Need help with my page design

Designing a web site is never an easy process... As to what else to put on there, I can't think of anything major at the moment... Maybe more pictures, a customer comments box, etc.

As for "inspiration", a very helpful site is http://www.coolhomepages.com. They have a fairly large listing of well-designed web sites and, as they put it, "the only known cure for designer's block".

Good luck!

Brian Farkas

You say you are only 16. Most of the people that design sites are your age or younger.

16? As the average age for building websites? I think not, my friend. You are missing the huge professional web development scene. If you mean that most 16 year olds have built at least one personal website, then sure.

If you mean that it can be done by anyone of almost any age, sure!

But no way in hell is 16 the industry average.

And quite frankly, even if it was, it wouldn't affect WebKid's ability, now would it.

Geesh.

Suzanne

What's up Webkid16,

I can appreciate your situation; I am also doing a free page and content is a tough one. To this novice, it may be the hardest part. I'm sorry that I can't offer any true wisdom in this area - I look for things around the customer's business, like pamphlets, newspaper articles, etc. It might also be good to look at competing sites to find standard features.
I too, keep looking for informative sites on the subject. I only glanced, but didn't see any .gif's on your page. Just an idea, if I'm not mistaken.

I hope inspiration comes to us both,
Steve

I must say this is not too bad for a first attempt (mine inculded.)

Is this a personal site? I it is the wonderful thing about it is that you can sort of make it grow in steps.

BTW...I'm 43 and launched my design site in March...when I was 16 these machines were still taking up entire rooms...they existed...but not in the same way they do now.

You might get more responses in the critque forum.(Haven
t been there in awhile)

syaegerii- This isn't the first time the someone has mentioned to me about using too many jpgs and not gifs. Why are gifs so good in websites? I thought that jpg was the best format since it is way smaller than gif. I know that jpg isn't transparent but when I don't need an image to be transparent do I still need to use gif? I just don't why gifs are so good, they are too big.

ok... I'm 14 and have built many sites for professional businesses... E-commerce etc. I have been online a TOTAL of eight months! My first site was done in May 2000, and of course progresses from there. The main thing that you need to do to get the hang of getting "professional ideas" is to go to a site you really like, like the one you posted, and ones on http://coolhomepages.com, and then just by looking at them... not downloading their graphic's attempt to replicate the look and feel of their sites. Then look at other sites.... "What does this site have that my site doesn't? And how can I make a feature like this BETTER?"

It's all about deciding you can do it. There is no fast paced tutorial or anything that will help you make "professional site". And truthfully, my sites rival's in a BIG HUGE way the other "professionally" built competition's sites. That is my promise to my customers-- It WILL be better than the competition. If they upgrade to something more eye apealing then so do we... but BETTER!

I know fairly well the webmaster who built a site for a company which is one of my client's biggest competition. And he's "professional". All of my sites, in the same type of industry I might add, school his.

Well, there is my $.00002 worth. The best teacher is self motivation!

And Suzanne:

I think that the stats would really suprise you. "The huge professional web development scene" is not as big as you might think. There are many people my age that build "professional" sites. Only difference is I'm not making $120,000 a year, and don't wear a suit and tie (At least not to the computer!).

God Bless your work,

Alex

oh ya...

In reply to the GIF's and JPG's....

GIF's ARE smaller. Learn how to optomize! And JPG's DO lose some quality each time they are saved-- Bet you didn't know that!

Right now it took me almost a whole minute to get your site totally loaded! Granted i'm connected at 28.8... but it should still be under 20 seconds! Get ULEAD SmartSaver Pro. It does a great job... and use border="0" tags on your images

Also another little bit from me:

What does the spray painter have to do with his business? How about a logo? You got the heading... that's all fine and dandy... but what about a symbolic logo? Something that will stick out to somebody and whenever they see it on printed material and other things... they will immedietly reconise it. Also work on continuity... make the whole site have the same heading, navagation and borders. There is really no need for navagation on the top as well as the side. How about putting a text link on the bottom of each page? Some people surf without images on... and some borwsers cannot view images.. let then have a way to get around! They're still potential customers.

For what I consider a VERY good representation of continuity and good use of logos. check out http://no-scent.com and http://www.beartoothbullets.com

And don't get discouraged! You have a great start compared to my first site!

