Feedback on a site for finding web design templates

[undoIT]

I've put together a site that might be useful for other web developers. Some feedback and criticism would be helpful. The design was recently changed a bit based on a few suggestions. Any feedback, both in terms of design and usability would be appreciated

http://themebot.com

Thanks in advance!

[tracknut]

Very nice, I enjoy looking at all these themes and getting ideas. While I was walking thru them (just hitting next, next, next) I was getting repeats of some of the themes. Like either they were in there multiple times, or the counter was backing up on me?

Dave

[undoIT]

Hi Dave. Thank you for mentioning that. It is a bug in Gallery 2.1.2. I want the gallery sorted by view count, it seems like the most fair way to have the more popular themes sorted to the top. This reminds me to submit a bug report to the Gallery developers.

Sean

[undoIT]

A new system has been added which will help Improve the quality of web design templates. It will also provide constructive criticism for members who have submitted templates. Let me know if you think this is a good idea.

[undoIT]

I just finished completely gutting the code for the template and CSS. No tables are used in the template itself, the code is much leaner, some annoying display errors while the pages were loading are no longer present, pages load faster, and a lot of unnecessary entries were removed from the CSS file.

There is just one major thing I'd like to fix but I am having some difficulty figuring out how to accomplish this. I used absolute positioning to position the right column. Since I'm not using a table-based layout and removed the pixel shims, the right column overlaps the content on certain pages if the browser width is decreased. If I set the Z-Index to -1 the right column floats underneath the center column, but the forms stop working.

I've also tried floating it to the right, but I need to mess up the source ordering to do this, and it still overlaps the content although underneath the center column. Is there any way I can get the right column to stop overlapping the content altogether when the width of the browser is decreased? Anybody who can solve this wins the grand prize... a shiny new can of beer

http://themebot.com

[sticks464]

Absolute positioning disrupts the natural flow of the page. By putting everything in the body in a container, give the right and left columns a width, float each one (left or right), no width on the center div, and all should flow as you want it to. Put the divs inside the container as left, right and center in that order.

1. Move your members login to the top of the left column.
2. Get rid of the Progress report box in the center and put a new menu in the left column with the links to the catagories.
3. Put the new templates on the homepage.
4. Move the center text to the appropiate pages ie. tips and tutorials and blog pages.
5. Make the left column the same for all pages.
6. Put all ads in the right column.
7. By making a fluid layout it should remove the horizontal scrollbar that is on all pages.

Just my opinion. Otherwise all looks ok, good colors and your pages even validate.

[undoIT]

Just when you think you've got it all solved, along comes the IE6 peek-a-boo bug. Squashed that with height:100%

If I float the right and left columns, it causes the center column to bounce down whenever there is a content item that is wider than the column. So, the absolute positioning works quite well and allows optimal source ordering. I got the right column to float under the center column by using relative positioning and z-index. That's when the peek-a-boo bug appeared.

I wish there were a way to just have the right column scroll off screen when the maximum width is reach in the center column. I just don't think that is possible without using tables for layout. It is amazing how much faster the pages load since I eliminated the tables in the template

Thanks for the numbered suggestions sticks. I'll be implementing some of them soon.

[undoIT]

I've added a section to the site which displays some basic statistics related to donation vote count and traffic trends.

http://themebot.com/stats.html