I'm looking for suggestions on design, colors, formatting, etc.

This is a webpage for a guild in the game Ultima Online. It's for a guild of animal tamers, which is one of the professions in the game, so yes, it's supposed to be very GREEN.

So besides the abundant greenness, what does everything think?

[url http://utb.idohost.com/phpsite/index.php]

Cookies to everyone who offers constructive feedback.

Oh, and to see what it looked like before I started playing with CSS, visit [url http://utb.idohost.com/]. You can compare/contrast to this page, but I'm really only interested in design suggestions on the first one.

Thanks!

it looks somewhat the same, but the css is a nice improvement.

I was just getting ready to post a thread askign for critique on the new design of http://www.bafsoft.net/ when this one popped up So could you guys also tell me what you think of bafsoft.net when you tell Radagar what you think of his site?

Looks good BAF. Pretty clean and sterile... But the design is fine. Everything is a little too small for my liking... but other than that, pretty good.

When clicking on the Netlib link...

oh that is most likely because the owner of the net lib webspace didnt upload their site yet :x

It looks messed with Opera (attached). The hover over link effect feels wrong to me. I think the text color should also change.

In the members list, the tables would look better with a solid background color (or soft texture, but different that the background). Maybe you can extend this idea to the full page, so the current background is only visible in areas without text.

Too many colors: green, orange, blue, yellow and red text colors. Try to play with shades of the same color, 2 as much. Gives better results

BAF: As a simplistic design, it looks quite good. It looks empty, but I guess that's because there's not much content now

You need to change some fonts, the background, the colours, the layout... Pretty much everything.

Radagar: As oscar said, LESS COLORS. I always say 3 is absolute max pigout. 2 Is best. Get ridd of the blue, get ridd of the red, (you also might want to replace the orange with a darker shade of yellow, or visa-versa). Use different shades instead of different colors in most cases and you will have a much better looking page.

The background looks very busy to me, change that. Also, the header is totally invading the content section, divide it up a bit. I suggest you shrink the header vertically (to about one line) and make the header background black to go with the navigtor/content divider. This will make the site look much cleaner.

BAF: BAF's getting advanced. As said before, its just a little small (which may make it hard to read for some users), but you do have the simplistic/clear/clean style down. Looks great

Edit:

I think that will help him about this much: -

My main gripe is the background. It just has to go. The rest.. well, the design isn't exactly a prize winner, but with better contrast and less colours you could at least make it tolerable.

And what goes for BAF, I won't even bother to take a look. It's most likely something stolen/taken/remade from OSWD again.

I'm going to have to be the bad guy and point out a number of poor design decisions here.

First off, I agree with Inphernic: That background has to go. Second, there's so many colors it looks like a clown exploded all over it. Reduce to black/white, one primary color and one or two secondary. What compelled you to make everything in the main content pane underlined? Also, the text flows together and looks really ugly in Opera — see attached screenshot.

The text in the content pane is rather large, but worst of all, it's inconsistent. The black line separating the left content menu from the text doesn't work. The left menu is not distinct enough. Remove the "UTB Gallery" page completely. It has no content, and is completely superfluous and only serves to distract right now.

Important Lesson #1: Less is more.

yay

Although I don't find it even that great a design, so I don't know why you bothered.

Marcello

yay

Radagar: Start by losing the background and the underlines
The layout isn't bad. It's just the colors/patterns that don't quite work well together.

My new design is coming up, soon. Totally new, totally fresh, and totally with div's. No tables \o/
Just need to fine tune it, and I want to add some bells and whistles

BAF got pwn3d.

Radagar: I think the design is still salvagable. Its just yeah. The invasions and the exploding clowns and stuff...

I thinks there is nothing bad in using templates made by someone else, as long they agree and you give them credit.

Copyright © 2004, Robert Ferris. All Rights Reserved.This is what i don't like; Baf, its ok using someone elses template but at least give them credit!:-/

I don't mind Radagar's page any more than any game-fan page with an annoying background and poor color coordination

Baf's is MUCH better than his previous one. I, in the footer, would say,
Site design © 200when whoever
User comments © their respective owners
Everything else © Robert Ferris

Radagar: Like the dog, dont like the site. Icky colours, yellow on green with orange thrown in? Not nice. As mentioned before, choose two contrasting colours, navy blue & white with a dash of bold yellow can work.

