Well I'm new to this forum and I though I'd post one of my recent website designs for some feedback.

 

Link

 

I'm looking for ways to make the design a bit more elegant and fancy... maybe not quite so plain. Any suggestions?

Welcome to the forum! This is just my opinion so feel free to ignore:

 

- Ditch the adverts. They detract from the content.

- The left hand navigation clutters the page somewhat and I can't see a need for that and the top nav.

- Top nav has not hover or active state

- The dark green text colour needs to be lightened a bit. I don't think the contrast is high enough so you lose some readability.

- Some of the images used in the sub-pages could do with having the same treatment as the home page images at the very bottom, i.e.: rotating them and giving them a white border to make it look like a photo.

 

Overall though the site is good. I like the layout, the images are great and there's some good use of typography. I think a little bit of polish will go a long way to make this site great.

^Ok, I'll consider some of your suggestions! Thanks for the input!

Validate the pages

Use different title and meta tags per page - optimise them.

Use a proper copyright symbol in your footer -

 © - &169;

Definitely remove the google ads, you're selling something you don't want to redirect people elsewhere.

Size your images correctly so the quality is improved - eg. this image http://dewellevents.com/photos/ballroom_reception1.png is actually 600x418 but you have it sized at 400x279 on this page - http://dewellevents.com/weddings2.php

I'm personally OK with your side and top nav together. Can't say I'm in love with the side nav's hover gradient thing.

Also, your top nav uses image maps which spiders don't follow.

Add a site map page and link to it from the footer of every page.

Well I talked to my 'clients' and we're not sure about whether or not we should keep the ads. The ads have only been up for about 2 weeks, but they've already made about $20, which is at least enough to pay for the website hosting every month. But we agree that the page does seem a little cluttered.

I would address the following:

• laying out the entire page with CSS
  
• adding a doc type
  
• wrapping the subnav in some kind of graphic to help it stand apart from the main copy on the home page, this seems to be running together in ff browser