Archeological site about Sheela na Gigs in Ireland - WIP

p

Hey all,

I'm working on a website for my dad, it's a site that lists 'sheela na gigs' - pagan statues around ireland. Here is my WIP on a temp URL:

http://bit.ly/pIDMNt

I've spent the last few months battling with Wordpress on & off and finally have a site that's functionally working with some visual design, however I'm a bit blind at looking at it at this stage. Could really do with some objective opinions on design & functionality to help me get over the last hurdle, and raise it up a level.

Thanks.

cormee

Only had a quick look but it looks nice - I made two very quick changes that I think helped it - I changed the background-color on id="home-intro" to white and I increased the font size of div.secondary-area to 1.05em, have a try and see what you think.

Given the theme you should also try incorporating some old Irish typography - use ancient Irish drop caps or something, those ornate celtic borders you see on parchments etc.

I'm confused about the map - the antique look to it certainly helps the look/theme of the site but it's essentially a big button, would your visitors be more interested in that or the most recent images? I'd have thought the images, if so I'd swap positions. And if you're going to move the images you should consider using a jquery image slider... but now I have it starting to look like a commercial site so I'll stop!

p

Thanks for the feedback - will incorporate your suggestions where suitable!

HairMonster

Nice job!

One thing I would recommend changing is the font for the dates beside the "recently updated" list on the home page. they are a bit hard to read because there is not enough contrast between the link colour and background (both similar shades of grey), and the font is a bit small.

Another thing you might consider is its usually best to keep all you pages consistent, but your homepage background is white and the footer block is grey, but in the other pages the background is grey. I like the white, its clearer and easier to read. The grey on the footer adds texture and interest without overwhelming the page.

I really like the old style look of the map of Ireland. A nice touch would be to make the map an imagemap with each county linking directly to the Sheilas in that county, making it one click less to get to the info. Thats just a nice-to-have though, its certainly not a necessity though as you have clear links to each county anyway.

Something I noticed, and its no fault of yours, is that the google maps are slow to load. I have this problem on every site I develop! You could try making them smaller, that way they will load more quickly.

I agree with cormee about using a Celtic font, you can get lots of free fonts on DaFont, here are their celtic ones (some are only free for non-commercial use but that fine for you)

The thing to remember is that the most important thing for any website is the content and how you present it. I think you've done a great job with the content! A lot of people get carried away with the look and can end up with a site that you cannot find what you want. You have it well organised and presented without trying to clutter everything onto every page. The info on each Sheila is presented clearly with a neat map with the location and a link back to the full list in the county. If only some professional designers but so much thought into the reason behind the website in the first place!!

Trojan

On the homepage, I'd move the "Browse by county" up into where the big text block is currently, it's more important than its placement gives it credit for. Although the image map is a nice idea, you could use that there instead.