my first website

nosignal

New Member
Hi everyone, I'm a web design student, and I've finished my very first completely original website, its for my band. It's not finished yet but I thought getting some advice from people who are far better at this than me would help.

I'd love to see what everyone here has to say.

Here it is.

try not to be too hard on me, haha.

thanks
Eric
 

wetgravy

New Member
not bad. I would consider a few things ... your "landmine" graphic has a grey halo on the left and right sides, cropping in those areas or making them black isn't too hard to fix. Also, why do you use tables inside of div tags? That is actually fine with the shows since it's easier to maintain that way, but i would look into going to pure css with your nav bar. oh, and a footer would be a good way to visually frame the site out, and you have enough room for a 2 column site ... i would work with that and have the band do cross promotion with venues and stuff for that space.

good work though.
 

Bazballnut94

New Member
Not bad for your first but try making the pages more interesting. They are very plain. Maybe put sidebars up or incorporate some more into it.
 

nosignal

New Member
thank a bunch for the replies, as for tables, i use dreamweaver and for the navbar i used the "insert navigational bar" feature in dreamweaver which automatically uses tables, I'd like to put them in div tags, i should probably work on learning how to do that. I'm not sure if I understand the "halo" you're talking about, could you explain more? I'm definitely going to put a footer in, haven't got around to it yet, just like the right and left margins, I'm still in the process of finding something to put there, and putting more content in to make it more interesting.

thanks a bunch guys!
 

adamblan

New Member
I think your separate pages are unnecessary for the amount of info they contain... I'd do away with the extra pages and just use an index page with modules to display content.
 

greenendstore

New Member
By 'halo' he means that there is a 1px wide gray vertical stripe to the left and right of your banner. Look closely, it is faint.

I would suggest a 3-5px black border along the red navbar and gray content area. Also, give a bottom-margin of say, 20-30px. Keep the top margin 0, it's good like that. Make the page links a little more flashy... smallcaps, bold, underline. On the contact page, throw an email address at least. Register one on Gmail, or use your personal email. You're missing potential opportunities when you limit your contact availability.

Overall, very good job! Keep up the good work :)

Oh, and the music is great!
 

nosignal

New Member
I've been working on the site and i've taken your suggestions and added more content, a footer, and threw in a couple new things that i learned in class.
 

voodish

New Member
I think your separate pages are unnecessary for the amount of info they contain... I'd do away with the extra pages and just use an index page with modules to display content.

I tend to agree; you could make one information rich page, a conglomerate of all the other pages.

The other thing to note is that it is very good for your first website, well done and keep plugging away! :)
 

greenendstore

New Member
Okay, I like the updates! A few more updated suggestions...

The homepage should at least explain what Landmine is, where you're from, the type of music, downloads, something.

The gray content area is quite large for such a thin content area. Expand the content width or decrease the gray width.

White on gray for text is a little of a strain on the eyes. I would suggest using black. It's classic, but it's a trusted tradition.

Maybe think about using a wider font, like Tahoma or Verdana... those are of course Windows fonts, but you can easily find Mac and Linux alternatives.

Red links are no good. They are hard to read, too much of a contrast.

It's good that the news is on the homepage, but it's all that's there. I know I basically already said this, but I must insist. Had I stumbled upon your website without ever seeing this thread, I would have left the site before I ever realized what it was even for. Not trying to be harsh, just honest.

..

Okay, I hovered above the SHIRTS link, and now I see why the content is so narrow. I would suggest including the hover image in the post, as most people won't hover over a link just because it's there. I didn't hover over it for five minutes, and again, I would have left the site long before now if I were not reviewing it.

I can't wait to see your updates, I'm starting to really enjoy your music!
 

pingeyeg

New Member
For something like this I would design the whole thing in flash and make it crazy, creative and fun. Right now there is barely anything there that focuses on a band.
 
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