God Bless

Alex

Save as gif for text images, and low color...the more simple images. Try to save in as few colors as possible. Your image editor will give you choices as to how many colors to save as...it also should give your a preview of how changes affetct the image. Go as low as you can without affecting quality.

When saving as a transparant gif, make the backgound color that will be transparant as close to the background color that it be be on as close as possible to that color.

Save as jpeg for photo's and more complex images. One's that need to contain millions of colors (gradients, for an axample).

If you have an image that contains both text and high color, slice the image up, so that you can save the text as gif, and the high color parts as jpeg.

When compressiong jpegs, play with the percentage settings, and compress as much as you can get away with without losing quality.

exbabylon- Thanks for your reply. I was wondering why my images had a border around them. I had forgotten that they have a default. I didn't even have a border tag or anything but I fixed it, thanks. Can I see some of your sites that you have made? Oh yeah, the reason why I have navigation on the top and bottom on the homepage is because I wanted to put the top navigation links on every page but Henry(the guy I'm making this site for) saw the airbrush navigation interface and he liked it a lot so I didn't know what to do. Should I just have the homepage with the airbrush navigation and the rest of the pages with the top navigation? Or would that make the other pages look too diferent from the homepage? Thanks again for all your input and everybody else's. This site has helped me so much making this site, I really hope Henry likes it. Thanks

webkid,

My sites:

http://www.beartoothbullets.com - Big E-commerce and Forum
http://www.hotl.net - underconstruction
http://www.hotl.net/thecause - under construction
http://www.no-scent.com - Nice simple e-commerce.
http://www.mowing.nethop.com - A site for a local business
http://www.fishon.nethop.com - Under construction

Look at http://beartoothbullets.com and http://no-scent.com. I built the logo's and designed then myself. They both make very good use of logo's and keeping the exact same look and feel throughout the sites.

Yes, if your guy wants the paint brush then by all means the paint brush. But keep it on all pages, if you want the top bar also put that on all pages. Make a template that looks really good. (as I'm working on at http://hotl.net .) Then go about adding content. Consider using CSS, makes the changing of the basics very easy- Font color, link color, table color, table border, text box color (IE only), ect.)

Your goal is to please the visitor, please the your client, and make it look good enough that you're not ashamed to show other people:

"Hey! I built that site!"

I have not built even one site that I have not listed here, granted, I may have updated, and upgraded them, re-designed, ect, but still, at that time when they went live it was still better than the competition.

I am currently working on a site that will have to be better than these sites:

http://www.connorfloor.com/
http://www.robbinsfloor.com/
http://www.hornerflooring.com/

If you can get a clue from these, I am up against multi-million dollar companies, but the awesoem thing is, the company I'm making it for is also a multi-million dollar company, so money is not an object. I do have school to worry about, but for enough money I can give most of my off-scholastic time to them.

Well, there is some of my stuff, and I hope your guy DOES like it, it will be good with some more long strenous eye nuking hours.

God Bless

Alex

Another thing, this site looks ok in IE but when I opened it in Netscape the some graphics were in moved up some(the top navigation bar) and in reparacion.html the border didn't come out how it was suppose to. I know that there is some different in IE and NS browsers but how can I fix this problem? Is there any way that I can make everything look the same in both browsers without making a whole new page just for Netscape? Thanks

fairly simple fix for the home page.

Don't use a background picture as the main use of color. Use table bgcolor="blah" and cell bgcolor="blah" to make color like you did. Your problem is the way NS and IE displays the background picture. Just forget the background for now... try to replicate the way it looks by using tables. Here is some code that may help you get on your way. Replace your first table with this.

That basicly replicates the way your page currently looks and it should be ok in most browsers. No guarantees expressed or implied!

God Bless

Alex

[Edited by exbabylon on Jan. 07, 2001 at 08:29 PM]

Quote:
And Suzanne:

I think that the stats would really suprise you. "The huge professional web development scene" is not as big as you might think. There are many people my age that build "professional" sites. Only difference is I'm not making $120,000 a year, and don't wear a suit and tie (At least not to the computer!).

Alex, all due respect, but the professional web development companies aren't the little guys. The firms out here don't hire teenagers, they hire professionals with university degrees in computer science and graphic design. They hire people who have MBAs. Not a lot of teenagers have that kind of practical business training. Period.

