Topic: can someone give me tips on how to make my site look less bland

[turkman]

im more of a php person and cant really work out how to make my sites look good.

here is my forum part

http://abbs.imgboard.co.uk

and my wiki part

http://abbs.imgboard.co.uk/wiki.php

[xcandiottix]

I don't the problem is the design but it's more a matter of what's the point. Upon visiting your site.. i really have no idea what its for, what the name of the site is, why i need to be looking thru it, or what data i should expect to find. I recommend that you try branding your website and the design will follow. Create a logo, color scheme, banner, a cool title font, etc etc and things should start to come together.

[turkman]

oh thats a good tip, i suppose there is no real point... im just seeing if i can design something - just to improve my php.

[Adam]

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I think the first thing you need to concentrate on is developing a system that doesn't pop-up a message like that on the first visit.

[scept1c]

to receive such a pop-up message isn't pleasant indeed. It's a testing site for you as far as I understood?

[turkman]

yea im not trying to make anything commercial, im trying to work out things in php... but i still dont know how to make it look good.

[jd307]

First thing I would try and do is instead of opening that "error" message because it is my first visit would be to have the page create a cookie for me and redirect me straight away to where I am meant to be going.  When I saw that and nothing else opened, I was almost tempted to close the web page thinking "oh it's not working"... but then I read on.

I would suggest that if cookies cannot be set, display a notice (possibly in the center of the screen) with some nice large, readable font that clearly states "Cookies are not enabled for your web browser, this website requires cookies to be enabled.".  That way a user knows straight away without reading a small document  . 

If cookies can be set, it would be set on the first page and then sets header("Location: the_redirected_page.php");.

[Jimania]

First, I would go to a site like the Adobe Kuler site and search for a better color scheme. Next, work on your font with a size of 7.5em or 8.0em, color #444, use a standard font like arial, verdana, tahoma, use a line height of 135% and don't have the text go beyond an average width of 12 words.  Add some background images at header/title areas, use thumbnails to break up content areas and try sporadically dropping in a sentence with brighter color and oversized like 1.3em.

Break up the page with variations and you will notice a big difference!

[fortnox007]

If your goal is to make things look good. don't focus too much on php, but started focusing on css. After all if your setting up a nice site you don't use inline style but external css.
Start here for some inspiration mate: http://www.yourinspirationweb.com/en/
Oh and what i could recommend anyone buy a book on how to make nice pictures, national geographic has a few. Making nice pictures isn't all about the right shutter time, but most of it is the composition and lightning.
good luck!