cleaning up an ugly site with your criticism

Well, I don’t think it’s “ugly” per se. I always have a hard time with black, and rusty red adds to that perception problem.

I very much like the overall, especially on the permalinked page from your test posts – the chrome yellow is better, for instance, than the black on the main page as are the other colors, though the best one (my POV only!) is the dusty rose in Films.

I also like the change of color from category – nice feel, and a good way to track where one is on the site. Except for the rose, all the colors are too strong for me personally, but your subject matter seems to fit with them – and for that reason, you might like to “strengthen” the rose saturation-wise, so that it fits better with the other color selection in categories.

Really, the only thing at all off-putting is the black with red on the main page.

I’m trying to find colours that match the red i nthe film section – it was just chance that it worked together, so since then I’ve been trying hard to make everything else flow but it’s really not coming off the way I want it too. I think aside from the red, everything else is really overly strong.

What about in terms structure does it work? Is the site too big, too small, etc?

Jinsan from your CSS
#sidebar {
position: relative;
float: right;
width: 140px;
right: 20px;
top: 20px;
padding-bottom: 0px;
background-color: #fff;
text-align: left;
color: #000;
font-size: 8pt;
text-transform: lowercase;
}

What is all .this stuff ?? ?

I think the structure works fine. I didn’t check your css (Root did, I see!) nor did I hunt up IE – in FF it all works fine….

I’d be happy to send along some “go with” colors which are more in keeping with the rose if you like. Or if that doesn’t appeal, try the Color Scheme Generator mentioned a few days ago….

well I’ve tried to find more subtle variation in the colour, and I think it actually works better to give the individual falvour of each topic.

I seem to be having a slight 1px problem with all the footer/content area where there’s a white gap between the two.

Was thinking of adding rounded corners. I’m still not sure what to do about the black and red on the Home bit. I was thinking of using black as a trim, creating the content area in white, and making the sidebar (possibly) black. The home bit is meant to be a front page that says “welcome monkeys get your free bananas here” or something of that description so it wouldn’t actually show the posts. I’m not 100% certain on that.

Still need to find suitable stock images for the headers and then add content and so much. Spent ages adding a tonne of quicktags to make the process easier, then I have 213 reviews to copy and paste exluding those on my hdd…with images no less…

So, how do the colours feel now, I sense you have some sort of lusty affair going on with your friend dusty rose…

I like them better now…. but you still have the feel of “being” somewhere special. I wonder how it would work to make the front page a black background, and use that yummy velvety dark grey for the content section? Then the red text wouldn’t disappear so much….

I was thinking along the same lines. I know what my friend is going to say though. “You used black for a page? That’s rubbish!”. I swear, I don’t know if the guy has some allergy to using black as a background but he seriously hates it.

I’ll give the home bit a going over tomorrow after I’m done with hospital.

Thanks for your input andif you have anything more to say, please do, I’m always open to opinions.

Ciao fer now

Well, normally I’m not a “black page” fan either, but in this case I think it makes sense….

Have a good shift…. see ya!

your ‘recent games’ image is too long and gets cut off