design ideas

[richcleverley]

Hi all,

I've seen a few requests for site reviews in here, but not any for design ideas. Hope thi is OK, just want to bounce some things off you all before I do the design.

I have been given the task of redesigning a site

http://www.owners-direct.com

which was built by someone with some knowledge of html quite a while ago.

At the moment it is a completely static sie and I will be making it dynamic with a php/mysql backend.

Ideally I want it to be fully templateable, but the real thing I want input on is any ideas of the overall layout and design. I'll be mocking it up in photoshop first then creating the html from that (not using slices etc. I just tend to get the look sorted out first then create html using dreamweaver and handcoding etc. from there).

Ok, so any ideas?

Thanks,

Richard

 

[ChrisHunt]

Hard to say, when the current URL just redirects to a 404. What are they owners of?

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[richcleverley]

not sure why you get a 404, works fine for me. Have a look at

http://www.actionsites.com/owners-direct.com/

which is where it should redirect to.

It's a property site.

Richard

 

[ChrisHunt]

Yeah, that's where I'm redirected to, and that's where the 404 comes from.

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[richcleverley]

Hmm, weird. It works absolutely fine for me.

Richard

 

[Foamcow]

Originally it worked for me, but now I also get a 404.

<honk>*:O)</honk>
Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web site design in Cheltenham and Gloucester
Ham and Jam - British & Commonwealth forces mod for Half Life 2

 

[ecobb]

I'm getting a 404 too.


Hope This Helps!

ECAR
ECAR Technologies

http://www.ecartech.com

"My work is a game, a very serious game." - M.C. Escher

 

[richcleverley]

It works absolutely fine for me (always has). I'll get in touch with the owner and see if he has had any problems too.

Thanks guys,

Richard

 

[richcleverley]

Right, as everybody except me seems to be getting 404 errors, I have put the homepage of the site on a different domain so hopefully it'll work now.

If you have a look at

http://www.ictechnology.net/owners-direct

you should be able to see the page now. It needs a complete redesign, be a lot less busy etc.

Any ideas greatly appreciated

Thanks,

Richard

 

[MicahDB]

I'm sorry, you're looking for people to redesign the site for you? I'm just trying to be more clear as to what you're looking for.

Thanks,
Micah

 

[richcleverley]

No, I am not looking for someone to redesign the site (it isn't my site anyway), just to see if anyone has any ideas/suggestions to get me going.

Richard

 

[MarcusStringer]

loose the yellow type. (no one can read yellow)

Place the rentals in Country catagorys, maybe drop down menus etc, making it less busy

Look at other sites and see how they do i.e. real estate site etc.



Marcus

http://www.midlandtypesetters.com.au

 

[richcleverley]

Thanks Marcus,

I was brainstorming with a friend yesterday and we came up with very similar ideas. Yes, the yellow text serves no purpose what so ever, i think it is there for the benefit of the Search engines, but it may actually do more harm than good nowadays. Country categories are a decent idea, obviously once it is made dynamic and reads from the database, it will be much easier to do this.

We also thought of having different pages for the sales and rentals with possibly the homepage listing the newest properties. the whole bottom section will probably be put in to a drop down menu bar rather than having it all small at the bottom of the page.

And as you say, it needs to be a hell of a lot less busy.

Oh, and no tables too

Thanks for confirming our thoughts, glad to see others are having the same ideas.

Richard