What do you think of my new Linux website that I built?

[GammaRay256]

I recently launched a small Linux information website that I built. It's basically a place for me to write Linux guides, post screenshots, write articles for new Linux users, and to practice my web development skills.


I didn't write a built in comment system, so I thought I'd ask here if anyone would like to provide some helpful feedback.


http://silverlinux.net (http://silverlinux.net)


This site also provides an area for me to try out some of the free FX scripts available on the internet, while giving me a chance to practice my SEO, accessibility, and graphic design skills.


---

If this kind of post is inappropriate (eg. making a post asking for feedback on a website I built, please let me know or remove it; I don't want to break any rules).

Community Cafe seemed like the best category for this.

[smartboyathome]

I would recommend Ubuntu over Linux Mint for newbies. Even though Linux Mint includes codecs, and thus it is not legal to download Linux Mint in some countries like the U.S., and Ubuntu can have codecs included as well using a remastered LiveCD (not that hard to do).

[ninjapirate89]

I really like that font where it says "Welcome to silverlinux.net!"

Edit-> Also the page on the whole is very nice as well.

[ninjapirate89]

I would recommend Ubuntu over Linux Mint for newbies. Even though Linux Mint includes codecs, and thus it is not legal to download Linux Mint in some countries like the U.S., and Ubuntu can have codecs included as well using a remastered LiveCD (not that hard to do).

It's illegal to download Mint in the U.S.??? Oops!

[GammaRay256]

I would recommend Ubuntu over Linux Mint for newbies. Even though Linux Mint includes codecs, and thus it is not legal to download Linux Mint in some countries like the U.S., and Ubuntu can have codecs included as well using a remastered LiveCD (not that hard to do).

I thought about that recently. I didn't think Mint was illegal in the US... I might consider changing it to Ubuntu... The media codecs are easy, It's mainly the DVD playback and the Flash plugin, it gets easier to install with each Ubuntu release, but it was kind of difficult on my first experience with them, so that's why I would reccomend a distro with them preinstalled.

[Mokoma]

nice site dude

[GammaRay256]

It's illegal to download Mint in the U.S.??? Oops!
Yeah, that's what I thought...

[GammaRay256]

I really like that font where it says "Welcome to silverlinux.net!"

Edit-> Also the page on the whole is very nice as well.

Thanks, I like the font too, except that it's sometimes difficult to read certain words.
I might consider changing the font below it, that one's even harder to read.

[CraigPaleo]

It's a good looking site! What CMS is that?

Just so you know, "media" is misspelled on the Get Linux page - last paragraph.

[ninjapirate89]

I might consider changing the font below it, that one's even harder to read.

I like that font too but you're right, it is a little hard to read.

[GammaRay256]

It's a good looking site! What CMS is that?

Just so you know, "media" is misspelled on the Get Linux page - last paragraph.

Actually, no CMS, it's a custom system I coded myself in PHP. There's no web administration, but it makes it easier to create new pages and add content. (The content is rendered in the same way as a CMS, it just doesn't have a front-end for managment).

Thanks for the spelling error, I'll fix it in a moment...
EDIT => Spelling error fixed.

[ninjapirate89]

Its not a big deal but in firefox when you click on the links in your main navigation they still have the dotted outline. Here is an article on how to fix it if you want. http://sonspring.com/journal/removing-dotted-links

[GammaRay256]

Its not a big deal but in firefox when you click on the links in your main navigation they still have the dotted outline. Here is an article on how to fix it if you want. http://sonspring.com/journal/removing-dotted-links
Thanks for the tip, I'll look into it. (The CSS for that menu is a bit difficult to work with, I didn't write it, and I need to find what entry actually handles the a:active property on top level items.)

[some_random_noob]

I really like the design... I come across so many sites that are rubbish these days. Luckily, your site isn't :)

The question though, is can you have enough unique content to draw in visitors? Also, will the content/how-tos get good places on Google? Note of course that I'm not actually asking, it's just something to think about.

