Free For All Network

Is there a reason why the "home" button is not at the top?

The font that you have for the title is hard to read and the blue color doesn't go well with the gray IMO. What about an orange color?

I can't leave the forum, mp3 and web nap sections by using my back button. ACK...hate that.

I don't quiet understand the reason for the images at the top. To me, when I see pictures like the ones you have there, it reminds me of a gaming site. On the home page, you should probably include a brief paragraph explaining what the site is about.
You about page doesn't really tell me anything either. There are a lot of grammar errors too. Me thinks you need MMI.

My first impression of this site is that it's really boxy. So many table cells, all with thre line borders. I would try to streamline that a lot.

I also agree that the design really doesn't get the point across directly. I think that your navbar should also be broken up into two sections, in order to separate your content from the adminstrative details (About, Admin, contact, etc.) I also thought, that since teh site is supposed to be free resources, that the hosting link would take me to a list of free hosting sources. That could be clarified by posting the hosting link in a group with the other adnimistrative options.

looks like a final fanasty site, and the name kinda points that way as well.

I agree the home button should be up the top, seems you have placed you links in order, better if you place them by prefernce.
those pop ups are a pain, can you make them pop unders?

the side links cells are wider in opera than ie, not there at all in NS4.7 nor is your css, all fonts are big. NS6 has small cells with big text, you may want to fine tune your css

looking at your code you have a second page in there, well another set of html, head, script, /head, body contents, /body and /html tags, I'd say your including a seperate file for this section, doesnt matter what format it is (what its saved as - .php, html, inc ...) DON'T have html, head, body etc tags in it, only the contents you want added.

I dont care much for the blue border surrounding some of your image links.

thanx for your comments my team will take these into consideration and will probaly take action on most of the things you have reported, we will talk to our popup provider and will get a popup under code!

could someone help me add multiple domain names to apache?
i have my primary added but now how do i add another?

Quote: Originally posted by Megan
My first impression of this site is that it's really boxy. So many table cells, all with thre line borders. I would try to streamline that a lot.

I also agree that the design really doesn't get the point across directly. I think that your navbar should also be broken up into two sections, in order to separate your content from the adminstrative details (About, Admin, contact, etc.) I also thought, that since teh site is supposed to be free resources, that the hosting link would take me to a list of free hosting sources. That could be clarified by posting the hosting link in a group with the other adnimistrative options.

k i have looked into what you have asked and the system we currently use does not have the option to go to different directory for instace if i put MP3 in it'll load MP3.php o yea but what i am gettin at is we have to use redirect since it is another directory just push back twice fast and those 3 will go back to main! Sorry for any inconvience, we are switching automated PHP systems for many of these reasons, so plz wait a little while and i will resubmit for you to view again! But this web design is better than alot of websites and plus it has massive content that has not stopped growing so just wait awhile and you will see our full outcome thanx sincerly,

SNOWBALL

k well what do you like about the website so we can atleast compliment the team about what they did right i don't like just giving them bad news!

I liked the thong Pictures. joenov

oh and I do like the nav bar the way it works the color highlight as you move across light teal to aqua etc. and think it was good to go with white background with the light colors in nav bar and throughout the site. The anime type stuff Logo is ok because my take is you're an rpg fantasy clan with a server and trying to make a few extra bucks hosting( I had to dig to get this nothing comes out and tells me right off the bat so I could be wrong), but cant read the blue free for all network writing. A lot of the links, fun stuff, mp3's might all fall under a drop down in the download link and thus shorten the nav bar a little. I like the nave bar colors, the way it works and especialy because it takes you to the thong pics (content is everything) joenov

Thanx for your suggestions and commpliments Joe we will try and fix the server up some more, but i can't tell it will be today because me and my staff are workin on makin 2 RPG's out of FLASH & SHOCKWAVE i mean we have only been open since 1/28/02 so plz give us time we will be awesome when we get done (which is never) because we add content everyday! Thanx sincerly, snowball!

Also we kinda figured our name gave it away Free For All Network we offer content for 100% Free and we don't AIM for one specific content we just add as much as possible! We will make that clear on the homepage soon!

Graphics team is makin us a new banner ASAP!

Hello everyone me and my team have been hard at work and we are back with a new layout we added a new layout like 1 week ago so are still adding some new functions but tell me what you think!

I counted 6 different fonts used on the home page. You may want to consider using less of a variety. The fonts in the logo are hard to read and some I can't read at all. Especially the ones on the bottom of the logo.

The fonts that you are using for the headers in the navigaiton are hard to read also. They are too flat looking in my opinion.

Sorry, but I am not crazy about the colors that you are using. That brown looks blah to me. Maybe it is time I go rest me eyes.

