Navigation on large sites.

www.technowax.net

^^ meh site. Its all in bits and peices at the moment - and its trying to be things that its not. I want its focus to be on gaming / lan partys / computing. Although I dont want it to turn into some php-nuked site. I absolutly hate 'sidebars' because they detract from the real content of the page.

My problem seems to be too many themes, and no way to link them. literally. You see at the top of the page, in the header, there is a black bar linking about 5 different sections. But there are so many more links that I need to put in - and I dont really know where to put them. It is as simple as that...

Any budding webmasters willing to lend me some tips ? cheers.

Try to create some javascript / DHTML drop-down menu with multiple choices ?

For a start, why should anyone be bothered to click on a news link just to read one item? People would go insane if BBC news/CNN/whatever were designed like that- that idea is fine for articles, but news wise don't archive them like that by default.

Seems you might have been inspired by the menu bar under the logo too :wink: My suggestion there would be to put a bigger gap between the links on the left. If you need more links, just put an extra couple in the same place.

i like how the link turns dark as you pass over it with the mouse, but the dingy washed out original color scheme looks blah at best.

crisper colors, or possibly pastels would do the trick i imagine, but the storm-fuzzy gray has gotta go.

A few things I could think of

• Change that light gray colour of the text to a darker gray colour. Right now, it looks like your actual content is unimportant, and the images and links are more conspicuous
• Get rid of the links bar, or at least change the way it looks. e.g, make it part of a thinner left hand side menu.
• Change the colour of the black menu on top. Anything but black. Right now it looks like your page was neatly sliced in half, then separated and text was filled in in between
• Space out the links a little wider in the same menu.
• Modify the layout a bit to make the news more obvious. Like lep said, expand the news items inline instead of linking. I suppose a more conventional layout would be better for you. Maybe a small left side menu with the Section Links and the Links below it. The center for the news, and the right hand side reserved for the Lan Parties thing.
• Bottom menu looks messy. maybe if you rearrange things and stop using so many colours in the same section :razz:
• The logo is nice and simple, make it mesh in with the rest of the theme a bit so it doesn't look too much out of place. Use similar shades maybe
• Get rid of the light-grey borders around all the images... they look teh fugly.

Thanks for the feedback. Absolutly fantastic. If anyone has any more, please, lemme know.

I love this site's theme, and would copy it in the bat of an eye-lid, but that is gay. I did copy the idea of the nav bar, too.

DHTML is out of the question, its not cross compatible, and has a s**tload of inherant problems.

I think the sidebar may have to be put in. Which is a terrible shame. And the colors do need a review at the very least.