mystified Posted January 5, 2007 Report Share Posted January 5, 2007 I'm not overly new, but I like to take the easy approach and do the WYSIWYG stuff :P Ok, now I'm going to have to go look at the source code so I can make fun of it. :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted January 5, 2007 Report Share Posted January 5, 2007 (edited) Some quick points: - Your menu is a bit small if I enlarge the text. Try to make the container for it a bit bigger/wider. - You need a header for your website (in the empty area above) with a byline telling who your site is for and what it does. For example the http://www.xandros.com/]Xandros website[/url] is a nice example: "Xandros - Making Linux work for you", but in their site the header and byline are too far apart. Ideally this is also a link back to the homepage on every page (except for the homepage itself) - It is great that you offer a "Latest Updates" summary right on your homepage. Very good habit to do. - You need to structure your texts a bit more. Nearly none of your visitors will start reading the text immediately. Most people scan it. Meaning they jump with their eyes from one point of interest to the other (menus, headings, lists, ... ) Be concrete and to the point. Work with subheadings and lists. Use whitespace (your doing it already). Stuff like that. For example I rewrote your homepage a little bit (I'm not saying this is the perfect text, should be more scannable though): Welcome to Linux Solutions Goals of this website Linux Solutions is my personal website that offers frequently updated FAQ's and interesting news about Linux distro's and software. I hope you enjoy the content on the site and find it informative and useful. I shall be adding more and more to the site as it develops further and as my knowledge grows! My background My first experience with Linux My first experience of Linux came in about 1998, when I installed Mandrake Linux 7.2 on my machine at home. I think I had it for a few days, because at that time, I didn't have the time to try and learn it fully, so ended up going back to Windows full time, and removed Mandrake from my system. Further Linux experience - biting the bullet Then back in February 2005, I decided to make a more concerted effort to use Linux completely. I installed Mandrake 10.0 Official, as Mandrake was something I had briefly used before, so thought it would be a good starting point for me. Since then, I've had Mandrake 10.1 Official, Mandriva LE2005, and 2006 on my systems. Now I'm using Mandriva 2007 on all my systems at home. What I use at home My work systems tend to be a mixture. My laptop is currently running Mandriva 2007. My desktop system is running Fedora Core 6. My VMware Server is running CentOS 4.4 and my email server is running Gentoo 2006.1. Other distributions that I use are Red Hat, Arch Linux, Debian and Slackware. Learning something new every day I've gained considerable knowledge in the last year or two, now that I use Linux solely on my systems. But not only that, from my job as well, which has helped in acquiring knowledge on various different distributions as well as getting to a higher level of understanding quicker. I'm due to be Red Hat Certified in the near future, of which I'm waiting for my course and exam for RHCE :-) You can see the headings and sub-headings plus I've reordered it a little bit. "LinuxSolutions.org has been active since 1 September 2006." Maybe if there is more of this information you'll need an "About Us" section? Edited January 5, 2007 by Darkelve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted January 5, 2007 Report Share Posted January 5, 2007 Oh, and I do think the site looks good. Clean and peaceful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted January 5, 2007 Report Share Posted January 5, 2007 I like the design too. I'm a fan of simple yet eloquent designs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sjaglin Posted January 5, 2007 Report Share Posted January 5, 2007 Hi Ian, Very nice your new site, I ll have to look a t it in depth so I put it in my favourites until work gives me a break! See ya! Stef ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted January 6, 2007 Author Report Share Posted January 6, 2007 Thanks everyone for your comments, I'll keep plugging at it :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted January 8, 2007 Author Report Share Posted January 8, 2007 Changed the first page - as darkelve suggested. Think this works nice. I'll add some new stuff in a bit :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted January 9, 2007 Report Share Posted January 9, 2007 Hi Ian .. home now ....quick look looks cool... I can help more effectively from home :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted January 9, 2007 Author Report Share Posted January 9, 2007 Thanks gowator, I was looking forward to your input since you started a joomla thread that got me interested in it. Actually, I looked at a few phpmywebsite or something like that, xoops, and others, and just didn't like the look and feel. Joomla seemed to look and feel more slick. I turned off a lot of the features, such as people registering, etc, as I didn't really need those requirements. But, maybe in the future, I'll enable more as time goes by. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted January 9, 2007 Report Share Posted January 9, 2007 Looks good, but you forgot probably the most important thing: to tell your visitors what your site is about! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted January 9, 2007 Author Report Share Posted January 9, 2007 Ah yes, I'll add that little nugget now :) EDIT: OK, added that now :P I'll get the banner done sometime soon. I figured I'll get some content first before I start bothering too much about the cosmetic side ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted January 9, 2007 Report Share Posted January 9, 2007 (edited) Ah yes, I'll add that little nugget now :) EDIT: OK, added that now :P I'll get the banner done sometime soon. I figured I'll get some content first before I start bothering too much about the cosmetic side ;) Great! (by the way, that banner IS content :P) Oh, and you can code a list like this (ul means 'unordered list'): <ul> <li>item 1 of the list</li> <li>item 2 of the list</li> <li>item 3 of the list</li> <li>...</li> </ul> In your WYSIWIG program, there should be an icon with (a) bullet(s) on it, use that to make a list. You will get a marker before each one of your list items, and it's easier to read because the list marker separates all the items. For ordered lists, its "ol" instead of "ul" and in your WYSIWIG there should be a button with (a) number(s) on it. I saw that you didn't on this page: http://linuxsolutions.org/index.php?option...4&Itemid=26 Of course, you use unordered lists when the order doesn't matter, and ordered when the order matters e.g. because one has to be done before the other. Edited January 9, 2007 by Darkelve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted January 9, 2007 Author Report Share Posted January 9, 2007 I tried putting bulleted points before, but they don't show up :unsure: So I just went with indenting. Incidently, I've just bulleted that link you just showed. So let me know if you see bullet points. Because I don't. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neddie Posted January 9, 2007 Report Share Posted January 9, 2007 Looks like you've defined the bullet image as "../images/bullet_red.png" which doesn't seem to exist. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emmanuel_uk Posted January 9, 2007 Report Share Posted January 9, 2007 Unreadable black on blue on this link http://linuxsolutions.org/index2.php?optio...mid=3&pop=1 Contact Us: personal opinion: I like finding the real adress when I have a my own mailer available (So I can cc the email to myself) instead of using form Put email in clear with antispam wording Lots of space wasted at top of page in blue, 3cm on my PC even before the blue bend No counter? Is that a choice? Maybe clarify that you do not do or do consultancy? cf contact page Maybe clarify whether you acceot contribs FAQS provided under GPL? other? Nifty otherwise Search engine works! Cool. What does it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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