M.A. Site/Forum

The first problem I had with this site was the music! I was looking at it at work and had my speakers on so that was a bit of a problem. Now that I've turned them off I can give you site a proper look.

Now, this is quite obviously a template. In fact, I think I might have seen this one before. Or maybe not - they all tend to look the same to me. Which is fine if that look is appropriate for your site. In this case it's really not, IMO. The look and feel of your site should connect directly to the subject. So I should look at this and think that this looks like a martial arts site. other dead giveaways are the spinning globe (yikes!), generic people in the background, and plain font on the logo.

A few changes would improve this a lot and make it look more like a martial arts site. Change the colours associated with martial arts like red and yellow (if you have the source files...) . The logo should be done in a font that is consistent with that as well. So something chinese-ish looking.

The photo gallery is kind of neat but the navigation confused me. I didn't immediately identify that blue circle thing as something that would contain navigation.

I had a hard time finding the forum because it's not a link on the main menu as I expected. It should definitely be there - people will easily miss that small bit at the bottom where it is now.

The forum is completely different from the main site. These things should be as consistent as possible. Try to put in your main header with the forum as well. In addition, I see no need for a portal on the forum when you've already got a main website content area. Pull some elements from the forum onto that page if you need to. Otherwise, this portal isn't really necessary.

The other thing I really hate aobut these portals is that the link to the actual forums is always really obscure and out of the way. My impulse is to look in the top nav area first, and of course it's not there.

My first impression of the forums is that there are way too many sections. Start really small at first and ad forums only as you need them. This will keep all dicsussion centralized at first and make it easier for people to navigate.

Overall this isn't a bad setup. It's reasonably nice looking and there's nothign really too badly done. The main problem is that it doesn't integrate well with the Martial Arts concept, and the forum is too separated from the main site.

Thanks for your opinion you have given me many good points which could help to improve the site. The main reason why I used the people in the background was to show that everyone no matter who you are can study Wing Tsun. Although I must agree people wont think of this and will feel that it is not appropriate therefore you may see change to this in the near future.
Once again thank you for your honest opinions I will try and take them into consideration.

Tez

Hi Tez

DISCLAIMER: I hate templates, you have been warned

My major complaint with the site is the template! Ahh i hate those templates to no end. Quite honestly, my first impression from your homepage is that its some type of cheap internet service, becuase thats what I identify those flashy templates with.

My recommendation is simple. Get yourself a copy of Photoshop if you dont already have it. it doesnt even have to be the lastest version, so maybe you can get a discount or something. You dont even need to be a PS pro. Surely Im no PS pro!

Next, google martial arts schools.. Learn to see how other sites are designed, see what they list and build off of that. You will be able to tell which of those sites are elegantly designed and which are actually informative. Im not telling you to copy their design, but let them give you a good idea.

Finally take that idea, visualize it and build it in photoshop.

I think Megan hit on alot of the content points, so I wont reiterate them.

First of all, your site crashes my firefox browser. Tried opening it a few times and everytime I did, I would crash it. May want to check up on that.

In any case, what does the design of your site have to do with Martial arts? See, this is the reason why templates are usually a bad idea - it doesn't fit in with the content of the site.
Judging by the design, it looks as if the content is about a game or is a personal site.

On the subject of templates, let's also talk about the logo, as it should also fit in with the design and content of the site. You have a spinning world. How is that related to gaming, I mean, Wing Tsun?

As already suggested, try getting a pen and paper and coming up with a design which is relevant to Wing Tsun.

My first thoughts was, what is Wing Tsun, so I looked at your site, I thought I typed the url wrong and arrived at some sort of hosting site... Then I noticed that the flash header seems to fail to load sometimes and the contents is all jumbled up...

Although the template looks ok, its appropriateness to your content is really off... Whats the connection between Wing Tsun and the businessman with a mobile phone at the right? Adding up the functions like a register with the texts unavailable, why not remove it alltogether.

I suggest you make a redesign, as suggested by others...

I'm not a big fan of music on web sites either, but other than that, it is very nice!

the images on the page are small but are of big size.
reduce the size for faster loading.
also the flash work at the top is taking a lot of time to load on dialup.
the font-size is small.