My new site with drupal.First time i ever used this CMs - (in fact .. first time i have ever had a site online :) )

Anyway ...

http://www.absoluteislam.com

Looking for some feedback on design/usability etc

Regards,
Mo

Comments

media girl’s picture

I would make a couple of suggestions:

* Try a different format for your links. You have a lot of links, and when they wrap around on the narrow blocks, the underlines make them hard to read. Some basic CSS formatting using bold/color/etc to make the :link stand out and maybe some creative use of the :hover style could do wonders.

* Make your own favicon.ico for the site. A lot of people end up leaving the default Drupal icon, and while that's only decent to give a nod to your code source, it can make things a little confusing in tabbed browsing.

My thoughts on a quick view, anyway. Good luck with the site!

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mediagirl.org

iraszl’s picture

iraszl’s picture

I think the structure is perfect. I only have some design related suggestions:

Domain: I have one reservation. Absolute(something) is so closely related to the absolute campaign, which is an alcoholic drink, I would stay away from that for an Islamic oriented site. People might make jokes about this.

Background: I think you can find a better arabesque than the current background. If you want I can send you some.

Header: I like the background concept with the mosques, but it's a bit too simetric and plain. Make it a bit more busy and more like a siluette of a real city, but stylized.

Logo: The burgundy on dark grey is not enough contrast. Use white or any other light color. Also, the logo is too simple. It doesn't have a concept. Too light and techno. Doesn't fit to your content.

Menu: I like it as it is, except you may want to resave the buttons with less compression, because right now the images are very noisy around the edges of the letters.

Main content: You need to add margins on all sides. You shouldn't bleed the content completely to the edges. It doesn't look elegant.

Navigation: It's not consistent. The subcategories under navigation looks good, but the Categories is not aligned the same way and they have an underline and different vertical spacing. Online users, Latest articles and User login uses a third type of list. If you intended to this on purpose, I would rethink it.

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http://creativebits.org

sepeck’s picture

I like the header, but have to agree on the contrast issue with burgundy on dark grey. Probably need to brighten up the burgendy.

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

Maybe replace the favicon by some logo for your site.
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If you have troubles with a particular contrib project, please consider to file a support request. Thanks.

mo-1’s picture

Thanks you so much all for your replies.Lots of good tips.

1)I will be replacing the favicon (completely forgot about though!)

2)There is not much i can do about the domain-name, besides, it took me ages to think it upl!!

3) Yes, i did once know of a site with many, many backgrounds (such as those on spoono.com, but i can't seem to find the link.Anyway, i would appreciate if you could send me some thank you.

4)I am hoping to improve the header and logo soon

5)"Navigation: It's not consistent. The subcategories under navigation looks good, but the Categories is not aligned the same way and they have an underline and different vertical spacing. Online users, Latest articles and User login uses a third type of list. If you intended to this on purpose, I would rethink it."

To be honest, i did not even notice that difference until just now! Thanks for pointing it out, ill be sure to align and tinker with the blocks a bit more!

Thanks all for your contributions on this topic! any more tips woul be appreciated!

iraszl’s picture

See if you find something useful here: linky. At this resolution you can take them for free. :)
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http://creativebits.org

Dublin Drupaller’s picture

Hiya Mo,

Had a quick look and agree with other people on here....too many links...but you probably know that already yourself.

For your first site thats a great job. Well done.

Just out of curiosity...how do you get that icon showing in the address bar? At the moment its the drupal icon....

Cheers and best of luck.

Jason

Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate

Dublin Drupaller’s picture

Hiya Mo,

Had a quick look and agree with other people on here....too many links...but you probably know that already yourself.

For your first site thats a great job. Well done.

Just out of curiosity...how do you get that icon showing in the address bar? At the moment its the drupal icon....

Cheers and best of luck.

Jason

Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate

sepeck’s picture

Google search
http://www.google.com/search?q=favicon&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&s...

And I pulled two of the more interesting links for you, one to a web tool to create one from an image (not tested) and the other is a decent explanation.
http://www.chami.com/html-kit/services/favicon/
http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/favicon.shtml

Note: You should not need to by an ico generator, there are plenty of good free ones.

-sp

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

Dublin Drupaller’s picture

Thanks for the tips Sepeck.

That sitewizard link has loads of good tips.

Found a free icon editor at the following link....just in case anyone else is wondering about how to setup a custom one for their site..

It's called pixeltools

http://www.axiomx.com

To add the necessary link to your drupal site...you insert the following line in common.inc (around line number 88 for drupal 4.5)

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />

hope this of use to someone else..and saves them searching.

Jason

Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate

sepeck’s picture

huh? I didn't have to change anything in my stock 4.5 install.

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

media girl’s picture

As the Druplicon favicon already is placed, replacing it is just a matter of replacing the favicon file in the root. No coding changes necessary.
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mediagirl.org

Dublin Drupaller’s picture

Hi Media Girl..

the drupal favicon was there on the initial install for my version of 4.5..but the necessary link in the html code wasn't in the page...hence the need to tweak common.inc...

The common.inc that comes with 4.5 has the following head function which doesn't have the favicon link:

meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8
base href=$base_url"
theme('stylesheet_import', 'misc/drupal.css')

Am curious to how your drupal 4.5 installations have it as standard...and if I may have missed something...

Jason

Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate

media girl’s picture

That's a good point. I did not think of it since the favicon has been showing up in my browsers.

An easier way, perhaps, is to add <link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" > to the head of the template.

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mediagirl.org