art site needs brutally honest critiques

Welcome to TWF Karen.

We do ask that before you have your own site critiqued that you have a look and share your opinions on at least three other sites posted here. This will also help you when looking at your own site as well.

I will look at your site and come back to you, but in the meantime if you will participate in the discussions there.

Sorry about posting without critiquing!
Too little sleep and caffein plus doing 5 things at once, had me doing some really dumb things last night.

Thank you for the welcome, I am looking forward to seeing some professional looking sites and learning how to make my own designs better.

btw: When you go to my site, the url I posted is the DirectNic name (it's a redirect). To see the source code the real addy is:
http://gallery.passion4art.com/members/challenge/index.html

Again sorry about the mistake.
I'm going to start looking around right now.

Thanks
Karen

Karen, welcome to Webmaster Forums.

Overall your site is very pleasing. Just a few things that I noticed that might be done better.

Thank you mairving!

Please let me know what would improve it...
that's what I'm here for.

Karen

Karen, sorry about that. I posted those initial comments and then somehow must have hit the enter key. Then I clicked the edit button, posted comments on the site and then lost my cable connection. Grrr... Here is what I was going to say.

Overall your site is very pleasing. Just a few things that I noticed that might be done better.

The Good

• Your gif's are very well done. The text looks like you would expect on an artists site.
• I also liked your top logo. It was not too big and carries the theme of your site well.
• The lessons looked fairly easy to follow.
• No ad banners!!!

The Not so Good

• I have never been a fan of backgrounds preferring solid colors myself. Your is not bad and matched well with the site. You may play around with some solid colors, even maybe trying some multicolor with a border at around 5% or so.
• I am also not a big fan of frames. They can throw search engines for a loop. Plus they make it more difficult to view your source.
• Forums - the link appeared to be broken. Plus you are using EZBoard which I despise with a passion. You might try V-bulletin instead.
• The Lessons - your pictures could probably match up with the lessons a bit better. They seem to be just kind of stuck over to the right side a bit. I would try to incorporate them into the text and have the text flow around them.
• Make us your start page - this is way too much reading for someone. Plus you could add some javascript that would do this for them in IE. You should probably also change the name to 'Make CP Challenge your Home Page'. Also add a link for 'Add to Favorites'.
• Text underline - On your home page, your nice links on the left are offset by the text-underlined links on the right. I would remove the text underline and change the color, or make so similar but smaller gif's than what you have on the left.

Overall I think that you have a good start. The site is okay as it is but no one should settle for okay.

Hmmm...disconnected...
I'm on a dial up modem... annoying dissconects are a way of life... I understand.

First, Thank you for the compliments! Very much appreciated!

Now for the problems...

Backgrounds- I agree! I wish I had started with a solid color when I designed the site. There are nearly 200 pages now, so replacing backgrounds and redoing the "trying to blend in" links that aren't transparant gifs will take some doing.
I would like to try that, it will just take me a while to get it done.

Frames- That has me a little worried. I designed my site without frames just for that reason. (Oh, the time I could save when I have to update links if I just used frames)
Where did you find frames at? I need to see what went wrong.

Forums- Well... I have to admit I only shopped around for about a month before I chose EzBoards. (you should have seen the awful "cool board" I had before) I'll check out V-bulletin... thanks.

Lessons- I hope you're talking about the featured lesson for this month. I wanted to do something different myself, but the contributing artist wanted it layed out that way. The next featured lesson (due to start June 1st) has a different look which I really like.

Text Underline- I have been going crazy trying to make sure that the link images on the left and the text on the right line up fairly well across different platforms. Making the text links into images would solve that. I was afraid that that would be loading just way too many graphics on the first page though. Would you make them each individual gifs or would you make those links into one image map? I'm not sure what would be best.

Thank you so much for all the great input!

You are very correct... I don't want to settle for "okay" and a site can always be improved.

Karen

Hi Karen,

Don't feel bad about being a newbie here. I have only been posting for a couple of weeks and I too got "in trouble" by the moderator. LOL Don't worry they are very forgiving.

I think you have done well with the site. It seems to be neatly layed out and I love the art.

The first thing that I noticed as the first page was coming up was the table borders. I would definately loose the table borders.

As for the background...it isn't bad. Not too flashy or bright but it sort of distracts from the art work. In my opinion I think you should go with a solid background (white) or do the left border thing as mairving suggested.

The logo at the top didn't take too long to load. It is original and fits in with the theme but if you wanted to reduce load time just a bit you could make it a tad smaller and you would never notice the difference. One thing I have noticed about web sites lately is that designers are going with smaller stuff and it looks good to me.

The thumbnails are fine.

