review request : www.inmyplaces.com

Firstly welcome to TWF and thank you for reviewing some of the others sites.

Congratulations on your first website! The coding doesn't look too bad but I would definitely suggest that you learn css starting with some basic tutorials so that you can get rid of all the depreciated font tags right from the beginning.

As it's your first site I wont be too harsh but I will list all the things that makes it look amateurish:
- patterned, dark, heavy background
- lack of colour scheme
- lots of textures
- big logo
- buttons
- animated, spinning email link
- no font specified so showing as default TNR
- positioning of the content
- lack of real design to pull all of the above together

Good start, now learn css which will also give you lots of ideas for things like fonts, positioning and layout. Have a good look at some of the professional sites you like the look of and note down exactly what it is you like about them, colours, design, graphics, etc and try to replicate them for yourself.

I know you are only doing this as a hobbie right now so I apologise if this all sounds too harsh

Welcome, been by the introductions forum to introduce yourself yet?

I agree that the site is quite dark, but since its for astronomy, I guess it is excusable.

The site takes a while to load because of all the graphics, the bunch on the right hand column are not really needed.

A big header title strip isn't really recommended by me, try reducing the size of it, maybe to about 100 - 150 pixels max.

Thank you for the tips.

I don't think you were too harsh. I came exactly for this kind of help, ans i knew I knocked on the right door

I have nothing to say about the design except re-iterate what Webmistress has already said, however I would like to suggest you take a look at the following sites:
http://www.alistapart.com
http://www.csszengarden.com
http://www.zeldman.com

If you need to learn CSS/web design alistapart is the place to go, CSS Zen Garden is an example of the power of CSS (believe it baby!), and Jeffrey Zeldman is my hero (strange but true )

Oh, and welcome to the forums - we hope you enjoy your stay!

Hi again,

I took your advice about learning and using css and i came u with the website below. I know it still needs a lot of work but i'd appreciate comments.
I know the buttons for links is somewhat newbish but i kinda like them

http://www.inmyplaces.com

Thank you.

If you are insistent about using buttons, use Fahrner image replacement (or a similar method), this will allow you to provide text that screen readers, and search engines will be able to parse.

Link: http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&q=fahrner+image+replacement

Also the font you have used isn't going to be available on many users choice of viewer.

Unfortunately, this web site looks rather 'first generation' to me.

The information is decent, but the overall design looks really dated. Some of the colors are tough to read, especially the maroon on top of the green. In your astronomy section, the photo of Saturn is very distracting when trying to read the text.

At the very lest, I would try to go with a solid background and adjust the colors to make your page titles easier to read.

I have to agree with strobe, but since this is your first website, I forgive you my son .. hehehe.... Here is a good site that might help you out.

http://www.wpdfd.com/resources/Beginners.htm

its got a bunch of pretty decent links as far as learning your web design ABCs

Use the Shwartz elendil. Use the Shwaaaaartz.