Right track?

jgarner · #1 (**permalink**) 04-11-2006, 03:24 PM

I have recently started this site www.smilelikeadoughnut.com with a few friends. We are all very new at web design. The end goal is to sell shirts, but we also want to include pics, stories, and general humor. We don't want to have a site "professionally" made as we like the idea of in house creation. Keep in mind it isn't done, but I would like to know if we seem to be on the right track. Is there any different way you would design/layout? Any suggestions are more than greatly appreciated.

tedellis · #2 (**permalink**) 04-11-2006, 07:21 PM

An amusing site but looking at your code you lack a DOCTYPE at the very start!

No DOCTYPE Declaration Found!
A DOCTYPE Declaration is mandatory for most current markup languages and without one it is impossible to reliably validate a document.

One should place a DOCTYPE declaration as the very first thing in an HTML document. For example, for a typical XHTML 1.0 document:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
<head>

<title>Title</title>
</head>

<body>

</body>

</html>

bj · #3 (**permalink**) 04-11-2006, 07:25 PM

Umm, it's very . . . 90's.

I think you're going to find that if you can be businesslike AND funny without getting offensive you'll do better with this.

joseweb · #4 (**permalink**) 04-11-2006, 08:26 PM

Dude, between the "doughnut" smiles and the white stuff dripping off of everything, I wouldn't guess this is a t-shirt site.

Now for a perspective that's not in the gutter, Your menu is severely over-photoshopped. As a graphic designer, I cringed at first sight of your site, but hey, to each their own. I would suggest developing some organization to your body text, as it looks like a mind-dump flowing down the center of your page.

That's all for now folks.

Keimos · #5 (**permalink**) 04-11-2006, 09:05 PM

Hi jgarner,

Why no links on the most obvious place

Funny Shirts | Stupid Stories | Good Music | Crazy Pics

As below, your site will only attract certain people and will chase customers away, your choice. Everybody to there own humour.

The site concept is great. Just try not to insult your audience, if possible.

Keimos

Faglork · #6 (**permalink**) 04-11-2006, 09:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by joseweb

Dude, between the "doughnut" smiles and the white stuff dripping off of everything, I wouldn't guess this is a t-shirt site.

Indeed. Definitely not a site you will want to be caught looking at ... ;-)

"Fun for the whole family" is a bit on the far side, with wording like "cum on in", "You can also use this site to promote whatever stupid or mean shit you're doing" or "mean ass crazy stories" you will certainly not attract families, so maybe you should make clear what your target audience is.

As far as the code goes ... "we don't want to have a site 'professionally' made" is not an excuse for sloppy coding. There are no *big* problems but you could do much better, using cleaner code, and using CSS for styling (your CSS use is only rudimentary). This will make site maintainance and future design changes much easier.

hth,
faglork

sands · #7 (**permalink**) 04-12-2006, 04:38 AM

I agree with most of what everyone says about the sites look. But if you wish to retain the same look (I know how emotional some folks are about their design), just one suggestion. Make the top margin zero so that the "white stuff dripping off" the top looks like it is dripping off the Address Bar :-) Would make things look better to some extent.

sarahseddon · #8 (**permalink**) 04-12-2006, 06:54 AM

This will probably depress you (I doubt I'm your target audience - I'm mid 40's)but I liked your website! I'm a fan to T shirts with slogans - though think they must be funny not mean. One comment though from a very fussy English speaker - re you sshh .. just <lay> there. It should be sshh .. just <lie> there. In the English language, you have to lay something (ho, ho I know). In other words lay the table. Lay is intransitive!! Anyway, just thought you'd like to know.

From very fussy middle aged English person, who's proving to be very hung up about the english language

jgarner · #9 (**permalink**) 04-12-2006, 09:44 AM

Awesome,

Most of you think you're being too hard. Not so. As I said I am very new and I love the crticism. Ill work on the navigation this week. The Doctype I had some problems with as nothing I put in there would validate for WC3. I have a lot to learn and this stuff helps. Very much appreciated. Thank you again. Keep em coming if at all possible.