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its been updated a bit now. The main page has more tJDM pics and videos for your viewing pleasure.

Also the forum is working 100% and is looking good:tup:

www.torontojdm.ca


kart.no.38:

Nice website you have there. Looks very professional:tup:

I like the overall look, but I just think it needs a little more work. The content would be better with some images. The homepage, for example: it's just a block of small sized text which doesn't really inspire me to read on. All you need is a header graphic to give it a bit of spice, like this:

welcomehome.jpg


Don't use that, obviously (since it's on my homepage), but you see what I mean: a car with a nice background and some text. It just gives the page a little more... life, I guess.

The other thing is the forum images: the vB standard ones are hideous, and don't look right when you change the colour scheme. It doesn't take long to knock up a decent set, and if you don't want to there's a ton at places like vbimageworks.com.

Hope that helps you along :)
 
Yeah, our host got hacked. To many hacks in one day to so many different people :scared: I'm waiting for stupid godaddy to refresh it's servers so I can get the forums back up :grumpy:
 
http://jondot.thecarforum.net/

Been developing it for a few days, and finally got it up and running today. No real content at the moment, but other than that, everything works.
I'll tell you, you've got some nice features on there, and some nice design elements as well. At the point you're at right now, the main thing I would recommend is that you play around with your typefaces a bit.

For the style you've chosen to go with (clean, modern), I'd recommend some type of sans-serif font for the headers utilizing complimentary colors to the site's chosen scheme (throw in some serif fonts for elements you'd like to emphasize, but keep their sizes down).

Typography is all about the details, and if you do it well people really do notice. Just play around a bit. 👍
 
Thanks for the tips :). Yeah, i'm still really playing around with stuff like that. The only things that might not change are the logo and the overall shape.
 
Ive been running a gallery in the GT4 galleries section for just over a year now, and I've always been interested in web design, so I thought I'd combine them both and create a gallery of my best work using xhtml, css, php, and mysql.

I've got the xhtml and css covered, but I'm still learning php and I have not even started to tackle mysql yet! What you see now is a template for a blog I am attempting to create a blog that will accompany the gallery, and be a place to go to find out what I have in the works.

Here is a screenshot of the index page:



And here is a screenshot of the main page:



Both pages validate to xhtml 1.1 and the css is error free but with a number of warnings (which I will fix as I go along).

The layout in the main page uses a simple 'fluid floated divs' layout. all of the divs can be interchanged easily, so many different variations of this layout can be achieved.

I have tested it from 800x600 right upto 1280x1024, and it works perfectly. I still have a number of things to sort out with the main page, but it is almost there.

The css needs a little tweaking, but I'm happy with the look at the moment. I plan on creating some dynamic styles using php later on, but for now the orange on blue look at present stays.

I've created all the graphics for the web pages myself too, using transparent pings. I know that they can look like a bag of crap in IE6, but on the three browser I checked (ff2.0, op9, and IE7) they looked great.

Once I find a good free php/mysql web host, I will post a link to the actual live site, until then, I will have to use images. Any comments, observations and/or criticisms will be taken on board! :dopey:
 
I like it 👍. It's simple, clean and it's using a colour scheme that's a personal favourite of mine. To keep the design working nicely with that layout, there's not much I can suggest. Maybe add in a few GT4 shots on normal pages to give it a little more focus on your subject. Maybe have something small fading inwards from the top right, or add a couple of rotating images next to the far right of the logo. While I'm on that, I'm not too keen on the huge logo, but it's personal prefference more than anything I think :).

As for databases, if you don't want to you really don't need to bother. Go find a content management system that you like, and then just fit the template around it. Why a CMS? Well, it's probably better suited to you than a blog, as you'll be able to organise your pages a lot better (and even have blogs on certain ones) and I personally think it'd fit your template a lot better (you can have as many different sections on each page as you can think of). It's up to you, really, but once you get used to how each one functions it's easy as anything. I don't know how advanced you are with webdesign, but basically once it's installed you don't need to touch the databases at all. All you do is tell cpanel to make the database with a certain name and that's pretty much it.

