My portfolio - Evularts.com

Evulness · 06-26-2008, 11:36 PM

Although it is not finished yet, and i'm sure i probably should wait untill i get my next set of updates done, but i feel a little bit of feedback is nessessary.

Before you go to the site, please keep in mind that i started this from scratch yesterday at work... (shh i was supposed to be working on a different website). Finished the template, and the very basic html of the site while i was at work. when i got home from work, i ate, and went to work on it some more.... i think i made it to bed at around 2 am eastern time? either way. This is the basis of my porfolio. The site explains its self in short, but i figure i would go alittle more in depth here.
I despise using only div tags for my layouts, as the chances of getting your site to be viewed the same by every user that will visit, is slim to none. I am a fan of mixing Div's and tables. to achieve a fluid, or static layout.

Although at the present moment, it isn't xhtml validated, before the site becomes live to users, it will be

. It is supposed to be very minimal web 2.0 styled CMS. it's built on a layered template system, much like the layer system used on theHome of SMF: Free PHP and MySQL forum software forum system. In the works along with my user system, will be user chooseable themes & styles. i fell in love with the way they did their templating. something like smarty confuses me too much.

One thing you will notice is a detailed navigation system. Every "page" has a set of "actions", and every "page" is handled by the main index.php page. If the requested page & acompanying files do not exist, it kicks you back to the index with a warning (which in the future will only be visible by "Admins")
in the nav menu, each sub-category will be asigned a set action, which will make the page do what it is supposed to do. Creating the template and navigation this way, alows me to create an unlimited amount of additional systems to the site. the menu is controlled by a small javascript function. which you will see if you View the source.

Although it isn't needed, because the page loads in less than .00 seconds right now... i included my page loadtime class which was supposed to wait untill it was needed with the rest of my other classes when the sql queries piled up. But i figured what the hell, why not, since it was so simple, i added it now, as it really doesn't effect much of the rest of the core code.

I will probably use it as my first entry into the portfolio, and code gallery, for testing, my adding scripts, my DB queries, etc...

Typical security measures have been taken, along with a few tricks up my sleeve.

Ok enough ranting, and over explaining....
Tell me what you think so far. Let me know your suggestions.

EvulArt Studios, Inc. .:[ Version - 1.5 ]:.

Tanax · 06-28-2008, 01:13 PM

Looks pretty awesome.
Not a fan though of the rounded corners, but ohwell

Evulness · 06-28-2008, 03:43 PM

eh, they have their uses. I wanted something simple to start with, so when i'm ready to release the main themes system, i can show the true extent of the site ;)

Aaron · 07-01-2008, 12:49 AM

Not a fan of the tables.
Why are you putting a single <div> inside of the table cells?
You have a few typo's.
You have a few broken links, like to firefox.
You can't put a script in between the head and body tag.
TD's don't have alt attributes...
An indicator telling you what 'page' has 'actions' would be amazing. I won't go into why your 'action' idea is bad.
Why would someone want to log in?
Why would you have a splash page with enter or exit? Why even have a splash page?
As for exit, why not use Javascript, like...

Code:

<a href="#" onclick="history.back()">.:Exit:.</a>

My javascript is extremely rusty... I hope that's it.

Village Idiot · 07-01-2008, 01:01 AM

To be honest, I would never hire someone as a designer if that was their site. Here are the problems (in the order I see them):

1. No color, its is all different shades of grey. Not easy to look at.
2. Hard to read (and honestly ugly) logo.
3. The layout itself is too boxy
4. The scrollbar looks awful.
5. Too many unnecessary links on the sidebar, none work.
6. Broken get firefox link.
7. No place to contact you

When I come in, I have no idea where to look to get an idea of who you are and what you do. I come in and see your latest update on construction, but I want to know if you design for vBulletin or IPB.

All in all, you should probably go back to the drawing board and start from scratch.

Aaron · 07-01-2008, 01:09 AM

And here I am trying to refrain from saying that...

Evulness · 07-01-2008, 02:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Village Idiot

To be honest, I would never hire someone as a designer if that was their site. Here are the problems (in the order I see them):

1. No color, its is all different shades of grey. Not easy to look at.
2. Hard to read (and honestly ugly) logo.
3. The layout itself is too boxy
4. The scrollbar looks awful.
5. Too many unnecessary links on the sidebar, none work.
6. Broken get firefox link.
7. No place to contact you

When I come in, I have no idea where to look to get an idea of who you are and what you do. I come in and see your latest update on construction, but I want to know if you design for vBulletin or IPB.

All in all, you should probably go back to the drawing board and start from scratch.

and....

Quote:

Not a fan of the tables.
Why are you putting a single <div> inside of the table cells?
You have a few typo's.
You have a few broken links, like to firefox.
You can't put a script in between the head and body tag.
TD's don't have alt attributes...
An indicator telling you what 'page' has 'actions' would be amazing. I won't go into why your 'action' idea is bad.
Why would someone want to log in?
Why would you have a splash page with enter or exit? Why even have a splash page?
As for exit, why not use Javascript, like...

Code:
<a href="#" onclick="history.back()">.:Exit:.</a>
My javascript is extremely rusty... I hope that's it.

to quote myself ....

Quote:

I despise using only div tags for my layouts, as the chances of getting your site to be viewed the same by every user that will visit, is slim to none. I am a fan of mixing Div's and tables. to achieve a fluid, or static layout.

Although at the present moment, it isn't xhtml validated, before the site becomes live to users, it will be .

