Suggestions on Website

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I had to make a website on cplusplus.com as a discourse community for English 106 at Purdue. I was wondering if I could get any input on how it looks and how to improve it.

I know the color scheme sucks, so if somebody could give suggestions on a new color scheme, that would be greatly appreciated.

I want a background image rather than just blue. Any suggestions would be great!

The gray area at the top is my header. I want something to go there, but I can't think of what I should put there. I either need a picture and/or some words or I need to delete it. Any suggestions?

If anybody sees anything wrong with the content or wants to contribute to what I already have, that would be great as well.
closed account (S6k9GNh0)
Wait... what?
I'm with you 'quip, I can read the words but it's like they're not coming together in a way that makes sense.
Sorry. I have a website that I have to make for English 106 (I don't get it). Can I get some input on what I can do better?

These are what I know I need improvement on:

Color scheme - needs more variety and color. Can I get some input on colors that would make it look better?

Background - needs something other than blue. Is there any sort of picture that is linked to programming or computers that I could use as a repeat background or a static image?

My header - I have no idea what to put there. Should I get rid of it, or is there anything out there that I could use to make it worthwhile?
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I don't know how my content looks, but it is part of the grading process, so I was hoping my fellow cplusplus.com members could help me make it more accurate.

Here's the website. http://cplusplus.site11.com/
May not be able to access it on AT&T.

Sorry this didn't make any sense at first. I'm really tired and trying to multitask.
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Ohhhh, I see.

I'm quite a fan of simplicity and practicality over aesthetics. I like the number of colours you've got (blue,grey,black), I don't think you should add another colour unless you feel you have to specifically distinguish something as being unique (I didn't mean for that to sound as wanky as it did).
Having said that, I'm not a fan of the blue (as you mentioned), "dark grey" is calling out to me (but that's like, my opinion man).
And yeah I think you should have something in the header (removing it would make the page feel like it's trying to touch the ceiling), just the name of the site would be fine I think.
In regards to layout, I think the "main" section should be centred (I don't know lingo, I haven't done web design), with the sidebar further to side. At the moment it looks a little unbalanced.
Anyway that's my two cents.
Just as a matter of readability, large blocks of text are very hard to understand in any language.

Try to break it down somewhat.


Pure RGB colors are not all that pretty. Try using an image editing program to play with the colors. Then look up their hex values. For example, the bluish-gray to the left on this website is #B0C0D0.

Usually you can just start with a pure color (like the ones you have) and then play with the sliders (in your image editor's color selection dialog) to change it just a little bit.


Hope this helps.
Thanks for the input! I'm still making changes, but this information is great!
Also, it is okay to start a sentence with "Cplusplus.com".
Ok. I just figured that since this site's header had it in lower-case, then, as a proper noun, it would still be lower-case whenever it's used. Thank you for that.
I updated the content of my site and the color scheme.

I'm looking for some images that I can use to support my content and/or give it more meaning. I feel that user posts will support the best, so if there are any places where my content is exemplified on this site, it would be awesome if you could post a link.

I need some examples of usage of some of the keywords on the "Keywords" page. Plus if anybody could help with my definition of recursion and the accuracy of my definition on "Spoonlicker", that would be greatly appreciated.

Any comments or suggestions on this site's new color scheme and content would be amazing. I'm looking for accuracy in my content as well, so if you see anything wrong, please comment.

Again, the link is http://cplusplus.site11.com/index.php
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I have suggestion:

The menu on the sidebar is good, but a little hard to read. More contrast perhaps?
You have three separate grays but they all look very similar and dark.

I recommend:

#content { background-color: #EEE; }

(And put a border: 1px solid #BBB; around the image or something.)


#nav a { background-color: #CCC; }

(You might want to mess with the link colors too...)


#head { background-color: ...; }

I'm not sure why you have this thick band here... The cplusplus.com site uses #204060 behind the pretty image -- but that is a little dark. I would recommend making it just a little more bright, like #369 or similar.


Hope this helps.
Thanks to everybody for all the help!

@Duoas
That area is for a header, but I'm not sure what to put there. I'm having difficulty trying to figure out what I should put there to link it all together.

On the Keywords and Terms pages, could somebody check those for accuracy, please? I think they're all accurate, but I may have misunderstood something. I don't think I explained recursion very well, so any help with that would be greatly appreciated. Trying to explain recursion to people who don't program is difficult.
I wouldn't say that RTFM is the most important, but it is common, as people don't like to have their time wasted answering questions found in a program's help.

I am also unsure I would put anything in there about spoonlicker. Best forgotten, and it is something of a thing for people to figure out anyway. The truly curious can use google it. Second hit: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=spoonlicker

Recursion - the process whereby a function computes its result by calling itself. People do this naturally. Lather, rinse, repeat.
(Use your examples, too.)

You don't send or receive variables to functions, you apply it to one or more values, and receive a new value as result.

Variable – as in math, a variable is something that holds information, or value.


Otherwise, not bad. I would try to make the last paragraph less wordy. Think in terms of how you would write a commercial about C++.com.
Who put that in urbandictionary??
Great! Your definitions are definitely more accurate than mine.

The last thing I would like help on for an accuracy check would be the first, second, and last pages "Home", "The Community", and "Research". These are meant to describe the actual community, so how it is represented is the only experience the people viewing my site will get of this community.

I don't want to make it look like arguments are really common, or that some people are full of themselves or anything.
My teacher doesn't like the dead space on the right side of the page. Does anybody have any good ideas for it? I don't want something too distracting, but I don't know what to do about it.
Google banner ads.
Your teacher is being a dip.

Set the html,body width to a maximum, and set the html background color to either black or white and leave the body background color as it is.

You will notice that cplusplus.com also has very strong hints to the page width, with overflow space on the right just a white background.

This is a pretty normal way to do a page design. My monitor, for example, is a 16:9 aspect ratio, and there is nothing you can do to your page to make it play nice with it without ruining usability on many other displays still in use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_aspect_ratio

Ask your teacher what he expects you to do with it.
+1 Duoas

Another thing you could do is center the content, and have the overflow space on both sides of the page, and put your links to navigate the page in the heading.

See this Bootstrap template for a visual example of what I mean:

http://getbootstrap.com/examples/jumbotron-narrow/#
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