NEW and Improved

[warfare3]

http://www.night-hood.cjb.net/
i redid the whole site, tell me any suggestions, the member bios page isnt done yet so i know its not working

[RubenRemus]

Why the flash on the splash page? There's no need for it, except it kept me waiting for nothing. And the enter button on that flash is had to hit.

When I enter, it's so bad in all ways that I don't feel I have the time to tell you about it. The page has errors, pictures doesn't load, pictures have wrong proportions.

You sure has got a lot to learn...

[Lyra]

Well, I say if you dont have any constructive comments to make, why bother.

About the site : I agree that the Flash intro is uneccesary. If you really really want an intro, rather do one with no bitmap images so that it can be extremely small and download fast.

Overall the site is dominated with lots of brightly coloured shapes which are not functional and very busy images in the background. If you want people to read the content, you need to present the pages in such a way that the eye is not constantly pulled away from the text by all the other stuff going on.

Have only the images you really like, and dont repeat them all over the show.Place them in the place where they make the most impact, have plain backgrounds, and only use the snazzy stuff where its needed.

For example, the navigation bar looks curiously plain against all the other razmataz. Rather make that look a bit more interesting, and tone down some of the other stuff.

Make sure you use the same font all the time, and only use other fonts when you really need variety: for example, in the first page there is a link Diamond cut designs, in a serif font, which looks very out of place.

Think carefully about the way you present the text: Put a margin in on the left, and break it up into paragraphs, it makes it much more likely that people will read it.

Also, decide whether you want the paragraphs to be left justified or centered, and stick to one of these: otherwise it looks like you just cant make up your mind.

Lastly, think carefully about your buttons and how you name them. For a visitor coming into the site the buttons must be self-explanatory. You have a button that says "the 411", but when you click it, it goes to a page with the heading "who are we". When I just look at the nav bar, I dont know what "the 411" means, and if I were looking for info on who you are, I would not know to click there.

Also, I only just noticed that it is possible to scroll down on the "who are we" page to get more info. People generally dont automatically scroll unless its obvious that there is more info lower down. Rather break that page up into two, or combine those text blocks.

Its always a good idea to get a friend to look at the site while you watch them, and see how they navigate through the site: what they miss and where they go first.
Good luck, and dont be disheartened by criticism: everybodies always learning.

[tallmikeG]

wow...a "worst post ever" followed by a "best post ever"!

i think Lyra brought up some very good points. the site is far too busy, and i didn't see the scrollbar when on the NEWS page...i didn't realize that i was missing 1/2 of your content. you may want to give your cells a little padding, or separate the "night hood news" and "ivy league news" text boxes a little.

follow Lyra's suggestions and it will improve drastically.

...and thanks Lyra, you're an asset to FlashKit.


---------
tallmikeG.
http://www.tallmike.com
http://www.pixelblender.com

[Barefoot Kid]

wot lycra said and also.....u should optimize ur images, they take forever to dl on a 56k, that bg image is terrible, the animation in the flash banner happens too quickly and is very distracting, slow it right down, dump the free hosting and get urself proper hosting.

[karidee]

You might try paying for your web hosting too. This will avoid those anoying pop-up ads. Most people won't stay at a site that has ads popping up all over the place, it's terrible.

[Retrospark]

I think maybe why this design doesn't doesn't sit right with most people replying is this:
It has a very Anime feel to it. This site design kind of reminds me of that bright colorful anime style of design especialy where you use grids and angled shapes.
When I think of rap, when most of us here thinks of rap probably, images of a rap genre come to mind, and not an anime style genre. Make sense? Bright colors and angled futuristic elements and grids just don't fit the genre of rap music. And after all don't you really want to represent the music?

Here are some schweet examples of sites that kind of fit their genre.

http://www.wddg.com/badd/

http://www.p-diddy.com/pd/index.html

http://www.liquidgang.com/