I am a 15 year old web design and this is my website. I have worked on it really hard, and I would appreciate some respectful critisism. I would also like it if you considered joining as well. I hope you like the site.
I will,
well, the content looks interesting but if I were a search engine I would say that you have too much images (try some web tools on my web site and see the results), take your time to improve your site and be patient...
Smartboy
Hi and welcome to the world of webdesign your first site is so exciting and its also great that you realise you still have a lot to learn.
1) Colours - I like blue but I don't like the grey looking page background and I have to be honest I prefer websites with very pale pastel coloured text area backgrounds like cream or white. It makes it easier on the eyes and somehow cleaner.
2) Graphics - The bevel edges unfortunately give your site a very amateur feel. Very frontpage standard menu graphics which I don't think is a great look. I would be tempted to replace these with flat coloured areas with a slight border maybe for a cleaner effect. The amount of graphics used for background effect also make the site quite slow loading. I do however quite like font and rollover on the button graphics.
3) Layout - Your main box does not quite fit an 800 x 600 size and if I was you I would try to make it slightly smaller. Yes there are still people who use 800 x 600 resolution not least people with visual impairments so its a good idea to stick within this size even though like me you probably have your screen set to a much higher resolution.
I like the centre arrangement though.
4) Navigation. The menu is well placed at the top although I would consider in some places a submenu in your left hand side panel. eg in the gallery, articles and tutorials sections. Good to see that external http links target a new blank window. YOu need to consider a text version of your menu as simple links at the bottom of the screen. This is part of a W3C recommendation for website browsers who are visually impaired.