Ascendo Tuum

First, thanks in advance for your critiques!

I would consider myself an relatively experienced designer (though far from professional), as such, I am looking for some tougher criticisms to make sure I'm making the most out of the site. The coding itself isn't the problem, but I want to make sure the final presentation is one that will capture a gamer's attention right away, get the necessary information in sight within seconds, and function properly.

I'm in the process of recoding a base system behind my guild's website, and I also want to fix up the design in any way I can. This critique is not on the one currently on the website, but rather on the one soon to come. Because I want to fix the design, I'll post three links to the different templates being used. These are currently static images since I didn't want to encode something I wouldn't keep.

Index Page: http://www.ascendo-tuum.com/images/p.../preview17.jpg
This is the first page the person sees. This page is designed so our pertinent information is immediately viewable: current recruitment, our progress, and links to necessary website info. Because of this index design, there won't be any more multiple sets of large JPG pictures on any page. This should substantially improve load time.

Partial Page: http://www.ascendo-tuum.com/images/p.../preview19.jpg
This page will be seen throughout all public pages. The modules on the right will pull various database information, such as recruitment (want to keep that on all pages), application stats, membership stats (similar to what we have live).

Full Page: http://www.ascendo-tuum.com/images/p.../preview18.jpg
Similar to the partial page, but this one will be specifically for pages with large bits of information, such as our ranking pages private to the members.

Template Note - The template is exactly how I want it. I have the widths exactly right. I took a poll from the guild members, and much to my surprise, only a couple actually view the website from a 600x800 resolution (from work, all home computers perform higher). I was originally going to take the size down, but because of this feedback, they want to keep it larger. Because of width constraints in information tables, I realistically can't go less than what this is. Also note the admin bar you see at the top will NOT be visible to all members.

Known Problems
First, if you go to the current site, you'll see I do use tables to do the layout. This will change! I took time to look more at CSS, and the website will be CSS driven. There's also a couple scripts, like the image rollover, that are broken. I found better alternatives. This is a known problem, but not one that you need to worry about here! =)

Fonts - They don't work well together. I had taken a couple different approaches, and in this put them together. It ended up being a bad mix that I'm trying to fix. Because of what I need to do with some image generation scripts, the smaller block font is one i need to keep, so the more stylish "Warcraft" font will need to go. Because I just formatted, I forgot to back up my font sets, so I need some good ideas for fonts.

Color Palette - It's too yellow brown. I'm really poor with colors and have a couple of palette sites to help me, but I don't really know where I should adjust the colors. I've always saw a change in color necessary to highlight places of interest, but I have a feeling more will be needed to give more life to the site. Our guild colors are dark blue and silver (super original, eh? =)), so I want to try to maintain that as much as possible.

What I'm Looking For
1. The site needs to be transferable, by that, I mean if we were to start up another game within the guild, only a couple minor adjustments (to the banner and its own index, the index isn't a huge concern here) are needed to keep the same "feel" to the site, but still have its distinction to work in other games. This is a low priority.

2. The smaller font needs to stay, so I need a larger one that complements it.

3. Template placement stays the same, but the borders and such can all be altered to make it look better. The size of the banner can expand if needed, but I want to make sure the main 6 links stay there. The progress box at the top could easily disappear on other pages, since it's not necessary everywhere.

4. Ease of use: our site's easy to navigate, so I don't want to change that. However, this site should not feel like a CMS (it isn't, but it still feels like that from the newsposts we currently use on the website).

5. Lean towards less "parchment". I like the frame elements on the second two links posted above. They can be adjusted, of course, but these will work well with (w's!) the pages. This implies heavy changes on the index, but no biggie. If those pages don't end up working, so be it, I just want to try to keep them if possible.

I know that's a bunch of stuff there. I do appreciate taking time to read this and provide feedback; your comments will help a lot on this site.

Edit: Wow, didn't know there was a CSS validation and how bad the current CSS was. I got work to do!

i am not in the position of do not have the knowlage to comment on your code and changes that need to be made to dat.

however, as a regular web used i believe that this is a very well designed site, you say your not prefessional but i believe that you canot tell.

i am sure that you will have more useful comments later on after this, but i have to say that i love your site, 10/10 for appearance

hope this help

craig

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Well, it looks pretty good. The whole "ornate panels" thing is very dated for most "ordinary" websites, but on this gaming site I think it's appropriate. I've no knowledge of WoW, but the look reminds me of Starcraft (mmm, Starcraft...); that's probably a good thing.

It would be a splendid achievement to design this with CSS for layout, not tables. If you are serious about taking the enlightened path of CSS, I strongly suggest validating against a Strict doctype.

It'll be a lot of work to break old habits, but I'm determined to do it. I just wanted to work with the design to have them right before coding too far into it. Thanks for the comments so far, I'll definite look at the strict doc!

O_O

Not for me?

Sorry