Backyard Gardening

[Chris]

http://www.backyardgardening.net/

I have finished my new garden site. It uses the same CMS as this site with only a few tweaks. Ahh... the benefits of economies of scale, reusing code...

Gardening is my passion and my hobby so this was a natural extension for me. I plan on probably getting a fancy design one day but I think what I have is acceptable for now.

This was also one instance where I was screwed by a domain registrar. In the morning backyardgardening.com was available, in the evening it wasn't.

But thats okay, so now all three sites are .net (gardeningblog.net, backyardgardening.net, gardeningforums.net I also have gardeningsite.net).

[tommy_boy]

Very nice.

[Giles]

Looks prettty nice. Good luck.

[Mike]

I like it, seems a few good articles as well (even though I'm not into gardening that much!).

[Emancipator]

The best sites are the ones you are passionate about :)

[Masetek]

The best sites are the ones you are passionate about :)

Damn straight.

Looks good Chris. Articles are pretty good too. I am interested in gardening, but we live in an appartment so I'm limited to just killing indoor plants!

[Cutter]

Looks good, I see you are going the whole kill three birds with one stone route.

[demosfen]

I am interested in gardening, but we live in an appartment so I'm limited to just killing indoor plants!
I let my 4-year old do that. :) Myself, I sprout seeds in my kitchen. Harvest in the morning, it grows back by the afternoon. My grocery expenses really went down since I started with it. Also good for lowering medical bills in long term.
You wouldn't want to be my grocer or oncologist. :banana:

[Snowballer]

wow that's the 2nd time i'm hearing a registrar grabing a domain....sucks.

[Westech]

Chris, if you're still interested in the .com wait 7 days without visiting or looking up the domain and then try to register it again. The domain squatters will usually drop the registration within the refund grace period once they find out there is no significant traffic and no interested buyers.

Nice site, btw.

[polspoel]

For someone who makes alot of money, you sure don't seem to spend it on your site design. It just looks spammy or amateur to me and I would close it immediately if I got to that site.

Ofcourse, this is without reading the content, which I'm sure is excellent.

[Chris]

I'm sure you must go around closing a lot of sites then. Like Google, which certainly isn't fancy either.

[polspoel]

There's a difference between what you have, and what google has. Google has a minimalist approach, but the usability is excellent.

Just by looking at your site:

* Recent forum posts - The header shows black text on dark green.
* The <hr /> line breaks padding is all wrong, clashes with several other elements on the page.
* The footer shows white text (with blue links..) on light green.
* Recent articles - This would look ten times better if you added some padding.
* Merchant directory - Big *** fat black links.
* Also, on this page - http://www.backyardgardening.net/gardening-merchants/1/ - the right ad probably causes problems in 800x600.
* On the same page, the table (for rating) is gray on light green.
* The site is 100% width, which should be restricted to like a max-width of 1000. No good to read this site in my big resolution.
* You could make the left navigation somewhat smaller to help smaller resolutions.
* In general I would say the typography and color scheme could use some work.
* Also, a simple link in the header would help. (Link the logo to the homepage) This is especially needed in the forum, where the leftside navigation has disappeared.

These are just a few of my gripes, do with them as you please. Only trying to help. I know you don't need fancy graphics to have a good looking site, but you do need a good color scheme and typography. And consistency across pages.

[Chris]

The site isn't meant to be viewed on800x600

but I'll take the other things under advisement.

[Kyle]

The site isn't meant to be viewed on800x600

but I'll take the other things under advisement.

I agree with the 800x600 thing. People still in 800x600 probably get hell regulary as many sites are going to 1024. So they're used to side scrolling. The majority of the visitors I receive across my sites use 1024 and up. Unlike a couple years ago when it was 800.

[Chris]

I figure even my laptop is 1024 now and it has a 15 inch screen.

Eventually someone has to push the envelope to encourage people to upgrade, I might as well be one of them.

[The New Guy]

I figure even my laptop is 1024 now and it has a 15 inch screen.

Eventually someone has to push the envelope to encourage people to upgrade, I might as well be one of them.

This from the guy who still uses tables ;)

[fatnewt]

Aw, hasn't Sitepoint taught you to design it for every resolution, Chris? :p It's a choice and I'm not picking on it, but 1024x768 isn't really an upgrade if you can see better on 800x600.

But anyways, I like it. I think the design is clean enough to be worth looking at. It's not fancy or highly artistic, but I don't find it "spammy".

Unless you're talking about articles on Web design or art, it's normal that the author of a page like this would care more about content than design. The effort on this site isn't on design.

But I think any design flaws are more evident to us, since we tend to look at it, than it is to the casual Web user (or gardener). As Web designers, developers or publishers, our Web browsing activity is atypical.

[Chris]

Well really, in doing it I just wanted to get it launched and I kept most of the CSS from this site in tact, so its no suprise the padding and text sizes don't look quite right. Eventually I'll probably spend a couple hours tweaking all of that.

[Chris]

This from the guy who still uses tables ;)
Every time I try to do CSS it never works cross browser without some funky hack. So I say $(*&$ it and just go with tables which might be old fashion, but they work, and they're easy. :)

[Chris]

Aw, hasn't Sitepoint taught you to design it for every resolution, Chris? It's a choice and I'm not picking on it, but 1024x768 isn't really an upgrade if you can see better on 800x600.

The reason I do it is for ads & pictures. If I want to use larger pictures, say 350 or 400 pixels wide, and if I want a menu and a 728 leaderboard to share the same horizontal space, then I need to do a 1024 layout.