NinDB's Design

[Fryguy64]

I know I've done this roughly every few months, but I've been thinking about giving Nintendo Database a flashier look - something a little shinier and more colourful around the edges. On the whole it will remain untouched, but I want to snazz up the menu and the title a bit.

Does anyone have any ideas? Or better still... anyone know of any websites with particularly snazzy layouts that I can get inspiration from?

Another thing I'd like to add would be links on the main page to "important" parts of the site - such as the trophy guide, dolphin guide, and all that other stuff that could be missed. I briefly knocked up the two buttons you see on the main page (for the forums and trophy guide) as a stopgap - but some ideas there would also be quite useful

[The Almighty Narf]

Well, here's a site I recently put together that might give ya a few ideas.

[Deezer]

Anything without frames.

[The Almighty Narf]

Yea, frames are bad.

[Fryguy64]

Yes, I was going to stick to the no-frames thing. They're more trouble than they're worth.

[Fryguy64]

Oh, and Almighty Narf, I came across your site the day before you mentioned it Very swish. In fact it was one reason I thought about the design of NinDB.

That and all those swanky Zelda websites with more shine than content

I want it ALL!

[The Almighty Narf]

I'm also currently reworking The Animal Forest to be ready for Animal Crossing DS and the long awaited Animal Crossing (Europe). I'm not showing anyone it yet, but if your still working on NDB in a few weeks from now, I guess you'll be able to use it for inspiration too.

[Pikaboy2001]

I'm think, that with the "new design", you should have more concepts like FAQs, lots of screenshots, something like that. Perhaps you should change it to a lighter look with the DS release.

[Fryguy64]

Like I said, this will be a purely superficial design change - the content will remain as it is (and so the background colour must also stay)

But as it stands NinDB's layout has some minor changes between systems, and I thought I could go for a sharper look, and maybe customise the layout of each individual system even further.

A bit like I started doing a while back before I gave up.

[Fryguy64]

Right, I've started playing with CSS, and wondering how I can work it into NinDB. At the same time I'm also learning how to use Dreamweaver, as that will be quite useful for future employment at something vaguely interesting.

Any tips from visiting webmasters who use CSS?

[Deezer]

ProTip: Use CSS as much as possible.

[Fryguy64]

Looks like the few pages I've worked on are now massively CSS efficient. Thanks to a few tips I picked up somewhere.

ProTip: Find an excellent site that you know is CSS and HTML efficient, and View >> Source - and don't let on that the site in question is the one by the person who posted previously...

Damn!

[The Almighty Narf]

Fryguy64 said:

ProTip: Find an excellent site that you know is CSS and HTML efficient, and View >> Source

That's usualy the best way to learn this sort of stuff.

[Fryguy64]

The redesign is going well, but I have a quick question for anyone who might know (especially Deezer and Narf, as you have Gamespy-hosted sites):

Can I embed the CSS link required on each page in a Side Server Include, or will that cause problems in the end? Is it better to have the link separately on each page?

I only ask 'cause I can't easily test it at the moment

[The Almighty Narf]

Personaly, I just put the link on each page. That way I can use diffrent templets on diffrent pages.