Amateur Weaver's Site Debut

(Brad Dawkins) #1

I have finally gone live with my new website (yankee-lake.org). I created this for our lake community after the existing site creator retired and could not sell his company, so he was shutting down our site. I am a retiree who started this project with only very basic html experience from years ago. I decided to use RapidWeaver and the Foundation framework. The result (yankee-lake.org) still has about a half-dozen pages in development (three under the “About” menu, and a Gallery), but it was ready enough to go public.

I extend special gratitude for RapidWeaver, Stacks (@isaiah), Foundation (@joeworkman), Big White Duck (@tav), Nick Cates Design (@nickcates), Will Woodgate (@willwood), and the RapidWeaver community. One of the requirements for the site (yankee-lake.org) was that all the old folks like me needed to be able to read it without their reading glasses! I am very happy with the result, but would appreciate any feedback from the weavers on this forum!

(doug asherman) #2

I have a little feedback, but it’s all tied to my personal taste and not related to functionality. So take it with a giant shaker of salt. The thing I would change is the background color of the pages – it’s a little bright for extended reading (for me, anyway).

On the other hand, the layout, the menu – nice. And it is definitely readable. Doesn’t hurt that you have a collection of beautiful banner photos, either.

Also, I had no idea loons were carnivores! That’s my surprise of the day.

(Thomas Roegner) #3

Thanks Brad
for sharing. It is a very good website! Learned a lot about yankee lake and the community.
And the story about the eagles - great!!
Thank you for building this website - the Rapidweaver community though not living at one place is as good a community you have there at yankee lake.
Just drop questions or problems here - I always found a lot of people willing to help and share knowledge and experience. In my humble opinion the Rapidweaver community is one of the best in the internet.
Keep up the good work for yankee lake.

(David Freels) #4

Spectacular!

Very well done.

I’d love to see more photography.

(Will Woodgate) #5

A very good website. I love the photography. The bigger-than-average font size and attractive font face are also very pleasing.

I agree with the other comment that the blue colour of the text against the blue background could benefit from added contrast. I’m viewing the website on a high-end colour calibrated designer monitor, and the navigation bar / navigation links at the top are faint and hard to read. I would be tempted to tone the blue background colour down and perhaps add a slight textured / ripple pattern to make it look less flat.

You also have an issue with the footer area in Firefox 68 you may want to investigate further. The lines of text are jumbled together. More line height needed?

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Making the phone number a ‘tel’ link could also assist people on smartphones.

(Andrew Tavernor) #8

Thank you. You are most welcome.

(Brad Dawkins) #9

@douga : Thanks for looking the site over. I understand and agree with the issue with the bright (and flat) background. Also, if the menu drop down lands over an expanse of this background blue, the secondary menu gets lost in that background. I have tried different color gradients and textures and have not found the combination yet that I like. But that is something I am definitely working on. Thank you again for the feedback!

@capetom: I totally agree with you about the RapidWeaver community. I have been a “lurker” on lots of the threads, learning from the community. I have also worn out the search button, looking up my issues, and seeing if others have had the same question.

I must, however, give a special hat-tip to Andrew Tavernor (@tav). I had endless questions about some of the Foundation and Big White Duck stacks. @tav stuck with me until everything was sorted, explaining and providing CSS “fixes” if that is what was needed. I have seen Andrew’s guidance and influence scattered all over this and other RapidWeaver forums. His help made all the difference when I was stuck!

@davidfreels: Thanks for looking the site over! I have a Gallery in the works, but it will be a while yet before I release it.

@willwood See my note to Doug above about the background color. It is in the works, but I’m not satisfied with it yet.

But the real problem is that footer. I was aware that Internet Explorer 11 had this issue with the footer, but I had not seen it in any other browser. I think the problem is that I define line height in Foundation Site Styles, but that was making the footer lines (in ParagraphPro) look double-spaced. I adjusted the line height in ParagraphPro to get what I was after, and all the browsers I tested in except IE 11 were displaying properly. I thought it was a quirk of IE 11’s CSS interpretation, but apparently not. I will have to scrutinize that one again. Thanks for the review, and this important catch!

(doug asherman) #10

I’m glad I can be of help. As far as colors go, I was pointed to a site just today that looks very helpful.

I’m not sure if this will help for exactly what you’re trying to do, but there might be some good ideas for gradient combinations there.

(Brad Dawkins) #11

@douga, @capetom, @davidfreels,@willwood, @joemart1951: Thank you all for looking at my site (yankee-lake.org). I have made some changes based on your recommendations: I fixed the footer problem (I hope!) that was showing in Internet Explorer 11 and FireFox. I used the “tel” parameter for the footer telephone number. I’m not sure I did that correctly–I simply made the phone number a link, which was prefaced by “tel:”. Seemed to work… I “unflattened” the mariner blue background by introducing a tiled subtle wave-like SVG pattern throughout, and a pale blue vignette around the edges of the page. (I was trying to subconsciously suggest deeper water in the center of the page and feathered shallowing of the water toward the edge. Whatever…) A made some subtle changes to the sub-menus, giving the drop down a pale blue shadow all around, and making the hovered-over text black instead of dark blue. I am working on placing the multipage document displays that are in the accordion on the “YLPA” page, into scrolling boxes, but that is still in process. I was striving for subtlety in the design changes, while addressing the issues you all pointed out. Thank you again for applying your design experience to my site. It is definitely better as a result!