The Dark Knight Tell me, What do you think?

[The-Dark-Knight]

Ok i've been working on this for a few days now, and would be really grateful if you guys would take a look at my Batman site. Before anyone Compares it to BOF the 2 sites are diffrent. Mine offers stuff that isn't on BOF and vise versa. i dont expect mine to be as big as BOF but the internet is a big place, if i picked up a small but dedicated following of Batman fans, that would be great. be really grateful if you guys would sign my message board or discussion board (as you people know what your talking about-most of the time ) once again thanks (and please be nice, its my first site) I have posted this in another forum before (diden't have the guts to put it in here, i just feel as its focusing alot on 'The Dark Knight' i thought it more relevent in here) so do forgive me for posting it again. Thanks in advance. www.The-dark-knight-.piczo.com

 

[The Shape]

Yeah, I saw this the other day when you posted it in Community. It's pretty good. A lot of info, but nothing we don't know or haven't seen already. Plus, a lot of this stuff is covered more extensively on BOF.

But good effort.

 

[Batty Belfry]

Nice!

 

[Batgort]

Great first site, keep up the good work!

 

[heypapajinx]

the site looks great!
thanks for all the info and totally hilarious video!!
i had never seen it before and totally laughed my butt off.
seriously, it's totally gone, i can't even sit down anymore.

 

[Mr. Superhero]

Anything done by "piczo" is utter ****e. So, I'm not even going to look.

 

[heypapajinx]

Anything done by "piczo" is utter ****e. So, I'm not even going to look.

my my. sounds like someones got a case of the Mondays.

 

[Ceb-Man]

good site. Keep up the good work.

 

[Mr. Superhero]

my my. sounds like someones got a case of the Mondays.

Sorry for stating a fact.

 

[Excel]

nice

 

[Fenrir]

I dunno whether you people are just being nice to him or are going to a totally different site, but the design and layout of that website sucks big time. It's just all over the place and looks like a slapstick job done by an obvious amateur that just got his copy of Microsoft Frontpage. Here's a piece of crucial advice - If you're creating a website in English, it pays to have a proper grasp of the basics and technicalities of the damn language. And friend, when posting news, do keep in mind proper word formatting - bigger and bolder text for headlines, smaller text for date and author and proper italics for quotes and so on. Don't try to do everything on your own - if you know a good artist, seek his/her help out for suggestions on color palette, picture placement and better image integration into the background. Why not take a look at BOF or even Bluetights.net as references for shaping the look of your site? After all, they too are fan websites.

Instead of showering him with undeserved praise, you guys could actually help him by providing some constructive criticism that might come in handy for improving his website to look more refined and respectable. Sure, words of encouragement are nice but they can also often be counter-productive to an individual's goals and aspirations for it may give him feelings of self-fulfillment way too soon before he has reached the peak of his talents.

Sorry for the harsh words and if I came off as jerk, but your site is far, far below the acceptable standards for quality web design (even for a fansite) to be worthy of any compliment in my book. Your undertaking is admirable but at this stage, you need to put a lot more effort into it for it to look even satisfactory.

 

[The Shape]

^ Yeah. What he said.

 

[mcflytrap]

Nothing wrong with the site, but you should step up your punctuation a bit. Looks very unprofessional with run-on sentences and only certain names capitalized.

 

[The-Dark-Knight]

Nothing wrong with the site, but you should step up your punctuation a bit. Looks very unprofessional with run-on sentences and only certain names capitalized.

Thanks, Yeah thats my weak point, im working on it though.

 

[lordofthenerds]

I dunno whether you people are just being nice to him or are going to a totally different site, but the design and layout of that website sucks big time. It's just all over the place and looks like a slapstick job done by an obvious amateur that just got his copy of Microsoft Frontpage. Here's a piece of crucial advice - If you're creating a website in English, it pays to have a proper grasp of the basics and technicalities of the damn language. And friend, when posting news, do keep in mind proper word formatting - bigger and bolder text for headlines, smaller text for date and author and proper italics for quotes and so on. Don't try to do everything on your own - if you know a good artist, seek his/her help out for suggestions on color palette, picture placement and better image integration into the background. Why not take a look at BOF or even Bluetights.net as references for shaping the look of your site? After all, they too are fan websites.

Instead of showering him with undeserved praise, you guys could actually help him by providing some constructive criticism that might come in handy for improving his website to look more refined and respectable. Sure, words of encouragement are nice but they can also often be counter-productive to an individual's goals and aspirations for it may give him feelings of self-fulfillment way too soon before he has reached the peak of his talents.

Sorry for the harsh words and if I came off as jerk, but your site is far, far below the acceptable standards for quality web design (even for a fansite) to be worthy of any compliment in my book. Your undertaking is admirable but at this stage, you need to put a lot more effort into it for it to look even satisfactory.

"Your site sucks" might have been a better way to word that.
Personally, I think the site was flawed, but it isn't terrible.

 

[The-Dark-Knight]

Edit.

