BlueringCreative

Hmmm... You could be the next Zuckerberg... But just be prepared for a long journey. Joomla has a lot of people in its community taking care of security upgrades and feature additions. Adobe Business Catalyst, Squarespace and the likes are paid subscriptions to large companies who have the resources to constantly evolve the offering. Good luck with your endeavor, find the passion, find a way to give others that passion to help you and enjoy the journey.

Hmmm... I smell a troll... Or perhaps the folly of youth. I was reading their article on a mobile and the constant swiping left to right to read it was indeed annoying. Enough said.

1 - Put a drop shadow under the plate. 2 - put a patterned William Morris style wallpaper through the orange area as a watermark. 3 - Switch the font to Lobster (or similar) and larger on two lines.

Farge, this sort of effect is ultimately achievable using CSS styling of HTML and maybe a little bit of JavaScript. I doubt Dreamweaver has anything out of the box that would automatically provide this but you might get lucky finding something similar uploaded by a fellow designer in the adobe exchange parts a the Adobe Website. I would hazard a guess that the original designer of the example site you gave has saved themselves the trouble and bought one of the many pre-built templates for Wordpress that would have already contained that feature. To save yourself s lot of time I'd suggest you do the same.

What is your budget? If it isn't above 5 to 10 grand go find an illustrator or Graphic designer who would like to partner in the project, formulate a business plan, get funding and get going (also figure out why someone would buy your shirts over those on THreadless).

Teodora is right on the money. This is a games site so it could afford to be a lot more decorated. At the very least a Header image that is a montage of a heap of different games or an illustration or something exciting and a huge colourful background image positioned center and top in the body element. Otherwise it looks like a well oganised and easy to navigate website - so once it's got those two decorative elements I think you're on your way.

Navigation - you have no "home" link in your top nav (and also make the logo link to the homepage) Style - OK you're just starting out so this website isn't going to look like something from Squarespace in a hurry but there are a few modifications that can help: 1 - Google fonts - find out about these and implement a crisp and thin font like Raleway Normal for all of your headings. Make them quite large (18px??) and a darker version of the blue you used in the header. Dap mentioned real html - I think dap means that a website is quicker to code if all of the headings are in <h1>Heading1</h1> or <h2></h2> tags because then you can more easily apply CSS styles to h1 and h2 sitewide without having to style each individual heading 2 - 800px wide seems a little cramped compared to modern websites - try 960? This will also give you room to explore sllightly larger photos. 3 - Logo - not great - bevelled/embosed is VERY 1980-90s. Look at some on logopond and go from there. DO NOT copy the logos on Logopond - use them instead as a source of direction/inspiration.

Hmmm... first thing I would do is remove the 'fade to white' on the left and right side of your header image. Then make it extend right the way to either edge of your white main content area so that it butts up to the green leafy photo background - you'll see an immediate improvement in the look of the whole site (to get it to butt up edge to edge you'll need to take the header out of the .container div and drop it into its own div above the container div with no padding but obviously it will need to be auto left/right margins with a 960px width). A website refresh is a perfect opportunity to give the client added credibility in a crowded marketplace by bringing the 'look/style' of the website up to current standards. You can give it a facelift without freaking out existing customers if you maintain the same colour scheme and basic structure (white central corridor with light green boxes and dark green boxes) but add more graphical flourish. Drop a group product shot into the header - there's room. Bascally it needs more decoration - crack open Photoshop and get busy. I could go on forever but I've got to get back to work. If you'd like us to help add more style (for a fee of course) get in contact via blueringcreative dot com dot au On a side note - the GreenLeaf logo: Be brave here - clients are scared to change their logo... but I'm not suggesting anything dire here. From a pure legibilty stance there is wasted space in the bottom half of the green circle. If you break the "GreenLeaf" into two lines (ie "Leaf" underneath "Green") you can increase the size of the font markedly which will improve both legibility when the logo is used at smaller sizes and improve the aesthetic. Customer's wont even realise it's changed and the logo works better - trust me (also marginally thicken the leaf outline - it's an embroiderers nightmare as it stands).

