Dear Fellow Webmasters,

I'm not a pro webmaster or webdesigner, no formal training whatsoever but I've been on the net for 16 years now so I kind of know my way around

I run an educational hobbyist site focused on teaching and raising awareness of responsible fishkeeping internationally. It was one of the first of its kind, started in October 1997, so it'll be completing 10 years of existence in 2 months, and I was thinking about celebrating the occasion by doing some kind of facelift on the website design, maybe implement some Web 2.0 concepts, but without departing too much from the look and feel that my faithful visitors have grown used to. Any ideas?

Here's the Main Page: Age of Aquariums - Tropical Fish - Main Page

A typical Section Index: Freshwater Tropical Fish Photos & Species Profiles at the Age of Aquariums

And a typical Content Page: Betta (Siamese Fighting Fish) - Betta splendens

I still do everything from scratch by using Photoshop and typing code directly in Textpad, and like I said I'm no pro. Any and all critiques of the present design and suggestions for a new design would be much appreciated!

It does not need a facelift

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Dave Barnes
+1.303.744.9024
http://www.marketingtactics.com
sitting in my basement with my iMac

I agree w/ davebarnes - The site appears to be well built and probably doesn't need a facelift. It looks like the site has evolved over the course of the years and already has quite a bit of modern features (ie: user generated content, etc.).

If the site is still working and you're not losing traffic or conversions (to your goal), then you're probably ok. Perhaps you could send out a press release or have a contest of some sort instead of a facelift.

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I really like the site too. The only suggestion I have is to use a more contrasting color for the background in the text box of the overview. This might help break up the content and make it more digestible to take in. Great job...

Enjoyed your site. Even bookmarked the page about Betta fish (my wife has had several over the past few years). I understand what you mean about changing the look, but you don't really need an update. Your site has withstood the march of time. You may want to change the color scheme and change the fish in the upper left. What you are really looking to do is add a little flair, a fresh coat of paint, not remodel the whole place.

Speaking as an aqua hobbyist myself the site is great and nothing to sweat over. It's the content that is fantastic. Really great for someone who is into the subject for whom content wins over style every time. Yea, you could re-skin it but you'd be doing that for you, because you're probably sick of seeing the current scheme. It would add nothing for me.

I do find the menu a little confusing. All the fascinating tropical fish info I want in under "Gallery". I'd expect this to be called the Species Files or something similar.

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Malcolm Cooper
Internet Marketing Business Tips

The site owner (especially when the owner is the designer) gets tired with the site before the user ever does. Don't change for the sake of change.

That said, ask yourself what problems users have with the site? You know the people who actually are trying to get things done.

For example, let's say you are on the content page. The question arises "which fish go together?" You have designed the page for information on the singular purchase.

Tell me, how many customers have one type of fish?

You may find customers aren't buying as much as the could because they don't know the results of putting a "fighting fish" in with others. A compatibility factor might be called for.

Many sites are built to get the user to that one purchase, and out. Well lots of customers might come in looking for one fish, but not know how that fish fits in the context of an aquarium with three, five or a dozen different species. Almost every site limits the amount of business they could be doing by not looking at the big picture.

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Design Crux - infographic design,
content strategy Visual Merchandising online

You spell fishkeeping here, but fish keeper there ... but I suppose fishkeeper sounds too officially titular, like zookeeper....

I'd think of adding a live background of little fishies swimming about, and, Changing the cursor to--
1. a hook,-- and all the little fishies avoid the hook, or nibble at its bait
2. a garrishly fake fish,-- ...
3, a fish net,-- ...
4. a worm,
5. a fly.

Although the fish in the upper left is okay, it seems to look larger than life-- like a bass fishing site... maybe that fish needs more color.

You could have a single fish darting-about --morphing-- and sniffing a fishbait cursor until you move it ...

Overall,--

I'd think of refitting the page as an aquarium screensaver ... text blurring to rocky-colors until touched again. [MSIE 'blur' Behavior, or FLASH]

If you do go this way, -screensaver,- individual click-tabs could be larger objects, with their spellings tagging rather than boxed adjacent.

Ray.

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Mr. Raymond Kenneth Petry
Lanthus Corporation

Just want to thank everyone for the compliments and the excellent feedback. You've given me a lot of food for thought and I've already changed my views on the issue, although I still plan on adding a little "fresh coat of paint" here and there as jxw said.

Since everyone was so helpful, let me shoot another quick question: what about "site/code validation", is this something that a 10 year old, non-commercial site that's already massively indexed deserves any effort? As I said previously, I just type almost everything manually in Textpad using very primitive HTML, and the pages don't even have a defined doctype. Would there be any benefit in investing time in that direction? I mean in terms of SEO, loading times, whatever...