Speaking of making sites: isn't it about time that we saw some kind of really, really good open source game development community/site? I know there's stuff out there, but it should all be in one place.

[ninjapirate89]

I really like the design... I come across so many sites that are rubbish these days. Luckily, your site isn't :)


You mean sites like these :)
http://www.arngren.net/

[measekite]

I recently launched a small Linux information website that I built. It's basically a place for me to write Linux guides, post screenshots, write articles for new Linux users, and to practice my web development skills.


I didn't write a built in comment system, so I thought I'd ask here if anyone would like to provide some helpful feedback.


http://silverlinux.net (http://silverlinux.net)


This site also provides an area for me to try out some of the free FX scripts available on the internet, while giving me a chance to practice my SEO, accessibility, and graphic design skills.


---

If this kind of post is inappropriate (eg. making a post asking for feedback on a website I built, please let me know or remove it; I don't want to break any rules).

Community Cafe seemed like the best category for this.



Nice

What did you use to create it?

[GammaRay256]

I really like the design... I come across so many sites that are rubbish these days. Luckily, your site isn't :)

The question though, is can you have enough unique content to draw in visitors? Also, will the content/how-tos get good places on Google? Note of course that I'm not actually asking, it's just something to think about.

Speaking of making sites: isn't it about time that we saw some kind of really, really good open source game development community/site? I know there's stuff out there, but it should all be in one place.

Thanks for the comment on the design :)

Yes, I think it's time for a better game development community site as well. So much of the information is scattered around various posts and lists all over the internet.

[CraigPaleo]

Actually, no CMS, it's a custom system I coded myself in PHP. There's no web administration, but it makes it easier to create new pages and add content. (The content is rendered in the same way as a CMS, it just doesn't have a front-end for managment).

Thanks for the spelling error, I'll fix it in a moment...
EDIT => Spelling error fixed.

A CMS without a front-end? Interesting! I think Silver Linux would be a good name for a new distro.

[GammaRay256]

Nice

What did you use to create it?
Handwritten PHP, HTML, and CSS
And a bit of JavaScript... (which I didn't write) :)

It's mainly a system of PHP code that allows me to make a single file for each page without repeating all the code. It also includes some automatic tools to make manual publishing a little easier (one is the way images are handled, they're automaticall resized, look at the URL for some of the images in the site, you'll notice that they're a PHP file).

Perhaps I should publish the source code? I worry a bit about security.

[GammaRay256]

A CMS without a front-end? Interesting! I think Silver Linux would be a good name for a new distro.

I thought Silver Linux would be a good distro name too.

---

The "CMS" is mainly a collection of organized files, including configuration files, template files, and (very basic) modules for rendering custom tags in template files. I also have my image resizing script, which makes images a breeze to upload and display (view the URLs for one of the images, they're a PHP file).

Here's the source for the automatic image resizer, if anybody is interested: http://silverlinux.net/img.phps
I found the original idea online, but I had to do some heavy modification (I added caching, image size limits, and a few other features).

The rendering system is basically ready for a management console, but I haven't gotten around to writing one yet.

I once wrote a management console in PHP, for an ancient version of the system, but it took a long time (and I have almost no JavaScript knowledge, so it wasn't very fast or effective).

Also, I don't know SQL, and I think SQL would be better for a CMS than flat files.

[CraigPaleo]

Handwritten PHP, HTML, and CSS
And a bit of JavaScript... (which I didn't write) :)

It's mainly a system of PHP code that allows me to make a single file for each page without repeating all the code. It also includes some automatic tools to make manual publishing a little easier (one is the way images are handled, they're automaticall resized, look at the URL for some of the images in the site, you'll notice that they're a PHP file).

Perhaps I should publish the source code? I worry a bit about security.

I can see the images turn and resize when the page first loads. It's a nice effect.

