Site critique! Need your opinion :)

[JosiahB]

I would love to know your thought on a new website that I am in the process of building … it is by no means finished so there will be many things that have not been completed, but I just wanted to know what was thought of the overall design

[Site…](http://childrensgospelcursade.site90.com “Site”)

Thanks!!

[joshuanhibbert]

The domain has a typo :(

[JoniGiuro]

Don’t like: The font you picked for the title and menu

Like: the custom scrollbar

[Watson90]

Hey @JosiahB

As @joshuanhibbert said, your website has a typo. You have put ‘cursade’ in the URL as opposed to ‘crusade’. Don’t know if this is going to be its permanent domain name or just one to get it up and running for cross-browser testing.

Your website obviously looks nicer in Chrome, with the custom scroll bar and the navigation 3D effects and the scrolling features, but it doesn’t look so good in IE9 – it may be a good thing to try and at least accomodate for that browser, and use some cross-browser coding technique or work-arounds for it.

As @JoniGiuro said, I think the custom font you’ve used is used a bit too much, it’s basically used for the logo, the navigation, the blog titles, the blog post date and the read more links. I know how exciting it is when you get a font up and running that isn’t just a bog-standard web font and it’s easy to go crazy with it but sometimes less is better.

Overall: good attempt but take our advice as positive as you can :) after all, we’re here to help and give our opinion.

[Watson90]

Well spotted @jkinney768

[Paulie_D]

Just running it through a validator will help a lot…

[JosiahB]

Thank you so much everyone for all your advice! I really appreciate it! :) I changed the font around and fixed the … thank you @jkinney768 for pointing that out! I was wondering why it look so bad in ie …. I know that I misspelled the url … its just a temporary service until I get it finished … so I did not worry about changing it :) Please let me know what you think of it now! [… updated](http://childrensgospelcursade.site90.com “updated”)

[MBM]

The colour scheme is garish. There’s too much empty space. The Team section looks nice but you’ve got too much padding at the bottom. With a bit of work it could look very stylish.

[JosiahB]

@MBM this is only my second real website I have built/building … so kinda new to this …. could you give me some ideas about what to do with the color scheme?

[MBM]

Go here for some ideas :

http://www.colorcombos.com

The purple and grey you have used for the menu doesn’t work for me but the colours in your drop down (Hoderas = Honduras?) provide a much better contrast.

I agree with what the others have said about your font choices. Try some of the google fonts :

http://www.google.com/webfonts

I think two of the best are PT Sans Narrow and Ubuntu.

[JosiahB]

@jkinney768 thanks so much for the information! I am sure that will be very useful … @MBM do you think this color combination looks good? [color scheme … ](http://www.colorcombos.com/combotester.html?color0=79BEDB&color1=593E1A&color2=6B78B4&color3=266A2E&show_text=Y “color scheme”)

[Brian Meyer]

Joshia, I think you would greatly benefit from working on your design skills. You’ve probably put a lot of work in to this site, so please don’t take this the wrong way. I’m trying to be helpful.

There are numerous “bad” things going on with the site. Not in usability, but purely in the realm of design aesthetics.

1. The logo on the front page is barely legible. It looks like you’re going for a “kiddish” type look. That’s fine, but don’t sacrifice legibility.
2. The colors are all quite bad together. As mentioned above, work on developing your color palette. Adobe Kuler and many other sites on the web have palette samples. You’d also benefit from reading about color theory.
3. You need to work on your typography. The fonts are bad, the kerning is bad. Do you know what kerning is? Not trying to be rude, but these are basic design fundamentals. Read more about typography! (the elements of typographic style is an excellent book)

I’d start with those three areas and go from there! Good luck.

[MBM]

The colour schemes are better but most websites have black or white fonts for a reason. Stick with a simple palette to begin with before experimenting with colours.

If you want to use a kids font style for your logo take a look at these :

http://www.fontspace.com/category/kids

[chrisburton]

I don’t believe there’s a legibility issue here but the typeface combinations are not complimentary. If you’re going to go with Google webfonts, please choose wisely as majority are not optimized for the screen (I highly recommend avoiding them). If you’re serious about quality and design, go with Typekit or Myfonts. Webtype.com is incredible for quality. If I had to choose I would go with WebType.

[JosiahB]

thank you everyone for all your help so far! @brianallan thanks for the information about Adobe Kuler! That is extremely helpful! Everyone please let me know what you think of the color scheme now (just the logo and nav bar have been changed) [updated colors … ](http://childrensgospelcursade.site90.com “updated”) Just to let you all know I am a beginner (obviously) and in highschool (haven’t taken any classes … self learned) so I really appreciate all your help!

[Author]

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