REVIEW REQUEST: ModernWebmaster.com

I like your layout, clean and simple
will you be having anything in the left column ?
The white is very bright on the blue, maybe use a light grey or light blue to tone it down a little, also making your section headings different to your text would help.

as for the content, one thing that stuck out, you have "The best way to know if a web hosting company is good or bad is to talk to people that have personal experience with that specific company ..."
If your new to hosting you probably wont know how to find these people, not many people advertise who their host is.
Also another question is, what happens if i go over my allowed bandwidth or file space? how much per gig? will i get warned first ...
and again since they would be beginers, the probably wont know anything about file managers, file access ...

I agree that it's a nice layout but the navigation tabs at the top seem a little bit small and squished up to me. I also think that an accent colour could be nice, say orange, to lift it a bit and you either need your navigation links again as text at the bottom or a back to top links to save people scrolling all the time.

Busy,

Thank you for reviewing the website. We are planning to have menus and other things in the left column. The reason I've written the "The best way to know if a web hosting company is good or bad is to talk to people that have personal experience with that specific company..." part is simply because that is the best way and it is mentioned a earlier in the article that you should ask the web host for a few websites that are hosted by them and contact the owners. I guess I should make that more clear. Very good question that should be added.

Julia,

Thank you for reviewing the website. I agree with you both and to be honest I'm not too crazy about dark background and light text, I like it the other way around. About the navigation, I'll see if I can make them a little bigger. I'm not sure if all sections will fit in there as we're just starting out with a few and will add more to it in time.

I'm working on a new design for the website as I'm not too happy about it. I always do this a few times until I find a design that I'm happy with. If I would to sell all the designs I don't use as templates, I would have had $30-$40 by now

Aw, man, you're still going with that lame-o tagline? Yawn, snore...

I agree that the tabbed buttons are too small and I also think that you should try to get a more high-contrast mouseover scheme. i can hardly even see that the colour is changing, the difference is so slight.

Otherwise there's not much else to say. It's a nice simple layout with a nice simple colour scheme - totally my type of site (except for that boring tagline )

Megan,

Thank you for reviewing the website. If we find a better slogan we will change it, but until then I guess we have to use this one.

I just uploaded the new design (which is only 1 page) which should give you the idea of what the site will look like. Personally, I think the 2nd design is 10000000 times better than the first one, what do you guys think?

Design 1: http://www.modernwebmasters.com/beta/webhosting/
Design 2: http://www.modernwebmasters.com/beta2/

Yes that is good and I like the new colours. How about making the headings throughout the page a different colour to make them stand out and give the page further down some colour?

Actually, I'm not sure that I particularly prefer this one over the last one..> I guess I'm sort of indifferent. I do think that something should be done to the navbar to make it stand out more, and the mousovers still need more impact as well. THe unactive tabs are too low contrast (the text doesn't stand out enough IMO). Same with the tagline colour (I'm sure we had something close to a good tagline in that other thread. Are you even trying to think up something better?)

Ok, I have now changed the headlines to dark purple color (links are lighter purple) and also used the same dard purple for the small text in the logo to make it easier to read.

Megan, I know your favorite color is blue but the first design just didn't go with me (just wasn't happy), I'm sure you know how it is when you make a design and it just doesn't feel right. We will probably change the tagline before we launch the site, those are just small details. I do agree about the top menu, I'm going to see what I can do with them. Anyone got any ideas what colors to use for both tab and text on the inactive and hover menus?

Where did you get the idea that my favourite colour is blue? Normally I actually dislike the shades of blue look but I didn't think it was bad in the one you had. I also didn't mean to say that I like the blue one better - I don't have a preference for one choice over another here. I'm sorry, I guess you wanted to hear that the new one was better.

In the get to know your fellow members thread you said "I always like blue with orange, or blue with a limey green colour, actually." so I meant favorite color for websites, not in general.

Oh, right, I'd forgotten about that. That doesn't mean that I think every website should be blue. Those two schemes just came to mind when I went to answer that question (because I was previously thinking about how I hate it when the clients always ask for blue). Man, I wouldn't have said that if I knew people were going to bring it up in here. I have done a lot of designs like that lately but mainly because blue was required and I don't normally like blue that screams BLUE!

Do whatever you want with your site, zollet, I won't bother you with my thoughts anymore...

Megan,

I'm kind of confused here. I don't know what I said to offend/upset you, but I apologize if I said anything that did so even remotely. I do care to hear yours and all other members' opinion which is why I posted the site for review. My favorite color - after black - is blue which is why I made the site blue in the first place, but as I mentioned earlier, it just didn't feel right for me for that site.

Sorry, I was getting a little frustruated there. I understand what you mean about the blues not feeling right. I was going to mention in my first post that the dark background may become a problem and it could be a better idea to do something on white anyway.

