My First WebSite (Everything is done under Open Source)

[Ioky]

www.foolzage.com

This is the first website I have done, it has been up and test for about a month an half.

Every tool I have use is OpenSource software, which is pretty sweet for me.

It is my personal site, that I display some of my work and use it as a blog, and maybe start a little business with it such as web design, or maybe graphic design.You know just maybe small site for Artist or Musician or maybe some small Organization. I know I am not master on those thing yet. But I think I will able to get more chance for me to do more on those. I mean how often you will randomly design a web site for nothing. haha

I would like some feedback about the site, wondering what can I improve from it when I do my next major update.

Oh by the way this is the software I used

text editor: Bluefish
Graphic: Gimp
Along with Galery2 and Wordpress

[freebios]

nice, who is hosting your site?

[marckie]

nice!

[Can+~]

To be your first one, it's very well done. My first website was awful.

Anyway, some friendly recommendations:

Grey text over grey background = Eye strain. More contrast for better readability.
Putting a different color background on the body for some extra eye candy, the center flying over a black background is a bit boring :S.


Here's how it could look like with a different background:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v517/CanXp/foolzage.png

[Ioky]

Ah, I see, you are right I looks much better. I will need look into some design as soon as I finish my site for a local church.

The one thing I really want to do with my site is that, I really want to keep everything from back to white. especial the blue start that will light up at 9pm to 9am at eastern US time. Any idea on how this can be done?

By the way, I am use hostmonster for my hosting. They are pretty good, and cheap.

[banago]

Very nice.

Try to have a look at Inkscape, it might help.

[Hyperkill]

I like can+~'s suggestion. However, I do have one of my own. Your policy has a few grammatical errors. It reads...

FoolZage's Policy are very simple. Everything you find on this website is for free and copyrighted. You are welcome to download and use anything you want from this site. However, credits much give to the author or artist (Most likely myself IOK). Nothing is allow for commercial purpose without permission

It should read as ...

FoolZage's policy is very simple. Everything you find on this website is free and copyrighted. You are welcome to download and use anything you want from this site as long as proper credit is given to the author or artist (Most likely myself IOK). Nothing is allowed to be used for commercial purposes without permission.

[Ioky]

Thank you so much to telling that, I am really bad in language. Although I can speak a few, but when it come to writing. I am screw. haha

[freebios]

have you looked into hosting your on your own computer? that way you would not have to pay a hosting fee, and you would ultimately have more control of your site's growth in the future.

[Ioky]

oh, could you tell me more detail about it?
it seem interesting

The one thing is I don't' leave my computer on every second, however, I do have a second computer that is kind of doing nothing at the monument. and my internet is kind of slow too. it is only 300kb/s download and 782kb/s upload, or something close to that. so...

[freebios]

thats a great speed you can easily handle many visitors at the same time. The good thing to about this is you will be in greater control over how much space you need, bandwith, etc. Best of all you WILL save money. Most people dont do this because their isp discourage this, and many people just dont know how. take a look here for more info

http://www.dslwebserver.com/

http://www.tizag.com/webhost/host_yourself.php

[teaker1s]

ubuntu lamp server,gui and webmin interface= easy. just use dyndns or similar to keep your ip and name together:popcorn:

[Merk42]

Well people have told you about the design, I'll tell you about the technical parts.
It'd be nice if your side passed w3c validation (http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Ffoolzage.com%2Fbag%2F)
Also, in your email section, I'd recommend changing it to something like ioky[at]foolzage.com and foolzage[at]gmail.com otherwise spiders will scan your site, find an email address, and then you'll start getting spam.
Another fun thing to do is set your site up with Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/indexu.html) it's free, and you just copy some javascript code they give you onto every page of your site. It's a nice way to learn about your visitors.

[Ioky]

Thanks to telling that. I never think about such thing when I am doing my site. I guess I need to pay more attention on some detail stuff.

Thank you so much .

BTW, is there a nice place to look up web design tips and tricks in term of both graphic design and Technical stuff. especially technical stuff?