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I think the search bar may be ameliorated by:
 
1. Adding a 50% opacity black border around it
2. Reducing the opacity of the inner shadow to around 25%
3. Using a darker font for the "Search ... " text.
4. Giving the text a little more margin on the left.
5. Slightly reducing the magnifying glass icon, so that it does not touch the edges of the bar.
 

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Glomping the internet populace.

One forum at a time.

Okay, I'll give it a shot.

Part of the reason why the logo may look strange is because the shadow was applied to the original, and then the image was shrunk so, I'll apply the shadow to this after removing it from the original and see how it looks.

EDIT: Okay, I redid the logo shadow (I also reduced the opacity of it). I also tried out your ideas on the search box. I only did 30% on the stroke as 50 was too prominent with the background. I'm not sure how big of I difference you will see with the inner shadow as it was originally at about 39%, but it does look different. Lastly, I reduced the shadow on the background (I'm not sure what I was thinking before had as it looked horrible now that I see it reduced). Anyways...

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will use the new picture logo i sent it to you??

Hmmm ... try increasing the font size by 1 point and move the text 2-3px to the left. (Again referring to the search bar) And I still think 50% opacity for the stroke would be better, but if you don't like it ...

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Glomping the internet populace.

One forum at a time.

Yes I will use it drago. I'm still working with it though, and I as I said it will probably be some kind of an emblem or mini logo or something. I'll figure something out

And uttaresh, I'll give it a shot once these storms pass over.

EDIT: Drago, I had no idea that those files were different. I thought they were both the same. I am using the new logo, however I'm not using a reflection (there isn't any room for it)

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Okay, here is the latest update. I made some minor adjustments (I brought the opacity of the search border to 40% to compromise). I also changed some of the anti-aliasing on the text in some areas. I also added some more sample content, as well as the styling that Drago made for the logo. The width of the template has also been changed from 1200px to 1000px to prevent issues later on with screen sizes.
 

 

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Looks pretty good! Better then "original" / "start page".

Hopefully this will work out. I'm studying up on my CSS so I can make this awesome. I'm not sure how I'm going to get the blog idea with sorting (for the Wii, DS, etc links) to work, as well as have a way for multiple people to submit content.

I don't want comments as I'd prefer comments to be made on the forum. Another sorting thing that I want is to have it move older posts to other pages automatically. So, once the main page reaches, lets say 8 posts, the older one would be moved automatically to an "older posts" page. Once that page reaches 8 posts, then blah blah... etc etc...

I would use Adobe InContext Editing, however I don't think it is powerful enough to allow the editing to occur with PHP, or Rails, or whatever the blog thing would be coded in.

It would also have to be styled like I have above. It would be great to have an image upload system so we can add those images as well.

And yes, this is a plead for help

However, I have no idea how this will even happen, at least until August. nintendoaddict.com has been purchased for a while and expires in August, however at the beginning of this month somebody purchased nintendoaddict.net and nintendoaddict.org. And what's worse, they are for World of Warcraft, and those aren't even the main domains! People make me sick.

EDIT: I think I may just try to download the Wordpress API and skin it. That would solve the tagging, archive column, pages, and so much more. Modifying the Latest Reviews column would be easy as well.

EDIT 2: Maybe I'll use ExpressionEngine... that's what Veerle uses.

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Shouldn't the green DS say (seen left)?
 
Definitely a huge improvement on the original - I'll let the mighty Uttaresh tell you what could be improved That guy is one great critic!
 
And sounds like you could be in coding hell for a while... I suggest you do, it's so much fun!

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Very good catch there Ghost. But that isn't a big deal as this is all sample stuff.
 
The only problem with using Wordpress or Expression engine, I don't know if I could use the showcase thing that I have. We'll have to see what happens.

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So I'm confused. What's going to happen to your site after August? Are you going to move it to a new domain or shut it down altogether?

I say the Search ... text still has to be move 5-10 px to the left. You want the upper, lower, and left margins to be about the same.