That pretty much states, that the template isn't perfect, but it will be before the site is live.
i never once stated this site was live to users did i? right now... whoever reads this topic, and 2 of my personal friends, are the only people aware the site even exists.

i've had 50 unique hits to the site, not including myself, in the last 5 days. i'm not worried about it being perfect yet.
when i start getting more hits per day to it, than i like... then i will maintenance lock the site.

i have the splash like that, because i plan on using the spot used for my construction sign, to place a nice flash intro, or something. i'm a digital artist, this is where i plan on displaying my talents... so a splash showing something eye catching is a good idea if you ask me.

all in all.... if you read what i've said. it is no where near done. 5, now 6 days into it. using what little free time i get to write this.

1) i've lost track of how many sites i've seen where the colors blend not much differently than what i have.

2) for a quick place holding logo with a "painted" look for an art style portfolio. it fits. Not to mention, how can you not read that? if you can't read that then you need glasses.
3) boxy? unlike this website here, or the other 200,000,000 websites out there?

4) the scrollbar is only there, so it doesn't stretch the layout too far while i fix the template. (see quote from my first post above)

5)too many unnecessary links that don't work? they don't work because the pages don't exist, and they don't exist because i haven't created those systems yet.

6)that i will take fault for, because i didn't notice that lastnight when i put it up there. there was a reason why... probably because i don't want my site being read as a referrer to google yet...

7) well.... considering that 75% of the rest of the systems on the site aren't there yet.... i wouldn't think a way to contact me is going to be there either....

Most if not every place i would be trying to get a job at would have a team of people to do this for them, right? i have 2 website design/hosting companys on the same street that i sit now, one right above me, they have 2 teams of 4-5 people working on each website. the other down the street has 1 team of 6 people.

I'm working on this site, 2-3 hours a day, if that. and most of that time is looking over what i write, and making sure things work.

steps folks....

brainstorm your ideas, make notes
toss together a paper draft
create a draft template
refine template till perfect
split template make ready for first draft html code
create first code draft
refine draft
refine again
create beta-test site on test server
add, remove, edit, refine, re-write, re-code, re-arrange whatever it takes to get the site ready for live
quality check again and again
live release

right now, i'm probably in between stage 6 and 7on that list.

I thank you guys for your crits and comments though.i'll keep things in mind.

Jim · 07-05-2008, 02:57 PM

I'm looking the page fullscreen on a 22" monitor, so the main content lines are damn long now and long lines of text are difficult for people to read.

Second is the color, it's too dark and gothish :>. Look at your garden or something and get some nice color ideas for your website, the site will look 3 times as good with a fresh color sceme :)

Third is a little bit of PHP: EvulArt Studios, Inc. .:[ Version - 1.5 ]:., ok in this example it's not a big problem. But these little errors slowly make your website unsecure. Use Basename() on the page variable.

Fourth is: Don't let my comment take you down, you are doing a good job. I just hope you might take some of my comment in consideration when you create a new design :)

Rizza · 07-05-2008, 05:05 PM

I recommend redefining your process... and facilitating closed betas. My process is simple and it works great...

1. Define
2. Design the app
3. Create tests
4. Develop to make those unit tests pass
5. Design the aesthetics
6. Integrate
7. Final internal QA
8. Closed testing
9. Launch

You'll find much more success and faster development cycles by using test-driven development.

Evulness · 07-07-2008, 01:57 PM

It has been a long week. between trying to work all week with a migraine, to the 4th of july stuff... its been pretty hectic, so i haven't had much time to update anything.

oh wow thats weird. that makes it include its self? works like i was doing an include 'index.php'

Well, in short, this is my page handler

Code:

$page_path = str_replace("", "/", realpath(dirname(__FILE__))).'/Files/';
define('PAGE', $page_path);
$EvPage = $_GET['page'];  
if($EvPage){
        $Pagename = PAGE.$EvPage.'.php';
        if (file_exists($Pagename)) {
            include_once ($Pagename);}
else{ //Do my error handling}

which works rather well. i didn't know about the example you posted though.
i don't have my main security measures in place yet, because there really aren't any holes in it yet. not that i can see anyway. other than what you pointed out, but i don't see how that can be a security flaw, if you can't force it to try to include the files that aren't there.
i have a cleaning function i'm going to be using with the rest of the system, as well as session validation, encryption, error logging, etc...
i have a few test proceedures drawn up, to test my scripts for flaws, but i'm sure there is plenty of stuff i'm not looking for, aka Jims ../index inclusion. main thing i'm securing from from the get go, is all inputs (striping slashes, shell commands, injections, html) are cleaned, all supers, post, get, session, etc... are all cleaned on page load. when it comes down to it, i will be doing mime checking on file types, etc....

As it sits, the site is a basic templating system. the index handles everything. all i have to do is change my index.template page and the whole site changes. On site load, the template is initiated, if my checks are ok.
When you "Enter" from the splash it runs the checks. (the Splash page will be able to be disabled in user settings, when thats done)

i haven't put anything live on the site, that i haven't tested repeatedly on my 2 test servers. i have 2 boxes, beside this one, a linux server, and a windows server. (to help with cross server compatibility, etc). i've ran into a few instances where the code worked fine on the windows box, but failed on the linux box. (especialy with my mysql queries, my linux box doesn't like tills ( ` )'s)

Things are rolling along slowly, but i'm getting there :)

Evulness · 07-07-2008, 02:00 PM

oh, the site isn't staying like it is at its present state. its just a temporary template to hold places, and alow me to test code out :)