My new website. [Give me ratings]

[DarkDragonLord]

Hi everyone!

Well, i'm soon releasing my new website so i need you to tell ma about it,give me ratings, critiques, ideas, etc.

Right now just layout and systems/codes working. I'll start adding content soon.

It is multi-language support so you can change languages in thwe upper right menu. It detects browser language. If portuguese, website is portuguese. If not, start in english. Btw, it already save a cookie with the language setting that expires in 1month.

Where is "english side" will be buttons, RSS and other options.

The news system is cutenews. (still making the news layout.) And the counter is bbclone. Speaking of it, disregard about the PHP error in the footer, i've disabled the counter yet, since i didnt official opened the website,i dont want it to count my own visits for testing.

Buttons are PNG so, if you are using a browser without PNG transparency support, i've added a pngbehavior hack, so when website finishes loading, the transparency channel of PNG become trasparent using a blank gif.

And contact form is php+AJAX, working already ^^

The link is:
http://www.raphaelddl.com/index.php

dont forget of the index.php since i setup'ed in htaccess that http://www.raphaelddl.com/ will go to "Under construction" page.

Just to finish, the website is based on the skin of my forums at --> http://forums.raphaelddl.com

Test everything and tell me any issues, layout problems or else.
Its made to work on 800x600 ++ resolutions. (In fact i did not tested on 800x600. If creates a horizontal scroll bar, please let me know!

And the slogan, tell me if you liked the "Designing Solutions for You"

Thanks for the replies!

 

[reichiru]

Hmm... doesn't look bad, good job on it. The gray parts, I'm not too sure about, but the rest looks pretty nice to me.

 

[coy_white]

I like it...

 

[knightcon]

I like it the site looks good, I especially like the the fact that you have made such an easy-to-use multi-lingual setup. A point though, on your contact form, you may want to add a javascript validator which makes sure that certain fields aren't empty, because I was able to send a comment through to you on it without having any of the fields filled out.

 

[zegadmin]

Over all layout very nice, fluent and eye catching. I don't know tons about web design but maybe some roll over effects on your navigation buttons possibly with sound?

 

[Emihaumut]

Hrmmm, I get a Warning: Variable passed to each() is not an array or object in /home/darkdrag/public_html/raphaelddl.com/index.php on line 509 which I don't think that's a good thing...

Where there's blue on the site, I love it. The header and the content area, however, just seem to abruptly end and become grey. The edges or more so the corners are too sharp. Perhaps you can put a border around it?

 

[DarkDragonLord]

I like it...

Thanks

I like it the site looks good, I especially like the the fact that you have made such an easy-to-use multi-lingual setup. A point though, on your contact form, you may want to add a javascript validator which makes sure that certain fields aren't empty, because I was able to send a comment through to you on it without having any of the fields filled out.

Hmm.. i forgot about that
thanks for the tip!

Over all layout very nice, fluent and eye catching. I don't know tons about web design but maybe some roll over effects on your navigation buttons possibly with sound?

hmm these could be done with flash only. If i do using html or/e java, the page load will be high and one of things i want is to a light load website.

Hrmmm, I get a Warning: Variable passed to each() is not an array or object in /home/darkdrag/public_html/raphaelddl.com/index.php on line 509 which I don't think that's a good thing...

Where there's blue on the site, I love it. The header and the content area, however, just seem to abruptly end and become grey. The edges or more so the corners are too sharp. Perhaps you can put a border around it?

answer for first paragraph is here

And the counter is bbclone. Speaking of it, disregard about the PHP error in the footer, i've disabled the counter yet, since i didnt official opened the website,i dont want it to count my own visits for testing.

for the border, i`ll try use the border you said and check if is good.

 

[shaunak]

Love the reflections and the language bars!

Totally adore the color scheme.

And the site loaded up very quickly [extra points for that!]

But I think the Background [the dark grey] could do with a little more blue in it, or maybe even a little pattern. [because a lot of it is visible on higher resolutions]

overall a 9.5/10 :biggrin:

 

[manzoor]

Nice site

but I would like to give a suggestion

Why not add an effect, when some one moves the mouse pointer over the navigation links it should get highlighted , I don't what it is called I forgot lol

Overall nice site

 

[Grandcruiser]

Nice website...very neat but yeah I agree...probably put some Flash action in there if you can.

