new retro gaming website design.. need feedback

[ckendal]

Well about a week ago I registered the domain name www.theretrogamer.net. I have now created templates for my site and you can see what the design looks like at The Retro Gamer (http://www.theretrogamer.net).

Before I start to add content, I wanted to get feedback from the community as to what they thought of the design.

Enjoy and share your thoughts.

Thanks,
Carl

[badinsults]

Too narrow.

[ckendal]

well I guess for people who use 800x600 res, not that there are many, it would fit perfect. Should I up it to 1024x768 res?

-Carl

[Drag0nsfyre]

I like the design concept so far. :) I can't wait to see more! very cool. 8-)

[Drag0nsfyre]

well I guess for people who use 800x600 res, not that there are many, it would fit perfect. Should I up it to 1024x768 res?

-Carl

yes, I'm running that 1024x768 res. and it looks fine on mine :)

[ckendal]

Thanks for the comments. Keep them coming!

[InsaneDavid]

It's fine where it is, accessibility is the key to web design. It's called "eating your own dog food."

[ckendal]

It's fine where it is, accessibility is the key to web design. It's called "eating your own dog food."

Yea I thought so as well. It should navigate very well once everything is up and running. I hope you all will enjoy the site once its fully ready.

Looking forward to more comments/thoughts from the community!

-Carl

[Drag0nsfyre]

I bookmarked it so I can keep checking back. :)

[ryborg]

So far, so good. I like it!

Personally, I much prefer simple designs over massive flash-based craziness. Also, for most entertainment websites, it's all about the actual content. The site design comes in a distant second.
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[Daria]

a site about retro gaming shouldn't have the new Zelda character art in the banner. Also get the content up first, then fuck around with your design.

[ckendal]

The Link I used was From Minish Cap. I edited his hat/sword/sheild. I wanted a cartoony looking Link. He has the sheild from ALttP and OoT and the blue master sword from those as well.

I guess you can call him an updated retro Link.

Hope that clarifies it.

[lordnikon]

You could always swap Link out for this:

http://media.gamespy.com/columns/image/january03_covers_09s.jpg

8-)

[JT80]

How about different skins so people can change the look of the site.

Sega skin
Nintendo skin
Atari skin
etc.

[Mayhem]

Using fixed pixel widths... hmmm... not sure about that. The widths should really be set for the DIVs rather than also using tables within the DIVs.

And if possible use CSS for the mouseovers on the menu bar instead of javascript (general principle, use as little JS as possible, and only where it can't be done by another method).

[lurpak]

you need to think..

whats the site going to be about, retro gaming is big... and if you just glos over it you will just have one of a billion retro gaming sites...whats going to make yours worth visiting regularly ?

[ckendal]

How about different skins so people can change the look of the site.

Sega skin
Nintendo skin
Atari skin
etc.

Sounds like a great idea, but unfortunately that logo took me long enough. I made that NES controller basically from scratch as a sort of mini project so that it would look cartoony. I had originally just taken a picture of one of my NES controllers but it didn't look right having a 'real life' object with all the other stuff in the header.

Maybe if I get some time in the future i'll slap a couple together.

[ckendal]

you need to think..

whats the site going to be about, retro gaming is big... and if you just glos over it you will just have one of a billion retro gaming sites...whats going to make yours worth visiting regularly ?

Heh, I haven't really thought about it that much. At first it is just going to be a really basic personal site with updates about my collection and pictures. I'll throw some retro gaming news on the news page.

But... in the future I wanted to open a store called "The Retro Gamer" (we are talking a couple years here) and at that point it will become much more.

[Playcosm]

excellent looking - I wish I had the capabilities to build something like that! Smooth colours and a trusted feeling, keep it coming :)



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[ckendal]

excellent looking - I wish I had the capabilities to build something like that! Smooth colours and a trusted feeling, keep it coming :)

Thanks for the kind words. I am not so good at design either and it took me a while. I hope everyone will enjoy the site a little once its up and running fully.

Keep the feedback coming!

