Review Request : BIWC

Left colum is to short should add somthing more there and the colors are to light for my taste. Besides that looks very nice

its kind of, well, blahh, Not much on the menu so it looks empty - more content = better site

Just looking at your first page, the colours are a bit too wishy washy. Normally a colour scheme consists of one or two main colours and an accent colour, they can be light/pastels but together they give the site an identity, whereas yours just looks washed out. I don't think the logo/header section is helping either as it is too small and boring.

What is the Centre's logo? That should be used on the site along with their colours. If this is their logo and colours you need to develop on it and introduce a stronger look. If they don't really have a logo/colours then it is up to you to make a better logo, even a more interesting font and stronger colours would work better. Once you have decided on that you need to make the logo/header area bigger so that it is part of the layout/design and not just stuck up in the corner.

You aren't leaving the comment box on every page are you?

Another thing to think about is your alt tags - make them useful to those who might need to actally use them. Put the name of the Centre rather than just 'logo'

One thing that you may have to think about is moving away from this template/ layout as I notice that it is the same as your own site.

Good start though

What is wellness? Leaf. Why should I visit? Leaf. Tour the Centre -- those pics taken on a foggy day? About Us -- Bio & pics. Under construction! d'oh Work the design around the content; not the content inside the design.

e107 is a decent CMS, I suppose, but please please please disable the double-click scroll-to-top "feature". It's very annoying. Thanks.

alright, so colors, logo, alt tags, design around content, more content. sounds like good advice. im going to be sent the real logo soon and from there im going to choose some colors to work with. the site is probably going to look a lot different from what it does now after i get my hands on the logo. and i am going to take away the comment boxes once the site is finished.

hmm.. and im also going to look into that "double click scroll to top" thing. i actually never knew that existed until i read your post.

thanks for critiquing my site. very valuable feedback

I sort of agree with Webmistress bout the colour scheme. The problem here is contrasts. The light colour scheme wouldn't be so much of a problem if the black text didn't stand out so much. The problem is that text needs to be dark in order to be readable. That said, you could probably lighten up the text a little bit (using a dark brown or dark greenish corresponding with the site colours). However, the light colours do lend a nice airy feel to the site and correspond well with the health and wellness theme. You've done a good job in that respect.

Another problem here is the text. The fonts are too small and hard to read (see what I said in Flipper's thread about that). The navigation is also too small. Some users may ahve a hard time identifying those as links. make sure that links are styled differently from plain text. You could do a lot to those with CSS to make them stand out more as a navbar.

The header and logo area is also too small. It's hardly noticable up there since it's so small and pale. The darker body text stands out more, also because it takes up more space on the page.

Do you see how these are all matters of contrast? There are many ways in which you can use contrast to make elements stand out or recede according to importance - size, colour, boldness etc. There's a good book by Robin Williams (not the actor) called The Non-designer's Design Book (or something along those lines) that goes into detail about this and other simple design principles.

Hmmm... not a site I'd like to visit when I'm not wearing my glasses or late at night. Small text and light colours don't go well together.