Regarding the look, making the feel

Ok so I’ve looked around and found four potential designs that I want to look at for this site, which I will list below, but remember, don’t take them all at face value, each will be edited and customised to my personal tastes and to fit in with the site schemea.

Lets start with template idea number one

This is Carrington, (click the image to go to the page) Now, I like it, because it shares similar things that the pixeled template has. It’s clean, it’s wide, but also has two columns on the right, which means I get to make the most of the real estate. Best of all the logo at the top and banner, are images, that can be customised, redone, or completley removed to fid the template style I’m trying to go for. As with this template, I need to do some major code editng, so that the three catagories for the blogs, appear on seperate pages (we will be renaming Site Updates to News by the way as It’s a little more accuratte)

I really do like this, and it seems to make the most of the screen real estate thats available, and put an emphasis on the text, rather than the images and background. Plus displaying pictures from a Flicr gallery, will work much better in a preview format (more on that later)

This is the second, called Inove.

Visually I think this is really quite similar to the one above, it’s a little darker but it’s still white, clean and crisp, again devoting more space to the screen real estate, rather than the actual images or background, but it does look like a “page” rather than a website, thanks to the contrasting background, so it’s something Im keen to play with. The sidebar also has some really nice things about it, first off it’s two column, just like my current one, and just like the one above, but it is a little wider, it does slightly concern me that it’s coloured, making edits, and adding in custom imagery, might be a little difficult.

Above all else though it puts a real strength to the text on the page, and clearly seperates it. It’s one of my favorites at the moment, and I hope you will like it as well.

The third, is Arclite. Now, although it isn’t black, nor white, it’s still a light template, with an earthy feel. It’s still clear and makes the most of the screen real estate. Im drawn to it’s unsual background colour, and the way the designer has used blue and pink in images and links rather than greens and browns.

My main fear is the background image, weather the site itself is made up of a background image, or weather it’s a set colour, that can easily be edited. Then theres the ‘button bubble’ at the top. Which might not work well, and be less appealing over time.

I’ve noticed as well the text on here, whilst clear, seems to be much smaller. So I worry about getting some of the comments I’ve had before about the clarity of the site (no doubt a few of you are reading this now wishing the text was slightly bigger) and finally, the sidebar is only a single column. So it doesn’t bode well with me, but I don’t strictly need a double column layout.

The fourth and final design is this, Extend. Now, this to me, looks more like an upgrade from the current site template, rather than a complete redesign, so it has major plus points there, as it’s less inclined to shock and appall new users that come visiting. But I am principally worried about the real estate. It’s about the same size as the current site template, so the text is also around the same size.  There is no real sidebar, so it would take a lot of customising and hard coding to actually get it to work, plus, it’s still very dark, and I get the feeling it’s not targeted toward the type of site I am trying to build. Couple that with the fact the preview isn’t loading at all and the developers website is frustratingly slow leads me to believe that either there wasn’t much thought put into this template, or it was designed for someone else, and then just released into the public domain. I also worry about what kind of support I would receive should I go for it and attempt to recode it to my needs, nevertheless, I have considered it because of it’s similaritys to the current template, and I would be willing to persue it shoudl the demand be high enough.

I did find a bigger preview, but I am not… overwhelmed by it, you can view it here http://ooyes.net/leisure-west but be warned, the site is terribly slow.

So thats the four I’ve picked out that I feel would be most appropriate and I would really appriciate your comments about the site.

Speaking of comments, let’s talk about flickr. As you’ll see in my last update, I commented that I was unhappy with the layout of my gallerys, saying a cleanup really needed to be done, something that was echoed by Arlene Radasky (Click here for the comment)

Arlene commented that ” I would like to see your explanation of why you took certain pictures and why you chose the digital pictures you did” she also commented that the white on black look, wasnt good, soemthing echoed by myself, and KingTarquin. Couple this with Shamins comments (Click here) he mentions about “pictures on your front page, as in a small thumbnail beside the title” and people on twitter have also mentioned about adding Flickr.

I’ve been keen to stay away from Flickr in fear of image theft, however because all images have now been converted to have watermarks im not, as concerned about it as I was. Still, many of my images, have the exif data on it, plus, I am lead to believe that Flickr can also provide “Artists Comments” and the ability for others to comment it.

I need more information, so I reach out and ask you, all once again for your input. Thank you