As for the links on the left....the colors look just a bit broken up on my monitor and the edges are a little jaggy. Maybe you could try a different color and reduce their size too. Also you can see the outline of the background around the links. Not too bad but hey....I am looking for mistakes right? LOL Probably wouldn't have noticed it that much had I just surfed onto your site.

If you went with a solid white background, a faint dropshadow would look good on the pics. Some people don't like dropshadows though. It's all a matter of taste.

Now.....when I get my rollovers straightened out you can rip my site apart....HAHA!!!!

Welcome aboard!
disaster-master

This site particularly caught my eye because I used to do artwork with pencil crayons myself (a looooong time ago! Nothing nearly as sophisticated as what you've got though. Maybe this site will inspire me to start again).

I agree with most of what has been said already - the graphics are well done for the most part (although I would shrink the drop shadows down a bit on those text graphics - oversized drop shadows are kind of a pet peeve of mine). I don't really mind the background in this case, since the parchment texture relates to the site topic (BTW, you could easily remove the background tag using search and replace - there are many programs out there that will search and replace in files that aren't open. Allaire's Homesite, an HTML editor, is one of them).

One thing tha you really ought to work on is your alignment. Notice how the left side nav bar starts a little lower down than the highlighted lesson and the right nav bar on the home page. Move the "Call for Artists and Teachers" up to go underneath the highlighted lesson, remove the "website" link down there (this is where they are - no need to have that on there), and link your e-mail address to your name on the copyright statement, or add a "contact" link to the left sidebar.

Your navigational system should remain consistent thoughout the site. A group of text links at the bottom is fine if you've only got a few, but so many options together like that will only confuse people. The navigation works much better the way you've got it set up on the home page.

I would also try to make some of your pages more compact - the Past Challenges page, for example, is way too spaced out. You have to scroll too much to see the lessons. I would also include a thumbnail of the completed project next to the description.

I don't know if this is something you're working on or not, but it would be nice to have a section for beginners, listing types of materials available, what is the essential equipment, what are the best brands, how to get started, and some basic lessons.

Thank you Megan Jack!

I know it would be easy enough to replace the actual background on the pages, it's just the jpgs with the background on them would all have to be redone too.
(you know the ones with the nasty drop shadows on them)

Thanks for pointing out the alignment problem. I work on a very tiny monitor and set my tables to percentage widths so, even though I do "tricks" when I'm creating the pages to see it in 800 pixel width, I still miss some layout problems.

I keep working on tightening up the pages. Next month I will try a new look for some of them (including the "Past Challenges" page).... it never ends... if you want it right.

I know I have a lot of links in my bottom navigation on the pages. I want everyone to be able to go from any section to any other section in the site (and there are a lot of sections) I might make the "About this site" and "Support this site" type pages into thier own sections. That would cut down on the individual pages that are being linked to there.

Thanks again
The advice has been great!
Karen

PS: the "Teachers Challenge" section is going to be full of tips, lessons, and advice covering the basics of colored pencils (as soon as I get some more artists contributions.
Maybe we'll see you around the site.

disaster-master,
Thanks for looking at my site!

You're right about the jaggedness of the text links on the home page.
I had to reduce their pixel size last month and I adjusted the gifs instead of the psd files (because I couldn't find the psd files in my folder), so they are not right.
I'm creating some new ones that will look better, so hopefully that problem will be fixed.

Wish I could help you with your roll over problem. I always used Adobe Image Ready to create mine, so I'm not sure how to help you.

Good luck!
Let us know when it's all working.
Karen

I like the cleaness of the site, and while i usually don't like this particular style, you;ve done it so that there isn't a bunch of needless clutter.

My tip is to not use 3D table borders. Personally, I think they look a little unprofessional. I've always like solid color borders, and a colored background would seperate the tables slightly from the rest of the layout.

I agree with everything that's been said, and think that the jumble of links at the bottom of the page is a bit intimidating. There are other ways of displaying that many links that might be more effective.

I like this site, clean, does what it should ..., even thou I dislike patterned backgrounds, but apart from what the others have said, the only other thing is the link buttons on the index page, "lessons" "artwork" etc, on my screen I get a box or edge type thing around some of them, where the pattern doesnt quite line up, I'd go for a transparent gif for all these, you may have to choose between the drop shadow and transparent button thou.

Karen,

I too agree with what has been said before by everyone & would especially change the following :

The links - far too many at the bottom, keep the main pages navigation at the side & then on those relevant pages have sub-links. (That's why I DO use frames & I don't have a problem with them & SE's! (sorry Mairving )

The 3D table borders, loose them!

I'm not a fan of backgrounds (this one isn't actually too bad) plus solid colours does make it easier to get images such as the text links looking much better.

Alignment - this will make the site look that much better instantly.

Overall a very good job! I know it's a pain having to change things like backgrounds & images but it really will turn a good site into a great one

Good Luck