see what you think about those.

[ober]

It's between 2 and 3 for me and I'm leaning towards 3.  Any of them would be an upgrade from your current site.

[Ninjakreborn]

Some more are being worked up, and those suggestions are being put into action on those templates.
Here though it's an admin template
what do you think.
http://www.freelancebusinessman.com/temp
it's the mech one.

[redbullmarky]

it's awful. stick to the others.

[Ninjakreborn]

That's only for the admin panel.
It's just for what I see when I am in the administration panel.

[redbullmarky]

[quote author=businessman332211 link=topic=111767.msg453287#msg453287 date=1161110824]
That's only for the admin panel.
It's just for what I see when I am in the administration panel.
[/quote]
doesn't matter. you asked for thoughts on it. tis a good habit to get into to make the admin panel look good, too - otherwise you leave yourself open to sloppiness and excuses. most of the time, my admin panels are pretty much a case of using the same template/css/scripts, etc. makes things much easier to put together, too and don't take up more time than it needs to. taking the time out to design a new layout/template for the admin panel shows you care about what it looks like.
cheers

[Ninjakreborn]

Good idea I will do that.
http://www.freelancebusinessman.com/new/maintemplate.php
That is the coded version.
I coded the website.
I am not rewriting(recreating), all the content for the pages.
THen I will work up some ideas for color's of links, and form styles, and things like that.
Then start putting everything together.

[redbullmarky]

1) still feel that too many options in your navigation - admittedly not as many as in your current site, but i reckon you could trim that down a bit.
2) nav still not good. have a look at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news - look at their nav. plain/simple, but effective - just to give you an idea.
3) bottom banner is too prominent, making things look a little bottom heavy. try lightening it up to something more like your logo, and reducing the size of the text.
4) in some ways (possibly due to the footer as mentioned above) your logo now looks kinda 'huddled' in the corner, whilst the rest of the width of the screen is plain empty. maybe pulling this across the full width of the screen maybe better?
5) "Client Legalities" worries me. maybe you should choose a better term.
6) Thoughts and Guidelines sounds like it's gonna be an excuse for a page of waffle. It's probably not necessary.
7) do you need an 'About' me link when there are so many other links that are 'about you'? alternatively, try putting some of the other links WITHIN the 'About Me' section

what i'm trying to get at - don't let it get overblown with content like your current site is. Keep it simple and to the point.

[ober]

>>http://www.freelancebusinessman.com/new/maintemplate.php

yech.  Reminds me of frames and your image in the footer repeats horribly.

[Ninjakreborn]

[quote]1) still feel that too many options in your navigation - admittedly not as many as in your current site, but i reckon you could trim that down a bit.
2) nav still not good. have a look at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news - look at their nav. plain/simple, but effective - just to give you an idea.
3) bottom banner is too prominent, making things look a little bottom heavy. try lightening it up to something more like your logo, and reducing the size of the text.
4) in some ways (possibly due to the footer as mentioned above) your logo now looks kinda 'huddled' in the corner, whilst the rest of the width of the screen is plain empty. maybe pulling this across the full width of the screen maybe better?
5) "Client Legalities" worries me. maybe you should choose a better term.
6) Thoughts and Guidelines sounds like it's gonna be an excuse for a page of waffle. It's probably not necessary.
7) do you need an 'About' me link when there are so many other links that are 'about you'? alternatively, try putting some of the other links WITHIN the 'About Me' section

what i'm trying to get at - don't let it get overblown with content like your current site is. Keep it simple and to the point.[/quote]

1, 2, 6, 7 - I will think about what you said as far as link amounts and content amounts.  I will have to think awhile about that, I will keep that in mind.

3 - I know but look at it in ie.
This time I have a fluid layout almost perfect, it's way to small in ie, and alittle too big in the other's any advice on how to fix this and keep it fluid, I would love to fix that.
This was my first fluid layout and it took 20 minutes.
But when it was done, if I messed with hardly anything it wasn't fluid anymore.

4 - What do you mean if you mean header/footer being 100% width, I tried that and it starting showing a scroll bar at the bottom for some reason.

5 - I am trying to come up with a term that sum's up privacy policy, copyright notice, and legal concerns when someone hires me all under one term, have any advice?

[b]Edit after some thinking I listened to what you said.  I have cut down the number of links considerably.  I have also decided to limit some of the content, but some pages (not one's linked to the left nav), might still have a considerable amount of information.

As far as the other numbers up there if you have any advice I would appreciate it.[/b]

[Daniel0]

I don't get it. People are talking about 3, 4, 5 etc., but I only see 1 and 2 :S

[Ninjakreborn]

I deleted the one's that people didn't like, to focus on one's people thought were good, and picked just one.

[Ninjakreborn]

http://www.freelancebusinessman.com/new/maintemplate.php
What do you think about that.
I redid the links, and I am going to limit most of the content, I changed the bottom term to the best thing I could think of.
I tried, there is absolutely nothing I can do about the header and footer and it still be fluid, if there's advice about that before I end up starting to put in content I would love to hear it, any other advice/ideas/comments about hte layout, that I can work on.
I tried changing the percentages on the header/footer, but it's either making a scrollbar at the bottom, or not working out properly.  Also if you see hte bottom of the left nav, if the content in the right div, goes down a ways there is a constantly growing white space in between the left nav and the bottom footer, but I would rather keep things as they are, then mess it up, but if someone knows of some tweaks or changes I can make to the css to get some of that stuff to work as you suggested it's always worth a try.

Any other opinions about the layout?

[freakus_maximus]

Try dropping the borders on your header and your nav menu. Same for your content area if you have it set there also.