[ninjapirate89]

Handwritten PHP, HTML, and CSS
And a bit of JavaScript... (which I didn't write) :)

It's mainly a system of PHP code that allows me to make a single file for each page without repeating all the code. It also includes some automatic tools to make manual publishing a little easier (one is the way images are handled, they're automaticall resized, look at the URL for some of the images in the site, you'll notice that they're a PHP file).

Perhaps I should publish the source code? I worry a bit about security.

I'm pretty sure any of the source code for a website can be viewed anyway.

[GammaRay256]

I'm pretty sure any of the source code for a website can be viewed anyway.

Not the PHP code, only the server sees it.

[GammaRay256]

I can see the images turn and resize when the page first loads. It's a nice effect.

I'm talking about the actual images, not the "effects" that are applied, that script comes from here: http://www.netzgesta.de/instant/

The script I was referring to resizes the images on the server for faster downloads.
The images are accessed like this:
http://silverlinux.net/img.php?w=750&src=./site/pages/default/compiz-desktop.png
Notice that it's a PHP file with added parameters.

[ninjapirate89]

Not the PHP code.

Ah...didnt know that. I knew that you can view html, css, and javascript so I just assumed that it would work for php as well. You learn something new every day.

[bashveank]

Cut down on the amount of text, specifically the huge block on the front page that I am very unmotivated to read. Look at some of the most well-designed sites on the net, Google, I can count the number of words on one hand, Ubuntu.com, very small text chunks, Flickr, very small text chunks, etc... People don't like to read a book unless they know they like your site, and the front page will be seen by lots of people that don't know if they like your site.

I would also cut the bar at the very top, rather confusing having that there, and a similar looking bar a few inches down (the navigator)

I would also cut out the box at the bottom with your copyright and other links and replace them with a single line of size 10 text.

AND RSS IT! No one's gonna come back to your site unless they know there's new content up, and very few people are in the habit of checking their websites for content, they just look at their RSS readers.


Finally, and probably most importantly, read this (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/31/10-principles-of-effective-web-design/). Very well respected [web] design site.

[GammaRay256]

Cut down on the amount of text, specifically the huge block on the front page that I am very unmotivated to read. Look at some of the most well-designed sites on the net, Google, I can count the number of words on one hand, Ubuntu.com, very small text chunks, Flickr, very small text chunks, etc... People don't like to read a book unless they know they like your site, and the front page will be seen by lots of people that don't know if they like your site.

Yeah, I'm working on that... I don't know exactly what I'm going to do yet... I have a few ideas, maybe something like this? http://www.phatfusion.net/imagemenu/index.htm

I agree though, the huge block of text probably won't be read much.

[bashveank]

Yeah, I'm working on that... I don't know exactly what I'm going to do yet... I have a few ideas, maybe something like this? http://www.phatfusion.net/imagemenu/index.htm

I agree though, the huge block of text probably won't be read much.

That's eye catching, at the least - I toyed with using that on my site, but I couldn't find anywhere to put it that wasn't awkward. If you can, though, more power to you.

The code for it and other really cool little javascript stuff is at http://moofx.mad4milk.net/ by the way.

edit: sorry, http://mootools.net/, http://demos.mootools.net more specifically.
edit: actually http://demos111.mootools.net/ there for that specific one....
edit: dear God, the source is right there on that site you posted. I'm an idiot. Well, there are still some great techniques on the sites I linked to.
edit: some other excellent MooTools techniques: http://devsnippets.com/reviews/20-excellent-mootools-script-for-rich-user-interface.html

[GammaRay256]

Cut down on the amount of text, specifically the huge block on the front page that I am very unmotivated to read. Look at some of the most well-designed sites on the net, Google, I can count the number of words on one hand, Ubuntu.com, very small text chunks, Flickr, very small text chunks, etc... People don't like to read a book unless they know they like your site, and the front page will be seen by lots of people that don't know if they like your site.

I would also cut the bar at the very top, rather confusing having that there, and a similar looking bar a few inches down (the navigator)

I would also cut out the box at the bottom with your copyright and other links and replace them with a single line of size 10 text.

