High School Website

j11t,

First of all, I would like to welcome you to Drupal. You will love the world you are about to get into. I am going to be pretty picky about your design; because, well frankly, I was a high school web designer and I wish that somebody would have been nit-picked my work. I would have been a lot further with design than I am today. Secondly, I would like to point out that my remarks do have some backing -- I designed my high school's website for four years and still today, my design is being used. I also started my school on their first CMS (sadly not Drupal due to district restrictions). Through a rough road, we got there, and teachers were able to eventually edit pages and change content without disrupting my design.

On to Cordova's site. First of all, very nice graphic design in the header. If you designed that, well done. Secondly, nice work getting all of the content in place -- I know from experience that that is almost harder than the design. The good thing now is that you can easily change the theme of your site and the content will be untouched. This brings me to my main point -- your theme. For a school website, a black body background is probably not the correct choice. A school, especially one with any prestige (which, by reading the Dresscode policy it seems like Cordova does have a bit of prestige) should have a plain white background. Very rarely will you see a professional site with a non-white background. I'm not saying that it can't be done, but just a guideline. As for the rest of the theme, it is very 'drupalish' (three columns, easily distinguishable modules, prominent login, fixed width...) All of these are downfalls of simply editing an existing theme. That reminds me of the latest lullabot podcast on theming. All of the contributed themes are not all that good because people do not want to contribute a theme in which hours of time went into making.

Back to Cordova... Your choice of formatting the Primary Links is fairly poor. Links at the top of a page, above the header, tend to me overlooked. Normally, when viewing a website, the eye immediately jumps to the content section of the site and then to the links nearest to the main content. On your site, being a first time visitor, I would read the mission statement, and then look to the left to find the links to all areas of the site. The only problem is that some of your most important links (Contact, Mission, Calendars...) are not easily viewable.

Logins for a school website are, a downfall, unless executed correctly. At this time, there is no need on your site to have a logon so proponent on your homepage. Most likely, the end result of this site will be where teachers can logon and edit his or her class's homework or change the due date or add a test to a calendar. Students, more than likely will not be given access due to the implications of teenagers given the right to post whatever they want. (You could, of course, approve every post to the site, however, in a school of 2400 kids, this might become a problem). On my school's site, I have a student logon which allows them to access grades and assignments (outside of the CMS). There are also two additional logins for teachers. One for the grade program and one for the CMS. Through a bit of coding, I managed to have one login box for all three of these authentications. That main logon, is located on my school's homepage, but it is less proponent than the main content and main navigational links.

The biggest suggestion I have for you is to keep going. Keep designing, keeping the tips I have given in mind. Design your site with a professional, clean, aesthetic mindset, and you will go far. Don't design this site for your generation -- design it for the next 5 generations.

--matt