Don't spend too much time redesigning, content is even more important.
Frankly I love your site and find it really useful.

Bill



"Wayne J. Cosshall" wrote in message
...
JC Dill wrote:

Rude? I didn't see anything rude. It seems that perhaps you have a
problem with your overly cluttered
page's content being called "crap" but really, to the visitor, that's
exactly what it is. It's cluttering up the page and making it very
hard for them to find any valuable content.

Frankly, I find it very ironic that your site claims to be a reference
site for "Web design" given the site's own very poor design.

jc

I think anyone who has worked as hard as I have on the site might find the
word crap rude.

Anyway, anyone here who has actually designed a web site with so much
content will know it is a tough balancing act. For example, I've been
criticized for having the usability tip message at the top of the home
page, yet I have had a good number of emails from people thanking me for
putting it there as they did not know this and it has helped them not just
with my site but many others. You can't suit everyone.

My priority with the redesign of the site (which is the current design)
was to put 'above the fold' enough indications of other content on the
site so that if people came straight into an article page, they could see
that there was much more available. Hence the article categories and types
down the left, for example, and the recent articles list on the article
pages. It has grown and evolved and, as people have pointed out, become
cluttered. I suspect that if you ran a similar site such a thing might
also happen.

It is clearly time for a redesign, and I was heading towards it before
this thread started. It has been clear for some time that the article
page, for example, needed more width for the actual content so I could use
larger pictures. I am also considering a home page design which allows me
to highlight certain 'hot' content whilst also providing easy access to
other parts of the site. Plus I've wanted to add a search page for some
time, for example. Part of this process is looking at how other similar
sites have done it and part is thinking about what is most important, etc.

Anyway, there should be a new design ready in January.

Cheers,

Wayne

--
Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/
Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/