Hi I was just wondering if anyone had any suggestions on my site:
Only thing I wanted to do was to get that impact slide show not to overlap the stuff above and below it (site title and the blog module below) at certain widths…
one was saying the images are too big… i tired squashing them…
any other suggestions appreciated…
thanx & happy new year
It’s difficult to understand what design you are going for, but from this end, on a regular Mac with a regular size screen (1400x800iah) things seem to be a bit all over the place, with many elements partially sitting over others, making them hard to read etc.
Perhaps this is by design, but as I say, hard to know.
The page size is also huge, over 20mb. I suspect most of that is images.
Without understanding the general design you are going for it’s hard to comment on the general look and feel, but as a general comment, I’d suggest you need to have a complete rethink, as at the moment you are making an awful lot of UI mistakes, which may severely impact the success of the site.
Here is my impression of the site, it’s not necessarily worth anything.
[1] The home page took 1.5 minutes to load for me and transferred >23Mb of content. That’s not really good enough, lots of visitors will just give up before the page has even loaded. The slideshow images are the chief culprits here.
[2] The content overlaps - of which there are many - are not adding to the site, to my eye they are a detraction.
[3] The huge site title.png looks messy and you are missing out on having that as an H1 which probably would have been better from an SEO perspective. That image might have been better as some sort of logo.
[4] Spacing content is essential to create a feeling of visual rythmn which is easy on the eye and supports consumption/comprehension of the content. The site does not have any of that, it looks like the content has been splatted onto the page. Look at the sites of any of the foremost RW Add on designers to see what I mean - give your eyes room to breath.
[5] The images, such as the b/w greytone flourish just don’t fit. Too big… grainy… out of place.
[6] There does not seem to be any colour palette underpinning the page - the backgrounds are a sort of clay/mud. The menu is a sort of blue-purple, the menu highlight is almost a pastel-y blue, while the text is off-white, but the links are unstyled completely.
[7] The typography is, for me, one of the most serious issues. The mixture of fonts, swinging from elaborate/ornate to unstyled creates a bit of a swirling mess which is bothersome to actually read.
[8] It’s not clear what the site actually “is”? As far as I can see its a collection of images and words which suggest ideas, but its not clear what the site is “for”.
Fundamentally, I agree with @TemplateRepo. It looks like you have the tools (Foundry and other stacks), now maybe take a step back and think about how to use them to create cohesive designs. If the site you are making is for a client, I would just be careful about showing it to them just now.
Look at lots of professionally designed sites. Study their use of color, spacing, typography in order
to create a pleasing UX. Look at how those sites have a message, a purpose and make it clear to the
user what they are about and how to interact/commit/buy/read more/connect.
Find a site that captures what you are going for - then take your time and build it as a training project
in RapidWeaver/Stacks. Pay attention to the details and don’t give up. It’s fun and you’ll learn a lot.
Took over a minute to load over my 300mb+ fibre. I almost gave up.
When it did eventually load, I couldn’t figure out what it was trying to tell me, and the layout is messy and confusing.
I agree with the previous posters, so won’t repeat everything they’ve said, but these days the move is to “less is more”. If the landing page doesn’t convey the message/call-to-action within a couple of seconds, it’s not working.
@indridcold has nailed it - look at some great websites, and try to emulate what they’re doing, design-wise. And +1 for don’t give up!
The impact slider takes a while. Is there a way to get that a “lazy load”? Where it loads in the background?
Yea I would have preferred to use header for the site title but it just would not resize… kept getting cut off when the window size changes… If anyone knows a good stack… i’m using foundry and if there is a setting that dynamically shrinks or expands the text please let me know… all i see is it has 3 breakpoints… and thats… just not working as it gets cut off…
There actually only 2 things over lapping… So probably what your seeing is impact overlapping. which is not what I wanted… trying to fix but dunno how. I guess I could just not use the position stack for that and position the others around it…
Thing Adam said is … rapidweaver can’t be used as a layout tool… I kinda need it to be a layout tool. If I can’t put stuff where I want it… I don’t think I will be able to use rapidweaver… Everweb will be my only help there I suppose.
I mean is UIkit or Platform more a layout tool? I thought stacks would be more helpful in that area.
any suggestions welcome
@pacman7293 If a user is downloading 23 Mb of content then “lazy loading” will help, but only marginally. The key is to have a LOT LESS stuff to download. This is mainly due to the images used. Useful to read about image optimization for the web. As a very general rule you don’t want folks to have to download more than 1 Mb or so (especially on the home/landing page). So this requires a massive rethink on your part, plus learning how to resize images and then optimize them.
As for layouts: No web tool is a print layout tool. It’s a web layout tool: and those are very different things. RapidWeaver and Foundry make great web layout tools. You really need to do some learning about web design and not stick to your ideas about print design.
Mathew check out Everweb if you think you cannot put things where you want them in any web design software. Everweb (using fixed width not responsive) allows effortless layout. But it’s not responsive.
Give us an example, a simple one ideally, of what you reckon you cannot do. I honestly feel, at this stage, that you have the tools, but not the technique (not a criticism!).
With a bit of patience and learning you can more or less put what you want where you like. But much, much more importantly, with that learning you’ll realise that if a layout is hard to achieve, or maybe not possible - there is probably a very good reason why that is the case.
Look at Foundry for example, look at how it was designed to work… how the components gel together to promote well fitted end to end designs. Use that to your advantage and don’t fight with it. Trust the professionals who made that so.
I’ve alway seen RW (thanks to Stacks, of course), as an excellent layout and rapid prototyping tool.
@pacman7293 Not sure what to say. If a website isn’t responsive these days then … it’s not really a website! So many folks use phones and tablets. … but sure … if you think Everweb will get you what you want then please try it out.
You’ve received a ton of great advice from @indridcold and @TemplateRepo and @jacksona. I’m not sure you are actually “listening” to them.
Look buddy @Mathew you’re kinda trolling and i’m not interested in being trolled again. Please just leave this discussion. Thanks.
I now think I posted to you on the foundry forum, can’t recall what about, but I do think I asked you to clarify what you were actually trying to achieve in layout terms. From memory you didn’t respond or got sorted?
Perhaps now is the time to explain what you are trying to achieve? Then, those of us with experience of Rapidweaver can offer advice.
OK I’m simply trying to put a image, next to another image. side by side. Then have a silder below those images. And have ONE image overlap it. on the left.
THATS IT.
Mainly talking about the top portion. You can see what it is. Two images. It was a header but that didn’t resize so i made it an image. The slider is below it. I don’t want it overlapping anything Just to be behind the silver leaf. …
What??
@Mathew is NOT a troll and if that’s what you think then you are beyond edification. Apology expected.
OK i’m done. Please delete this thead. I did not want this to become a pile on thread starter contest.
thanks anyway
Not sure who that is aimed at, but pretty sure no one on this thread has the ability to delete threads.
Happy new year.
“No good deed goes unpunished”.
Sorry @pacman7293, but judging by your MANY other threads, both here and on the Foundry forum, you seem to have a very fixed idea of how you want to do things, and no amount of great advice seems to be listened to.
@Mathew is anything BUT a Troll. In my experience, he’s been nothing but helpful to you and many other people.
Good luck with your website.