Greetings!

 

I have been building a website for gamers and tech-geeks for 2 days now. I might say that my site is in Alpha-state at the moment, logo is currently being developed and especially the forums aren't really working as I'd like them to work. And the graphics and colors of the website... I think that they are terrible, colors doesn't match at all...

 

What do you think? About the functionality of the main page and about the graphics and color scheme of the website?

 

Here is my website: http://fewmoretimes.com/

 

As you can see, there is still a lot of Lorem Ipsum there Almost no content exists at the moment.

It does annoy me when people come to the forum without even I introducing themselves and then immediately ask for help on their websites but unlike some others who do this, you did ask reasonably rather than the usual sort of "Here's my website; make it better" and we do need this community to grow to flourish so...

 

I'm unable to view it on a co outer at the moment because my University network is down (again -.-) so this quick review is viewed on my iPad.

 

I can see some sort of pixelated text at the top of the background image "..... Excalibur?" not sure what that's all about (your gaming alias maybe?) but it looks unprofessional.

 

The logo definitely needs work but you're already aware of that.

 

The slider and navigation bar is okay.

 

The navigation menu on the left Is a bit dull and there's tonnes of white space to right of it but I'm assuming that your content will be inserted there.

 

The "Recent comments" section in the footer exposes HTML image tags – are these subject titles or a small portion of the comment?

 

I'll have a second look when I can access it on a desktop computer.

Thank you for your feedback.

 

I apologise for not introducing myself first, I suppose that introducing myself now is better than doing it never;

 

I am 22-years old NCO in Finnish Defense Forces (Sergeant). Playing around and with computers can be considered as my hobby, thats why I wanted to make yet another community for gamers and tech-geeks alike. This is my first website ever, and I don't have any previous experience with web designing, but I have been modeling 3D-models for few years. And last but not least; I have two cats as my pets

 

That pixelated text is from game "Terraria", from which that right side screenshot was taken from. That background isn't complete yet, and I'm planning to remove that text, and blue cursos also, as soon as I get back home. About every image in the website needs editing and compressing to reduce the size of them.

 

Yeah, logo REALLY needs work, but like I said, my friend is currently working on that. I'll let you know as soon as it is available.

 

I'll tweak the font and text-color of navigation menu. You are right, that white space there will be filled with content, mostly teasers of news and articles. It will show five teasers, and rest of the articles and news will be available through "News -> Archive" - menu.

 

Those HTML image tags in the "Recent comments" section are actually real comments - I'm currently tweaking my forum software to be able to show images with HTML-/BBCode Tags. Almost every HTML tag you can see there is from forum post, that didn't show images as they should; showing HTML tags and URL's instead of real images.

 

I need to tweak the "Recent comments" section to show only comments in the news and articles, and not to show forum posts.

 

Do you have any opinion about color scheme of the website? I think that it does need a lot of tweaking...

Thanks for introducing yourself.

 

That's cool, I was considering joining the UK Royal Marines as an officer but was persuaded by my partner to go to University instead lol.

 

It's definitely a good attempt for your first website and you've made a good decision to use a CMS to construct it as it's going to require frequent updating and by doing so you could always give a second user admin privileges if the workload becomes difficult to manage.

 

I've played both Terraria and Minecraft and seeing as though you're using those as your background and they both share the same blue/green/brown colour scheme, I would use those colours as your theme; however, blue and green aren't a very good combination so I'd focus more on brown + blue OR green. The only other option would be to change your background image... maybe the sort of brown and green design from the Minecraft logo? that means that the background would be a darker shade of brown which would mean that your actual website would juxtapose better in terms of contrast.

 

The rest seems okay and you seem to have a decent plan of what you're going to do but I would definitely decide on a colour scheme before advancing just so you don't have to return on the work you've already done.

I would ditch the background completely in favour of either a plain background or something with a really subtle pattern.

I would ditch the background completely in favour of either a plain background or something with a really subtle pattern.

