LDSResources.com - Please Review

I think you need to explain or at least word LDS, from your post I am guessing it stands for "Latter-day Saints"

Quote: the original layout and current color scheme were borrowed from an acquaintance (i was in a rush to get it started and didn't have time to make a layout). i've since modified the layout to suit my purposes better.

Hope you got permission to use it

on your category page, the displayed tables line up nicely in IE5 but are a little jagged in Netscape 4.7. (as you mentioned), seems its only the top right one that is messing up the layout

I'm not to sure about your icon/banner thingy, maybe another color/style, I think the sripes are affecting the colors, not sure cant put my finger on it.

overall it looks pretty good

i'm expecting most (if not all) of my visitors to be LDS so i didn't think to spell it out. i'll add that in though. (maybe it will help with search engine rankings?)

yes, i got permission to use the layout.

hmm i thought i edited the wording enough to make the category listings show up correctly in netscape, but apparently i didn't. i'll have to edit it again.

i'm not really a green person myself, so i'm definetly going to be re-doing the graphic at the top (especially since i changed the sites official address from LDSReference.com to LDSResources.com). i'm gonna try to find a better font and make it a little more rounded.

when you mentioned the stripes, do you mean the background stripes? i'll play around with those (or take them out) to make things look better.

thanks for your help!

It does look good, and it would be fine if this was, say, a list of academic library resources or something. I think that you should change things to reflect the religious nature of the site. Maybe some sort of religious/spiritual type images from LDS... I'm not too familiar with that religions so I can't offer specific suggestions, but you definitely need a more suitable look. You've even got a page full of links to sites with LDS clip-art and graphics. Go through there and see if you can find something suitable.

hmm very good suggestion. i'll definetly work on incorporating a more religious theme into the website.

side note: LDS = official acronym for the mormon religion. basically its a Christian church.

I am viewing on IE 6 so I can't help you with the NS problems but I will give you my thoughts on the colors and such.

The site is really neat looking. I think it could have a better explaination of what it is about. Well, actually you have that but I think it may just be lack of theme. Like Megan said, ya need some graphics. I read that you are going to work on the logo too. That is good. It does look just a tad plain. Shades of blues may be a more a more suitable color for a religious site. Have you looked around on the web to see what other religious sites are using? that may give you some ideas.

This is going to sound funny but when I look at the site (colors) I think of an alligator. LOL Don't know why. Maybe I am loosing it. hehehe

Someone mentioned background stripes. I don't see those but the background does look to be an off-white color so maybe it is just my monitor.

Nice to know that some people ask before using things on their site that isn't theirs.

Oh, and I think that some buttons instead of text links at the top would bring it out nicely.

well i'm playing around with the stripe and variations on the stripe but at the moment i took it off to see what various background colors would look like.

hehe well actually the story behind the green color scheme is kinda interesting. according to the JELL-O company (i think i spelt that correctly, the people that have bill cosby in their commercials), Utah consumes more jello then any other state in the United States, and its favorite flavor is lime green jello. (Utah = location of LDS headquarters and tons of LDS people)

i was debating on whether to use graphics or text.. perhaps if i can find some shades of blue i like, i will make some graphical buttons for the menu.

thanks again everyone for helping me out!

Wow!! Here ya go. Shades of blue;)
http://www.freewebmastertips.com/php/content.php3?aid=53

yay thats a lot of blues! i'm sure i'll find something in there i like. thanks!

i'm gonna stop by a few local paint stores later today and pick up some of those color card things too; i figure painters are better at picking colors then i am.

hey zULuGriD - I think this front page is very well laid out! - I can see why you wanted to employ your friend's idea - I suppose in the spirit of your work, sharing comes naturally :sunny:

as I always say in my reviews, I copyedit and fool around with design, so let's see if I can sniff out anything

"rewrite" is typically one word

you might remove the periods in the update blurbs

personally, I like the way you've left the exclamation mark outside the anchor in "please contact us!" - you might want to do this with "Click here to browse our directory!"

in the TD containing "Name of Site" you use a nowrap attribute but set the width to 150 - I think it would look better on one line - setting the "Description" TD width to 100% may be causing this table to be quirky, not sure - hmmm, it displays ok on IE - if you want it that way on Netscape and Opera, I guess you'll need to fiddle with it - I'm not much of a carpenter, either, but I guess you know someone who is

in LDS Temples, ya might wanna move "easily" to the front of that sentence

in Latter-day Specialties, "often much cheaper than Deseret Book"

ya might wanna hyphenate "privately owned"

excellent job of leaving other punctuation outside anchors - a detail I can appreciate :coolblock

Generally a very nice layout and easy to navigate but I think you definitely need a new logo and colour scheme. I was thinking more along the lines of autumn colours - don't know why!! Also the topical graphics will bring the site to life a bit more as it seems rather flat at the moment.

Good work

thanks everyone for suggestions and help!

i moved ! outside of the anchor for the "Click here to browse our directory!" link. (i'm glad i'm not the only one that likes to keep punctuation outside of the links)

added a transparent spacer to make sure all the tables are lining up correctly. i keep the site name nowrapped at 150 because some of the site names are VERY long, and if i don't wrap them, then it leaves only a small space for description.

made a few grammatical changes, etc..

still working on finding colors i like (i think i'm just being too picky.. almost anything will look better then the current colors )

hey - the TD for "Name of Site" is a separate cell, isn't it? - I don't mean the ones further down containing the names, just the "header" - non-IE browsers probably don't like the 100% width attribute you've given the header "Description" cell - here's a screenshot of what I'm sayin':

not to ramble on about punctuation and anchors, but I'd say if the whole sentence/phrase is a link you can leave it in - but if you link from the last few words, probably not

hmm didn't even notice that was happening (i only check my sites using ie6 and netscape 4.78, and it appears the problem shows up in netscape 6).

adding in some more spacers to make sure things are showing properly. having some trouble making it look good in netscape 4.78, 6.2, and ie6 but i'll figure it out eventually.

edit: hmm well all i had to do was take out that 100% and now it looks fine. that was easy.