Opinions needed on new website design

[lisbonlion]

Thought I would practice some website design by creating a site for my local poker league, just looking for opinions or help. Still very much under construction.

Thanks in advance.

link is

www.ketteringpoker.co.uk

[Nobber22]

Well, the green lettering is a bit small and hard to read, the left half of the page is a bit empty/wasted and the players table could use some jazzing up, but you're off to a good start.

Keep it up.

[GasDad]

Looks ok - could be centered in the browser window though.

You are also using a strange font style3 {font-family: "Gill Sans MT"}
Not all users will have that installed.

James

[v CJ v]

Looks good.

I don't like the dark background, it's hard to read the text over it.

Loads quick.

Better pictures, more colour would sort it.

[Nobber22]

Originally Posted by v CJ v

Better pictures, more colour would sort it.

I agree. Maybe a sports car, helicopter gunship and some jibbly jubblies. Yeah, lots of those!

[lisbonlion]

Thanks for the comments, the players table was just a quick attempt to see if i could manage to pull info from my sql database. The left hand side will be filled once the content goes up, hence things not beind centred. I like the dark background but i know it probably isnt to everyones tastes.

What colour text would you suggest, as I chose the colours from the picture to enable everything look part of the same theme. The fonts will probably chance i just need to spend the time going through them.

Feel free to give anymore suggestions as this is my first attempt and all help is very much welcomed.

[funkyspider]

I find it quite straining on the eye in those colours. I don't know why though, maybe the green isn't high enough contrast against the black.

Try a few variations of foreground text/background colour and host each of them as index1.htm, index2.htm to compare and see if it can be improved.

Edit: Actually to tie it in to the header image try the text in various colours found in the chips in that pic. If you can't find a colour from those in the pic then try different colours for the text, when you find one use photoshop to change one of the colours on the chips to match the text colour.

The black background would be fine if you had a higher contrast text.

[lisbonlion]

Originally Posted by funkyspider

If you can't find a colour from those in the pic then try different colours for the text, when you find one use photoshop to change one of the colours on the chips to match the text colour.

The black background would be fine if you had a higher contrast text.

Great idea, i forgot i could change the chip colour

[SimonH]

Black backgrounds are "sort of" making a comeback after many years, but in my experience it really does need some overall design flair too pull it off succesfully.

I never use black as a background unless the client is absolutely adamant, many people find it a bit of a strain and often body text is struggling to be heard.

With black as a background , white is enivitably what most sites choose for the body text, with varying shades of red used for headings and so forth.

Other than that the rest is down to personal choice, and looks perfectly respectable to me baring in mind what you've already said about justification and so forth.

Might not suit your purposes but for non commercial sites of this nature which don't require a corporate level of uniqueness I don't think there's any shame in just grabbing a "gambling" template , web templates are so cheap nowadays and of such a high quality it's hard to justify the time involved in hand making a site of this nature.

Mind you , if this is a lesson in getting to grips with web design and so forth, then you will tend to learn less.

Just thought I would mention it.

[lisbonlion]

Thanks, yes this is just as much about getting practice as it is functional, so i dont just want a generic looking site

[signs]

I like it, but hey , what do i know ?


Edit ... for your first attempt, thats great

[lisbonlion]

i have done a bit more, any more thoughts?

[SimonH]

The white text is definatley preferably for me as I can now clearly read it.

[boltoa]

Level 13 should be 3000/6000, the jump is too small otherwise. And I would start running antes at level 6.

Oh, sorry, you wanted critique of the site, didn't you . Yeah, looks fine.

Edit - actually, just noticed several of your pages are coming up as "Untitled Document". So there we go, real bug finding as well