Pre-Live check

[Guest gwizard]

Heya,

I have nearly completed my wifes store and wanted to hear some opinions.

This is 3.0.7-pl1 heavily modded with:

• DHTML Categories
  
• Custom skin
  
• Categories on front page (from aikdo) modified to use javascript mouseover
  
• Manual Credit card support
  
• Cheque and Moneyorder support (from Ben Logan)
  
• Check the product view screen for my mod of product pictures (inspired by estelle)
  

There are some more mods on admin side, like Add Customer from aikdo (i think).

The graphics are all hand drawn by my wife with graphic pad and later I added effects in photoshop and fireworks.

I have also completed yesterday a tool that converts customers from ZenCart to CC and changed the Login.inc.php to detect whether it's Zen user and check his password with the Zen function (they use md5:seed style encoding).

www.natalie-shop.com/index.php

B)

[Robsta]

Looks good. Not sure about the amount of brown though

You may have forgotton to customise the product lists, here is an example.... still white and grey backgrounds etc.

http://www.natalie-shop.com/nooei/nooe-oeiiei/cat_19.html

Nice work.

[Guest gwizard]

Thanks for the input.

I left the default colors of the lists becouse I liked them.

They accentuate (is this the right spelling?) the products.

[jerseyjoe]

The brown is definitely a mistake. I suggest you get input from a graphic artist regarding colors and how they work together - and don't. The general issue for your design is that you are using dark colors in both your texts and graphics against a dark background. That makes it harder to read - regardless of which direction you are reading in

A simple fix would be to change the page background color to something like #FFFFEA which is a gentle beige.

The dark gray bg for the product images makes them look dull. And the 3-D effect doesn't work. Save yourself all that work and just go with a light background to the product images, without the special effects. The presentation will be stronger.

One of the first and most important things that aspiring designers and architects learn is the advice of the great Mies van der Rohe - "Less is more."

Best of luck to you.

[Guest gwizard]

I told my wife exactly the same, but she insisted she likes the brown background.

Well, after all it's her store.

I only drive her around, carry the cash and build sites

Can I assume that besides those issues there is no problem you see ?

[jerseyjoe]

I told my wife exactly the same, but she insisted she likes the brown background.

Well, after all it's her store.

I only drive her around, carry the cash and build sites

Can I assume that besides those issues there is no problem you see ?

There is but one rule for a happy life . . . never argue with your wife regarding matters of taste, life style, residence, religion, child-raising, clothing, politics, food, furniture arranging, dish washing, table manners, choice of reading material, where to sit in the movies or concert hall, soap for the shower, rugs, paint, brands of ice-cream, color of the family auto, where to part a child's hair, whch side of the bed you sleep on and which brands of tea and coffeee are allowed on the shelf. Oh, and never dispute anything about anything.

Above all, keep in mind that your wife is, as Rumple of the Bailey used to say, "She WHo Must Be Obeyed."

Trust me on this. In my 73 years I have been well-trained by a series of wives.

P.S.: other than previously noted issues, the web site is fine.

Best of luck . . .