Critique request

[roughrider]

It has been a very, very, very long time since I have asked for a critique of my site. I have made alot of changes since the last time I was here asking for a critique, I also have learned alot more then what I used to know back in the day, haha.
Any-who....
URL: http://www.roughrider-maps.net

Ideas and suggestions?

[linnetwoods]

1)You don't get a second chance at a first impression... I am not saying I would re-write the whole text content but I would tidy up your opening statement to this:

Welcome to the new Roughrider-maps
Anybody that has been here before can tell this is new/different from the old way. There are a lot more different options and choices for members then there were in the old.

Navigation of the site is to the left-top in the "Menu". Also, once you are logged in, you have your own "Control Panel" where you can send private messages to other members or change your available settings. If anyone has questions, the FAQ are listed in the menu to the left.

2) That combination of blues looks a bit drab and a bit mismatched on my screen - it sort of 'just misses' being the same colour on the background and in the boxes and, as a result, the boxes make the background look a little grubby, if you know what I mean.

3) If you want people to be able to concentrate on reading the text, don't put an animated banner right in their faces unless your main purpose is to sell what is in the banner and you don't really care whether they read or not.

The basic layout is rather nice though, excepting that your logo is getting the top of its head shaved off... it has been shoved up the chimney by the animated banner. Pity, that, because it's a very nice logo!

[rainbore]

I'm a nuts-and-bolts guy and from my perspective, your main page has one major problem. Anyone who stumbles across this page by accident is going to have to scour the nooks and crannies in order to figure out what your site is all about. The main page says you like Powweb hosting. It says you've made some changes recently. There's obviously a forum on the site. But its essentially silent on the main topic of the site. The page title doesn't say anything, there's no <h>eadline, and there's no text explaining the site's purpose. If you want search engine users to find your site and casual visitors to explore beyond the main page, put a paragraph or two of keyword-rich text (think "mission statement") in the main section,move that text that talks about your changes to a "What's New" page, and put some keywords in the page title as well. Good luck!

[Marko Peric]

I think that the major points have been covered, but you might want to look at how you are sizing your text. I frequenty view text at the "smaller" setting in Internet Explorer, and the result was that only your headlines were readable. Everything else was far too tiny to discipher. I tried Firefox for comparison, and it was much better behaved. Looking at your code, this is probably due to an issue in IE with how it handles text sizes that are smaller than 1 em. But since over 70% of internet users are using IE, you may want to rethink your approaching to this.

[intelboy15]

You might want to move the powweb banner to the bottom of the page, so people would focus their attention on your site content versus immediately drawn to the powweb banner (it's great you have a powweb banner on your site :D).

On the main page, I suggest writing a paragraph explaining what the site is instead of the first impression paragraph.

Good Luck! :D

[roughrider]

Thanks all for looking at it and giving me your ideas. I do have plans on moving things around a little bit. About the logo...thanks. :)
My first intention was to have a place for people that are map creators for the Quake 3 Arena game, to have a place to house their maps if they didn't have space for them, etc. But it has been developing towards a "free-for-all" type site as my drive for a permanent theme has faltered some.
Will start working on it again/more and try to get some more out of it. Oh and I am aware of the text issues. I have changed the sizing a few times and also took out the sizing altogether. One main issue is that on IE, it is rather hard to get that "feel" without playing with it alot more then I want. On the other hand, Firefox renders it very well, which is my other testing browser.
Again, thanks ;)

[roughrider]

some keywords in the page title as well.
Ya know, I did have some in there before but they got taken out and I can't figure out why I never did put them back in, :eek: