MkII Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 Opinions wanted please on our newly provided (central pot of money spent on hosting moodle sites, providing very basic training, and designing the 'themes' for us.) Our new design can be seen here The hub is here This was a professional designer paid especially to do this over 7 months. We have a meeting with the local college running this tomorrow, and would like wider opinions.
triggmiester Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 If you ever want to employ someone for 7 months at professional design rates, give me a call!!! Hopefully it wouldn't takeme that long. No offence!!!
Guest Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 Mark are you asking us to comment on the "look" of it? If so what took 7 months to design?
_Bat_ Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 Mark are you asking us to comment on the "look" of it? If so what took 7 months to design? That is what would concern me. The website in itself isn't bad at all IMO, but it surely shouldn't have taken that long, especially by a professional web designer.
webman Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 It's a Moodle theme. And it took 7 months? :shock:
MkII Posted March 28, 2007 Author Posted March 28, 2007 Don't get me wrong - we're disgusted. SMT think it's great, and don't understand why everyone thinks it's so poor. The images are badly scaled, visible artefacts. The colour schemes - I doubt you could make them worse if you tried. Tomorrow they're 'asking opinions' - tho' the designers contract ends on the 30th, and there's doubt that there will be any more funding (PLEASE as we may get control and be able to rid ourselves of the abomination) BTW myself and another teacher have put all the content up that's there. Our 'designer' has purely done the theme - plus the other 15 or so linked from the main page - http://www.epowys.net
Halfmad Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 Colourscheme isn't great but the website itself is perfectly OK. As mentioned above though how did it take 7 months? I'd expect a competent IT person to knock that out in a few weeks with little or no knowledge of making websites!
petectid Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 Colourscheme isn't great but the website itself is perfectly OK. As mentioned above though how did it take 7 months? I'd expect a competent IT person to knock that out in a few weeks with little or no knowledge of making websites! A few weeks? I'm sure people will back me up here but a few hours would be more like it. I'm disgusted that an LEA has no body on their staff that can see that they have been taken for a ride. This person is going to walk away with public money having done very little. Out of interest could you possibly find out how much they got paid for this Mark?
_Bat_ Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 Don't get me wrong - we're disgusted. SMT think it's great, and don't understand why everyone thinks it's so poor. I think we have to remember that most people on this forum are website designers to at least some extent and our opinions are going to be extremely biased. SMT's opinion should count for much more I think, because what they think of the site will probably reflect what the average user of the site is going to think.
Geoff Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 For comparison purposes: Our School website. http://www.carrhillschool.com This is done in-house by one of our technicians. He was specifically employed with 'web design' in his job description. There's no backend CMS, it's basically done using Dreamweavers templating system. Our VLE http://vle.carrhill.lancs.sch.uk This is a freely available theme knocked about a bit by our technician. I don't think would of taken him much more than a day to customise it from the stock download. Our LEA's school 'hub': http://www.lancsngfl.ac.uk/schooldetails/?s=460a60065acc8b287c62ee120f833910 Lancs ICT services have a web design team..
MkII Posted March 28, 2007 Author Posted March 28, 2007 @petectid: The designer is on the payroll at this local FE college
DMcCoy Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 You shouldn't use red and blue in combination, its not a good combination for the eyes, its difficult for the eye to see both at once.
MkII Posted March 28, 2007 Author Posted March 28, 2007 @Geoff - nice theme - where could I get my hands on it? Our new IT Teach has played at his own designs, one of which can be seen here. Not perfect but far better IMHO Good point DMcCoy - must try and mention that. Someone said these designs reminded them of low quality pound shop stylie! Another said that the large central image contained stuff that should be in the header alone. That it was an annoyance, much like some TV ads, that just get in the way of content.
Geoff Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 Clouds. http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=26003
webman Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 The corners look really dodgy as well - top corners of the middle box and the bottom corners of the sidebar boxes.
MkII Posted March 28, 2007 Author Posted March 28, 2007 @Geoff - thanks @Webman - yes - not seen that 'effect' before - they've managed to do that on all the sites.
_Bat_ Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 The corners look really dodgy as well - top corners of the middle box and the bottom corners of the sidebar boxes. I can't even see the rounded corners in IE7... after your post I checked in firefox and now I see what you mean (but I only see it being dodgy on the middle box).
Irazmus Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 After 7 months you'd think they could at least get it to validate. http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fnewtown.epowys.net%2F http://www.contentquality.com/mynewtester/cynthia.exe?rptmode=2&url1=http%3A%2F%2Fnewtown.epowys.net%2F Also for comparisson our VLE (Which has little content and no-one uses. Ever..) http://smsnet.stowmarketmiddle.suffolk.sch.uk/
beeswax Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 Here's what I'm doing with our VLE. Again, it's a highly modified Clouds theme, but it certainly didn't take me 7 weeks, probably 3/4 days in total. If you want I'll devise something a little more tasteful, gratis, I might need to start advertising my skills sooner than I thought
MkII Posted March 28, 2007 Author Posted March 28, 2007 Beeswax you're obviously some ninja master at this
TechMonkey Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 Not wanting to jump on the bandwagon but essh!! And the IT Teach designed one I really like. Simple and uncluttered. Bit of fiddling that could be perfect I think.
localzuk Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 Well, after having to create a site which went against all of my design ideas regarding colour due to colour blind users I can say that the site has various areas which do not have enough contrast between the background and the text. Also from a dyslexic user point of view the text, or so I am told, is difficult to read in the menu's which have white backgrounds due to the text being blueish on white. Then from someone who suffers with neither, all I can say is 'what were they thinking???' What is with the multicolour scheme? It looks like the teletubbies had a battle and that is the aftermath But then again, our site isn't any better - but that is after it was attacked by my boss who likes bright colours.
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now