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mark schaaf
Posts: 365
Joined: 04 Oct 10
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check out my new homepage

This is my 4th homepage redo in a little over 3 years. I got to page 1 with my last redo but people I ask think that page even though it is only a little over a year old looks old fashioned and out dated so I re did it to look like people were telling me that visitors wanted. I myself think it is a little busy but some of my much younger like it much better then the last home page. So I would like some looks and tell me what you think is it a little too busy. the site is myitaliantravels dot com Thanks Mark
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Mark
 
cecille.l
Posts: 6369
Joined: 25 Feb 11
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Hi Mark,

I like it! The blue shade on the nav bars and links are a wee bit too blue for me though. Maybe something in a lighter shade? You might also want to change the background so that it all meshes together. You might want to give Color Scheme Designer a try. It lets you pick colors for various parts of your site, so you can see how it all goes together.

Hope that helps. Have a good day!
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Cecille

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Moderator
wollowra
Posts: 869
Joined: 14 Mar 08
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Hey Mark,
I agree with Cecille, That blue is too strong and the red mouse over links clash. You want it nice and easy on the eyes.
Also, Please do not take this the wrong way...but get someone on fiverr.com to design you a nicer banner for the site. Maybe something with pictures blended in and a nicer font style for the title.
Kindest Regards
Troy
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Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize
they were the big things.

-- Robert Brault
 
cecille.l
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Joined: 25 Feb 11
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Hi Mark,

I visited your site again to give it another look. For some reason I am unable to see the complete newsletter sign up on the sidebar. I tried it on both Firefox and Chrome.

Now that I have had a second look, I feel a new layout or design might be better. I like how the footer looks, and the header is ok, but the site comes across as "old-fashioned" to me. Was the site built using XSite Pro? Maybe you want to try designing the site using Artisteer? Or maybe moving it to Wordpress where you can choose from several free themes?

I hope that helps. Have a good day!
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Cecille

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mark schaaf
Posts: 365
Joined: 04 Oct 10
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thanks Troy and cicille for the comments. The colors i put in was because so many people kept telling me that I needed some bright colors to keep people from clicking out quickly because the old home page didn't have anything bright and flashy to catch there eye. Also I changed the title or site name to the font it has now because of the same reason, many people were saying script style or anything that wasn't kind of a block lettering made the site look old fashioned so I changed it to what it is now. Not sure why the newsletter sign in box isn't showing up correctly, I checked it out on my computer and it is fine no matter what I look it up on and have had a few friends check it out as well and they all say it is there. Not sure about the old fashioned thing is since I changed it to what it looks like because people said it looked old fashioned. I use a web editor called Serif to put the site together and I can pretty much do anything I want so any change can be done easy. My problem was I have never liked sites with all the little boxes with a little text in it like the ones I put on my site. I think it makes the site look too busy and I think it makes my site look too busy but like I have been told so many times that you don't put a site together to make you happy you put it together to make the viewers happy. I was thinking about making the home page longer and taking the 2 rows of 3 little boxes and changing it to 3 rows of 2 boxes and making the box off to the side rather then under the picture.
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Mark
 
Site Admin
maryt
Posts: 3224
Joined: 16 Apr 12
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Hi Mark,

I love the new look! :)

The sign-up at the sidebar is also not properly layout on my screen. I cannot navigate down the page (where you need to enter your details). :(

I am using Firefox. You may want to check on this. Perhaps, you are viewing your site on a PC? I am using a laptop. Maybe you can try viewing your site on a laptop as well.

Mary
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cecille.l
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Joined: 25 Feb 11
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Or maybe it's a problem with the browser? You might want to clear your browser's cache then view the site again?

You can also use http://browsershots.org/ to check out how your webpages look on different browsers.

Hope that helps. Have a good day!
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Cecille

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tankctrlr
Posts: 210
Joined: 16 Oct 09
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Your message contains 41 characters. The minimum number of characters you need to enter is 50.
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Last edited by tankctrlr on 29 Mar 13 6:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
 

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mark schaaf
Posts: 365
Joined: 04 Oct 10
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went to browser shots and looked at my site. it looks like only a few browsers shots that I see look funny, a couple don't even look like a site and the ones that look a little funny I haven't ever heard of those browsers so I don't know what to make of it.
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Mark
 
Site Admin
maryt
Posts: 3224
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mark schaaf wrote:went to browser shots and looked at my site. it looks like only a few browsers shots that I see look funny, a couple don't even look like a site and the ones that look a little funny I haven't ever heard of those browsers so I don't know what to make of it.


Hi Mark,

This blog may help you fox your browser problem-> http://www.netmechanic.com/products/Bro ... rial.shtml

Mary
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mark schaaf
Posts: 365
Joined: 04 Oct 10
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Tankctrlr, I have no idea what you comment means concerning characters means could you explain it.
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Mark
 
tankctrlr
Posts: 210
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I wanted to delete my comment but I couldn't so I deleted it but had to paste in some text so I copied the error text and used that lol.

Sorry for confusing. I think I asked what your sites URL was so I could look at it.
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PremiumMember
gradyp
Posts: 848
Joined: 28 Jun 09
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Hey, Mark! Site's looking pretty nice.

I know Cecille mentioned using Color Schemer for finding an alternative color for the hover color, but in case anyone else is interested and in looking for a way to find a good color combination for their site is to use a strong image already on the page, particularly when you have one with good differences of color like the one at the top of Mark's page with the Coliseum. This method works great for finding colors for hovers, borders, header text, and more. That is to use a program like GIMP or Photoshop where you have an eyedropper tool and find a good color in the image.

In the case of this Coliseum pic, I'd work with the largest sized file that I had available to me and do a 3x3 averaged sample. If I just had an image that was the size of the one you have in your header, I probably wouldn't do the averaged sample, but with a larger image, the sampling can help make sure you don't get "extreme" by hitting that one pixel that might be way different than the others in the pic.

Just looking at the image in Mark's header, I can pic out at least 4 or 5 that I could easily make a "theme" out of that would be different enough from each other to provide contrast, yet because of the strong image would still make the site feel as if the colors belonged.

(I made a note to make a tutorial on how I would do this.)
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grignard_reagent
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Joined: 24 Apr 13
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I dont think sounding vintage always does harm. If everything else has been going well with your site, let it be the way that is for a while and enjoy the other beauties of life. :D
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