TeeGopher.com

[Dax IX]

I'm kinda stuck here. Call it designer's block.

First of all, I'm having one issue that shouldn't be an issue (you'll see). I've got a request in for support. But overall, this site still looks VERY vBulletin, and I'd kinda like to get away from that.

This is mostly a social site, but it will soon have a commercial "product", too, but I haven't implemented that yet.

As you can see, there are only a couple of alpha testers so far, so there's no content to view. Registration is also deactivated for now.

I'm just looking for any suggestions that you might be able to provide.

This is very much a WIP.

TeeGopher.com

Thank you so much!

[gfxhelp.com]

-"Vendor Sales!" orange color is almost unreadable on the background color.
-Top area has too much blue, maybe a different color would break it up a little more.
-Try a white background instead of the brown, it may look better.
-The quote/reply/etc etc button sets are a little chunky, maybe make the font in the buttons a little smaller and not so bold.
-When I click the "Community" down arrow it brings up a menu way off to the left in FF3 instead of underneath the text.
-I had no idea what the subject of your forum was until I really looked through all the forums and I'm still not 100% sure. If you had a tagline right under the "TeeGopher" text in the logo such as Your T-Shirt Resource Forum or something along those lines it would make the subject more obvious at a glance.

looks good, keep up the work.

[Dax IX]

That's the problem I was mentioning. The Vendor Sales! forum should have a gradient, but it's not showing up and I'm not sure why. I've posted another thread in the Graphics forum.

I hadn't checked IE, so I didn't know that the Community drop down was acting like that. It looks fine in Firefox, but I'll straighten the IE issue out.

Hmmm...I kinda like the blue header, but I'll play around with it a bit.

Thanks for your review! I really appreciate it.

[Dax IX]

Still playing around with this in my spare time.

I personally like the goldish page background, so that's staying.

I believe I've made the header a little shorter, height-wise, so maybe all that blue won't be as big a deal now.

I've upgraded to 3.8, and that seems to have fixed the weird dropdown menu issue.

The welcome message is about to change into something quite a bit shorter (I tend to use a lot of words ), and I just might add a tag to the header to explain a little better what this site is (will be) about.

I can't decide if I'll keep the vBA Links Directory or if I'll try to create my own vBA CMPS pages for the actual displaying of the tees and vendors.

Thanks again for your input!

Chani

[GSeybold]

Hi Chani

Except for the yellow-brownish-gold color, I think you're forum looks great. Well laid out, not to busy, clean. Looks good.

How did you make the "vender sales" catagory to display another color? I've never seen that before.

Good job!

[Dax IX]

Thanks!

I must be missing something totally. I (and my graphic-designer-Fiance) personally think the brownish gold color looks good and goes well with the blue. :erm:

The differently-colored forum listing is just template conditionals and alternate CSS properties.

[KTBleeding]

Perhaps the issue isn't the "brownish gold" color, and instead is the blue color.

When you think of a gopher, what do you think of? A furry mammal, sure, but what about his environment? Earth. Brown soil, green grass, clay, etc etc. You obviously don't think of anything blue (water, sky) unless you have no idea what a gopher really is.

You have a potential mascot here, put him in his own environment.

Also, please add more color variety. The blue is extremely overused. Bright colors like that should be used as accents. It's also the same blue color over and over.. the only thing that separates elements is a drop shadow. It makes it hard to pick out what is what. You want certain elements to stand out drastically (like the navigation) and you don't have that now.

Aside from that, for the overall design, I suggest that your graphic-designer-Fiance read up on typography design, and maybe doing a few modern photoshop tutorials. Here is a list of useful resources for an earthy/green design:
http://psdtuts.com/articles/inspirat...n-inspiration/

[Dax IX]

Originally Posted by KTBleeding

Aside from that, for the overall design, I suggest that your graphic-designer-Fiance read up on typography design

Typography is his passion. I take exception to this statement.

Besides, he's not designing this website. I am.

After reading between the lines of personal insults in the last post and disseminating the actual advice I've reconsidered and changed all of the colors. The layout is the same.

I like it, but I still liked the other better, but if people didn't like it (and I'm getting almost no registrations except for spambots (which I think I've stopped now with some great mods here!)), then I guess it needed to be changed.

I could have done flashy with all sorts of special effects, but that's not what I was looking for. (and that comment about Photoshop was also uncalled for)

If everyone could take a second look, I'd really appreciate it.

[Dax IX]

Still using the default templates (with a child style of the default) with minor changes here and there, I've made some pretty big changes in colors and other css properties.

I've also changed the welcome message to be a little more user-friendly (MUCH shorter).

Of course, I'm not sure how this site will perform on dial-up accounts because of the added images. Any ideas there?

It's still pretty simple with no real special effects or anything, but I did want to keep this one fairly simple.

I welcome comments and criticisms (as long as they're not being facetious or personal attacks).

Thank you for looking...

[GSeybold]

HI Chani,
The background you have now looks alot better with that gold color! I like the clean design of it.