japjake

Thanks a lot for that, encouraging stuff, yeah the stuff you've mentioned I'm aware off, so I'm working on ways to fix it, which a couple of them (as is often the case in wordpress) don't have a clear solution, but its definitely stuff I want to sort (especially the slider) as I've said, this is all stuff that I'm glad to hear because often you miss stuff that others notice, and over the next few days I hope to sort these things out. Thanks again for your post!

Cheers guys, nice comments, just responding about the navigation, the 'category's navigation' isn't a navigation menu, I've done it like that instead of a list of category's down the sidebar, I thought I'd do something different, I'll take a look at how I can improve it, but its where it is so people can quickly click one of the category's and find every bit of design inspiration posted under it. Oh and yeah I'm thinking about how I can add some more colour, besides blue into it, but as I said all this stuff will evolve over time! Thanks for the comments!

Right in response to JMCDesigner: Divitis, yep maybe your right, thats something I can improve over time, but with it being my first official wordpress website I think thats more then acceptable, and my styles are in separate stylesheets, layout, typography and reset.css not quite sure what your looking at. The code will be cleaned up but I wanted to get the site up and then work on it, because otherwise its not going anywhere, as theres always something to do. The website wobbles thing is easy to fix I just need to set the active pages correctly so the hover state isn't applied to an active page, again something I'm going to do. I'm not quite sure what you mean by the navigation being fragmented, I think its important for it to be separate to a certain extent as otherwise you lose it, and once again I think the boxed up is a personal thing, it depends very much on the kinda thing your designing, with a site like that its going to get pretty messy without some proper structure. Thanks for your views though. In response to Jamesicon: Your right with that, and this is all stuff that will be done, but again i'm not plastering the website over the news and in magazines, I just wanted to officially get it out there, see what people think, improve certain areas and see what happens, the pages will be added to soon, but again I haven't had floods of visitors but with a full time very tiring job its something I have to find the time to do, and not that I don't want to, but its something that needs to be done properly. But again thanks for your comments. In response to MolotovRuss: Thanks, I do agree its a little bit buggy, the slider worked perfectly before I integrated it with Wordpress, I'm waiting for an email back from a guy who managed to integrate the same slider perfectly and get all the backend stuff working, so thats just something that I'm not overly happy about but am living with for now, but the main stuff is there you just have to wait or scroll down to see the posts, instead of clicking them! I think your maybe right about the gradient, I tried a lot of different one's but found it hard to strike a balance between blending in and standing out, I want it to stand out, so people read what Designer Falls is about but again I want it to look good. All in all I do agree it does need some polish but this is something that can be done, and compared to a number of websites on the internet and certain members on this forum I don't think its bad at all! But I agree I've got to get the polish out on certain areas! In response to bocaj: Thanks for that, nice to hear it, I think its important that a site like this is well structured and as you say I think it is, to be honest I think that for a website to function properly it has got to have a certain "boxiness" to it, again it depends on how you do that, but anything other then that and its going to be a mess. Again yeah I know theres a few bugs, but how many products are launched, or websites made that don't have some bugs, you find out from good people like yourself kindly letting me know, so we can fix them! Finally I think the blue is a matter of personal opinion, which by all means your welcome to, but on the same hand I can't go changing things like that, as you most definitely understand because otherwise I'd be changing it all the time!! Thanks all for your comments.

From what I read, it sounds like Wordpress would be the right kind of software for you, you say your a beginner in this area, so I warn you now, don't bother with Drupal or Joomla, I tried Drupal myself and its ridiculously complicated and as for Joomla, although I haven't used it myself, I hear that again its pretty complicated to use. I think for what your tried to do Wordpress is the way forward as in its basic form I guarantee it can accomplish most of what you want to do, and if it can't I guarantee theres a plugin for it somewhere, I design my sites through Wordpress and I've just recently launched my first Wordpress website and I wanted a lot from it, but I've been learning how to really delve into Wordpress over a number of months and I'm amazed at how flexible it is, stuff I never though would be possible and probably isn't without a great deal of hassle in other software is possible in Wordpress, and theres specific themes and plugins out there for Wordpress that handle MP3's and Videos, I tell you theres some pretty fantastic themes and plugins out there. As for what your actually getting yourself into, it depends all on what you want to achieve if you just want to have a place to reguarly post, and post mp3's etc then its really easy, but if your wanting to get into the deeper side of things, for example wordpress theme development and stuff like that, then honestly theres a lot to learn but as with all things if you jump right into it, you soon pick it up, I did and although it took me a few months. a number of false starts and many mouse thrown across the room to get my first main wordpress website up it was absolutely worth it. So hopefully I've made sense and given you a bit of info that might help you!