You obviously like that drawing you have in the logo but it really gives the wrong impression of the site, it looks like it's a gaming site or about cartoons. It is also very dark which lends more to the gaming look. I also agree about too many different, hard to read, fonts.

By saying 'Please Donate Help Keep Us Ad Free' implies that you are ad free at the moment but straight underneath is a banner ad!

I definitely agree about the fonts. The only one I can really read easily is the body area. The big logo one is just too stylized, the other one along the top is fuzzy and the font on the navbar headers might work better in lower case. The font for the navbar items is too small (this new trend is really starting to bother me. Make your font sizes large enough for people to read comfortably! Especially for important navigation items). The body font, however, is showing up in Times for me - not sure if you meant to do that or if it's a stylesheet mistake.

I also don't like the trend of including a running commentary of site updates on the front page. It may be okay to include this on a separate page, or as a sidebar, but I really don't think that people care too much about what you're doing behind the scenes.

Quote: Saiyan-Jin Serge Grand opening, SS is a registered and a protected site of F.F.A.N.!

Huh????? That makes absolutely no sense to me. The first couple of words also turned out to be a link, but where styled in the same way as the body text making it impossible to see.

I also think that the navbar could use reoranizing here. I think I mentioned before something about separating real content from administrative details. Here you seem to have what I would call real content three sections down. Is your site about offering free multimedia content? or is it about your hosting plans? Or is it your forums? You should have a better sense of priorities here I think.

Actually,
We had a more professional design but then our viewers voted for us to change to this layout, also megan what we are is a FREE FOR ALL NETWORK which we think tells it all we offer as much content and material we can for free on our network! Free For All or F.F.A. is a popular term amoung webmaster's! But our team offers as much content to our viewers as possible without XXX or pirate software we belive we will be respected to keep those 2 off our network! We do what our viewers want and they want this layout and they mainly want more content which is what we will give them Daily updates are really helping us! And about the donate thing if you were on our last layout we had 8 popups and 4 onsite banners and now we only have 1 we have slashed our profit down to a quarter of what we were makin to make our viewers more happy and enjoy viewing our website! For only being reopen for 2-weeks and getting 50 Daily Uniqes aint bad at all, do you agree?

50 daily uniques isn't very good, I don't think. :/ My blog, which doesn't exactly qualify as "high traffic content", gets 1-200 daily uniques (about 300 page views daily). My business site has 200+ daily uniques and about 700 page views. And they aren't marketed save for the banners on this board (and only this board). AND I don't offer anything for free!

Granted I've been around for awhile, but free sites, if they are actually serving their audience, generally have much much higher traffic. I know some graphic designers who had freeware graphics who lost their sites to traffic, or had to move to dedicated servers to keep up with demand.

I think part of the problem is the difficulty in moving around on your site. I clicked on photos, then clicked on the first item (some model?) and I was immediately out of the site design and without navigation.

There are no thumbnails for the directories, which means unless I know what I'm looking for, I'm left to click and take my chances.

What the heck is 97kb on the main page?!

The news items don't link directly to the things they are about -- they should.

The text for the navigation is too small for me to easily find the categories. And I can't read the titles -- I'm taking a guess that one of them says "MULTIMEDIA"?

Every section looks like it belongs to another site altogether. ?!

I think that Megan, Julia and Sonia have offered some very valid feedback. Who is your audience? If it's your buddies, you might want to rethink your strategy of catering to them.

Going through your content, I have to question some of the things you have available for download. I wouldn't download AIM from you! Nor Trillian! How would I know you have the most current version? That you're a trusted reseller or affiliate?

There are some basic issues here with your business plan that a critique of your design will not help.

Thank you for all of your comments and suggestions we are putting up a few layouts for yall to look at and decide which is best, give us some time and we will be back with new layouts, thanx again!

There a few too many lines on that sites, it a bit boxy for my liking.

Hello everyone,
i would like for yall to review my website and maybe give me some pointers on how to get more viewers and we are also lookin for website sponsors!

I have merged this in with the original existing thread, that way people can check back on what was suggested before your alterations.

For me the site is far too dark and the text isn't enough of a contrast to read it comfortably. I'm also getting all the images as missing.

ummm if you find it hard to read you can always become a member and change the theme you would like to use! That is why we went with this site system because i got tired of getting complaints of me changeing layouts now you can do it in your members section! But this is our default, if you don't like is signup and change it

Also the dead image links have been fixed thanx for the heads up

Quote: Originally posted by dfiworld
ummm if you find it hard to read you can always become a member and change the theme you would like to use! That is why we went with this site system because i got tired of getting complaints of me changeing layouts now you can do it in your members section! But this is our default, if you don't like is signup and change it

Sign up to what? I have no idea what purpose your site serves. You need to address that with some content.

