XBoxLiveAddicts

[blushinmushroom]

XBoxLiveAddicts has been around since Aug '04 we are a big community of Xbox Live gamers. We feature Xbox Live leagues and most of us are MotoGP fans! as well as that we offer support on xbox and PC problems.

Please review my site, and be honest!


XBoxLiveAddicts (http://www.xboxliveaddicts.co.uk)

[James]

I love that "Xbla" :D Just the sound when I say it.

Gonna be a bit tough on this, though:
Your code is way more massive than it probably could get away with being. I'd suggest working at widdling it down to something smaller so it'll be quicker-loading.

I think that the way you've redirected may have caused your website to be unable to have Google PageRank.

Your navigation text is hard to read; I'd suggest lightening up the gradient.

I don't like that "glow" around the top navigation.

tbh the biggest issue is that your website looks a bit cluttered. I'd suggest that you honestly go through every minute thing on the page and look at it and say "Can I take out this image, can I take out this link" etc. until it's something a bit simpler.

The xboxliveaddicts.co.uk on the top beside the logo looks odd and out of place.

The title should likely be something like "Xbox Live Addicts" to help with SEs.

[Sean]

I agree with all of james's's's's suggestions.

One thing you could do to reduce the cluttered look is to add some space (margin/padding) between some things. The navigation headers on the left bar could use a few pixels of top and bottom margin and the buttons under the google ad on the left bar for examples.

I agree with what james said about the glow on the top buttons. Possibly a light glow on hover, but the way it is now doesn't really fit the theme.

I'm no design guru or anything, so these are just a couple of suggestions.

[blushinmushroom]

Thank You Guys, I take it you are mainly talking about the front page when you say it's cluttered or the whole site?

I am using Unreal's Portal, so I don't think it's posible to cut down on much code, will take a closer look though as loading times are very important.

The main reason for the redirect was to have our own front page designed eventually and not use templates!

I have a couple of Graphic designers on site and this is one of their impressions;



:icon10:

Yep… make the logo stand out better… you might wanna add some very gentle
light touches to the black 'bla', (with the grey drop shadow, they look a little flat …)

Liking the new dividers… and the new buttons…
(they were all working yesterday… but now they're gone again?)

Only things you should definitely consider changing…
• Sort out where the 'xboxliveaddicts.co.uk' is written in the top navigaton.
It's just stuck there and looks lonely. I know you want to make that top piece look
all 360 like, but those shapes behind the web address are not helping your design.

• The top divider with the hollowed out XBLA logo…
- either make it a shade smaller so it doesn't touch the top and bottom of the bar…
- consider changing it to a colour (jewel like) version - working in a similar fashion
to the orange lozenge at the other end of the bar.


link (http://www.xboxliveaddicts.co.uk/forums//index.php?showtopic=4788&pid=45542&st=120&#entry45542)

Do you agree or disagree?

Being on the site for many hours each day I tend to ignore things that guests or members would pick up on, if you know what i mean?

Anyway your opinions are gratefully recieved

[James]

Grey drop shadows on light backgrounds often just lower readability and are hard on the eyes.

I was talking primarily about the homepage of the website.

You should see about using a server-side redirect so that Google doesn't pick up on it. ie use .htaccess or something.

While I don't think that the logo isn't standing out as much as it should be, I think that it does seem to not match the rest of the website quite as well as it could. The website's mostly darker green whereas the logo's brightly colored green and orange.

[blushinmushroom]

We've done a few of those suggestions now, I'm still not entirely happy with the portal and will probably replace it soon.

Please take a look again, any better?

[The New Guy]

Some of your image links are not correct

<img src="http://www.xboxliveaddicts.co.uk/images/navcontents.gif" </img>

Is wrong. Should be

<img src="http://www.xboxliveaddicts.co.uk/images/navcontents.gif" />

[blushinmushroom]

Does that make a difference?

[The New Guy]

Yes Because.

<img src="http://www.xboxliveaddicts.co.uk/images/navcontents.gif" </img>

Is nothing. Meaningless. Your very lucky the browser can interpret this mess.

[blushinmushroom]

Ok thanks well that's going to cut down on a lot of code

[James]

Running the CSS through http://flumpcakes.co.uk/css/optimiser/ saves about 10kb, bringing it down to 20kb.
I'd suggest bringing all the stuff between the <style> tags and replacing it with:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/style.css" />

and creating a file in your root directory named style.css and putting everything from your <style> tags into it.

------
Also,
<script language="JavaScript" src="/drop.js"></script>
and put the stuff between <script> in the header that's currently into drop.js in your root directory.

This'll let you take that 30kb file and have it in an external file, thereby allowing caching of it, and making the pages' code waaaaay shorter.

[blushinmushroom]

thank you