Designer Falls Honest opinion folks, I've just launched Designer Falls, the design is done and everything is in place except a few pages and other things I need to do, but I want to know your honest opinions on what you rate the design and what you think is good, but also what you think could be improved, I really am open to any constructive criticism. Thanks in advance, and I look forward to hearing your replies!

I use something similar to Thematic called Starkersto create my recently launched website, its absolutely flippin brilliant (the theme that is! but I also like to think the website is!), I haven't used Thematic but basically its whats known as a Wordpress Theme Framework, it gives you some building blocks to get you going when your designing Themes for Wordpress. Why are you interested? Are you thinking of using it yourself? If you are I highly recommend it, Wordpress is so customizable you really can do almost anything, check out my website (http://www.designerfalls.com) the inspiration you see posted is actually a blog post, but because Wordpress is so brilliant you can edit it so it looks nothing like one! Thats just 0.000001% of what you can theoretically do when you really get to breath Wordpress. Definitely give this theme a look (Starkers) as I said earlier, its a barebones theme, so its a theme that has had all the crap stripped out of it and you've only got the bare essentials, which if you've ever tried to create a theme using the default Wordpress theme as your starting point you'll soon see how brilliant Starkers is! I highly recommend learning to create websites in Wordpress and really getting to grips with the software, it can be absolutely ridiculously hard sometimes to figure out why something isn't working but the end product is so often brilliant thats its absolutely worth it! Just take a look at some of the Wordpress websites out there!

Yeah cool, but who has the time to read 75+ Blogs?

Yeah but supported by who? More and more people are starting to drop support on their websites for IE6, I certainly have, and I was reading this months ".net" which is saying that Google, Digg and another big few sites are stopping support! So maybe its gonna be supported till 2014, but thats only by Microsoft and a couple of idiots who don't have a clue, at the end of the day it's up to us... the designers, as we design the web, and if we don't support it and we let our users know that we're not supporting it then they'll have to upgrade... in theory! Thats my rant against the monster that is IE6! Go jump of a cliff IE6! (head first!)

in response to your first question! No! if you stop using programs like dreamweaver, that doesn't stop you making professional websites at all, the best designers out there code by hand as do I and you actually have much more control then when using a program like dreamweaver etc. Theres many ways of making your website templates look more professional, first off having a some natural creativity helps, but I think that design is something that can be learnt to a certain extent so definitely give it a go and look into advancing your knowledge, but bare in mind designing a professional website is about so much more then being good with photoshop, as I said just now its about knowing what works and being creative. Thirdly, yep its definitely possible to design sites like those in the link, if you can think it you can design it (skills dependent!) using photoshop is one way, I personally sketch out a design on a piece of paper, then code a basic 'wireframe' so I can get an idea of what the site is going to look like. But many designers do it in photoshop I just find it a bit of a hassle, I like to do it all with no aids! (glutton for punishment) But to sum it all up, there was a lot to answer so hopefully I was of help to you! Just go for it soak up every little bit of information you can check out all the webdesign resources you can get your hands on and practice, if you feel you can get into coding it all by hand in a program like Editplus, not only do you have much more control over eveything you also feel like you've really achieved something...

elbows

Hey, Just thought I say Hi! I've been registered for ages, and I have a fair few posts to my name, but I'm just saying Hi as I'm hopefully gonna be around a lot more! Well see you around! Jake

Ahhh! Not <marquee> It's not bad but to be honest there's not a lot to it, what makes it is the Assassins Creed image. Also I think the logo could be done a little better, its hard to see the text, and also try it on the left instead. I think it feels much more like a blog, there's nothing really there separating it from anything else. It certainly doesn't feel like a cheat site! However on the plus side, the navigation is very good, and so is the typography.

Good good, eskymo, I'll add you! I'm working on a layout to, its real nice and flexible Eskymo totally cool layout!

Whats your address, I'll add you.

You wait to you see how great the styling is, you have full control over the CSS and XHTML, its great for us designers!