Add the same light green background to your content area.

Possibly, just try and see how it looks, add a full dark green border around the whole site.

Just think it may give it a more fluid appearance.

Decrease the width of your nav menu, it does not appear you need the width you have now. That would give you more room for content.

Maybe with your CSS, have the links on hover change to a dark green with a slightly larger font so they pop out.

Just some thoughts.

[Ninjakreborn]

[code]Try dropping the borders on your header and your nav menu. Same for your content area if you have it set there also.

Add the same light green background to your content area.

Just think it may give it a more fluid appearance.

Decrease the width of your nav menu, it does not appear you need the width you have now. That would give you more room for content.

Maybe with your CSS, have the links on hover change to a dark green with a slightly larger font so they pop out.

Just some thoughts.[/code]
I reduced the borders, let me get a few more opinions before I remove the borders totally.
I decreased the width of the left nav some.I will do that with the link color's when I put in the link's and see how it goes.
Also for the content area background color I have to get a few more opinions on that as well.

Thanks, anybody else.
This time I am listening to almost everyone's advice, even if it is just getting second opinions, on some of it however, I can't do, like the stuff mark mentioned earlier, the footer/header, I didnd't understand, and when I mess with height/width, it seems to add a scrollbar, and the footer, in firefox, it is bigger, in internet explorer it's extremely small.

[freakus_maximus]

I think your footer was fine, which is why I only suggested changing the border (removing it) on the header and the navigation menu, so I would switch that back.

[Ninjakreborn]

I will try removing of the border's could this be what mark meant when he said that about the footer, and the logo looking huddled.?

[freakus_maximus]

I think when mark said it was huddled, he meant it's all jammed over to the right with no real identifying seperators or space. You have the | (pipes) in between but they get lost with the other text. It's hard to glance at and realize there are multiple things there. A visitor should not have to guess at what is what, it should be clear and distinct.

If you want to keep it to the right, then I would suggest either finding a different seperator to use than the pipes or at least change the color of the pipes to something different than the color of your text.

[Ninjakreborn]

Right now, I don't want to keep it anyway necessarily.

I am open to all advice, I am just trying to understand the advice now, ok
You, you suggested that I remove the borders totally, adn see how that looks right?
you also said something about the links, at the bottom, would they look better, in the middle or on the left, the link color I will put in there in a minute, as soon as I finish writing some more content.

Now what about the size of the footer itself, is it good/bad.
It is bigger in firefox, but in ie, it's really thin, is there something wrong or is the footer ok in general.
Any other advice, I am trying to understand everything that is being said, and trying to correct it all, or ateast try it all and see what response I get for the changes.

[Ninjakreborn]

Ok
http://www.freelancebusinessman.com/new/maintemplate.php
I did a lot of what was suggested, I removed the borders, center aligned the footer information.
Any more advice, does this fix all the problems.

I am almost calling the coding stage complete, but I don't want to call it complete unless it looks good, I have tried to incorporate everything, everyone has told me.  Does this final copy, or is there something I am missing, something else I should be doing to it?

The content is almost done, after that, i am cutting up my includes, putting in my content, and working up the backend, I want to make sure this final copy looks good.

Sidenote- you mentioned a good green color for the links, do you mean the basic link color and the hover, can you recommend 2 good color's for that.
Thanks for all the advice, any last minute advice, or changes would be appreciated.  I want to go ahead and complete coding phase, and start putting in content later today, things are coming along rather well.

[Ninjakreborn]

http://www.freelancebusinessman.com/
here is the final copy but if anyone has any advice on changes to css that would be helpful.  Let me know,

[redbullmarky]

i feel we're going down the same old road again....

1) your nav is not good - and still as not good as the last time i said it was not good. in fact, it's exactly the same.
2) your choice of font is not good.
3) your logo is bunched in the top left corner. your footer on the other hand spans the page. this makes the site look bottom heavy.
4) there's just no flow or consistency to it - its just things thrown onto a page in no particular way.


ok, so this topic is about layout (rather than content), and i know you'll probably come back with something like "Yeah, i'll do the writeups when I've perfected the layout" or something like that. (which begs the question that, as the layout is not complete, why have you made it your main site now?)

here's a paragraph about pricing.
[quote]
My pricing is fair, I normally charge below the average market price. If I go hourly I almost alway's charge atleast 30 per hour, if I have the ability I try to do a per project price at all times, whenever possible. I charge hourly when the work is so sporadic I have a hard time determining an exact amount of time it might take to complete
[/quote]
1, fair pricing = admittedly expensive
2, atleast is two words = at least
3, 30 what an hour? coconuts?
4, having a hard time to determine completion time? at that sort of price, i'd want to know EXACTLY how many hours you would take, sporadic or not.

just read it back to yourself. it's not so much the spelling or the grammar, but it's a good example of the general lack of attention to detail - which was exactly the problem with your last few 'changes' to your site. i'd love to say that i thought you actually spend enough time on these sites/designs, etc, but i could almost bet my left nad on the fact that you spend most of the day asking for opinions and help, and rush out a new design/version as quickly as possible so that you can ask another question. when this topic was opened, you presented 4 designs - quickly that went to two and then all of a sudden, before you've corrected the problems or attempted to make it look half good, you've applied one of them to your site - only it's much worse than when originally presented.

maybe you should actually grab a beer, put your feet up, chill out and do some self-critique on your site - can you honestly say you're happy with it? can you say that, if you were a client, you'd pick this freelancebusinessman to do your site for 30 dollars/pounds/coconuts an hour, who has no idea how long it might take? do you think it truly shows your skill in the best light?

maybe you should stop trying to hard and have some fun with it.