FINALLY Got to Launch The New Web Site!: Off-topic discussion forum: Grassroots Motorsports Magazine

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Dec. 5, 2008 1:50 a.m. Black Stig Reader

It's not supposed to be anything fancy, just a way to keep my sponsors, friends, family and most importantly, my fans up to date with what I've got going on with my car. I don't have much on there now, just a few pages of riff raff, videos, pictures the norm. As time marches on, I'll update it regularly and put results from events, tips, tricks and advice for beginners, modifications, sponsorship information, and the sort. Basically, it'll be a simple way for those who are coming up in the drifting/motorsports world and even for those who have already established themselves, (whether you be drifter, autocross, road racing, rally, time trial, or whatever) to come by and check out the cool stuff that makes grassroots motorsports so interesting.

Check it out, here's the site:

www.DAdamsDrift.com

Once again, I'm still working on it, give me a few weeks to catch up on it completely and we'll have it jumping with up-to-date information.

Thanks for checking me out guys and gals! -Dave
Dec. 5, 2008 6:30 p.m. GameboyRMH SuperDork

Pretty good, you might want to put some text labels over the embedded videos though.
Dec. 5, 2008 6:40 p.m. Salanis SuperDork

Not too shabby. If you don't mind some constructive criticism: I'd get rid of the animation on the title for your homepage. It's not too bad, but it's a bit distracting and doesn't add anything.

I'd also make the placement of the nav tabs consistent. They're along the top on your first page, and down the side on all the other.
Dec. 5, 2008 7:39 p.m. Black Stig Reader

Yeah I heard that one quite a bit, I'm going to take everyone's advice here, it seems to be for the better. I'll adjust the link bar and remove that animation. I had that back when I thought Dynamic HTML was the SHIZNAT. Now it's like . . .meh . . .kinda goofy!

I'll update when she's done. . .
Dec. 6, 2008 9:29 a.m. PHeller Reader

I gotta' say...I don't mind naming cars, that's fine and all.

but for me at least...it gets anoying reading "i brought her home and she went to bed and she woke up the next morning and we went for a drive and she felt great and she her blah her she"

That's my opinion...and maybe others aren't quite so bothered. I guess its a pet peeve.
Dec. 6, 2008 12:17 p.m. Black Stig Reader

Yeah, I guess I did lay the anthropomorphism on rather thick

I'll go back and re-read and make some adjustments . . .
Dec. 6, 2008 1:43 p.m. Tim Baxter Online Editor

Ditch the frames. After that, I'll have some other suggestions, but that's #1
Dec. 6, 2008 4:06 p.m. Black Stig Reader

LOL! I'm not quite sure how to do that. I'm rocking FP2003 FTL

I'm not exactly a programmer, I wish I new how to make a pretty cool website. To be honest, I just wanted something simple, effective that got the point across. Something that my friends, family, sponsors and most importantly, fans, could bring up and be able to navigate throughout without any issue.

But hey . . .Tim . . if you're willing to teach . . .I'm more than willing to learn
Dec. 7, 2008 8:08 a.m. Grtechguy SuperDork

Tim Baxter wrote:

Ditch the frames. After that, I'll have some other suggestions, but that's #1

I thought you liked frames?

<---------- and ^^^^^^^^
Dec. 7, 2008 4:46 p.m. Tim Baxter Online Editor

I've never built a site with frames. Ever. Built my first one in '94 and have built hundreds since. Never one with frames.

Dave, on the frames thing... What you're doing there is loading your nightmagic domain in a frame on the dadamsdrift site. Probably not the best way to do that (search engine spiders can't read it, for example). You'd probably be better off picking one domain, and redirecting the other to it.

Now, as for the site itself, I think it's a pretty solid effort, so don't take any of this as bagging on your site. Just suggestions.

If I were you, I'd get off FrontPage. Sooner or later, you'll be glad you did. FrontPage does bad things, and if you keep building sites, eventually you'll get burned by it. There's a lot of ways to write HTML, but I would suggest NVU because (a) it's free and (b) it's WYSIWYG, like FrontPage, so you don't have to get your hands dirty in the code all at once.

Besides that, resize your images for the web. Not by setting a size in FrontPage, but by actually changing the size of the image. When you change it in the HTML, it's still a big honking, slow-to-load image, it's just shrunk down.

If it were me, I'd set that body table to be about 900-950px wide, just a bit more than the two pix width. I think limiting the column will give it some breathing room, and keep the line length from becoming excessive.
Dec. 8, 2008 12:03 p.m. Black Stig Reader

Hmmmm . . . .now . . .what if I . . . .were to let . . .you . . . .design my site . . .

HAHAHA!

Compensation could be had, if you'd like. I'm just very lazy at the whole website thing. It's like, if the user can surf, it doesn't look wretched and it's easy to navigate, that's all I care to do. I've been trying to find someone who will design a nice enough website without asking me for an appendage as payout.

-Dave
Dec. 8, 2008 12:10 p.m. Tim Baxter Online Editor

Not me. My plate's full. Those are just some simple little things you could do. Or don't. It gets the job done as is.
Dec. 8, 2008 1:01 p.m. Salanis SuperDork

A good shortcut is to find a site that does what you want your's to do. Go to "View > Page Source" and take a look at their code. Copy, paste, and tweak it a bit so that it is actually your's. You'll have a cleaner site, you'll know it works, and you'll understand it better.

Learn a bit about CSS and learn to use "div" tags. They're pretty simple.

I can send you something of mine that you can use as a template, as long as you make some tweaks of your own to things like color, column width, and fonts. PM me if you're interested.

Or, find a freeware content management system that has free pre-made templates. I had good luck building a site with Expression Engine.