Review Please

Copenhagen, welcome to Webmaster-Forums. We request that people that are wanting a site review to help us out by reviewing 3 other sites prior to their site being reviewing.

Anyway as far as the critique goes, I would say that it needs some work. The main problem areas on your site are page layouts and navigation. I didn't like the colors much either.

• Logo and colors - Your logo needs some work. It doesn't give a very professional effect to new visitors to your site. It should also be positioned at the top of your page. Anti-aliasing should be applied to the text to remove the jagged edges. Black is a popular color on gaming sites but you should either change the black background or change some of the colored text. Dark blue on black is not very readable.
• Navigation - You severely lack any kind of navigation on your site. If I click on one of the drop downs, how do I get back to the home page. Navigation should be laid out so that your granny can follow it.
• HTML and coding - don't use MS Publisher to create web pages. It writes some pretty 'dirty' code.

I really like that castle in the upper left. Did you make that? The site takes about 12 minutes to load at 56k wich is very good. For a gaming site you did a nice job has a good feel.

Hi & welcome to TWF Dan,

I'm not a fan of black backgrounds and most of the time things are very hard to read or concentrate on because of that. Blue definietley doesn't go well on black. I would say that you need to redesign the top part, maybe into more of a banner type logo, incorporating the castle, Coopenhagen Tower & The Ultimate Fantasy, Sci-Fi and Gaming Resource (if you really believe that this is).

Have a look around the forum here and see how others have laid things out (& post some reviews while you are there!) as this site really needs some navigation and then the rest of the content laid out accordingly.

I agree about FP, there are plenty of free editors out there or learn html yourself. I personally use Dreamweaver (groans from many others out there!) but that will cost you.

I think most of us would say that the best thing is to learn the code. YOu'll have a lot more control over your designs if you know what the code is doing and how to get it to do what you want. Also learn how to make better graphics.

I think that you ought to look around at other sites and see what they're doing. Look closely and see if you can pick out any common trends on good looking sites. Gaming and entertainment sites are a little bit of an exception to the rule in that you can get away with black backgrounds etc..

I would like to add a few comments.

- Get rid of the ugly, large counter. What does that do for you? Statistics should be information you use, not your visitors. It just takes up space and makes your page load even slower. Here is a free, ad-free one: http://www.xav.com/scripts/axs

- I'm not too fond of the font you are using. Generally, Arial, Times New Roman, or Verdana (my favorite) should be used. Others can cause problems on some systems.

- The blue text beneath the logo needs to be changed - it's hard to read.

- I don't prefer drop down menus as the primary site navigation. Try using color tables with CSS and make a column down the left side with your links. It will be much more laid out and easier for usability. For example, look out SitePoint.com uses colored tables and links with CSS to make a navigation system. You should try to avoid graphics in navigation, as well.