Hey! Check out my Halo site. It’s just something basic of course. I’m still working on it. Tell me what you think. If you have any ideas or anything you would like to share, that would be awesome!
<mark>http://halo4ever.webstarts.com/</mark>
First welcome to the forums. There’s alot to learn in creating and maintaining a website, while it looks like your site is a little rough right now just keep at it and it will come together. I would google or youtube about website creation and design for help and direction. There are a ton of resources online.
My advice will vary depending on whether you are actually having to code / design that site and upload it via FTP to your server, or if you are using one of the many “turn key” solutions where you get a site from a host and they set you up in a pre-made site.
I use both. Our discussion forums are hosted by Enjin, but our world wide website that we use merely for advertising and search engine hits is hosted on GoDaddy and I upload pages of HTML to it via a FTP client.
For the turn-key style sites they most likely have a help forum, or some reference material where you can learn how to use your back end editing tools. Definitley read up on those. Communities like Enjin have forums where you can ask the community for help with banners and backgrounds if you can’t do those yourself.
For a site you’re basically hosting yourself and are uploading content yourself via FTP there are lots of free texts out there on HTML. You can also get tools like Front Page or Dream Weaver if you have the money. I personally just type in Notepad and then save it as .html instead of .txt.
Also, try to learn CSS and utilize an external CSS file. That will let you deploy a lot of changes across multiple pages of your site by merely changing the external CSS file rather than going to each page one at a time. I control my site’s background with an external CSS file.
Here’s a lesson I learned, for when you get more advanced. Halo is a console game, and as such Halo fans are going to put most of their gaming dollars into their XBox and game library, not their PC. A lot of console gamers don’t have high end PCs like PC gamers do - different priorities. Be sure you keep your site design to where it will fit on very basic monitors and reasonable resolutions. I am also a PC enthusiast and have two huge LCD monitors, and I spent a day redesigning our forums to what looked really cool on my monitors. Problem? A lot of our members didn’t have the graphics cards or monitors that would support the layout, and I pushed the right 1/4 of the monitor to where a lot of members couldn’t see it.
Good luck sir!
> I would google about website creation and design for help and direction. There are a ton of resources online.
> Hey! Check out my Halo site.
First to analyze the host-site I am going to assume you have very little knowledge of programming.
Advice:
- First, if you are considering to seriously host the site & attract people, you might want to switch to http://www.godaddy.com/ as Webstar limits the features you get for a pro-account. Which if your paying monthly, might as well do it the RIGHT way.
- Second, do not use the Enjin host. It also limits the amount of things you can extend to your website, & the pricing for hosting it monthly is absurd. The only reason people go there is for the custom layouts & banners that come with the package (but you can easily create them yourself).
- Third, it does not matter what text editor you use. You can go from basic Notepad that comes with your OS, the programmer version called “Notepad++”, or CS4+ programs with built interfaces like Dreamweaver. Learn how to program, save it to the appropriate files, use PHP or HTML and create your website.
My Criticism:
- I see you are trying to fit the buttons to the picture, however this will turn off a lot of users. Make the picture a BG layout, and layer in the buttons over it horizontally to make it more accessible. (This will give you custom button options)
- The Text = Eww. There is a rule for using texts in websites. Georgia for Font Titles, Times for descriptions, etc.
Large Text = announcements, titles
Small Text = descriptions, blogs
Smaller Texts = giving (c) credit to picture/media author.
- Box border = make it transparent or where it doesn’t clash with the picture. You could always crop the Spartan and give it a flash transition to make it more animated so it doesn’t funk your site.
- Font Color = See number 2.
- If you were trying to use the layout that Webstart provided, then you are forgetting to make it all blog-like. Use a smaller resolution of that picture and put the text under it to make it flow smoother IF you NEED to have that spartan picture as a non BG.
- Make a button called “Contact Us” and put all your contact information there. Never on the home page unless you are selling a product.
- =.= you forgot to link bungie.net as a main halo website which also turns off users.
- Don’t use iS33You lettering as you will only attract the non l33t audience.
- Terminal page= Serious Ewws. Look at what I said about number 2.
- Comments - OK but don’t use double BG. It’s useless unless you have something more to add there like a “Forum” for instance.
- Visual Guide= OUCH ON THE CONTRAST MAN! D: Use better contrast or no bg at all! Also redo your texts, color and size are not needed here.
Overall: I rate your site a 1/10 (poor). Use these comments to help you raise approval rate or else it will not get anywhere. IF you’re not a programmer, then feel free to use a free-forum site like forumotion or webs.com
I agree Enjin is pricey, but I’ve not found something I couldn’t put on it that I wanted to. Using their HTML modules will let you put anything you might want. I’ve got Banner Zest flash objects, google analytics, you name it.
And site fonts are user preference not set in stone. Heck Waypoint and B.Net don’t even use the fonts you say are rules.
I think OP made a really good effort, and if you don’t do that stuff full time for a living it just takes time to learn the minutiae.
http://forum.dgclan.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=7841
If you go to that link. Then there is an awesome tutorial on how to create a really good FREE forum. There is an “upgrade” option that you have to pay for, but you can do loads without that. Plus, this one looks better too.
You may need to go to the link once, and it’ll redirect you to a different page. Go to the link in another tab AFTER you have already been redirected.
Hope i helped. 