Let me know what you think

Hi I'm Noko. I'm new to this forum and I'm looking for some feed back on my site. This is the first real site I ever did. Its a clan site for Quake 3. http://ul.fantaseum.com/ I did this site from the tutorials I got from http://www.eyeball-design.com/index3.htm . My main question is did I copy eyeballs design to much?

Little history on me: I'm 39 years old and was a Photographer/Photolab tech for 12 years before I became Mr. Mom for the last 10 years. I am now getting ready to get back into the Job market. Do you think I have what it takes to become a Graphics person in web design?

I've been teaching myself Photoshop since 2.5 and just lately teaching myself Dream Weaver and basic HTML. I'm going to be making allot of Web sites in the next few months to get a portfolio together. So your opinion will be greatly appreciated.

hmm....maybe you copied it just a bit to much. I can see the some of eyeball-design in there. But still you still go it looking good.
Not bad at all

Yes, the site is obviously influenced by eyeball, and looks very 'tutorialized'. Which leads in to your second question... I think you should be able to come up with an original design without looking at or following a tutorial before you start calling yourself a web designer and charging people money to build them sites (or working at a design firm as the graphics guy). There is a hell of a lot more to web design than Photoshop and Dreamweaver. But if you are really interested in taking it up as a full/part time job, then learn HTML in depth, not just the basics. Use Dreamweaver as a tool, not as your only hope. Read more design books than photoshop books. Photoshop is also a tool, not an automatic web site creator. Read some books on interface design and web useability. Well I've written some *really* long posts on this before, so I don't see the point in duplicating it again, but you get the idea.

Actually I think thats a good attempt - if its one of your first, I liked it - it shows you have all of the basic skills!

The other point I want to make is this .. Im sorry but here I'm going to disagree with what Deker said. Learning HTML back to front is as far as Im concerned NOT AN ISSUE ANYMORE. Dreamweaver version 4 gives you absolutely all the controls you need to design websites. Ive never heard any convincing argument that this is not the case. Obviously you need to know some HTML to even use Dreamweaver but you are already at that level!

The real issue is whether waste your time with lines of code - or concentrate on whats really important - ie the design, and the optimisation.

For commercial websites the type of design you have here (funky interfaces) isn't necessarily what will sell - but its a good way to learn Photoshop!

The other tip I would give (and I realise this isnt going to be popular) is to learn Flash! As you probably know Flash sites are far more powerful and exciting than HTML sites - the only temporary drawback is that of download time. Flash (or flash technology) must certainly be the long term the future of the internet - it puts everyting else to shame!

I really liked your site - it shows a clear and structured sense of design.

Learning HTML can be the foundation to learning other programming languages like PHP, PERL, ASP etc. If nothing else, it get you used to staring at raw code. There will never be a program that will code PHP or PERL for you, so if you are ever going to get serious about doing larger web sites, you will have to know it sooner or later. If you don't know HTML, then you won't know what half of the things in Dreamweaver even do. If you have a layout problem with your tables, and things aren't lining up properly, then you probably won't be able to fix it if you don't know how HTML works. Now I of course don't know the actual level of knowledge Noko has about HTML, and maybe it's enough. I'm not saying you have to be able to hand code 14 pages an hour, but you should understand what every tag does, what the properties for those tags are, and how everything works together. And you spoke of opimization being important... What about optimizing code? If you know HTML, you can probably drastically reduce the download time of the HTML page if you know what is needed and what isn't. Dreamweaver, even though it's a lot better than other programs about this, sometimes puts in unnecessary code, or takes 5 lines to do what should actually take 3 lines to do.

Like I've said many times before on this forum, if that is his first site, that's fine. It's better than my first site. The problem is when people start charging to build other people sites. If a guy comes along that has bought Dreamweaver and Photoshop, and read a couple of tutorials on each, then he says he's a web designer and has someone pay him $5000 to do a site, that's when it gets ridiculous. The person paying him to do the site could make the site themselves if they bought the same tools and read the same tutorials. All I'm saying is if you are going to do this for a living and charge people, you DO need to know HTML and graphics, and useability, and some programming, and marketing, and networking, (people not computers), customer service, etc, etc, etc. If it's just a hobby, then of course you don't need to know everything. But if you charge, then you need to at least try.