AND RSS IT! No one's gonna come back to your site unless they know there's new content up, and very few people are in the habit of checking their websites for content, they just look at their RSS readers.


Finally, and probably most importantly, read this (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/31/10-principles-of-effective-web-design/). Very well respected [web] design site.

Thank you for the tips. I've considered doing an RSS feed, but I need to research it little more before I implement it.

Is the box at the bottom too distracting? Would it help if I changed the color or appearance?

I'll consider cutting out the top bar, I was building another site with a similar template, and it looked sort of empty, like something was missing.

[GammaRay256]

That's eye catching, at the least - I toyed with using that on my site, but I couldn't find anywhere to put it that wasn't awkward. If you can, though, more power to you.

The code for it and other really cool little javascript stuff is at http://moofx.mad4milk.net/ by the way.

edit: sorry, http://mootools.net/, http://demos.mootools.net more specifically.
edit: actually http://demos111.mootools.net/ there for that specific one....
edit: dear God, the source is right there on that site you posted. I'm an idiot. Well, there are still some great techniques on the sites I linked to.
edit: some other excellent MooTools techniques: http://devsnippets.com/reviews/20-excellent-mootools-script-for-rich-user-interface.html

Thanks, especially for the last link. I always love showcases like that; I found most of the scripts for my site on pages like that.

[bashveank]

Is the box at the bottom too distracting? Would it help if I changed the color or appearance

I thought it was distracting, just a random box sticking up at the bottom of the page. It probably would help if it matched the color palette of the site and the general shape of the other elements....

[GammaRay256]

I thought it was distracting, just a random box sticking up at the bottom of the page. It probably would help if it matched the color palette of the site and the general shape of the other elements....

OK, I'll try to get it to match tomorrow (I need to get to bed, it's getting late).
I guess the box didn't bother me since I have a widescreen laptop with a vertical resolution of 800px, so I don't see that box when the site first loads (I only see it after scrolling a bit).

[MaxIBoy]

Very slick site, and you must have fast servers too! Loaded right away for me!



Correction on the "distros" page: You say that Arch is easy to set up, then one sentence later you say it's difficult to set up.

Correction on the "text editors" page: You forgot Emacs.

Correction on the "text editors" page: You didn't forget Vi.

Historical nitpicking:


Slackware is the oldest surviving distro, not "one of the oldest."
The oldest surviving "family trees" are, indeed, Slackware, RedHat, and Debian.
However, there was no clear "original three." The first "distro" was a set of basic GNU utilities ported over to the kernel, and available on FTP along with the kernel itself, way back in '91. The first to be widely published was Yggdrasil, which came as a CD set with large amounts of software.
Other distros, perhaps younger than Slackware, but older than RedHat and Debian, still survive, but they haven't produced "extended families." A lot of them are floppy distros that are today only used for legacy hardware.

[Bodsda]

Sweet site, I'm trying to get into web design and hope to produce something similar.

Just out of interest, what is the wicked font your using on your desktop http://silverlinux.net/img.php?w=800&src=./site/pages/media/scr/feb2009//images/7.png

Nice work,

Bodsda

EDIT: Correction on text editors: In the vi/vim section
"vi", originally "vim", is the most traditional Linux and UNIX text-editor

The above statement suggests that vim came before vi, which is incorrect as vim stands for VI iMproved

[MaxIBoy]

And "ED" is actually the standard UNIX text editor. You should totally use it to write your thesis.

[0per4t0r]

ah... Technology at its best.

Also, did you use a webpage editor, or just a text editor to write the raw code?

[GammaRay256]

Very slick site, and you must have fast servers too! Loaded right away for me!



Correction on the "distros" page: You say that Arch is easy to set up, then one sentence later you say it's difficult to set up.

Correction on the "text editors" page: You forgot Emacs.

Correction on the "text editors" page: You didn't forget Vi.

