My website

[rpcarnell]

Can someone please criticize my old website: http://rpcarnell.bravehost.com

It is pretty old, and my pic makes me look twenty years older.

Tell me what I should change.

[dotancohen]

For one thing, get rid of the intro page.

Your home page vailed verification with 32 errors. The page is also very graphic heavy and took a very long time to load.

[KDLA]

"Skip Intro!" screams at me that this site wasn't done by a professional designer.

I'd integrate all of your tabs into one strip, or overlapping, as they do naturally with a stack of file folders. The large amount of black space between the rows creates a disjointed look, and pushes your content much too far down on the page.

Color scrollbar - another "unprofessional" element here.

I'd work on the banner - it's much too large, and seems to be several non-related elements placed together. It doesn't create a clean, compact effect. The design elements don't seem to be of the same style. Also, when you reduce the size, more of your content will appear without scrolling.

Nice looking guy in the photo.

KDLA

[Ness_du_Frat]

Hey, another writer around !!! cool ^^
Now, to the webpage.
Get rid of the intro. It doesn't bring anything good to the website, much to the contrary. Either directly put your website, or find something really cool. Avoid flash at any costs, unless your flash intro is as good as theirs (http://www.2advanced.com/flashindex.htm). Flash intros are good sometimes, when they really bring something to the user. When they don't, they are just plainly annoying.
I won't look at the code, others will do that better than I would, but on the graphical side, I would say using primary colors is not really the best way to create a comfortable mood. I mean, your website uses agressive colors : red, blue and black. The combination of the three is especially agressive. It kinda screams to the visitor.
What follows is only my point of view, and I'm not even a graphist or a webdesigner, so don't take it too seriously, I'm certainly not saying my way is the only way.
To make a user comfortable, I would rather use pale colors, with one dominant color. I avoid using primary colors, and I avoid using two of them at all costs. If you want, you can use a color and its complementary color (yellow and purple, for example), it's often used in graphism to create a good but not agressive contrast.

Black background is not always a good idea. There is a big tendency among newbies to start with a black background (I did it, almost everybody did it), because it's "cool". Actually, black background is cool for some websites, but I wouldn't say it suits your color scheme well.
Too many navigation buttons. Stick to one navigation bar, and a subbar if you really need, but I'm lost already.
Too much void space. If you want to have a cool effect, the red thingy (arch ?) should be on top, with no void.
BTW, I'm viewing your website on FF, so it might look differently on IE, but my IE doesn't work (lol ! I lost it when I upgraded to WIN SP2...).
I'm eager to see some of the stories you talk about on your site :)

[wh666-666]

Just start from scratch rather than trying to alter all the elements in the exsisting .. try template monster ... some examples of whats good ... and whats really hidious

[rpcarnell]

Primary colors scream to the visitor. Suddenly I realize that we, web designers, are like cyber-versions of painters.

[wh666-666]

lol scream in what way rpcarnell?? I tend to think in an angry way at times. Alot of websites could do with gentle pastel colours that arent offensive or if you do use stricking colours at least use something like flash to really make a mark on your target audience