You are already using Dreamweaver - search for Adobe's own CMS called Adobe Business Catalyst - do it now.

Blogging will deliver good results over time but to get more immediate results list the company's details in a few free local business directories, only the good ones. If it looks cheap and nasty they are often directories set up by firms just trying to make a quick buck out of exploiting ranking hunters - they will possibly eventually be delisted by Google and you with them. With any Search Engine strategy remember that Google rewards websites for their popularity and they are constantly revising their algorythms to try and prevent people 'faking' popularity. In that context if you try a tactic and it 'feels' wrong, it probably is. eg. enlisting the help of a russian or indian 'link farm' to temporarily boost your rankings will probably get your site delisted from Google in the end. Blog, blog, blog - make your website interesting and like Kevin Costner said "if you buil it they will come".

Dreamweaver, always dreamweaver... but you said free so you are forced to take another road until you have the resources to invest in Dreamweaver and Photoshop (note that a Creative Cloud subscription will get you ALL of the Adobe Apps for a monthly fee - a lot easier to swallow). For a freebie starter have a look at Squarespace - it's a hosted solution and you should be able to achieve some customisation for your clients without having to invest too heavily in software.... but you will eventually need Dreamweaver when you get serious.

Be careful not to jeapordise load speed here. 2000 pixels wide is a pretty safe bet for width but we tend to try to design the website so that the background image will only need to be 300 to 600 pixels deep because a 2000x2000 pixel image will slow the load time. If the background image is applied to the body tag and set to position in the top center using CSS you should have no issues with the image 'squishing' but keep in mind that not all of the image will be showing if the user is on a small window (iPhone). Be clever when you create the bacjground image in Photoshop - the colour you use on the sides and bottom can then be extended by using a background-color property on the body tag

Fonts should be selected to compliment the overall style/design of the website... although from my old school designer perspective a good starting point is the google fnt Open Sans for business/tech websites and good old Geogia for anything that needs more of an old world, warm of crafty feeling.

Hmmm... the old battle between form and function. You can certainly become proficient in that method but it can diminish the visual. We come from a different angle. After considering all of the functional requirements for the website and what tech may be required we start by sketching how we want the site to 'look'. Doing it this way the code is developed to reach the goal of creating that look. Doing it your way the resulting 'look/style' will be dictated by the process so god knows what you'll arrive at in the end. Set a goal and then try to hit it - you may not get all of the way there but at least you have a direction.

I agree - increase leading in text (old design speak for line-height) and make the body text a couple of px bigger. You seem to have lost a lot of the colourfulness transitioning from the mockup to the html beta - too bland now - you need more colour. Perhaps consider a subtle blue/cyan background image applied to the body tag that is centred and set to the top of the page. You could then also reinforce/define your content area with a semi transparent white round cornered shape (you'd only see the top two round corners because the background image should fade as it goes down the page). The semi transparent white shape would be hardwired into the body background jpeg (ie build it in Photoshop). You are right - the logo IS substandard and as a result reduces their credibility. Trying to go for something completely different will meet with resistance if they have already been using this logo. Instead give it a subtle facelift: 1- Make it two colour (dark grey with cyan 'ticks'), 2 - don't 'condense' the "ell" & "ork". Replace the 'comic' font with something like Barmeno.

I'm pretty sure Fireworks is on its way out - move on brother

Don't forget Adobe Business Catalyst - a major benefit is that the Adobe team take care of all the tech upgrades so you can concentrate on build sites.

Hmmm... what if you treated it like a dropdown menu - the top nav item is the first item in an undordered list <ul> and the content was treated like a second tier item in the same list. I can't help but think some Javascript might be required along the way but surely you could find any old dropdown nav menu and customise the CSS to achieve the effect you describe?

Hmmm... I'm surprised that there's no mention of Adobe Business Catalyst here (OK - I skipped page 4 but...). One issue we found with the two that most people tend to go for first (Joomla & Wordpress) is having to manually upgrade for each new version that comes out and managing the same for any add on modules you have floating around our countless different sites. The Adobe BC team take care of all of the tech upgrades so you can relax and go about creating you're next website.