Historical nitpicking:


Slackware is the oldest surviving distro, not "one of the oldest."
The oldest surviving "family trees" are, indeed, Slackware, RedHat, and Debian.
However, there was no clear "original three." The first "distro" was a set of basic GNU utilities ported over to the kernel, and available on FTP along with the kernel itself, way back in '91. The first to be widely published was Yggdrasil, which came as a CD set with large amounts of software.
Other distros, perhaps younger than Slackware, but older than RedHat and Debian, still survive, but they haven't produced "extended families." A lot of them are floppy distros that are today only used for legacy hardware.



Would you believe that the site is hosted on a Qwest DSL connection in a small, rural town, with an old Pentium 4 Dell desktop?

I'll probably move it someday, that webserver is actually set up primarily for a different website and I don't like using it's bandwidth.

Updates:
* Fixed the wording about Arch Linux
* I don't know how to use emacs, I'll need to try it out
* Fixed the wording on vim
* Fixed some of the historical errors.

[GammaRay256]

ah... Technology at its best.

Also, did you use a webpage editor, or just a text editor to write the raw code?

Just a text editor. "gedit" to be specific.

[bashveank]

Just a text editor. "gedit" to be specific.

Is it just static HTML, or are you serving it via a CMS?
Because if it's just static HTML I would highly recommend porting your site to something like Joomla, Drupal, or even Wordpress. Much easier to manage.

[0per4t0r]

I think he's using php. I like php, it's a nice language.

[dragos240]

It has a nice style, but I don't judge linux websites for a living so.... thats all i'm giving ya.

[GammaRay256]

Sweet site, I'm trying to get into web design and hope to produce something similar.

Just out of interest, what is the wicked font your using on your desktop http://silverlinux.net/img.php?w=800&src=./site/pages/media/scr/feb2009//images/7.png


I think it's called Papyrus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_(typeface) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_%28typeface%29)), it's just too bad it's a Windows Vista-packaged font :(

[GammaRay256]

Is it just static HTML, or are you serving it via a CMS?
Because if it's just static HTML I would highly recommend porting your site to something like Joomla, Drupal, or even Wordpress. Much easier to manage.
Well, it's a step up from static HTML, but not quite a CMS... Here's all I have to do to create or manage a page:
Say I want to create the page: "http://silverlinux.net/?req=fun:test"
I would go to (on the server) "/home/silverlinux/public_html/site/pages/fun/test/", and create/edit a file named "test.php".
"test.php" would look something like this:

<?php
$page[title]="Test Page";
$page[subtitle]="This is a demonstration";
$page[description]="This is what would be in the META description tag.";
$page[keywords]="these,are,the,keywords,for,the,meta,keywords,tag";
?>
<p>HTML code would go here. <i>The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.</i></p>The nice part is that I have separate files for the template, the menu, the config files, and the content areas. Therefore, I don't have to write a full HTML document for a new page. I also don't have to worry about updating dozens of HTML files if I want to change one element.

[GammaRay256]

UPDATE:
I changed the background color of the bottom box on the pages. It still stands out a bit too much, but at least now it fits the colors of the rest of the site.
http://silverlinux.net

[wolfen69]

It's illegal to download Mint in the U.S.??? Oops!

better watch out for the OS police!

[-grubby]

I like the layout, but the colors are mismatched.

[Paqman]

GammaRay256: Some of your pages don't actually validate. The Mint install one, Some of the pages in "Articles", the "Fun stuff" pages, etc.

Apologies if you haven't got to the code-scrubbing bit of your site build yet, I just clciked on the W3C button out of habit and it threw up errors.

[Paqman]

Because if it's just static HTML I would highly recommend porting your site to something like Joomla, Drupal, or even Wordpress. Much easier to manage.

Eh? Joomla et al are for dynamic sites. Using them for static content would be making the site much harder to manage. A CMS adds alot of complexity to a site. They can be a godsend for complex sites, but they'd be overkill for a few flat pages like this.

[GammaRay256]

GammaRay256: Some of your pages don't actually validate. The Mint install one, Some of the pages in "Articles", the "Fun stuff" pages, etc.

