New site

[old.Jas]

Our new site has launched. http://www.ferrago.co.uk

Some feedback would be great - I'm planning to tweak it over the coming weeks.

 

[Shocko]

The right collumn of the main area seems a bit too wide...

Combine that with the fact that the storys on the news index type thing seem too narrow/short... In otherwords, i think the main space area could be managed slightly better

The content area at the top, seems too detatched from the main area imo, perhaps if there was more of a gradient, going from blue at the top, to more white at the bottom, it would seem to be more attached to the site...

I guess i'm just nitpicking, since you asked I can't really see anything wrong with it, but at teh same time, it doesn't seem quite right.. I can't really explain it, but the site seems "foreign"(Not in terms of other countrys), compared with other sites...

 

[[UKLans]Khan]

To be fair that look frikin wicked!!! I really like the clean cut look, very impressive.

Keep up the good work Jas,

Khan

 

[Crucifier]

Fantastic design. Don't hange a thing, tell me, did you do those graphics? I really need help with a design template for a new clan ladder site, do you think you could help me out?

 

[old.Jas]

Cheers for the feedback guys

 

[old.LeitMotif]

heh

heh... wierd, its almost identical to a site, bar the top layout, which i prototyped 3 weeks ago.

nice job

are you finding .net a significant improvement in performance over asp 3.?

 

[[UKLans]Khan]

I personally think .net is the way forward, It's scary at first but you soon see the advantages and start to really like it.

The main difference for me is not having the VB knowledge that I really should have, I was a VB script man with easy code, but now I've converting to .net I have had to sort out my VB.net

Cheers,

Khan

 

[Embattle]

Clean Jas.

 

[old.Jas]

Re: heh

Originally posted by old.LeitMotif
are you finding .net a significant improvement in performance over asp 3.?

Very much so - the caching increases the page pushing capacity dramatically

 

[old.Kez]

I have simply oodles of criticisms. But what else would you expect?

• The masthead and blue colour-scheme are very similar to ukgamer
• Neither Ferrago nor UKGamer need the horrendously patriotical flag, you both have uk in the bloody domain name.
• The page scrolls vertically for far too long. Attention is held the same way it is in a Newspaper. Above the fold.
• All the hugely scrolling content - the accompanying graphic text [for "features et al] is too faint, and almost indistinguishable.
• Blue is ridiculously boring now, everyone's doing it. Write some script that randomly changes the header graphics set each visit - that'd be nice. I like that kind of thing. Its consumerism baby!
• I had at least 3 chances to vote - one on each seperate page. Whats up with that?

I can probably drum up more, if you care to throw down the gauntlet.

 

[old.Jas]

The flag was put there as it looked a bit plain without it. I didn't like it to start with, but I've come around.

All of the main content is above the fold, 90% of the page views come from the top section on the homepage - but the rest is there for reference. Most of our users are on broadband, and at a fairly high res - so page loading times are generally not an issue. Anyhow - its only 40k, verses say 70k for MSN.

Ask a designer thier favorite colour (as I have done in many job interviews) and they will ALWAYS say blue. The layers of blue I used are inspired by the bottom of the old netscape.com design.

I'll sort the poll thing - its on the list.

I'm surprised you havn't picked the most obvious faults -

• No explicit home button on any page
• Lack of site description on the homepage - only a nondiscript tag line
• Poor search functionality - you can't search by publisher, platform etc

 

[old.Kez]

Originally posted by Jás Club
Ask a designer thier favorite colour and they will always say blue.

I'd argue that its not a case of it being "favourite" but rather "easiest to apply" - there are few shades of blue that are offensive asthetically, as its a calm colour. This makes it hard to ruin things using blue, similarly pastel greens are favoured for their calm use.

Personally, I favour orange and purple over blue, as the right shade is equally unobtrusive, but they're not hideously over-used as blue now is [for the very reason you stated]

 

[Tempy_Incursion]

Well yes that is true but then there will be some who prefer the paler colours of blue and green etc. over more obtrusive colours such as orange or purple. However, I have used a mixture of lighter and darker colours in my new site project and I think Jas had done a damn good job already on Ferrago.co.uk keep it up!

Once you've seen to those "faults" I think there isn't much wrong with the site after that.