New Website - What Do You Think?

[noah]

http://www.megaflashgames.net23.net
Sorry for the surplus of Offtopic threads by yours truly

So I made a flash games website with Weebly a long time ago. It is poorly made and the hyperlinks are misplaced in some games. If your interested it's http://www.mflashgames.weebly.com

I wanted to make a new site (above) with HTML because Weebly generic site builder was limiting me. So I switched to http://www.000webhost.com for a better, free website. I will upgrade to premium in a month or two. It's a great site, and even has an optional weebly-like site builder (which I don't use). They force no ads on your site, either. Check it out if your interested.

So if you've clicked on the link above you have seen my new site - not really, it's a template I'm going to use. This is a template from http://www.templatemo.com , another great site.

Basically do the poll, and give me extra input. Is it a major step foreward from my last site? Does it look professional?

Extra Info: The rotating picture gallery will of course be of popular games, and the carousel word will be replaced by my logo. Also - my page structure will have a games page, with submenus under it with the game categories. If you just click games and no submenu, you get a page listing all games. If you click a submenu, it will bring up the most popular/featured games, followed by all games. Example: Games > Role Playing. Then the role playing page comes up. Then they click on Stick RPG.

Also - should I just have the games embedded or add a fullscreen function below the embedded game which is a hyperlink to the .swf? That way if you have Adobe Flash Player it will take up all of your browser space when clicked.

[MayImilae]

Canned job. Terrible. The picture script is extremely wasteful in both resources and use of vertical space (and near useless), you have the template's fill latin and stock images everywhere, the news area is 3 column yet has no vertical scrolling (what), and the generic dark racecar/diner motiff so doesn't fit with the site you are trying to make. Also, it's a fairly old template: I can tell by the placement of the sharing icons. New templates try to put them front and center, as that boosts SEO like crazy. It has Jscript instead of flash, so my guess is late aughties, around 2008.

I'm going to cut to the chase and not tip toe around the issue in fear of hurting you. I know you are a noob, I know you are just doing this as a hobby, and I know there is very little chance of this going anywhere. That's fine, you have to start somewhere, and we have all done this kind of stuff as we learn and grow. You would not want to see my first website *shudder*. So, as an artist that has made more websites that I'd have liked to, here's some advice to help speed you along in learning how to design: Focus on what you NEED, and go from there. As a flashgame site, what do you need?

1. Two column layout: large news area and side bar. The large news area gives you the space to actually do something with it. And the side bar gives lots of potential for interesting and fast ways to get to stuff, like widgets for top ranked games, popular games, etc. Alternatively, you could put the games list right on the main page, and use a Jquery slider under the header for news (and a dedicated news page elsewhere on the site).
2. A larger logo/header space to better demonstrate your brand (no one knows what you are)
3. Very good navigation. VERY good. If people can't find games, the entire site is useless, so it needs damn good navigation. As for the specifics of that, it would take too long to explain in this point as there are a ton of ways to approach it, so I'll leave it at that.
4. A theme that creates a feel for the site. A dark brooding theme isn't very good for a site about casual games. You need some color! And not a canned job, cause those suck.
5. If you so much as think about a sticky header/nav, I will hunt you down and strangle you to death, so help you god.

[NaturalViolence]

Seriously though that was really well articulated.

[noah]

Thanks, exactly what I wanted MaJor. Do you know of any template sites I could get something like that from or something I could turn into that? I haven't made a site from scratch because I'm not very good with CSS or JavaScript, just HTML.

If you think I should start from scratch and ditch templates, is there any book or something that could show me the way? Because when I make a site, it can be anything, like exactly what you said, but it will look like its from the early '90s.

I thought this template was decent, but I guess not. If you have any more criticism that you didn't say in fear of hurting me, please do say it. Same with anyone else.

Edit: Is this better? I could make it look decenter. Only it's not colorful.

http://www.templatemo.com/templates/temp..._131_game/

[Garteal]

I agree with MaJoR.

Don't use templates. Learn the languages and create something unique.
CSS is extremely easy, so try to master both HTML and CSS first.
You can make nice static websites with those alone. Later you'll have to start with PHP/ASPX and Javascript to create dynamic content.

Anyway, you don't need a book. W3Schools offers free web tutorials on HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript, etc.
Learn from them.

[AnyOldName3]

This seems like the best place I've ever seen to put this, so:

Have any of you ever tried to locate the exact address of the official (i.e. non-demo) version of Happy Wheels' .swf? The actual site contains a javascript launcher, which, right before calling a load of methods I can't find, starts a launcher flash object. This appears just to launch the advertisements, and, other than that, just calls methods which don't exist. I've tried running the launcher on its own with various levels of internet access etc., and have decided that it doesn't contain the actual game.

This is no longer a major issue, as there are no longer people who pester me daily to make Happy Wheels work at school, as I'm now at 6th Form College, except the fact that someone recently bet me he could do it, and has yet to produce a pendrive with the file on.

[ExtremeDude2]

Not that good. About the same as your other site.

They are the same. Not very good.

Seems legit

[noah]

Seams legit

*seems legit


@AnyOldName3 yeah everyone asks me that too. It's protected and the levels are hosted on totaljerkface's servers, so if it's blocked, you can't play it.

[garrlker]

Seams legit

*seems legit


@AnyOldName3 yeah everyone asks me that too. It's protected and the levels are hosted on totaljerkface's servers, so if it's blocked, you can't play it.

ED2 didn't say seAms legit. He spelt it correctly. Also, the website isn't good. I won't go on a rant about it, but make it look original. Or atleast make it look better without premade templates.

[AnyOldName3]

You could embed the loader in your site, and you'll have a link to it, but totaljerkface will still get the ad revenue. Either way, it won't be more than a couple of months before the guy said he'd crack it while I watched him, so not so much of a wait.