I agree about the Flash thing. Though I actually enjoy Flash, there are times when I'm in a hurry to get to the content and am not in the mood to watch whatever Flash intro you want to shove in my face, especially if that intro really sucks.

Also, I think it's useful to have a liquid layout. Perhaps not entirely liquid, but at least make it liquid enough so that when users resize their browsers a little, it won't look clunky with horizontal scrollbars and that users with an 800 x 600 resolution will have no more problems viewing your site than users with 1400 x 1200 resolution.

Background music is indeed VERY annoying--it slows down the site a lot. Besides, the webmaster's taste of music may not be the visitor's taste of music. Just because you like rap doesn't mean everyone else in the world has the same taste in sound.

I think it's less about the wrong impression. Not all visitors prowl around and try to see what forum type you're using. (I, for one, don't bother) However, using something like vBulletin has a lot more features than phpBB or SMF. Users don't particularly care if your forum was free or paid for, but they will care if it has the functions that they want and need. If they want subforums and discover that your umodded version of phpBB doesn't have it, they're going to be annoyed an leave. If you can somehow mod phpBB to have every function your visitors need, good for you, you invested the time and effort into a free product so that it now has the quality of a paid one.

I think he means not using photos as the background. As in, if you take a photo of a tree, decide it looks nice, and decide to paste it as the background. I've seen people do this before, and then they decide to use black text over the scattery tree-filled background. It totally kills me. ><

 

 

 

Reply

So, it seems that, the good practices should be "draw something nice". And I see that, for each of us, "something nice" is "someghing I am happy to see, someting I feel comfortable".
Unfortunately, I would say that there is no real answer, execept "artist's freedom"!
Why are some artists successful and some others are not ? Why do you like a painting, and somebody does not like it ?
I must confess that, on my own sites, I do exactly what has been told here not to be done. I like black fonts on a yellow background. I love putting photographs as background. Unfortunately, it makes myself happy, but maybe I am the only guy happy with this ? Maybe that's why almost nobody comes and visits my site ?
So, to summerize, you should first thint about "who will have to visit my site" ? If the people visiting your site love italic fonts on pink background, you should give them what they want. This is probably the reason why some professional website designers are successful, and some others are not.
And, unfortunately, I'm afraid that this topic is in the artistic field, so probably you will not be successful until you go to an art schools and learn how to design nice things.
Regards
Yordan

 

 

 

Reply

Alot of succesful web designers I would assume, do to some extent cater to the audience they are attempting to target, or to the requirements of a client etc...

I build mine the way I like it, I don't mind advice or critism but if I like something the way it is and it works, then it stays.

Reply

What you just mentioned is one of the most common problems People create things THEY like, without thinking about other people. Some do it on purpose (like you), and some just think that everyone will like their design. I believe that all web designers (including me) start the second way. I used to create really ugly sites just because I thought they were really cool. It took me over a year to realize what people really like. Fortunately, I've managed to skip the group which deliberately creates sites only they like, and now I can create a template that 70 percent of the visitors will like.

Reply

Heh heh, the trick to me is that I don't care , I only built mine for the purpose of learning PHP/Mysql and anything else I find necessary on the way and finding out common ways of implementing certain features such as user login system, forum, shoutbox, news, files, tutorials etc...

If I was trying to really sell something, make money from advertisements (on a more serious level) and such then I would re-consider how to design the site.

Reply

I'm sure it varies depending on what sort of site you're making and how its implemented, but I know a lot of people find the marquee tag very annoying/unprofessional... I dunno, I've used it a couple times, but I guess if there's too much motion on a page it looks just as bad as too little.

These tips are very good; I'm going to go play with that color scheme generator because the last layout I spat out has a terrible color scheme (plum and forest green ... I saw the combinaton on a shampoo bottle and thought it would look nice ) and this little tool looks very useful.

Reply

It certainly is, I use it quite often for web deveoping as it gives you the RGB and Hex values so you can do a quick copy/paste/save and re-load to see the changes.

Actaully, I think a nice lightish forest green colour scheme would be nice, might take a bit of playing around to get it just right though.

Reply

I agree. Some people use a small picture file to make that blue and white background. Other use another small picture file that is always repeating itself. I am using one of those right now for my page, and the page looks amazing.

So you can use background picture files, but nothing huge or not a lot of them stacked or bunched up together. Something simple or small.

But other than that, don't use pictures. Color is the best not only because not a long time to load, but also because viewers of your website will pay attention to the other pictures on your site, and not to the background. Thats all I have to add.

Reply

Also I'd like to add:
always use valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
Ensure Cross-Client Compatibility.
NEVER use an html builder.

Reply

I have to say that many of these are excellent considerations to take into account when designing a website...

Although about background sound....99% of the time background sound/music is a bad idea, however there are certain cases where it makes sense. For example, if you have a website for a band or some music group, background music might be appropriate...

About having 'dynamic' things on the page....make sure that you don't put too much of that....honestly, i would prefer a page that has nothing moving on it most of the time...Websites with tons of scrolling text can be very distracting at times.

Reply