 

[DarkDragonLord]

Love the reflections and the language bars!

Totally adore the color scheme.

And the site loaded up very quickly [extra points for that!]

But I think the Background [the dark grey] could do with a little more blue in it, or maybe even a little pattern. [because a lot of it is visible on higher resolutions]

overall a 9.5/10 :biggrin:

Hmm..
lets see, i'll check what safe web color is good to add as bg to change the gray and i'll post here to you ppl see the changes.

Thanks for the 9.5 \o/~

Nice site

but I would like to give a suggestion

Why not add an effect, when some one moves the mouse pointer over the navigation links it should get highlighted , I don't what it is called I forgot lol

Overall nice site

i was thinking on that but, as i told previously, i want website to be loaded fast. If i add a highlight, when a person put the mouse over, the button will disappear and then, load the new img. I could use it with a java script that i have that load all imgs i want when loading the page but this could make website a lil slow. Then, i could make with flash but some people still dont have flash or flash is blocked or a lot of things that could be a problem for using it.

 

[jdpalmer]

Do NOT put flash in just to make animated buttons. A simple javascript image swap would suffice. There's no need in add sound, either. How many times do you visit a site with an mp3 playing and get annoying sounds coming through every time you roll over or click a button? Too many.

I agree with the others about the gray. A blue pattern would be nice, to help the eye fade from the center div to the edges of the screen. Also, it would help if the center div (or, looking at the source, is it a table?) were dynamic, instead of its width being pre-defined. There are a lot of desktops stretching to insane resolutions these days, and they would just get an eyeful of gray.

Other than that, very professional looking buttons and nice language switcher. Also, as was already stated, nice quick load (which will change if you add Flash). Nice, clean design.

 

[nightscream]

not bad

takes a while to load!!!

 

[DarkDragonLord]

Do NOT put flash in just to make animated buttons. A simple javascript image swap would suffice. There's no need in add sound, either. How many times do you visit a site with an mp3 playing and get annoying sounds coming through every time you roll over or click a button? Too many.

I agree with the others about the gray. A blue pattern would be nice, to help the eye fade from the center div to the edges of the screen. Also, it would help if the center div (or, looking at the source, is it a table?) were dynamic, instead of its width being pre-defined. There are a lot of desktops stretching to insane resolutions these days, and they would just get an eyeful of gray.

Other than that, very professional looking buttons and nice language switcher. Also, as was already stated, nice quick load (which will change if you add Flash). Nice, clean design.

nice post

well, the content area is a DIV with a table inside (to format the content) since all tries i did with divs failed (im not good enought with css yet T__T). I made it pre-defined since i dont like too much of that width 100%, just made at header. I have serious problems with that since, for example, have the table with 2 columns. 1 for content and 1 for side buttons. The side buttons i want a fixed width (ex.: 180px) and the the content could be stretched if needed. But everytime i try put just content as width100%, it bug the fixed column :dunno::dunno:. So i gave up and went back to make language switch fully work.

anywyas, i've changed the gray to a dark blue but i got a question
wich you will think its better?

#0e316b (the current forum's BGCOLOR) -->

or this one:
#336699 -->

i liked more the second one, what you ppl think

 

[manzoor]

second one

 

[DarkDragonLord]

=]

i've added second one in the layout and changed a lil the images, so, check out ^^

i'm adding right now the side bar so layout might be weird while i'm implementing it




edit:


k, i finished adding it. The lower left corner is not a error, i made that way. You might understand if go to the pages without content. It fits with the squared footer and right side ^_^

 

[jdpalmer]

For what it's worth, I like the first background better - the darker blue, mainly because it makes the content stand out better. A couple more suggestions:

1) The "Choose Your Language:" text and the language icons are all the way on the edge of the window, which looks a little unprofessional; would do well to add a margin there (is it a div? style="padding: 10px;" should be right...)

2) The Contact form could be lined up better. May as well put the elements in a table (there are better ways with CSS, but tables are good for a quick fix). For example, you can create the table width however you want, and then do,

<tr>
<td width="20%"><label for="user_name">Your name:</label></td>
<td width="80%"><input type="text" id="user_name" style="width:100%;" /></td>
</tr>

3) I still think you should create a rollover effect for the nav buttons at the top. It really helps the user to know where he's clicking, and the images seem small enough for it to not be too bad a load time.