Also, the news section is too cluttered. The text font could be 1-2 pixel lesser, or there should be more space and margins in between. However, the line-spacing could be reduced.

As for fonts, I find that Verdana always manages to look good on the web. Calibri is better, but it's not available by default without Windows Vista.

And you might want to remove the year from the dates. It's only really required in December and January, and even then for those who are completely disconnected from the world and from their PDAs ...

And you should leave a little more space between the links in the bottom navigation.

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Glomping the internet populace.

One forum at a time.

Wait, you said to the Left! I though you said right *facepalm* I'm becoming more and more dyslexic (I thought it was 5:30 earlier instead of 3:50)

Anyways, much of the content is cramped due to the size of the layout. Right now it is designed to expand as needed so, once I start coding things will space better. I'll keep that info you gave though in mind for the coding as reference.

To clear up your confusion, right now we are only a forum. We have a really lame website with 000webhost, however we want to have a site that doesn't have net23 in the name. Plus, we also want to remove the .proboards.com part of the domain and have forum.nintendoaddict.xxx (proboards now supports the use of their nameservers so, that will be solved)

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Wow! It's nice!
 
And if u do use wordpress Pm me I can do a bit of theemeing

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Glomping the internet populace.One forum at a time.

Well if you can gather 25 dollars a year, you can rent your own domain from Yahoo or whatever. Of course, that's only required if your site gets hundreds or thousands of visitors ...

EDIT: Just noticed this.

Awww, thanks, Ghost. Too bad you say you're not a girl, 'cause I could've kissed you for that!

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Glomping the internet populace.

One forum at a time.

Thank God I'm not a woman then And $25 a year? I'm sure you can get domains for $5 easy...

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The plan that we will be using is two domains, 120 GB of space, 1200 GB bandwidth, 2 GB of e-mail space, as well as $25-50 of free advertising on Google, Bing, etc. Plus, we have a 90 day moneyback guarantee which is great because, who knows if our site falls apart. If I were to order it today, then I would get it for 2.50 a month for six months, then $5 a month thereafter. However, we'll probably order it later since it would be a waste of time.

I'll get a new update up in a bit. I've been addicted (again) to Paper Mario 64, and I just got Sims 3 yesterday, so I was building my house. I'm mad, they don't have as much cool furniture and items this time. I'll have to look at the exchange.

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So, here is the deal with this. It appears the domain I want is about to become available (godaddy has finished holding it as pending for renewal), so I've decided to remake the layout.

I feel that the old one was kinda clunky, and I think I would have trouble with cross-browser support. Plus I got some new inspiration today.

EDIT: And I will still use your logo Drago

EDIT2: Okay here is what I have so far. This time I'm pretty much designing everything by myself, with no tutorial help, all memory. I plan to have the search bar in the menu bar.

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You mean the graphics from memory, or the actual web coding from memory?

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Graphics. I don't have much coding in memory...

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Haha, I suspected it wouldn't be the coding Even if you remember it's always best to keep a check, it's easy to make a mistake and then spend an hour looking for it later

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Yeah, which is why Coda is a great program. It has books built in to explain what each tag does, etc. Sadly I don't have $100.

EDIT: And does anybody have any ideas on trying to get the logo to blend better?

EDIT2: Okay so, I have a rough search bar. I also am trying something different with the logo.

Shadowed:

Embedded:

EDIT3: And sorry for the blank space. I'm just to lazy to crop the image.

EDIT4: Does anybody have any idea for something to put in the empty blue space?

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Sorry for the double post, but I have a fairly large update. I lightened the blue part because it was too strong, and I also started making the featured content area. I'm using colors from the logo for that.
 

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Really nice

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Glomping the internet populace.One forum at a time.

I agree, very nice! Keep on going.

So you guys really like it better than before? I do. Plus, I have a feeling that this will be much easier to make, and will be far less image heavy.

EDIT: I do need to make the Active dot for the featured content area more visible compared to the others...

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Yes I like it. Personally not completely sure about the menu (and the combination with red), but for the rest I really like it.