 

Yeah, I've been thinking about that as well; current one is too messy. It would make the whole website look much cleaner. Maybe I'll just keep those screenshots in the slideshow and clean the background.

 

Another idea I've been thinking is that I'll make background from screenshots of the in-game sky, with very tiny amount of trees and grass in the bottom; that would be a lot cleaner than the current one, and still provide pictures of the games in the background with blue-ish color scheme in the whole site. I'll inform you when I get my background tweaked.

Thanks for introducing yourself.

 

That's cool, I was considering joining the UK Royal Marines as an officer but was persuaded by my partner to go to University instead lol.

 

It's definitely a good attempt for your first website and you've made a good decision to use a CMS to construct it as it's going to require frequent updating and by doing so you could always give a second user admin privileges if the workload becomes difficult to manage.

 

I've played both Terraria and Minecraft and seeing as though you're using those as your background and they both share the same blue/green/brown colour scheme, I would use those colours as your theme; however, blue and green aren't a very good combination so I'd focus more on brown + blue OR green. The only other option would be to change your background image... maybe the sort of brown and green design from the Minecraft logo? that means that the background would be a darker shade of brown which would mean that your actual website would juxtapose better in terms of contrast.

 

The rest seems okay and you seem to have a decent plan of what you're going to do but I would definitely decide on a colour scheme before advancing just so you don't have to return on the work you've already done.

 

You're welcome, introducing yourself is always good thing to do

 

Thank you! Although it's already a good attempt, I'm looking forward to make it much better. That's why I wanted feedback, because you usually become blind to your own mistakes.

 

Check my previous post; I've been thinking about making the background blue-ish. I'll think about that "brown and green" - design you suggested

 

I'll dedicate this evening to tweaking and choosing the color scheme.

By the way, How is the Finnish military ? I did 4 years in the RAF myself.

By the way, How is the Finnish military ? I did 4 years in the RAF myself.

 

To prevent off-topic, I'll answer here once, if you have more questions, feel free and ask them via private messages.

 

Don't know how to describe it, I'm working as IT-support person so my job isn't as interesting as you might think. It's just like any other IT-support, with the exception that I wear an uniform and insignias.

 

EDIT: corrected few typos

Edited January 9, 201313 yr by Simppa

I like your idea with the blue sky, occasional cloud and trees at the bottom, it would be much more subtle than what you currently have; if you did this, then I'd probably do the wrapper in dirt-brown.

 

My other idea was basically doing a much larger version of this...

 

 

Where the brown dirt area is repeated downwards to make it longer whilst the grass stays at the very top.#

 

However, if you use this image in any way, you should contact the owner and ask for their permission; or you could try and create your own.

Edited January 9, 201313 yr by Alluziion

I like your idea with the blue sky, occasional cloud and trees at the bottom, it would be much more subtle than what you currently have; if you did this, then I'd probably do the wrapper in dirt-brown.

 

My other idea was basically doing a much larger version of this...

 

 

Where the brown dirt area is repeated downwards to make it longer whilst the grass stays at the very top.#

 

However, if you use this image in any way, you should contact the owner and ask for their permission; or you could try and create your own.

 

I'll try the idea with blue sky and the wrapper with dirt-brown as soon as I'm back home. Thanks for suggesting that! If that doesn't turn out well, I'll figure out something else as wrapper. Maybe I'll brainstorm it with my fiancee. There is always the option to invert the wrapper to blue sky and the background to dirt-grass theme. Not sure if it works..

 

Thanks for reminding me about copyrights! I'll make sure that I have permissions to use all the things that I'm using in my website.

i completely agree, i think ditching the background image and going with a subtle pattern will do your website a lot of favors.

 

Quoting your initial post and the discussion about content,

 

as a bit of advice for the future, try and build your website around your content, and not content around your website.

 

Keep me posted, id like to see the finished product,

also on your error pages, it displays no navigation so without using your the back button of the browser there is no built in navigation for your users to escape the error pages, try and keep the design consistent in each page.

 

 

I hope that helps.

 

Craig

I've changed the background, currently tweaking the slide show and the wrapper. I think the background is quite good now, but is it good enough...?

