Half-Life Mod Source...again

[TehGuy]

I had my site, Half-Life Mod Source reviewed here about 4 months ago or so, and I was basically told it sucked, it was too dull, and the banner sucked. (along with all the other graphics, so I've finally made an attempt at redoing the design. I haven't really had much time to work on it in the 4 months in between now and the last design until this week, and what I found out last time is that if I get stuck at one point in the design (after I've given it a good effort), it's typically better to ask for advice before wasting time and effort only to have a crappy design.

So, here I have the old site:

http://tehguy.pixelhosting.net/hlmodsource/

And the new:

http://tehguy.pixelhosting.net/hlmodsource/test/

The things I'm currently worried about are the banner, the thing just below the banner that says "Forums", "Team", ect. and the area for the main content.

The banner is mostly just empty, and I'm not too sure what to add to it. Since the site is about mods for Half-Life, I was thinking about just cutting out models from a lot of different popular mods and just putting them on there on the right. That's all I could really think to do...

The thing below the banner just looks funny to me. I don't know why. I suppose it would function for now, but if anyone has any suggestions for change for it, let me know.

The area for the main content is worrying me mostly due to the fact that the text may be hard for some people to read, but I wasn't too sure. Should I make the background of the entire page brighter or should I make some sort of special background for just that area that is brighter?

I need some criticism on all of the site, though, not just those three parts. I know PixelPutty can at least give me some...lol...he seems to be good at picking out everything that needs to be changed to make a good design...

I do know that the new site has absolutely no content yet, but that's because I'm working on coding something in PHP to make it a lot easier for me to update everything, and it's the first time I've even touched PHP (and it's the first site I've done all the graphics in Photoshop with), aside from the simple use of "include". The coding part is actually almost done, so I'll be sure to post back when I do get it up.

Just for the record, the right side bar of the page will probably have the mod of the month featured there and a poll or the top rated mods or something, with the basic same look as the left side bar.

Lemme know what you think and what all I need to do to fix this thing up...I know it's horrible, but I'm only hoping to improve it.

Whew I rambled...I seem to be good at least at doing that.

 

[pixelputty]

IMHO your old site wasn`t that bad and could be improved, looking at the new site I would put a few charactors together in an art program, blend them together, take them down in transparency and finally add them to the header, instead of what you have there right now, the HALFLIFE font works well, so how about keeping that part but have the slogan "Mod Source" smaller in the same font and under the HALFLIFE text. when you add your content into the centre use white, make the font for each catagorie abit bigger in the left menu and just after Pixelhosting.net add <br> to give a drop down space, try in your top left menu orange instead of black and finally to the right area, add some padding, hope this helps, good luck.

 

[tandoc]

I agree with what other people told you.

In short, the two layouts were of the same standard in my book - sub.

It's all a bit too plain, for a game that is revolutionary in graphics, you do the title no justice with the plain header and tables. The right cell of the main content table (the one with all the 'LOL's) should have some padding - looks awful when text touches borders, unless it achieves some sort of artistic effect, which only ever happens on designer's blogs =__=. A bigger font, 10-point, would be more suitable for the site, and judging from what the site will be, make use of as much space as possible, set your table width to 100%. On the topic of cellpadding, increase the padding for the content cell, it looks a bit too close to the borders for my liking.

I'm not sure if your design is complete yet, but you may want to give the content cell of your page a different background to the page background. A lighter shade of grey than the menu bar would be good, so it doesn't seem too monotonous.

I can understand with what you were trying to achieve using the gradient tool in photoshop, I used to do it like that, and it comes out really poorly. Take away the blackline from it (the one that separates the gradient and menu bar) and have the gradient flow into to menu.

Use a more disdinctive rollover colour for your links, using black on a background like #808080, or whatever it is, is a nono, a darker orange like #FF6600 is better, since it suits the Half-Life colour scheme.

Personally, I don't like the way the buttons in the banner are beveled (or whatever you call it). The font is too big in comparison to the font used for 'Half-Life' and 'Mod Source' and the font itself seems out of place. Instead of setting the gradient to meet at 50%, make it biased towards one way, giving it a little bit of character and depth, than a round pipe that was cut into bits.

I'd say more, but I'm still doing my 800 word Crime and Punishment essay and need to finish that, but what I've said is more than enough for you to comtemplate for awhile, along with the next couple of posts to come from other people.

Peace.