Do we have any professional website designers in here?

[iCraig]

Too much purple. If that's the corporate colours, fine, but that doesn't mean it should be plastered over everything.

As already said, this is a new website and should be designed using today's web design methods. Tables should not be used to structure the site. There should be no styling information within the HTML, just content.

The structure, style and presentation of the site is controlled via the CSS.

As for a cleaner and less abrasive design, well, an image speaks a thousand words.



Ripped apart an older design of mine, needs tweaking but you get the idea. The corporate colours are promoted subtly.

[Messiah Khan]

Thanks a lot guys, this is all very usefull. Ive been bug testing the last couple of dayd and ive already filled 3 pages with faults and bits that simply don't work Im far from impressed at all tbh. I also found out from my boss how much the project cost... £1500. I suppose the old saying "you get what you pay for" is true. Oh, and the guy has taken 18 months to make the thing!

Originally Posted by Beansprout

We've done a school's website before....I can PM you info if you like, and probably get a few design ideas done today/tomorrow

In terms of cost....'four figures' would be the kind of range....school sites end up a lot bigger and more complex than at first expected

That would be very welcome mate. If I can get enough comments/ideas and realistic figures and timeframes etc, then i'll take it all to my boss and possibly recoomend scrapping the whole project and get something decent made.

Icraig, could you possible redo that image without the naughty words please, so i can use that as an example of how bad our current one is. Would it also be possible to send me some links of your work?

Again, thanks a lot folks.

[petemc]

LOL HAHAHAHAAAHAHAHAHA OMG tell me you're kidding and thats a joke site? That was done by someone who knows NOTHING of design. The whole site feels huge and I'm at 1600x1200. The huge ass anim is pointless. The two images are just bad and no thought has been given to the readability of the words over them. As others have said tables are bad. In this day and age any designer worth their salt should be using CSS for styling of content. The HTML isn't valid either. Its terribly in-accessible for disabled people and that should be a standard feature for an educational site. Its a legal requirement too, though its been a year or so since I was a designer so I'm not sure where things are with that.

[Beansprout]

I had a much better link but lost it when FF crashed....that said, this page gives a good overview...essentially, accessibility has been in the law for a *long* time now

[Messiah Khan]

Originally Posted by petemc

LOL HAHAHAHAAAHAHAHAHA OMG tell me you're kidding and thats a joke site? That was done by someone who knows NOTHING of design. The whole site feels huge and I'm at 1600x1200. The huge ass anim is pointless. The two images are just bad and no thought has been given to the readability of the words over them. As others have said tables are bad. In this day and age any designer worth their salt should be using CSS for styling of content. The HTML isn't valid either. Its terribly in-accessible for disabled people and that should be a standard feature for an educational site. Its a legal requirement too, though its been a year or so since I was a designer so I'm not sure where things are with that.

Fair point with the second half of the post, but as for the animation etc;

Originally Posted by Messiah Khan

Please ignore the random test articles, sections and animated gifs etc, thats just me playing around and testing the backend and site management features as im bug testing at the moment. Which IMO is something the designer should have done, but never mind.

[petemc]

Whoopsy. I didn't mean them of course. They were brilliant *shoots self in foot*

[Mark]

Originally Posted by Messiah Khan

I also found out from my boss how much the project cost... £1500. I suppose the old saying "you get what you pay for" is true. Oh, and the guy has taken 18 months to make the thing!

Obviously, I have no clue what the site maintenance is like, but if it's anything like the site itself then I'm afraid your boss has been had, plain and simple, and it's got nothing to do with getting what you pay for. Sadly there are too many people who think they can design a website when in reality pretty much all they know is dreamweaver, or, even worse, frontpage.

I'm nothing more than an amateur, but even I know to use CSS for layout, and certainly not to plaster the whole site with garish purple.

Good luck with getting it sorted. I've seen a few shool sites that I've been very impressed with, so it can be done.

[Daz]

Originally Posted by iCraig

If you're shy on teachers for any of those lessons I could take a couple

[petemc]

lol I never even saw those. If you need a photographer *dreams*

[Messiah Khan]

Hehe, I would if I could. Its going to be hard enough persuading the powers that be to part with more money to make a decent site. Fortunately my line manager (Who is sort of heading this project) is on my side. I nearly gave her a heart-attack today when I handed her a very heavy report including loads of bugtesting, HTML validation and web accessiblility information. I think thats convinced her that we need to get a new site, or at least rework a lot of this one.