EDIT: Woopsee! Read teh post! Okay, so you need green, but lose the yellow and orange on the green...

Instead of the background image, I would prefer a soft green color (or some light cyan like aqua). Fonts should be smaller, maybe some stylized font like New Times, to give a bit more serious look.

BAF site looks much better than the previous one, on a side note.

Radagar: That background is awful. Except from that, pretty nice! =)

He seem to use a template from it, but as it is a template site(?) that's what they are there for (and he gives credits). Where can i find the OSWD webpage so i can take some template myself? I don't really have a well developed design gene and don't give a rats ass about the `shame' in using a template.

Sigh. Misunderstandings ahoy. This matter has been addressed several times before.. maybe repetition will get the message through:

There is no shame in using templates.
There is no shame in using templates.
There is no shame in using templates.
There is no shame in using templates.
There is no shame in using templates.

But..

<b><u>There is shame when credits for the template are not given to its author.</b></u>

He gives credits <b><u>after</b></u> someone points out that it's an OSWD template. Not the first time he has done this (is this the third or fourth time? I've lost count), and probably not the last.

Oh well, what the heck, check out
http://hazul.net/ and critique my design too while you're at it?

Inphernic, yes i know the first and i know the second. Where can i find these templates then? And on crediting... The content is mine and (c) to me and the design is the template author, any ideas on how to write?

See CGP's post for example.

The link was posted above.

Whats with tons of people not wanting to use the full width of the page? I've seen so many sites that do this recently, it doesn't look bad but I just don't get why.

Elimination of horizontal scrolling on 800x600 and > screens.

+ It looks very neat

Much stronger control over how your page looks. It's much harder to make a page that stretches with some designs, and some tricks are completely impossible. It really makes life easier for you and you can do neater things if you decide to stick with a particular size.

Oh, sorry, didn't see it as it wasn't linkified..

try white or black text

First of all, this is the 2nd time. Second of all, i was told by a bunch of people on irc not to bother crediting the person who made it (because it was donated to the public domain. same idea with allegro, you dont always say made with allegro even though it is based on allegro).

And what is wrong with using templates (as long as they look halfway decent)? I am not good at web design. I can code HTML/PHP fine, just i dont haev a good sense for design. In the case of bafsoft.com, mutator gave me the graphics and sketched out the general design of how it fits together, and i put it all together (with betterification later by CGames).

Lies. Again. I remember at least three - a dark blue/orange design, a light blue/white design, and then this.

Bzzt. Wrong. Design license is up to the author - it can be (L)GPL, Creative Commons, public domain, etc. In the design in question, the author has clearly marked his copyright message - meaning that he has not given up his copyright. That should be enough to hint that it's not exactly public domain.

Gnatinator: BAF's getting advanced.

That is wrong. Without proper credits, you'll lead people into thinking that you did it. But I guess that people who already know you also know that you could never make anything like that.

Looking back at everything you've done so far - no, you can't.

SSC: I think you need to break up all that text into recognizable sections - maybe through some use of tables? You can also have the headings in a different style. Please lose the background.. I've started thinking that green is pretty hard to combine with most other colors, in a good looking way

And, yes - it looks pretty bad in Opera

BAF: Looks pretty good! But it feels a bit bland, and yet(heh) over-designed (everything is Small Small Small!) - emphasize Something! - It all looks the same, regardless of what function it has

Thanks for the replies everyone. I know my design skills suck. I'll work on toning down and coordinating the colors, and limit myself to 3.

I want a green textured background, anyone find me a good one that isn't as wild as this?

Also, WHY IN THE WORLD does it look so horrible in Opera? In firefox and Mozilla, it doesn't look like that at all. Not everything is underlined and flowing together. That's just wierd. Attached it what it looks like to me.

The W3C validator will tell you exactly how your HTML code is broken.

Thanks for the link X-G.

Name one example showing that i cant...

Radagar: It looks much better with the solid backgrounds on top of the wallpaper.
My only complaint now is that it's brown
A solid green might look nice, if you adjust the text colors accordingly. Either way, it looks much better.

