My First Drupal Site Using The Basic Theme *Updated Site*

Hi Robert. Gonna be honest with you. It's not bad, but here's two things, in my opinion, that I would change: I really, really don't like the background. It's too busy, distracting and does look a bit dated. The other is the transparent content and block background's. The transparent, coupled with the busy bg image, just makes it difficult to stay on the site for very long. I think the title blocks are a little big. And the theme really doesn't go very well with a technology/PC repair firm.

Here's where I'd head.
Color scheme: A combo of any of these - gray, light black, light blue, white font/black font. It's always a sure fire thing to stick with the basics, especially when designing a business or professional site. Keep good contrast; no light gray text on white bg or dark text on dark bg. Don't use too many different colors. Black text on white is always the easiest on the eyes (although it's a bit boring). Blue on gray and green on gray is a pretty good text/bg combo as well.

Now, I don't mean to bring you down... it's not all bad :^)
The overall layout is good: It's basic, clean and easy to discern. Things are easy to find. It's light, loads fast and all works as intended. Simple blocks, to me, can never be wrong (I use them on one of my sites). Top menu is good too (but I would get rid of the menu bar image and hover image and replace it with a simple color and hover color, maybe with some text effects).

You're on the right path, just keeping changing, playing with the css, use Firebug or Web Developer (I use and prefer) to see how changes look right away - What I do is open my css using ftp, then open edit css with Web Developer on the page itself. When I make changes and find something that looks good or works, I change it in my actual theme or system css immediately (works for me so I don't get lost!). You may already know all this, but I don't know how much experience you have, so I wanted to mention it.

Anyway, please don't take offense to anything I said. I'm just being objective and offering what "I" would change. But then again, it is just an opinion... and I could be totally wrong, so take it with a "grain of salt". One thing I learned a long time ago is that when designing sites, it's not always about what I like personally. It's more about what the public will like, what will attract visitors, what's easy on the eyes, what will keep them there, etc. Some of the most successful sites are totally basic, bland and sometimes boring. Craigslist is SO horribly ugly, yet is in the top 10. Wikipedia - Plain, no color, no flair, not pretty... but totally effective. New York Times - VERY ugly, black and white (but is newspaper themed).

If you make changes and want advice, just keep posting and I'll keep checking. Either way, best of luck to ya!

Chris
www.theparanormalsociety.org

In the XHTML source code of the template, move the link element from inside the body element to the head element.

Hi,
I think you did a very good job with the site, just one thing--the granite looking background is quite distracting when I was trying to read the words on the site.

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Pearl
www.buyinginfraredsauna.com