As far as "if you don't like it signup and change it" goes, I can only assume you aren't trying to attract members. Otherwise, you may want to rethink that marketing strategy.

Overall general opinions:
- too brown
- too small
- too vague
- horizontal scroll at 800x600
- needs a review of spelling and grammar

ummm see this is my problem you guys make my work sound like crap and yet you don't tell me what is good about which also a plus when reviewing a website and that is why i didn't post here for awhile so plz tell me what you like about that website also...

It is very brown, I think you need to make it more readable to attract people, i think a lot of people would be scared off just seeing this. Its a nice touch being able to change it when they sign up but you dont have any clear information on the first page that tells this.
Also on your header you have nuketest.com but your url is different and the link and alt is different - confused.
your survey is very vague, "did the maintance help?" umm what maintance? is this a members know thing?
you could have the content, hard to see whats where, you just need to make it clearer what the site is about, lighten the colors or use a brighter font color at least, and an about page would help. the layout is there, just need to fine tune a few things.
you also have a javascript error on IE, no scroll bar at 800x600 in NS4.7

Quote: ummm see this is my problem you guys make my work sound like crap and yet you don't tell me what is good about which also a plus when reviewing a website and that is why i didn't post here for awhile so plz tell me what you like about that website also...

Ok...starting out on a positive note here. I do like the color #393831 that you have and the lighter brown for the outline that is around each individual box. But I don't like the color #292C21 that you have for each individual box background. I think you should use something lighter here.

You need to use a color for the text that has more contrast with whatever background you decide on. The brown colored text is just too much brown with all of the other browns.

The brown colors can look really nice if they are used right. Keep playing with your colors. I think your logo should stand out more too. Not sure what color though. White might do the trick or a silver white or yellow/orange. That would depend on what you do with that color #292C21 I suppose.

Sorry but I had to come back and post something else.

Quote: ummm if you find it hard to read you can always become a member and change the theme you would like to use!

i hate to be the bearer of bad news but i really don't think that very many people are going to become a member just so they can change the colors on your site. Not sure I am too hip on that idea.

dfiworld, I really don't believe that anyone is trying to make your work sound like "crap" as you say. You have to realize that when you post a site for critique that you and anyone else will most likely get feedback on stuff that people don't like, (ie; their opinions). If they don't see anything that they like would you rather them lie to you? Or would you rather them give you their honest "opinion"? Try not to take your reviews so personally and use everyones opinions as a learning experience even if you don't agree with them.

Now for your content.....Some people who surf the internet are "scanners" (I am) which means that they scan pages that they are viewing for important tid-bits of info to see if they want to stay there or not.

When I did a quick scan of your page this is the information that I get out of your content that you have now.

First I see "Nuketest" (this is your title and I am thinking to myself, Is this an atomic web site?)
Then I look at your main body section and I see "Privacy policy" (which i don't care to look at right now. I am still trying to figure out what your site is about)
Then I see " Today me and the Co-Webmaster" (i am not interesting in what you did today. I want to know what the site is about.)
Next is "Site is now 100% Operational and stable" (then i think to myself, it is not 100% IMO---what is the site about? why should i hang out here?)
Now I scan over to your links hoping that they will provide some information. I see:
* Downloads (what kind of downloads?)
* Forums (forums relating to what?)
* Home
* Photos (photos of what?)
* Poetry (what kind of poetry, who wrote it, etc.)
* Privacy Policy (hey i saw this earlier in your body text!)
* Staff (i will probably go here next to see who in the heck you are and maybe get some info on the site here??)
* Statistics (statistics for what I wonder?)
* Webchat (what are we gonna chat about? )

Now my point is, I still do not know what your site is about and you could use the questions above to get a fairly good start on some content for the body of your home page. (a couple or three paragraphs introducing what your site is about and how people are going to benefit from hanging around) Your privacy policy seem to be the strongest point of your whole site. Don't think it should be.

Quote: ummm see this is my problem you guys make my work sound like crap and yet you don't tell me what is good about which also a plus when reviewing a website and that is why i didn't post here for awhile so plz tell me what you like about that website also...

Well, you don't see a spell checker complimenting you on good spelling, do you?
Even so, I think a couple of reviewers did say what they liked.

What I like:
- The theme you're going for.
- The skin features like backgrounds & borders.

What I don't like:
- Colors. (I have my monitor contrast at 70%. I can barely read anything.)
- Horizontal scroll.
- Download logo image is matted wrongly. (Use black, not white.)
- JS error.
- Usage of the character · in navigation instead of HTML code &# 149; or whichever it is.

Conclusion:
Nice idea, good design goal, but not executed very well or completely.

Recommendation:
Review your code and consider some general site usability concepts.