Website help

KS1

Junior Member
Hello, I have created a website using Wix. I'm new to design so it's quite basic right now, but just wanted to get a bit of help/feedback before I plough more time into it. It's only really like a days work with the exception of the title design which I followed a tutorial for which you can find here:

Create a ?Clock Up? Wallpaper in Photoshop.

I'm am going to change the title design anyway. I know it doesn't really fit with the website. It's not sharp enough and it's not really the style I was going for. It was more a case of temporarily having something different to the standard fonts Wix provides (and just trying to learn something new in photoshop). I do actually want to get something similar to the background in that tutorial though but without the planets. But title design wise I want something more like this;

http://cdn1.1stwebdesigner.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/vertigo11.jpg

and can be found here in black & white:

http://photoshoptutorials.ws/images/stories/Interview-With-Anna-Pater_14A59/vertigo_3.jpg

I started to draw out what I was going for in illustrator but it's quite tricky for a novice. Is there a way to rotate the grid at all as I working with awkward line angles? Here is what I have so far:

KingsVert.ai

Well anyway, if anyone has any kind of feedback do let me know. It is all work in progress and I want to learn on the way to getting a finished website. Here's the link: http://www.kingsleysmithmusic.com/

Thanks
 
Thanks for your help. First things first... what can I do to make things load faster?

Thanks
 
mrp2049 said:
You can't. Get a faster internet connection, get a site built on a server.

Ok, sorry I'm a bit lost. Im new to all this. Like I said in the OP, I built the site on wix.com. I dont know what you mean by build it on a server. Could you explain please?

And Liza put "speedy pages are important". So what makes a page speedy? Less content? I basically built the site using a template online. Is that a less efficient way of doing things?

Thanks
 
Hey,
putting the site on you server means you need to build your site in Flash (if you want it to be like Wix),
- buy a domain
- buy a host
- design and develop your website

Then upload it to your host and there you go..

about more speedy pages, well, as less heavy weight graphics you have on a page it should load faster.
also the host is important regarding speed.

for more help you can contact me here
Roman Vaizer Portfolio
 
Can I just ask, why are you creating this website in flash?

From what I can see from the design of the site there is absolutely nothing which can't be done in HTML/CSS. I'm not entirely sure what it is you plan to do; web design/development graphic design etc but if you're planning on making a business out of this I would firstly forget about creating websites for now in any professional/paid situation and focus on learning about what it is you want to do.

If you can tell me what your long term plans are I can advise accordingly.
 
I'd ditch the flash concept, bud. It's adding unnecessary load time to you page and search engines can't access the content. As Squiddy said, there's no reason not to use HTML and CSS. As it's quite a simple design the code would be tiny so the side would load quicker.

The only reason I'd consider a flash site is if I wanted some amazing effects that couldn't be done with CSS and Javascript.

Optimise your images too, they don't need to be of the highest quality for the web so shrink the file size down using Photoshop or something similar. Not sure if you can do it in Illustrator. If you've not got Photoshop try GIMP. Smaller images load quicker.

On the design side, I'd probably use your 'Official' logo that's on the home page as the main logo for your website either centred at the top with the main menu below it or have it left aligned with the menu next to it. Probably invert the colours on it if you're sticking with a dark background though. I think it'd look a lot better than the title you've got at the moment. Just my opinion, though. At the end of the day it is your website!
 
There should be a save for web option under the 'File' menu in Illustrator.

I agree with james on all points. I'll wait for you to answer my questions before I go any further.
 
Cool, thanks for all the help so far. I really do appreciate it! Ok, if I'm totally honest I didn't even know the site was in flash (totally new to all this remember). Long story short a graphic designer I know told me to use wix and so did under his recommendation. I'm not looking to get paid for doing graphic design work or anything of this nature. I am interested in design and photography and want learn how to build a (semi) professional website.

So that's basically my situation. It's more of wanting to learn as I have always been interested in design. So anyway, first things first; I'll take the website down. The domain name is paid for so that's sorted. The reason I liked wix was because it gave you templates to work with. But ok, so if I ditch the wix account where do I go from there? What hosts should I be looking at? And what's the best thing to develop a website with?... photoshop, illustrator? Once you have a website design how do you do things like add buttons and change their behaviour etc? Is that done with a host or in the software prior to uploading?

I want to apologise for the total novice questions, this is all totally new to me, but I also want to thank you all for taking the time to help me out and answer my questions.
 
Just to be clear, designing websites is a different field from developing them. Most web designers are skilled developers too which is why so many people think web designers are all developers. From the sounds of it you're more the designer type. Learning to develop websites can take a while as you'll need to look into how to utilise and structure HTML to make your design a reality. You don't actually develop your website with image software or the likes (I personally use Photoshop to design my sites). Once the design's rounded off, you then develop using mainly HTML and CSS. HTML is used for structure and content whilst CSS is used to style it all.

Going through the basics of coding would take a while on here so you might be best looking for a video on Youtube to help you grasp the basics. There should be a few tutorials around the internet as well that will walk you through it step by step.

Adding buttons is best done by styling links or a elements with your CSS code. You can use CSS to set the size and shape of your button or even set an image (which you can pull out of your Photoshop design) as the background.

Kudos for wanting to learn how to do it yourself, it is rewarding once you get past the initial frustrations but it will probably take you a while to pick it all up and be proficient enough to produce a decent website.

Host wise, I always go off customer feedback and reviews. Check out this forum for some pretty indepth reviews of hosts.

Sorry if that was a long winded post!
 
Nice for that dude, thanks. I do have some grasp of html (only some)... as in I understand the principles behind it. I have done some (very) basic html modifications to things I have designed. Like I have used a design generator to design some stuff and not been happy with something small and I figured out what part of the code I need to change to get the results I was after. I'd imagine this is literally skimming the tip of the iceberg though.

Thanks for the heads up on the insight of developing and designing. I kinda thought what you said would be the case. Like get all the design work done in something like photoshop and use developing software for all the coding etc for things to behave the way you want.

I'm going to look into all the links you gave now and will report back when I've started something new.

Thanks again
 
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