Help designing a fan-sub website

[Skyla Doragono]

Spoiler

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c391/SkylaDoragono/SODmockup.png[/img]

I'm trying to make a website for a translation project I'm going to work on.  But, well... I haven't done any web design in a very long time.  Like, when HTML was awesome and 100mb Geocities accounts were a big thing.  So... any suggestions/ideas on how to make it more... modern?

 

[e]

Well, what you are you aiming for? A highly graphic experience? One that will stun and amaze your visitors by its sheer visual beauty?

Or would you prefer a usability (or goal oriented) design? One that focuses on providing information in the simplest and most straight-forward manner, as fast and as efficiently as possible?

Basically, the first one has more images, more CSS/JavaScript effect : in other words, it's very Web 2.0.

The second one is mostly CSS/color based, with speed and usability in mind; tables are a big no-no (takes more time to render), extra effects aren't recommended, the less HTTP queries that are made (i.e. : the less images to load, the less external CSS or JS files, etc.) the better, etc.

 

[Despain]

Allright, this absolutely sucks since I was horribly uninspired, but it's something. Basically I took what you had and tried to make the exact same thing but a little more modern. I also added "latest episode" boxes because I felt the main page was pretty empty with just the text, and it is definitely something that would be useful for visitors.

Spoiler

http://bb.xieke.com/files/sod.png[/img]

 

[Skyla Doragono]

O_O  Wow, Des, I really like that, though I do want to keep more to the original logo design that I had there.  But, yeah, that's pretty much what I'm going for; something simple but can still attract attention.

 

[___]

First things first:  learn new web standards, and get familiar with CSS layouts - when I came back to web design about a year ago I tried to go with old HTML table layouts and other nastiness because the environment I was coming from was one where we were all just getting excited about what it'd be like when CSS was finally supported in a majority of browsers.  I'm still kicking myself for that because I had to reverse engineer the mess of a table a few months later when I did spend the afternoon it took to get CSS down.  So yeah, learn that first.

I just linked this in another thread but http://www.csszengarden.com and http://www.stylegala.com are the places to go, IMO, for inspiration on what you can do with modern web design.

 

[Skyla Doragono]

I just linked this in another thread but http://www.csszengarden.com and http://www.stylegala.com are the places to go, IMO, for inspiration on what you can do with modern web design.

Um... yuck.  :x

A lot of those are just... ass ugly.

 

[t0nedef]

are you going to be using any sort of server side scripting such as php to make your content more dynamic? Are you looking to incorporate ajax features *not really recommended unless you really know what your doing*

 

[___]

I just linked this in another thread but http://www.csszengarden.com and http://www.stylegala.com are the places to go, IMO, for inspiration on what you can do with modern web design.

Um... yuck.  :x

A lot of those are just... ass ugly.

Some of them are, yeah   However they do demonstrate the power of CSS in design.  A couple of the zengarden styles are really beautiful.  I really like Icicle Outback and LuGoZe for instance.  More importantly though is the point that the only thing that has changed on each of those different versions is a simple .css file. :D