Posts by JohnFly

You must be viewing in IE?

I’ve noticed that the colors in the masthead blend almost perfectly when I view in firefox or chrome, but IE does really shows a distinct line from the background to the masthead.

I’m going to try and recolor so it seems.. seamless.

I ended up going with shadow66142000’s Premium Business

I’ve converted the site over to it and written up some thoughts on the whole experience: http://themeforest.net/forums/thread/postmortem-on-a-web-design/10662

Just wanted to post a follow-up from my first post here :

http://themeforest.net/forums/thread/geekhealthorg-launched-please-review-and-comment/10247

After taking in some reviews of my design, I ended up buying http://caodesigns.com/premium-business-template/ (you can see what I ended up with at www.geekhealth.org..)

I think it was money well spent. Here is my story, I hope it has some worth.

About 6 months ago I had an idea for a health information web site… I knew there were already many out there but I had a different take on them, and hopefully the idea pays off.

Anyway, I didn’t know much at all about CSS or “proper” web design when it came to page layout. I’ve been a software developer for years but I usually stayed away from the graphical aspects.

Not having enough money to pay for a custom design, I decided to first learn enough HTML + CSS to get the basics. As I started learning I started up a project for the new site.

As time went by I learned quite a lot. I visited PSDTUTS and NETTUTS often and tried to follow the advice I got from those sites as well as others across the internet.

BUT … I kept moving forward with my layout and design.. I kept in elements that I thought “looked neat” or effects that seemed cool.

In the end I came up with a functional site, but I had overlooked a few key items:

1) The site was very dark.. something I like but it didn’t fit with the standard clean and light design most other health information sites have.

2) The navigation was not working. I used something I came up with instead of keeping it simple and consistent with other sites. Analyzing my traffic quickly showed me people were just not exploring my site.

3) I didn’t have others review and comment on the design early on or during the development. I ended up coding 60+ pages before publishing. I really wish I had asked for opinions earlier in the design process. It didn’t take too long for people on sites like themeforest to offer up good advise once I asked for it. This is something I will make sure I do earlier on in the process from now on.

The main things I have learned from this experience: 1) Have others review early and often.

2) Just because a look or an effect is cool or new, it might not have a place in your design.

3) Take the opinions of others well… It would have been very easy to be offended by some of the comments I got.. but they were honest. By taking their advice I think I now have a much cleaner looking site and hopefully people will use it more.

Finally just wanted to say “Thanks” to everyone who helped point me in a better direction.

I’ve been looking around at themes…

Do you think shadow66142000’s Premium Business would be a good fit for my site?

I really like the layout.

http://themeforest.net/item/premium-business/20596

I don’t have to stick with what I came up with. I’m completely new at trying to design a functional website that would catch a persons attention.

I think I’m going to browse around here for awhile and see if I can see some themes I like…

What about the 960px width… I’ve been thinking about tearing it apart and just making a full width design.

Now that some of you have looked over the site, (even suggested buying a theme) would you point me to one you think would do well for the type of site I’m trying to build?

Right now I’m using ASP .NET, no PHP , jquery(but not much).

Again, any comments or tips would be appreciated.

@simnor : not spam… This is my first attempt at designing and publishing a website (other than internal apps for work ). Since its my first site I didn’t want to purchase someone else’s templates, but discover how everything works for myself.

Once I get a feel for what is good vs. bad and actually have some new concepts to add to a discussion I’ll start posting regularly. Right now I don’t have enough experience.

@Everyone,

Thanks for the input. Like I said, this is my first attempt at anything besides simple web apps. I had never even touched CSS before starting this project. I think I did pretty well(for a first shot). If anyone has more tips I would love to hear them.

edit: just thought I should post that I’ve been actively reading nettuts and psdtuts for quite some time… I was just holding off reaching out to the community until I really had something everyone could look at. -thanks again for the help, I really appreciate it!

Hello all,

I’ve recently launched a site http://www.geekhealth.org I would love to get some feedback/reviews by members of Theme Forest.

I’ll try to stop here frequently to respond to comments or questions.

Thanks, John Fly