 

[The-Dark-Knight]

I dunno whether you people are just being nice to him or are going to a totally different site, but the design and layout of that website sucks big time. It's just all over the place and looks like a slapstick job done by an obvious amateur that just got his copy of Microsoft Frontpage. Here's a piece of crucial advice - If you're creating a website in English, it pays to have a proper grasp of the basics and technicalities of the damn language. And friend, when posting news, do keep in mind proper word formatting - bigger and bolder text for headlines, smaller text for date and author and proper italics for quotes and so on. Don't try to do everything on your own - if you know a good artist, seek his/her help out for suggestions on color palette, picture placement and better image integration into the background. Why not take a look at BOF or even Bluetights.net as references for shaping the look of your site? After all, they too are fan websites.

Instead of showering him with undeserved praise, you guys could actually help him by providing some constructive criticism that might come in handy for improving his website to look more refined and respectable. Sure, words of encouragement are nice but they can also often be counter-productive to an individual's goals and aspirations for it may give him feelings of self-fulfillment way too soon before he has reached the peak of his talents.

Sorry for the harsh words and if I came off as jerk, but your site is far, far below the acceptable standards for quality web design (even for a fansite) to be worthy of any compliment in my book. Your undertaking is admirable but at this stage, you need to put a lot more effort into it for it to look even satisfactory.

You say that my site is far, far below the acceptable standards for quality web design. But i never claimed to be a web designer, as i said its my first site. I diden't expect it to be perfect. You compare my layout to that of BOF. Did you ever see BOF when it first started? It was a mess. it looks like it does now because it's been going for 8 years. like i said i dont expect to be as big as BOF but it's trial and error. As for saying i dont deserve the praise. Thats there Opinion, Yeah maybe there being a little to kind but its still there opinion. My site has been up for 2 weeks BOF for 8 year's. please dont compare mine to Jett's when he first started hissite it was far, far, from perfect as you say mine is.

 

[jeemer]

I'm a professional webdesigner, I work for a couple of newspapers. Your ideas are ok, but Fenrir is pretty much spot on. However, I think he's giving you constructive criticism here and you're taking it as a personal attack.

Here's one of the best tips I can give you in webdesign; if you take weeks honing, scrapping and redesigning your site, making sure it looks spot on before announcing it to the general public, you will get a much better ongoing response and more visitors to your site. This is only necessary for your first few websites but it is necessary. Have a look at coolhomepages.com and take ideas from other people's layouts, colour schemes, navigation etc.

If you want to really make an effort, you may as well invest in cheap hosting and a domain name. If you put up a site like that one, and I'm not trying to be a dick, but a lot of internet savvy users will see it and be turned off, and never want to visit again.

PM me if there's anything you'd like to learn or like some advice on.

 

[The-Dark-Knight]

If you want to really make an effort, you may as well invest in cheap hosting and a domain name. If you put up a site like that one, and I'm not trying to be a dick, but a lot of internet savvy users will see it and be turned off, and never want to visit again.

Thanks for the info, the diffrence between your reply and fenrir is he's making out i bigged it up, when i dident, yours was constructive his wasent. Also seen as your knowledgeable on the subject could you point me to some cheap web hosting sites and maybe tell me whats so wrong with piczo? Thanks

 

[explode7]

How did you do that country map thing???

 

[The-Dark-Knight]

How did you do that country map thing???

go to my site, and theresa link on the map thing, it will take you to the site you get them from. if not tell me i'll post the link.

 

[jeemer]

Thanks for the info, the diffrence between your reply and fenrir is he's making out i bigged it up, when i dident, yours was constructive his wasent. Also seen as your knowledgeable on the subject could you point me to some cheap web hosting sites and maybe tell me whats so wrong with piczo? Thanks

Piczo (which I had never seen before your site) is bad because it has that frame at the top, with the advert and buttons etc. That was the first thing for me anyway.

Some other pointers;

*Get the hit counter off, even a nice hit counter, hidden away, with small custom images, is still very late 90s

*Get the shoutbox on the right off, it's a nice feature, but only on a big close knit community as far as I'm concerned

*Get the vote off. If you really want a vote then try and find out how to make your own. I think votes were very 'in' for a while but now people rarely use them. Also, having the 'free x from x.com' at the bottom of votes, hit counters etc looks bad too

*Never use animated gifs like that Welcome one. They just scream "cheap"

*I assume it's something to do with Piczo, but I'd get that visitors online/visitors to date taken off. I know it seems interesting at first, but it screws up the layout and no one's really going to read it.

*Don't put text on top of pictures, like in the TDK poster, if you're going to do that, do it in something like Photoshop before you put it on the site, so you can set the text to smoothed anti alias or something.

*Structure your layout. It's just a black page. There is a menu on the left, content in the middle, and content on the right, but there are no defined lines. Split it up, create an actual layout for your page. coolhomepages.com is a good place to go if you are short on inspiration

As far as hosting and domains, get your names from 123reg.co.uk (search on google, its something like 1-2-3-reg.co.uk if i remember rightly) those guys are cheap.

For hosting, shop around, take an hour to research what you want. If you just want a little webspace like <100mb with no database facilities or anything, it'll be cheaper than my hosting package (I use powweb and it works out about £65 for the first year, but you get gigs of space, databases, virtually unlimited bandwidth etc. with them)

 

[The-Dark-Knight]

^^Thanks Alot for the info, really helpful. i'll certainly be doing some of that.

 

[The-Dark-Knight]

took your imput on board, got rid of the 'welcome' i was thinking it looked tacky(one of many things i've changed) be grateful if you'd take a look and tell me what you think(as you seen to know what your talking about)

 

[Van Petrol]

Nice!