A few ideas - try darker bluey-purple in the navbar (active tab would be darker, inactive would be the same colour as the active tab is now... or maybe not, I'm not sure what would be better). Or try making the text on the inactive tabs dark on mouseover, that might work (or not...)

Sorry for the lack of specifics here, but I'm not really sure what would work best here.

Ok, took your advise and tried darker a little more bluey colors in the nav bar, what do you guys think?

Better but now I'm getting a small horizontal scrollbar at 800*600!

Oh, wow, that worked great! That colour contrast is really striking now! How about changing the "webmasters" text in the logo to match that? Just another idea...

Zollet, I like the second one better.

IMO, it looks more professional. I too am getting a horizontal scroll on the second one.
And I would stick one text links at the bottom of the page.

Nice work!
Sonia

Done, done and done I've changed the "webmasters.com" in the logo to the dark blue/purple and the sucky tagline to black. I've also changed the left/right padding/margin to 5px which should hopefully take care of the horizontal scrollbars.

Julia, can I bother you to check it again? Thank you.

Soon, the design will be complete and I can concentrate on the development (which in my opinion is much easie).

Sonia,

Thank you for reviewing the website. Light (specially white) backgrounds are always more professional and boring But I think it looks better for this website. With text links at the bottom, do you mean the navigation menu? I'm not sure, but I think that will interfere with the design or what do you guys thing? I'm thinking about adding a "back to top" link instead since there will be too many menus later.

Yes, I was talking about the navigation.

Home | Tutorials | Scripts | Links | Web Hosting | Advertise | Contact

Maybe it is just me but I use the bottom nav on many sites that I visit if they offer one. It isn't a big deal not to have one I don't guess but I think it just helps the user move around especially when the pages are long. Just a suggestion....not written in stone.

The padding that you added did not and will not take care of the horizontal scroll. To fix that you will have to make your table smaller in width.

Ok, more updates to the site. I've added the question Busy mentioned and as requested by the ladies, I've added a text navigation menu to the bottom of the page. Hopefully it looks good.

I removed the blue site and uploaded the new one to http://www.modernwebmasters.com/beta/

Question: What was the question that busy mentioned? LOL

Yes, yes, that looks really good Zollet. Fixing the horizontal scroll did wonders for the looks.

The navigation at the bottom at first looked a little funky being aligned on the right side of the page, but the more I look at it the more i like it.

I guess it takes a little time to swallow such perfection? LOL!

Busy mentioned that I should add "Will you warn me if my website is about to go over my monthly bandwidth limit and how much do you charge for extra bandwidth?"

hmm whole new look, I like it.
Maybe darken up the links on the page a little.

Don't like how the naviagtion jumps around on mouseover thou

looking forward to the rest of the content

Excellent! I like the grid background and the links at the bottom just help to finish the bottom of the page. No scrollbar now either

I'm gonna say I don't like the grid. It's just a personal preference... looks a little unprofessional to me.

But hey, if The Webmistress says it's good, then it's gotta be good.

Quote: Originally posted by Abhishek Reddy
But hey, if The Webmistress says it's good, then it's gotta be good.

Flattery will get you everywhere! LOL

I'm still playing around with ideas for the background. What do you guys think about this dotted one? I guess you can say this is somewhere between the grid and no background at all.

Better, but still not to my liking...

How about spacing out the dots more?

I've now changed the background to vertical stripes that I think looks good, any thoughts? I've made the lines a little lighter so that they show a little less. I just want to fill the empty space you know.

I like the stripes.

Let's see what the others say...

I liked the grid better. with the grid you could tell what it was and was there, with this, you're drawen to it to try work out what it is.
the grid seemed to of match or blend more colour wise as well.

Still on first coffee so could just be me

/me goes to jump out the window.

I think I'll go with the stripes for now since I just want to fill out the space and don't want anything that draws any attention even though _maybe_ the grid looked better. More opinions are welcome...

Well, I didn't see all the other options but I'm not too sure about this one. It's alright, although I can't really tell if it's a grid or stripes. Oh well, whatever, it doesn't matter to me. I might have liked it better with just a plain background but maybe not, I don't remember.

(like that was a lot of help )

Tried horizontal stripes?

I too prefered the grid

/me opens window for zollet

Ok, changed it to grid now, is this better than the stripes?

Since /me had to work on the website and couldn't jump quite yet, he pushed Abhishek out the window (had to give something to the audience)

I think I do like this one better than the stripes, although the differences are so minor that it's really hard to choose.

That's good, because I just want to fill out the empty gray space and nothing more

SOLD, now lets move on to the orange in the yellow ...

Actually, as much as I enjoy you guys torturing me (j/k ), I have to put the site on ice since I've just started on two new paying projects that have deadlines I must keep. Maybe I'll post them here for review.

Hi

It looks really nice. The color scheme is conservative but not bland. The graphics look professional. There's not much bad I can say about this site other than the scrolling.

Nice job!

Plaastik