I think it's great that kids are getting into this field, and I have no issues with the talent that is widely apparent on this and many other boards. But the median age for this industry is not 16. No matter how many people you know that work in the field.

Oh, and I can pretty well guarantee that people working on the front end aren't making $120G either! Back-end professional computer programmers, yes. But not HTML/CSS/JavaScript folks.

Suzanne

P.S. Would you please edit your code so it doesn't make this thread scroll so damn much? Thanks!

Suzanne,

I am sorry.... you are right on that. What I meant to say and come accross is that many of the sites on the web are built by teenagers (13-20 years). I know the big companies do not hire "experienced" teenagers. They hire people that have a degree, who are somebody. I only meant to say that there are many people, many young and unprofessional, that have built the sites that you and I surf daily.

Again sorry to offend, do not need to get into an arguing match.

respectfully,

Alex

PS... I'll attempt to edit!

No, no, no! No offense was taken.

I agree with you -- there are many many people who haven't even gotten through high school yet who are extremely talented and gifted and knowledgable!

No doubt about it.

And having a degree doesn't make you somebody, everyone is a somebody. Having a degree is simply a prerequisite, a way to measure the all around aptitude of a potential employee. Many people without degrees are employed in various high level positions, but they are the shining stars, the brilliant ones.

For anyone less than number one (and face it, you can be superb and not the best, but miles above the rabble) -- having a degree can be the step up you need to get ahead of the pack.

And now I am going to stop rambling and sounding like an after-school special (Stay in School!)

All the best,

Suzanne

i'm planning on staying in school..

keeping my 4.0 up!

If you put a non-repeating background image it sometimes gives a page a nice look (in my oppinion). You also might try using Tables to position the text and graphics the way you want.

Hey guys I mean all this age stuff... I'm only 14.

I know you don't want it to be too "plain", but too cluttered and busy is worse. Err on the side of elegance.

You've done a great thing by clearly labeling the links. A way to improve further on that is to have one set of them in actual text (not a graphic), so that people who use screenreaders can "hear" what they say. (Like you have on the secondary pages - do that on the main page as well.)

Be sure to use the keywords and description meta tags to help search engines find his site. Also have text (not graphics) on the first page that inlcudes the basic information that you want to get across ("musical instrument repair, custom painting...", for instance) since some search engines rely on that more than the keywords.

The things you have on the site now are cool, but they don't work together. Try to decide 2-3 colors and stick with them. Maybe gray and blue, with red highlights? You can use lighter/darker shades of those colors to liven things up.

Use the same edge treatment (if any) on all the photos. What I'm seeing today (1/26) is one with a bevel and one plain.

Do something graphically to make each page look like it belongs to the same site - like put the same banner across the top of every page.

Put an example of, or mention, his vehicle painting work on the main page. Until I went to the gallery page I thought he just did cool painting on musical instruments.

Here are a couple I've done that illustrate those points:
http://www.thefield.com/
http://www.uptospeed.net/cobblestone/
There's *nothing* technically amazing about either one, but they are clean and clear, and get the job done.

Have fun!
Linda Eskin
http://www.granitehillsdesign.com

I haven't really been on the computer for a while but I just updated the site, unfortunately before I read these last few replies. Check up on the site and tell me what you think about the update. I still have some links that aren't up because he still hasn't given me the information that he wants in them. Let me know what you think of the update. I think it's more browser friendly now since it looks good in most browsers. If there's something that you see that you think I should change or put or should've never done in the site, please let me know. I'm still learning. Thanks for all your help you guys have taught me a lot about webmastering, thanks.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. The banner that I have up there isn't the one that I'm going to really use. I just put that up there so that I can have an idea of how it would look with the banner there. I still haven't made the banner yet. Can't think of anything good. When I get it up though I'll let you guys know.

p.s. Also, this is just my "test" URL. I don't have the URL of the real site yet, I'm thinking of registering one when I'm done.

http://marinedog.hypermart.net/home.html

When you 'roll' your mouse over the roll over images they seem a little slow. I'm not sure if you preloaded the images that come when you roll over the origonal image, so it would be a good idea if you did that. It will make the roll over images react faster. If you did preload them... well... my bad.