My First Website Was For My Company

[k0reanach0]

I work for a mom & pop type of company, and we’ve been around for almost 7 years now. Because we are a smaller company, it allows us to get our hands into almost anything that interests us and I have learned a lot. Even though I started in Technical Support, I have always wondered why our website looked like crap..

After reading and learning about the latest techniques for web design over the past few months, last week I pitched the idea of me working on our back-end where customer information is stored and developing a completely new design. I spent this past weekend creating and managed to finish the initial draft! I’ve tried my best to make a fresh and modern website, but after only recently learning about websites, let alone never building any, I can’t help but feel this page feels a bit “dated”. It’s way better than anything we’ve made before, but I came here for advice.

Website – My First Site

1. Honest honest feedback. I’d love to know what the strengths and weaknesses of this website and design are. How does a real designer and developer view this? Does it feel “dated” to you guys, or somewhat behind the curve?

2. Would I have been better to choose a WP theme to give it the feel of an up-to-date page? If not, what are some subtle changes I could add?

3. I can’t help but feel I borrowed my ideas and designs from all the sources available to me. I’m somewhat okay with this since only our employees will see it, but I don’t ever want to build a forward facing page that way. I’d love to find a source where I can view the “best of the best” websites out there for inspiration that can also provide some simple tips and ideas of how they will accomplish that. I’ve checked out B&N, but if you guys know of any books that have a ton of templates I’d love to check them out.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this long-winded post! It’s an exciting time for me and I feel like I need more direction than the usual places like css-tricks or any of the other websites I visit.

[k0reanach0]

@mcjohnst — Thank you thank you thank you! I appreciate the time. Obviously it’s still a WIP but I don’t think the footer will be containing much content. However, I haven’t heard of the term “fat-footer”. Is that where the footer navigation is larger than the main nav? Come to think of it, something even like css-tricks main page?

I’m trying to come up with different color patterns, I’ll definitely play around with it. I think it will make it look less “flat”. Although it’s a back-end, because it’s mine I get to do as I please ;).

@CrocoDillon — Thanks for the suggestion! I was definitely having problems indenting the right-justified text and now it makes more sense. I’m going to try both solutions just to see the different results :).

@all — Thank you guys again! I think what I’ve learned is that when you start using CSS, it’s going to be hard to make a “bad” site. I feel encouraged to go out there and just keep creating and I’m going to get better and better. Thanks for taking the time to respond when I’ve never posted here before.

[Author]

Posts