Apologies if you haven't got to the code-scrubbing bit of your site build yet, I just clciked on the W3C button out of habit and it threw up errors.

Yeah, I figured some of the pages probably wouldn't validate, I haven't checked them all yet...

The homepage validates at the moment, so that's good; I'll continue to fix some of the other pages when I have some more spare time.

Thanks for the note, though, I really do need to fix those pages. Some of the sites out there, though, have that button and none of their pages validate.

UPDATE:
The "You Might Be a Geek If..." page now validates, it was a simple error, two unencoded ampersands.

[GammaRay256]

I like the layout, but the colors are mismatched.

Which colors are you referring to specifically? What do you think should be changed?

[bashveank]

Eh? Joomla et al are for dynamic sites. Using them for static content would be making the site much harder to manage. A CMS adds alot of complexity to a site. They can be a godsend for complex sites, but they'd be overkill for a few flat pages like this.

I imagine, and hope, he's planning on regularly updating his content(note to GammaRay256: Update your content regularly if you want to get regularly returning users!). If the content is updated at all frequently, even semi-frequently, even irregularly, than use of a CMS is in order.
The point is moot anyway since he is using his own kind of CMS.

[GammaRay256]

I imagine, and hope, he's planning on regularly updating his content(note to GammaRay256: Update your content regularly if you want to get regularly returning users!). If the content is updated at all frequently, even semi-frequently, even irregularly, than use of a CMS is in order.
The point is moot anyway since he is using his own kind of CMS.
Yes, I'll be updating it as often as I can, whenever I find something related to Linux I think there needs to be more information about, but I may not get a chance to do any more serious sections until the summer, the rest of the school year is going to be pretty busy.

Updates will probably come in the form of new how-to articles and showcases. Here's some of my ideas:

* Cinelerra tutorials, I noticed there is a lack of these on the internet. I had a hard time finding out how to pan and zoom an image!
* Video and audio conversion in ffmpeg, some tutorials and sample code.
* Linux gaming
* Website development, If I ever get a chance to, I'll release the source code for the site and document how I came about writing it the way I did. I'll also introduce some of my own ideas such as the automatic PHP image resizer script.
* More fun pages, maybe a weekly video recommendation? I might have to start using a full CMS if I'm going to do something like that. Right now, I'm in-between static HTML and CMS, I don't have to go to all the work of static HTML, but I also don't have quite as much updating power as a CMS.

[GammaRay256]

I'm really interested in setting up an RSS feed now. I've never used RSS much, so it's a somewhat new subject for me. I know what it is and what it does, but I still need to learn how to write and implement it.
This is where content management systems are so nice, they have a well-integrated system that makes it easy to generate an RSS XML file.

It might be kind of a challenge with my current system, I think I can figure out a way to update it however. I can have an XML file generated with the latest 10 or so page updates. That would be pretty easy, just a PHP directory scan of all the pages, organize them in order of last updated, and pull a little bit of content from the selected pages and organize the entries in an XML file.

It will take some work, but I think I'll be able to do it. I need to do some reading on how to write those RSS XML files so I can make a PHP file to generate them.

[-grubby]

Which colors are you referring to specifically? What do you think should be changed?

The square green sub-menus look very odd coming out of the rounded blue bar.

Also, good job on the validation!

[GammaRay256]

The square green sub-menus look very odd coming out of the rounded blue bar.

Also, good job on the validation!

Ah, that reminds me, I wanted to change the color of those boxes early in development, but I was having trouble with the CSS (I've said before, the CSS in that menu is somewhat difficult, I didn't write it).
But I also couldn't decide on colors... Any ideas? White on black maybe?

Or, if anyone has a better idea for a menu solution, please post it! I'd like to keep it a CSS-based menu preferably, but if it's a very nice JavaScript menu that uses standard HTML lists, I might be interested.
The CSS menu I'm currently on my site comes from here: http://www.stunicholls.com/