On the gallery front, if you haven't chosen anything yet, take a look at menalto's Gallery 2. I've been using it for a little while now and it's been pretty good. Not much on the developer's front, but it's easy to use and there are plenty of modules around.

Oo, and if it helps, you can pretty much fix the IE6 PNG problem with this bit of javascript. It has it's limitations (e.g it doesn't like background images in tables or grabbing images from a php file like a rotator) but for normal images it'll work great.

Hope this helps :)
 
Sorry I haven't replied sooner, I don't have as much time online now as I used to. Thanks for the advice though, it is just what I was looking for! 👍

I'm working on starting to integrate some GT4 shots into the scheme, and I do have a couple of ideas concerning the top right area of the screen. The 'littlemag' logo was just a place holder image that I used to try to visualize the theme a little. Your right about it being too big too, I will change that in the next update I do. I have a couple of 2.0 style logos that I may use instead, here are the links:

Original 'littlemag' rip:



super 2.0 style:



Hmmm... cms. I've looked into them, and I did like the sound of Mambo, or Joomla, but I feel I could create my own custom cms if I managed to learn php and mysql well enough. Basically, thats the whole idea behind the whole webpage idea - create everything from scratch. The same goes for the gallery itself, I plan to script it totally in php with a mysql back end.

I'll look into the IE6 transparency script you posted, but I'm more of the thinking that if it doesn't work in the latest releases of the big three, then I'm happy for it to look like a bag of crap. I know its not the way of doing things, but you have to draw the line somewhere, and I draw the line at crap browsers!

Thanks again for the advice jondot!
 
Hey guys, I don't post here a lot but I'm thinking of making a site. If it succeeds, it will be a photo competition forum (kinda like yours, but I'm not completely sure if its still active) and possible a LAN forum if I find anybody in my area (Sarnia/London Ontario Canada area) What do you guys think?
 
Forgot about this thread...

Sorry I haven't replied sooner, I don't have as much time online now as I used to. Thanks for the advice though, it is just what I was looking for! 👍

I'm working on starting to integrate some GT4 shots into the scheme, and I do have a couple of ideas concerning the top right area of the screen. The 'littlemag' logo was just a place holder image that I used to try to visualize the theme a little. Your right about it being too big too, I will change that in the next update I do. I have a couple of 2.0 style logos that I may use instead, here are the links:

Original 'littlemag' rip:



super 2.0 style:



Hmmm... cms. I've looked into them, and I did like the sound of Mambo, or Joomla, but I feel I could create my own custom cms if I managed to learn php and mysql well enough. Basically, thats the whole idea behind the whole webpage idea - create everything from scratch. The same goes for the gallery itself, I plan to script it totally in php with a mysql back end.

I'll look into the IE6 transparency script you posted, but I'm more of the thinking that if it doesn't work in the latest releases of the big three, then I'm happy for it to look like a bag of crap. I know its not the way of doing things, but you have to draw the line somewhere, and I draw the line at crap browsers!

Thanks again for the advice jondot!

Glad I could help :)

Me likey!
 
Forgot about this thread...

I have too.

Anyway, it's been a while since I posted my site in this thread. Recently, we just moved to a new host and went from IPB to PHPBB3 beta, it's not as buggy as people have said and we haven't encountered any errors yet. Interested? Want to join? Click here.
 
That actually looks rather nice. The one reason I've steered away from them on my other sites was the hacking problems with PHPBB2. I went with drupal in the end, but still.
 
That actually looks rather nice. The one reason I've steered away from them on my other sites was the hacking problems with PHPBB2. I went with drupal in the end, but still.

Yeah, PHPBB2 wasn't exactly secure and I was very weary of it, but after another staff member accidentally messed up our PHPBB2 install, we went and got PHPBB3 which has features similar to vB forums. (i.e. custom BB tags, more settings that are changeable through the admin cp, etc.)
 
The big text on the home page (and the blue text everywhere) is really really easy to confuse with the links. I clicked on it a couple of times. Other than that the design is good.
 
Hi guys im finally ready to unveil a new forum me and a couple of freind are working on!

http://exoticwheels.informe.com

It has a main site which needs article posters and a forum (linked to) which requieres alot more members!

Feel free to join!

:bowdown:
 
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