Black Reef Designs

Black Reef Designs is a web site I made in Dreamweaver. Its very design oriented and is very basic, mostly because of my limited knowledge of web coding. I tried to make up my lack of coding skills with some pretty graphics, but I do not know if that was a good idea.

Anyways my goal here is to learn alot about CSS/PHP and Flash

What do you think of the site?

Ditch the tables, learn CSS it'll make your life SOOO Much easier. Also, the Javascript rollovers should be changed to CSS. I know your in want of learning so I expect to see it accomplished. The site has a nice look and feel to it, I'm not a fan of black backgrounds with text on them because it puts stress on the human eye (lack of light) but it does look good and you have made the text large enough where it seems to do ok

The navigational buttons could look a bit clearer in my opinion, that little red swoosh on them just doesn't have enough emphasis.

wow thanks alot. Its actually very motivating for a beginner like me to hear constructive words from an expert. Im glad you like the look of the site!

Is it that obvious I used tables? lol Tables have been challenging to work with to say the least.

Like I mentioned above is that I use Dreamweaver, and the only way I know how to build a website is visually (design mode). In the past I have tried to start building a css website in dreamweaver by creating a new document > CSS, but its just a blank document and I can not use "Design View" so it intimidated me and steered me away, lol. It was just a blank page with code. However when I open a CSS Template, it shows a design view, so I do not understand why it does this. Also I try to steer away from templates because I have heard bad things and that it is better when learning to start from scratch, so catch 22.

Anyways Im going to learn CSS and I look forward to it. Is there a way to Visually design a CSS web site? Or is knowledge of code mandatory?

Thanks again for the comments!

Hey..
Took a look at the site and it looks good! Very exciting.. very much like a sports team!! *wink wink

One thing I would do is change the color on the email link. It's blue.. looks unfinished.

I used to design in tables as well and a tutorial I used that really helped me make the leap to hand coding in design view was this one.

Good luck!

well designed site. Your homepage looks great i think you could improve on your nav bar though it looks kinda simple make it a bit more sort of dynamic.

Your web and rates page are empty all it says is contact joe@blackreefdesign.com put some more info in that especially in the rates page because people want to know your price rates(although it does say it on the home page).

your logo is great! I think you should add some more detail into your homepage and maybe you should change the background color to a more attractive one. instead of using tables that much use css much better.

Over all really great site!

Agreed, you really need to learn css, especially if you're planning on selling your services. I'd also try and improve your general eye for design, the website is very chaotic and has no real design structure at all. The graphics you've added are very basic so you might want to try and follow some tutorials to improve your photoshop skills. I'd also say that because the main section of the website has no website all the images just look randomly placed, almost all well designed websites have a background for the main page and then a background for any text.

Don't take this to be an insult but there's no way your current designs are worth paying $300 for. I'd look at some other websites to gain some inspiration and really work on your layout and design before trying to make money from designing.

Looking at your portfolio examples...the RimNordic site looks suspiciously like your site....

I do LIKE your site, but it does need to be different from your portfolio examples...this is YOUR site, you need to make it that. Sure your portfolio examples are what clients may look at but the first impression is your home page. You don't want them then seeing that if they get you to design a site for them they may just get a revamped version of your site...

As everyone has said Tables OUT, CSS IN! Take a look at various tutorial sites for how to use CSS for layouts, there are plenty of examples for you to play around with and learn from. I find A List Apart a very useful site for the more technical and fiddly aspects of CSS.

Site could do with a bit more structure, portoflio exampels on the home page are a great idea, but they just looked plonked wherever they fitted, similarly the "Web Packages starting at..." image also seems just plonked rather than placed...and just as a side point this should be text not an image. use CSS to add the image as a background and use display:none on the text to hide it from the browser when CSS is being used.

And maybe a personal thing but...I don't think you should have to write Navigation, at the top of a nav bar on a web designers site, it should be obvious enough that it is navigation. And the repeat of the "B;lack Reef text at the top of the nav doesn't feel right either.

I don't want to sound like I'm completely rubbishing your site, because as I have said I do LIKE it. Aplogies if i sound harsh. I am just giving my opinion, and trying to give you pointers to think about.

Keep at it.

Awesome. None of your opinions sound too harsh. I really need to hear stuff like this as it motivates me even more to learn CSS. I know absolutely nothing about it but Im going to take advantage of the tutorials on here.

Thanks again for the opinions...

-joe

Cool I'm glad you took it all well.

I posted my site on here and thought it looked great! I was well proud of it.

However, a few changes were suggested and it does look a whole lot better now. Talking with others about your design and getting different perspectives can provide both new ideas an strong motivation.

Good luck mate.

Cool. What sucks though is until I am confident with CSS, the Tables (in ALL the sites) have to stay, because honestly at this point I do not know to convert the page to CSS. Hopefully If I work hard I may have enough knowledge in a couple weeks to design a CSS page =)

yea I understand.

It may be worth trying to create a mess around site where you can play wiht 2 and 3 column layouts and with different positioning. It almost becomes a tutorial site.

What I did was have a block of text saying this is absolutely positioned. And I moved it about the page with the code...god it felt good lol!

I carried on playing until I had the confidence to try and build a small site around it.

What I do is first I figure out exactly what I want my web site to look like and then I do google searches on how to do it using CSS.

Yea I use a similar technique if I can't get it working.

My normal process is a mock up in phptoshop til I'm happy and then conversion into xhtml/css, If I can;t get something to work I go hunting online!

But when learning I think you need to cover all the basics. Which is why that particular method might not work for BlackReef.