And I'm not even going to get into a discussion about Flash.

The bottom line is, it's a very nice site for your first one. I just cringe when I hear someone who has just finished their first web site already talking about starting a web site design company and charging people.

Blasphemy!!

With editors it is possible now do nice webpages w/o knowing any real HTML that -=doesn't=- mean you should fail to grasp all the concepts behind HTML.

I love editors! i use GoLive myself. Makes things really easy, no more long tedious hand-coding tables. woowoo

But its like designing a website (graphic wise) without knowing anything about design!! I can make decent things in photoshop but i can't call myself a designer.

Just because someone can pump out a page in Frontpage doesn't make them a developer.

HTML is one of the easier thingsyou can learn, and if you can't even mange to accomplish that what happens when you want to move onto javascript? Asp? Your screwed.

If someone goes wrong on your page all you can say is "duh" and wonder why your editor is messing it up.

(sorry noko this has nothing to do with your post, but i already gave my comments on your site on guistuff.com i'm sure i can be forgiven)

BTW i'd like to point out that even to mimic someone takes a little bit of talant. Atleast it means he can do something on purpose, not to just do something on purpose and be creative about it Its a great start Noko

Wow some Great input. I do know Basic HTML and I do mean Basic. Its funny if I opened notepad up and started to a web page I would have to look up allot of code put if I look at the source code on a web page I know what I'm looking at and understand it. I guess its just going to take time. The hard part is getting time to crack the 1000 page books that I have and learn this stuff completely, with kids and a wife who hates me on the computer, its tough but I'm not going to give up on it.

I would not even Dream of calling myself a Web Designer yet, or opening my own business. I now I have a ways to go.

I have about 5 sites I want to design for myself and other people I know for practice. I will follow the input you gave me here. Thanks peeps for your advice. I will use it.

I do believe that you do have to know HTML to work as a web designer, but I barely ever actually have to code with the programs that are out there. Sure I get paid by the hour, but it takes me approx. 8 - 10 hours tops to finish a site from top to bottom from meeting the client to uploading it all to the server. If I had to hand-code all that crap, it'd take me days and days of work. Yeah, I always go back through and take out all the crap that Dreamweaver puts in (I don't use FrontPage anymore. Dreamweaver is faster).

But I really don't even have to do that. My job is mainly to just design the site and get the layout. Someone else does the javascript, php, perl, cgi, etc. I will do as much as I possibly can before I pass anything on to him, but I don't think you have to be a "Pro" to make money in web design.

Mattboy:You job is basically like mine, expect mine seems to take much longer. Clients get to nitpick everything to death so i work on a page for weeks But i basically do all the layout put in the text and stuff like that, than hand it off to someone else to do the javascript or any other backendstuff.

My point is that w/o that HTML knowledge you wouldn't even know anything was wrong. I use GoLive and i rarly have to go and change anything but i wouldn't know if i had to or not unless i could read the code.

To do what we do, not you don't have to be a 'pro' but to do anything else you have to have a much better understanding. You aren't a 'pro' if you can't do javascript at the very least.

P.S i think you ment 'web developer' not web design right? big difference

Noko - sorry were using your post as a sounding board for our views - but Im going to continue!

Right dont get me wrong - its important to know the basics of HTML (and I mean the basics) to use Dreamweaver for example.

emm . HTML is not a programming language and doesnt intrinsically have anything to do with PERL - or any other programming! HTML is a simple language designed for text based content now far past its usefulness. Thats why I was making the point that you don't have to learn code to design - sure if you want to learn Flash Actionscript - then I can see the point in that (its true programming)- but not HTML. The point is there is nothing that you can't do in Dreamweaver 4 if you know it back to front , don't let anyone tell you otherwise!

I was talking about optimising graphics, more than optimising code - that is a far more useful form of optimisation - optimising code has a very small effect on download times (within reason)

Im really tired of all these code junkies who may have had to learn something for the way things were set up three or four years ago, and are screwing people up by mis-advising them!

Better designers concentrate on design, and use the best tools available at any time!