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miralize

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Hi all,

Back in 2009 when I was originally starting out as a web designer I was hired by the folks over a Simply Zesty to do a news blog design for them. It wasn't the best, but it was the best I could have produced that stage of my career.

2 years later, I was asked to redesign it again. Redesigning any site is tough, because a websites priorities change as you use it over a period of time. When i designed it first they were focusing primarily on articles. Over the last 2 years they've hired people, and started using their site to promote their business on the website. But because this was added on after the design, it felt tacked on.

They still use the blog section so I didnt want to disclude that, but there is a great deal of content that needed to be tied in with the site visually.

Anyway the design is online at Simply Zesty – Online PR & Social Media Agency in Dublin.

WP 3.2, HTML5, CSS3 all implemented. Works surprisingly well in IE, even without spending too much time on it. Hope to make it responsive in the future. There is a segment of the site that I have to wait to finish the redesign but overall I'm really happy with the result. Opinions?

(Some WP pagination issues too in Simply Viral & Our Clients, but I'll ask about that another time :calm:)
 
K

Kieran

Guest
Well done on the new site - I liked the original one and also like the new one. A few small questions rather than comments.

How come you don't have even the subtlest of mouse over colour changes on the main menu. I personally would like that.

I am not a fan of the chequered background - it is one of the new things out there and you see it a lot in Pro themes where they even supply you with one of those Menu bars that allow you to dynamically change background/fonts/ col0urs dynamically. Essentailly we are however talking about 3 sites here ableit under the WP banner using different templates so initially I was a little (figuratively speaking - I caught on in micro seconds) confused as to what home was and in the training / Pro section the change of look was a bit dramatic (again dramatic in small font).

One of the things I liked about he original site (despite that Niall wont win any modelling competitions) was that you saw people's faces pretty quickly in those initial images and it gave the site a bit of warmth. Might be worth thinking about even if to make the front images scrolling (oh noooo another scroller).

The only other thing is (and this a hobby horse of mine so discount it if you wish) is that it took a scroll down to get to contact. I like to have contact above the fold and in your face a bit to encourage that call to action. I know you have your social icons but meat and potato companies like to call/email. Might be worth thinking about.

Great job though and pushing Wordpress for all its worth..
 

miralize

New Member
The header never loads ..

Could you give a little more info than that? It loads perfectly for me

Well done on the new site - I liked the original one and also like the new one. A few small questions rather than comments.

How come you don't have even the subtlest of mouse over colour changes on the main menu. I personally would like that.

I am not a fan of the chequered background - it is one of the new things out there and you see it a lot in Pro themes where they even supply you with one of those Menu bars that allow you to dynamically change background/fonts/ col0urs dynamically. Essentailly we are however talking about 3 sites here ableit under the WP banner using different templates so initially I was a little (figuratively speaking - I caught on in micro seconds) confused as to what home was and in the training / Pro section the change of look was a bit dramatic (again dramatic in small font).

One of the things I liked about he original site (despite that Niall wont win any modelling competitions) was that you saw people's faces pretty quickly in those initial images and it gave the site a bit of warmth. Might be worth thinking about even if to make the front images scrolling (oh noooo another scroller).

The only other thing is (and this a hobby horse of mine so discount it if you wish) is that it took a scroll down to get to contact. I like to have contact above the fold and in your face a bit to encourage that call to action. I know you have your social icons but meat and potato companies like to call/email. Might be worth thinking about.

Great job though and pushing Wordpress for all its worth..

There is a hover on the main menu,it might not be too pronounced though, i'll try increase the contrast.

The contact page's position on the website is a bit tucked away in the agency section, I'll talk with client to see if I can make that a bit more pronounced
 

tricky_d

New Member
Nice work there. A few small issues imho:

The text on featpost has poor contrast and the bg image makes it worse. The notion that it becomes more legible by making the bg image opaque onmouseover is not a good way of handling the issue. Even a textshadow would help.

Style the select nav dropdowns.

There's something wrong with the page loading, a lot of what I click takes ages to finish loading properly.

The largepagetitle text isn't anti-aliasing well in FF5.
 

paul

Ninja
Overall I like it alot, great work.
The tabs at the top left seem a bit off. The bit that looks like a paper binder seems out of place , http://www.simplyzesty.com/wp-content/themes/sz-2011/images/topnav_styling.png

The text under the logo is a little small IMHO.

The banner nav with SOCIAL MEDIA FACEBOOK GOOGLE TECHNOLOGY blends too much into the bit below it I think. If it's supposed to be part of the navigation that's fine, but if it's something else, it should be a different shade of green I think.

The border links under the Quick links & Our Products seems a bit over done too.

All in all a nice site, well done.
 
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