[TisLord]

The collection link needs to stay in the same page and/or keep the same color scheme and design as the rest of the site...it feels like a different site for some cheap photo hosting or something....sorry not being mean....just honest

[ckendal]

The collection link needs to stay in the same page and/or keep the same color scheme and design as the rest of the site...it feels like a different site for some cheap photo hosting or something....sorry not being mean....just honest

I completely undestand, but have you ever used GALLERY? It has it's own skins and is scripted in PHP. I may try to figure out how to embed it inside the template, but the gallery is much larger than the current template and would stretch it.

Anyone have other ideas of photo software (that run under linux and apache) for websites that can be used?

Thanks,
Carl

[Melf]

a site about retro gaming shouldn't have the new Zelda character art in the banner. Also get the content up first, then fuck around with your design.

There's nothing wrong with it, since Link is a classic character. I have the same issue with people saying I shouldn't use images of modern Sonic for my Genesis site. The problem is, it's not easy to find quality art of the character from the period in question. Have you seen some of those early Link pics? Ouch!

[ckendal]

a site about retro gaming shouldn't have the new Zelda character art in the banner. Also get the content up first, then fuck around with your design.

There's nothing wrong with it, since Link is a classic character. I have the same issue with people saying I shouldn't use images of modern Sonic for my Genesis site. The problem is, it's not easy to find quality art of the character from the period in question. Have you seen some of those early Link pics? Ouch!

Thanks for agreeing. Atleast I used the retro shield and sword which gave him the retro look. I honestly think he looks pretty slick. But that is just my opinion.

[DaBargainHunta]

This looks fantastic so far. Very cool design. Keep us updated.

[InsaneDavid]

Also get the content up first, then fuck around with your design.

That can come back to bite you on the ass big time. I've spent the past two weeks repairing and normalizing the filenames of all my content - same with front end things like image sizes, resolutions, etc. Much of this was left over from eariler incarnations or just falling into inconsistant habits. If you can figure out a good design and uniformity system at the start you'll be way ahead of the game later on. Honestly things weren't that bad to begin with so I could only imagine how big a pain it would be if things were a mess to start with.


How about different skins so people can change the look of the site.

Sega skin
Nintendo skin
Atari skin
etc.

Personally I think stuff like that gets things too complicated, then you close some accessibility doors which in turn prevents people from visiting your site. (same with 60,000 flash ads and buggy applets - Myspace anyone?) Now if you're doing a multimedia page, I can understand that. Like my site, I have people that use their Dreamcast and the old MS WebTV units to browse it, works fine. My cutoff is my old 120MHz laptop with it's assortment of older browsers under dialup speed at 33.6k - I try to keep my stuff reasonable so that it will display decently on it. I figure no one will use anything more underpowered than that. LOL

[lordnikon]

InsaneDavid touches on a very good point regarding simplicity. I am a webdesigner as my profession. Sites these days are getting WAY too convoluted. All of these blogs, link recipricators, uncessary flash applets, and piles of javascript are messing up the internet. Also people are becoming too reliant on stylesheets. Sure stylesheets in many instances can make your life a lot easier, but in a lot of instances they are not needed.

Lately I have been going back to simple html when coding some basic pages for my own personal use. Plus, since the sites that I work on are so high end, its nice to just make something quick, fast, and functional without much stress.

I kind of like oldschool websites now. I'm not talking "animated gifs" with flames all over the place and terrible neon fonts flying across the screen in a marquee. I just like pages that are simple and easy to access.

Basic background, some text, simple nav and regular images.

BTW, InsaneDavid, I spent an enormous amount of time getting an entire portal community site to fit on the screen while browsing via the Dreamcast. It was not easy... Basically I have a special template just for Dreamcast browsers, and the main template is for PC users. It is really cool to browse forums though and have everything conform to the resolution of the Dreamcast browsers and not have to scroll horizontally.

If anyone is interested I have a primer on coding Dreamcast websites. Basically you have to stick to HTML 3.2, but there are some other things that the Dreamcast browsers won't render.

[ckendal]

Thanks for all the suggestions and feedback. I have started to add content slowly. You can check out the site and its progess.

I have added some stuff to the news section and updated the contact page. I have also taken pictures of my SNES library and it has been added to the gallery. Check it out!