site critique

[cseigel]

Hi, Im looking for help with my website: http://www.workriver.com
Basicly I need ideas to make the site more appealing: I want people to post classified adds on it. Any suggestions as far as color, design, wording, layout, ect would greatly be appreciated. Thanks. :)

[ogsolution]

you can look at sites like template monster...
http://www.templatemonster.com/

[dtm32236]

a few things...

the logo: it doesn't really fit with the site (the background is white, so it doesn't sit on top of the blue color well. It seems separate, does that make sense? It also looks like one of those MS Word generic fonts... I forget what they're called.

spacing: everything about the spacing is a little strange. under your bold headings (browse by catagories, add a featured ad, give feedback, etc) there's way too much spacing between that and the content below. There's also a ton of unecessary spacing between the blue areas. It looks like you have maybe 50-80px spacing between these areas, when a simple 5-10px would do just fine. I just made up numbers, i'm not sure if those figures are accurate.

colors: they're also a little boring. maybe you can introduce a new color to highlight certain areas of the site. a pale orange or something may work - who knows though. play with other colors and see if you can find something that works.

you're also missing a doctype (http://www.alistapart.com/articles/doctype/). having this as the FIRST thing in your code is absolutely necessary. this ensures that your site will be read correctly cross-browser.

after you add a doctype, you should validate your code, again, to make sure that your site won't break cross-browser.

check out those templates and maybe look into a design book and or sites/tutorials.

you also probably don't need the '(2 letters)' after state, just limit the field to 2 letters, and people are used to links changing when hovered over. you may want to change the color of your links on mouse over.

you're on the right track, but it could use some work.

if you want to play with the layout a little, post here again, and we'll all be more than willing to help you out.

good luck with it.

[donatello]

I agree with dtm32236, this image (http://www.workriver.com/logo.jpg) looks really bad.

If you want to make a decent logo without putting a ton of work into it, download The Gimp (http://www.gimp.org) and use their 'script-fu' logo extension. It is a lot easier than it sounds. You should also learn how to put a transparent background on your logo.

All of this is easy with "The Gimp".

Best of all, it's FREE (my favorite price.)

[cseigel]

Thanks guys, i'll get to work on this now.
I think my OS comes with GIMP software anyway, im using open suse.