Now I have a site design up for critical analysis
I'm looking for comments on the layout and code, cross-compatibility with browsers, and any suggestions. It passes the w3c validators, but real world tests are better. The actual content on the site is very little, but a feel for the design is there.

I'm going to be adding a few themes, so leave comments on the dark theme to a minimum I do realize it's somewhat difficult to read, and I have plans for lightening some areas.
I also have plans for a black on white theme and a blue on white theme. I started with blue on white, and made the red/grey on black as a secondary theme.. but then modified it so much that the blue on white theme doesn't look right anymore.

Anyway.
The site is temporarily found here until it's complete.
As the first news item says, it's entirely done with <Div>'s other than the form used to add comments. Everything also operates using mysql databases! \o/
From a design & programming point of view, it has a lot of features that I've been meaning to create for a long time now. I'm now in love with SQL.
X-G's Monkeyblah.com and the CSS Zen Garden inspired me the most to switch to Div's and CSS.

I'll be generous and name you three: bafsoft.com, bafsoft.net, pixelate.co.za.

Um, I made pixelate's design, for pixelate...

And I misread your post so yea. Wee.

Marcello

Heh, don't worry, it's not the design I meant.

Thanks, I don't know if I like the brown either, but I'm still playing with it. After I get something I like I'll post here again so people can re-check it.

Also, I'm going to have some questions on making my XHTML fully compliant. I'm having some problems with that.

Edit - Ok, please tell me what you think now. Should I use differet colors? Does it still look horrible on Opera?

Also, HERE is my INDEX.html validation results.
How do I fix the problems with the ampersands and why is it complaining about <br> tags? Also, how do i add character encoding to fix the first reported issue?

Thanks if you can help!

You don't have to do that, but you should. In the words of the Readme.txt:

Radagar: In XHTML (which is what you're validating against) all tags have to be closed, including <br>. This means that you should replace all <br> tags with <br />. Replace & with &amp;

A line like this in the header tells what charset you use:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />

<center> doesn't exist in strict XHTML.

Regarding the looks: Clear improvement. Now it doesn't hurt my eyes, and Opera has no troubles with the site. You now have something to build on. I'd suggest slightly larger text for the menu, and maybe not brown for the mouse-over. At least not that brown and that green. Maybe a little more space for the "Catskills Shard" in the top.

Thanks Trumgottist.

I actually don't like my color scheme right now, so I'm going to improve it on. I'll also fix what you mentioned.

Addition
----------
Instead of Yellows, what color should I use to go with the green background? I changed the background behind the panels to pure black, as well.

Validation on my members page is horrible. over 500 errors. Apparently XHTML 1.0 Strict doesn't recognize ANY table tags. How do i go about fixing this? Is there another way to declare tables?
HERE is the link.

what is wrong with the code on those 3 pages? the PHP CODE

Ok, Please Check and Critique now. I think It's looking much better.

Here is what I'm wondering right now...

Instead of Yellows, what color should I use to go with the green background?

Validation on my members page is horrible. over 500 errors. Apparently XHTML 1.0 Strict doesn't recognize ANY table tags. How do i go about fixing this? Is there another way to declare tables?
HERE is the link.

I think it's much darker now. What about a white background?

Much clearer now

(link for those who have threads divided in pages: http://utb.idohost.com/phpsite/members.php)

Yes i also think that you should have a mich lighter color as background. Perhaps a picture in the top of the page? It looks a bit boring at the moment.

Your table tags are all uppercase. XHTML (being, at least in theory, case sensitive) only permits lowercase tags.

White looks too bright to me. But black is a little dark.... Any other suggestions?

Oh, thanks gnolam! that's probably the whole issue.

Knowing you, most likely everything.

The page has gone missing?

inphernic: what is wrong with my php knowledge?

You still don't credit the author of the template you used in bafsoft.net, just the place you leeched it from.

Oh, and the W3C validator can name plenty of what's wrong with bafsoft.com

Ouch. Thats pretty harsh. Still I don't really have much (actually no) experience whatsoever in PHP. I think Baf's sites look alright. He attempts to give them credit at least.

This thread should be deleted now imho, Radagar has got help and it's turning into a flame war.