jay pick

BBPress is part of the Wordpress franchise so I assume integration with a Wordpress installation would be reasonably straight forward..

Good start but I reckon you could do a lot more with the top section. The rest of the layout works well but there is no real impact at the top of the site, which it needs. Don't think that the left aligned nav works there either. Reminds me too much of corporate-style sites. It looks like the work you have on there at the min is pretty decent so show it off a bit. A jQuery slider would be ideal. Definitely a nice start though

Paypal comes as standard with the latest version of Magento. Pretty much all you need to do is add your client's email address and you're sorted

Dreamweaver

I think its always good to give your professional advice as this is part of what they are paying for. It adds value to the service and I find in most cases clients will take notice.

No worries Jay, my pleasure. Please feel free to +1 my post if it helped Jay

Really nice site.

Prefer the top of the half of the concept but the bottom half of the current.. maybe combine the two

I recommend coin slider http://workshop.rs/projects/coin-slider/

I notice you haven't mentioned Wordpress http://wordpress.org/, which clients (usually) find very easy to get to grips with. It's easy to customise and there are loads of plugins available. Wordpress is perfect for the job Jay

This is pretty slick http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/ Jay

Just had a go on the site and I must say it's very well done I think the interface and transitions are great. It's a nice, clean design and simple to use. The only negative thing I would say perhaps, as others have, is the inability to go back. But this is a minor issue. Good job mate. Jay

As has been said, not a bad first attempt Quite a lot to improve on and again I would start by ditching flash. Well maybe not completely, but certainly don't build an entire site using it. You need real text for optimisation. There's no point having a site if no one can find it. More subtle things you can do to help make future designs a bit more professional is things like losing the heavy drop shadow on text and harsh gradients. But these are things that you will pick up as you design more and more sites, your skills improve and you develop your own style. Your attention to detail should also improve with time as well. Jay

I like it mate, good work. Maybe a little too much dark red on the right but the layout is sweet. Jay

I reckon you should watermark the logo (or just the house part of it) in the bottom right of the footer. Clients love to see their branding and its a nice professional touch to round off the site.

I would move the mid-bottom section (slider and call back form) up to the top, losing the full width image of the couple and make space for some content below (seo in mind). I think the colours work alright its just not screaming property website at the min. More appropriate images will be a good starting point. Jay

I think you should set an active state on those nav links. Make it the same as the hover Jay

Hi, I agree with evu, the content area looks too dark. I'm guessing this is going to have some really interesting/important information that you're users will want to be able to read. Serif font will definitely help here. Also, I think the design style just looks a little dated to be honest. As you say you're just getting back into web design again, so maybe check out some CSS showcases like http://www.designbombs.com to get some inspiration. Saying that, its not a bad start Jay

I agree with Martin regarding using a subtle background texture. Canvas would be ideal I would also look to increase the size of the flash area at the top to really show off some of your wife's work. Maybe even take some high res pics and get a sick jQuery gallery slider in there instead of the flash. Good work though man. Jay

Buzzing off that site

If you have access to a secure database, I would also suggest using Wordpress as this is free and simple to install. There are loads of free themes available to download and you can deck your site out with some sick plugins for added features.

Thanks for sharing this info Dizi kuler is sick.

I suggest using http://starkerstheme.com/ as this provides the functionality and basic structure you need with ZERO styling. This allows you to add your own code and styles easily without conflict. (You upload new themes into the themes folder inside the Wordpress wp-content folder.) You can then, if you wish, add your images and css straight into the Starkers theme folder. There shouldn't be any issues with broken links etc as all your files will therefore be in the same directory. (To go up a directory level use ../)

I posted that before I had tested it, no it doesn't.. I edited my last post, try above ^^

Try putting this: <script type="text/javascript" src="scripts\jquery-1.4.3.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="scripts\jquery.nivo.slider.pack.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> $(window).ready(function() { $('#slider').nivoSlider({animSpeed:1000, pauseTime:3000}); }); </script> before your closing </head> tag