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[Otaking]

I've been throwing around the idea of starting a website for some time now, but have never gotten past the design stage. Every design I've made has just plain sucked, so I've been told. I thought I made some good ones, but never got approval from friends. My site in question is here, and I was wondering if someone could give me guidance or constructive criticism. A friend of mine made a layout here, but I'm not too sure about it. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I'm not very good with Photoshop or the Dreamweaver applications, but I am familiar with how they work. This is where I seek the knowledge of my superiors. If someone could point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it.

 

[MonkeyBoy]

i dont know anything about otaku, so i could not help in new design, just continue cutting and pasting, it always works!

 

[Burger]

OK here goes:

The top:

Fix that notepad image. It's obviously been small at one stage, then blown up and resampled to hell, it looks plain ugly. I don't really like how the top bit angles down at the end. Keep it Simple!!!

Take out the bit that looks like an ad banner. If you have to have a link somewhere, fine, but don't make it look like an advert if you can avoid it.

Stop blowing up small bitmaps just because you need them bigger. Here is a new rule for you. DONT SCALE UP BITMAPS! Remake them yourself, or find bigger ones and scale them down, never up.

At the bottom of the page you have links left justified, right justified, and something underneath it centred. Use one of the above.

A good idea would be to take the Latest Features and Latest Media and throw it all on a sidebar to the left of the whole page. It's used on alot of other pages, no reason why you shouldn't use a similar style.

Also, don't make people click links unless they have to. Basically, more text, more news etc on the main page. I don't want to goto something ending in .com and have to click back and forth to read the contents of the page. Think Slashdot.com there is more if you want it, but you can basically stay on the main page.

Hope that helps.

 

[Otaking]

OK here goes:

The top:

Fix that notepad image. It's obviously been small at one stage, then blown up and resampled to hell, it looks plain ugly. I don't really like how the top bit angles down at the end. Keep it Simple!!!

Take out the bit that looks like an ad banner. If you have to have a link somewhere, fine, but don't make it look like an advert if you can avoid it.

Stop blowing up small bitmaps just because you need them bigger. Here is a new rule for you. DONT SCALE UP BITMAPS! Remake them yourself, or find bigger ones and scale them down, never up.

At the bottom of the page you have links left justified, right justified, and something underneath it centred. Use one of the above.

A good idea would be to take the Latest Features and Latest Media and throw it all on a sidebar to the left of the whole page. It's used on alot of other pages, no reason why you shouldn't use a similar style.

Also, don't make people click links unless they have to. Basically, more text, more news etc on the main page. I don't want to goto something ending in .com and have to click back and forth to read the contents of the page. Think Slashdot.com there is more if you want it, but you can basically stay on the main page.

Hope that helps.

Yes, that helps a lot. I will take your advice about another sidebar and redo the design. Thank you for your suggestions.