It's definitely an improvement! I would personally still go for something more subtle but if you like the one you have now then you could keep it, it's still quite "busy".

 

EDIT: I don't like what you've done by adding the image to slide description area.

Edited January 9, 201313 yr by Alluziion

It's definitely an improvement! I would personally still go for something more subtle but if you like the one you have now then you could keep it, it's still quite "busy".

 

EDIT: I don't like what you've done by adding the image to slide description area.

 

I know what you mean, perhaps I should try to set new wallpaper with even less "green" content.

 

Let me change that to something else, it does look too complicated for that purpose.

 

EDIT: Did the changes I mentioned.

Edited January 9, 201313 yr by Simppa

i completely agree, i think ditching the background image and going with a subtle pattern will do your website a lot of favors.

 

Quoting your initial post and the discussion about content,

 

as a bit of advice for the future, try and build your website around your content, and not content around your website.

 

Keep me posted, id like to see the finished product,

also on your error pages, it displays no navigation so without using your the back button of the browser there is no built in navigation for your users to escape the error pages, try and keep the design consistent in each page.

 

 

I hope that helps.

 

Craig

 

Fixed the error pages, now there is the same navigation systems available as in every other page.

I really think you should drop the background image, it over powers the website.

background images are a little dates

try this out

http://subtlepatterns.com/

some really subtle patterns you can just repeat over your background, keep your imagery for content.

 

I think the problem with the imagery your using for backgrounds and as pointed out by alluziion in the heading slider is that it is not good imagery, evn though you didnt design it and its based on a game, it just doesnt look good, and i think the end result of that will ruin your website design.

 

 

Craig

I really think you should drop the background image, it over powers the website.

background images are a little dates

try this out

http://subtlepatterns.com/

some really subtle patterns you can just repeat over your background, keep your imagery for content.

 

I think the problem with the imagery your using for backgrounds and as pointed out by alluziion in the heading slider is that it is not good imagery, evn though you didnt design it and its based on a game, it just doesnt look good, and i think the end result of that will ruin your website design.

 

 

Craig

 

I'll look into those patterns. Thanks for the link!

 

I think that alluzioon meant the changes that I did to the caption (the blue polygon in the slide show), not the actual slides. I reverted it to that blue polygon from more complex one.

 

I'd like to keep at least those screenshots from games in my slide show, because I plan to use slides as advertisements of the dedicated game servers I'm hosting. That picture of the motherboard is quite crappy to be honest, and doesn't serve any purpose at the moment...

I like your changes so far, the background is looking better and as Craig mentioned, websites such as SubtlePatterns offer great, free backgrounds.

 

I definitely prefer a solid colour or even a subtle texture for the slideshow description; although I would probably go with a slightly lighter shade of blue if you plan on sticking with a solid colour.

 

I would also change the colour of the navigation links from red to blue in order to maintain your colour scheme.

I like your changes so far, the background is looking better and as Craig mentioned, websites such as SubtlePatterns offer great, free backgrounds.

 

I definitely prefer a solid colour or even a subtle texture for the slideshow description; although I would probably go with a slightly lighter shade of blue if you plan on sticking with a solid colour.

 

I would also change the colour of the navigation links from red to blue in order to maintain your colour scheme.

 

Slideshow description has now better looking color, at least I think so. Let me know what you think

 

Color scheme of text changed to blue-ish, needs a little bit of tweaking I think. Will do it as soon as I'm back home. But definetly better than the previous one!

 

EDIT: Corrected few typos, again... Can't I just write in Finnish?

Edited January 10, 201313 yr by Simppa

Am I missing something? I don't see any change in the colour of text and the background of the polygon is still a dark shade of blue :|

 

Haha, writing in English is good practice

Am I missing something? I don't see any change in the colour of text and the background of the polygon is still a dark shade of blue :|

 

Haha, writing in English is good practice

 

I think you need to either refresh your page couple of times or clear your browser cache. Maybe I should take the caching off for a while..