I know these aren't super popular blogs, but I always like to get multiple opinions on my decisions or work to get different perspectives. It helps to make better decisions in the future.
Here it is: alertstudios.comI decided to update my website a tad in the past few hours, and I'm curious on if anyone could help me to decide what it should… well, be. But any design advice is appreciated of course.The point of the website is to replace my old one. The point of that one was to have games and software be displayed there in one place. If someone wanted to see an official site of the content that I made or worked on, it would be there for reference.When I designed my new one, I think I put a lot of work into the actual design, which is fine and dandy, but I feel like it lacks content and I'm not sure what pages people would expect to see.I have these sections: Home, Sites, Software, Team, and Gallery.I don't really have a team, because the teams I am in are actually with other projects. Maybe I'll change that to 'About' have a small bio for me and list people who help on various projects if that works…For gallery, I may change that to support some bs graphics about the design process. Maybe some history of the progress of software, design tools, etc, and games that have been made to work with online systems…The best part of it is definitely the pages for the actual projects. Hence why I made them front and center. Super easy to get to and reference when the stuff is out, and I am adding more projects to boot.Anyway, thought I'd share in case someone has any strong opinions that help me to judge my work better! … and im gonna cut away some of the bs pep talk on the pages about inspiration and stuff
I think instead of having agapi and particle designer 3 side by side, I would use one of those slider/slideshow thingies. But that's just my preference.
As for what to say… just put what you want to say and nothing more. Don't write stuff "because that's what you're meant to put there" etc.What is your website for? If it's a portfolio then obviously you want to talk about how great you are. If it's just to put up those two software projects, then you just need a splash screen and the two project pages.Thanks for that suggestion Toast. I was having trouble with those two graphics and I think a slideshow thing would look a lot better.
Honestly, its both. Theyre my projects, but the other pages are for the projects themselves. I'm sorta basing it off of a startup website kind of where the company website is basically a portfolio along with their actual products. Still, splash screen/slideshow is a good idea.Quick critiques:
- I'd remove "Sites and Software" and rename Gallery to Home/Main/Something-similar since it has all of the pertinent info for your site. Maybe once you put out some more websites or tools you could have totally separate pages for that, but it just feels empty at the moment.-Gallery doesn't have a unified organization of the text - headers and paragraphs are hard to differentiate and the layout doesn't visually separate titles from content.- Maybe replace Team with About since you don't have team yet- In About talk about tools, languages, and technologies you use so that people can get an understanding of what you're capable of- Hide the bottom bar until the top isn't visible. There's no point in having multiple visible links to the same contentThanks acid, you are a better web designer than I am so I appreciate the feedback lol.
I do plan on having more websites and tools soon, but I suppose I could hide them for the moment. I agree it is rather empty, but I have to update it with some other tools I do have listed on my old site.I think the gallery link on top is not working and the bottom one is. I forgot to change that sorry. The gallery might be renamed, but the purpose is to show images of concepts, examples, and such in general. But come to think of it it would be nice to have it on the project pages as well. Could work well with both. The gallery is a quick-stop geared more towards a showcase. Others will land on the site through direct link from project pages most likely.I also like your hidden bottom bar idea. Another feature i'll have to implement.You guys are awesome