These are all minor things, though. All in all, a great design

 

[Slothie]

I'd consider it to be an error It wouldn't be too hard to implement something like

if (is_array($data)) {
//foreach something
} else {
//display a no data message
}

 

[DarkDragonLord]

I'd consider it to be an error It wouldn't be too hard to implement something like

if (is_array($data)) {
//foreach something
} else {
//display a no data message
}

to what are you referring ?





ahh, now i understood. You are giving a PHP solution to that info check at contact form, isnt it ?

lemme check if can do that, the code isnt mine so i dunno if this could work.














edit:

i've tried but dont worked, maybe i'm making something wrong :S
the contact uses this JS

function createRequestObject() {
    var ro;
    var browser = navigator.appName;
    if(browser == "Microsoft Internet Explorer"){
        ro = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
    }else{
        ro = new XMLHttpRequest();
    }
    return ro;
}

var http = createRequestObject();

function sendemail() {
	var msg = document.contactform.msg.value;
	var name = document.contactform.name.value;
	var email = document.contactform.email.value;
	var subject = document.contactform.subject.value;
	document.contactform.send.disabled=true; 
	document.contactform.send.value='Enviando|Sending';

    http.open('get', 'contact/contact.php?msg='+msg+'&name='+name+'&subject='+subject+'&email='+email+'&action=send');
    http.onreadystatechange = handleResponse;
    http.send(null);
}

function handleResponse() {
    if(http.readyState == 4){
        var response = http.responseText;
        var update = new Array();

        if(response.indexOf('|' != -1)) {
            update = response.split('|');
            document.getElementById(update[0]).innerHTML = update[1];
         
        }
    }
}

the send button calls this function sendmail().



and the contact php is

<?php
$to = "ddl@raphaelddl.com"; //This is the email address you want to send the email to
$subject_prefix = "Raphael DDL.com"; //Use this if you want to have a prefix before the subject

if(!isset($_GET['action']))
{
die("You must not access this page directly!"); //Just to stop people from visiting contact.php normally
}

/* Now lets trim up the input before sending it */

$name = trim($_GET['name']); //The senders name
$email = trim($_GET['email']); //The senders email address
$subject = trim($_GET['subject']); //The senders subject
$message = trim($_GET['msg']); //The senders message


if (is_array($name,$email,$subject,$message)) {

mail($to,$subject,$message,"From: ".$email.""); //a very simple send

echo "contactarea|" .$texto['contact_thx'];

} else {

echo $texto['contact_error'] . "<br /> <a href=\"#\" onClick=\"history.go(-1)\">".$texto['back']."</a>";
}  

//now lets update the "contactarea" div on the contact.html page. The contactarea| tell's the javascript which div to update.
?>

while all $texto['something'] are the language variables.

i did something wrong? (ps.: im a php noob, im still learning :S)

the original contact php is this:

<?php

$to = "ddl@raphaelddl.com"; //This is the email address you want to send the email to
$subject_prefix = "Raphael DDL.com"; //Use this if you want to have a prefix before the subject

if(!isset($_GET['action']))
{
die("You must not access this page directly!"); //Just to stop people from visiting contact.php normally
}

/* Now lets trim up the input before sending it */

$name = trim($_GET['name']); //The senders name
$email = trim($_GET['email']); //The senders email address
$subject = trim($_GET['subject']); //The senders subject
$message = trim($_GET['msg']); //The senders message

mail($to,$subject,$message,"From: ".$email.""); //a very simple send

echo 'contactarea|Thank you '.$name.', your email has been sent.'; 
//now lets update the "contactarea" div on the contact.html page. The contactarea| tell's the javascript which div to update.
?>

what should i do?

 

[jdpalmer]

Are "contact_thx" and "contact_error" javascript variables? Your php code needs to be self-sufficient. The javascript will only dump out what the php writes; it will not examine the variables. So within the php code you need

$contact_thx="Email successful.";
$contact_error = "Problem sending email.";

And then your echoes would be:

echo "contactarea|" .$contact_thx;

and

echo "contactarea|" .$contact_error ."<br /> <a href=\"#\" onClick=\"history.go(-1)\">[Back]</a>";

Notice in the second echo, "contractarea|" was missing in your code as well, which is what told the javascript where to put the message.

Hope this helps.