New blue layout, need feedback please

I like it, but I'm a big fan of silver...

I believe I've seen your site before (or one VERY similar). The blue looks nice, but Silver would look good too.

What you SHOULD be concerned with is providing a map for your visitors – because judging by the NINE seperate areas of content on the main page alone, it'll look like Disneyland by the time you're done.

Honestly, get rid of at least 5 of those areas, starting with stats, affiliates, featured site and featured music. The stats are mostly likely useless to most visitors, the affiliates serve only to junk up the page and compete with that great looking masthead you have, and to be honest, nobody but those sites care about them anyway. The featured site and featured music boxes could be combined into one line of text in the main content area, or across the bottom of the page.

Research shows that the old saying "less is more" plays heavily on the web. When you visit a site, you should know immediately where to "start." 3 column formatted sites are generally a complete mess to read and eventually get slimmed down to 2 columns if the site wants to remain viable. It's not that the designer did a crappy job, it's just that the visitors tell them this via the site stats. A good way to describe it is looking at your page, you can EASILY see "this is important" and "this stuff isn't really important at all, but you may want to check it out." With your site, EVERYTHING screams "this is important" because everything has equal weight.

A site that looks pretty gets looked at once or twice, but a site with great content that is layed out in an easy to follow, top down format gets bookmarked and visited often!

it looks like an os9 control panel. if that's the intention than it's good. i'd like to see with content in it. that will change a lot.

I've always been a fan of the whole panels thing, but I've been seeing so many people use phpNuke that I have been more and more cautious of not looking like Nuke. I think you've done a good job of staying away from that, and definitely look much cleaner and deliberate.

Bring on the silver!!!

It is very minimalist, but it needs a little bit of detail to make it less stark. Maybe add a gradient to that background, or have something above or below the content.

I totally agree that two columns is the way to go, even if it means making the page longer or puttting it on another page.

I would also like to see the silver version...

Xile wrote:

http://xile.noxiousx.net/keepout

I don't know if I should use it or not. I have a silver version of it too. What do you guys think?

I like the layout but think it needs another colour to compliment the blue, maybe a strong orange or yellow as an accent colour. It comes across as just a bit too dark at the mo...