VillaDominio.com - First attempt - Feedback please.

[McDot]

Based on the template contest at:

http://www.namepros.com/design-contests/260884-req-template-domainmarket-template-psd-contest.html

I have started to get down to the coding.

The oficial launching is on January 1st, but the landing page is online to start getting the seach engines interested in the contents. Seo and backlinks are in progress as we intend to get PR on the next update expected around end of the year. Further contents are also in progress, but will be put online just before January 1st together with some of the other related sites.

The main site is at www.VillaDominio.com as well as www.VillaDominio.es

The related forum is also setup and running. Table based layout has been ripped appart Design is adapted to the look and feel of the site. You can access the forum at the main menu point "Foro" as well as at its own domain : www.ForoDominio.es

Please note that there some specific issues to still be decided. I would very much appreciate your input for these issues:

Design of the sub menu (left on the main site and right on the forum)
Color setup for the buttons and symbols in the forum.

Just for your information:
The banners are just place holders.
A list of the 5 last forum posts willbe implemented on the left of the main site, under the sub menu.
The graphic symbols of the forum are still in german. Translation (english and spanish) to be done while redesigning.
The main site language is to be spanish.
Feel free to login to the forum if you like or pm me for test user access.

Looking forward to your coments.

Thanks in advance.

 

[dotnom]

First of all center the table. In large screen doesn't look good to aligh left

 

[estibot.com]

I agree - centering would be good for a fixed-width design. Consider a variable width design. Otherwise, the design looks straightforward and professional, nothing fancy which is good, on the other hand not especially beautiful, but for a business domain it looks solid.

 

[McDot]

Thanks for your feedback.

As you can see in the requirements for the contest (link posted above) it was exactly that what we wanted. A clean, solid, straight forward design. I think we achieved this with the winning design. (thanks Sylense!) This whole project and all subprojects planed will have a great variety of diferent contents, so I find this design particularly flexible for all sorts of content types. The best example is the present integration of the forum.

As for centering, I'll give it a try, but I actually wanted to leave it left aligned.

I have just adapted the colors of the forum a little better and done the spanish translation of the graphic buttons and symbols. Tomorrow I'll get the english version ready and add the english categories to the forum.

What do you think about the colors of the forum symbols and buttons?

I've been trying around a little

Gray is too boring.
Red is to heavy
Yellow is to bright

I nearly think I could leave them orange. I'm sort of getting used to it.

Any opinions?

 

[ajkendall]

the site needs centering, it doesn't look too good on ahigh res and 19" monitor, the color scheme is nice but it seems to lack something, it only uses 2 colors really i would try and get another one in there somewhere, the logo is nice and works well, but the ends of the site doesn't seem to have any proportion to it, the header and footer go out about 30 pixels more than the content and everything just cuts off the sides (right side)

i would change the background from white because it's too plain and bland, with the content areas being white also it makes it looks like there's too much, i would maybe add a bg image or gradient to the site

 

[McDot]

Thank you all for your feedback.

I'll be rewriting the CSS within the next few days, get it simplified a little, tryout the centering, and get a little color into the sub menu.

Will post again when I'm finished.

 

[McDot]

OK, I've done a little work on the site.

The css is now a little "cleaner". The forced absolute and relative positionings are gone and the semantic build up is now correct.

The site is now centered, although I actually prefer it left aligned.

The subnavigation is now setup, but I am still thinking about how to enhace it a little.

The forum symbols and buttons are now translated. Spanish, German and Englisch are available. I'm sort of getting used to the orange color of the symbols. What would you say?
An alternative would be something like this: http://www.forodominio.es/images/reply.gif

I'm also having a css problem that I haven't managed to workaround yet:

The subnavigation looks correct in IE7, Firefox and Opera, even Firefox and Conqueror under Linux are fine, but the IE6 (Windows of course) shows a gap of about 10px between the navigation points.

Anyone an idea?

Here the link to the site again:

www.villadominio.com