I ask this because I am busy with designing my own for a mod, but I am not very experienced and it always help to look and study what the best did.

Also random tips to ease of use / layout / secrects of making stuff look good / what software you recommend etc, would be appreciated as well.   ^_^

Tons of Free Hosting sites
Just look at the descriptions and you might find what you want. ^_^

For layout, KISS (Keep it simple, stupid).  Most sites are laid out in a similar manner, and that's for a reason.  Make it easy for people to find your content, because for most sites that's why people are visiting. 

Unless you have a great reason to do so, avoid using stuff like flash and java applets.  It's a lot of bells and whistles that bring you next to nothing of value.

The other piece of advice I would give is to try to keep things as clean as possible.  There's no need to cram everything onto your home page, or any other page on your site.

ditto what randy said...

Thanks for the advice. KISS is what it will be.   :)

Quote from: randyripoff on February 06, 2008, 09:57:49 AMUnless you have a great reason to do so, avoid using stuff like flash and java applets.  It's a lot of bells and whistles that bring you next to nothing of value.

Amen! I see so many pages where flash is used to do something silly like change an image on mouse-over. It's like using a shiny, chromed bulldozer to empty the litter box.

Quote from: stumpy on February 07, 2008, 05:31:24 PMAmen! I see so many pages where flash is used to do something silly like change an image on mouse-over. It's like using a shiny, chromed bulldozer to empty the litter box.

Actually, that's what it was for initially. Before Macromedia (now Adobe) bought it and rechristened it "Flash", FutureSplash was presented just like that: create five buttons with rollovers, add five different Future Splash plugins. (Since the browser plugin architecture is, still today, inherently very resource-intensive, you mostly try to avoid putting more than one or two Flash object in a page. I shudder to think of what happens when doing that with 1996 computers.)

While Flash is often a bane, it certainly can be put to good use. I'd much rather we always used open standards like HTML and SVG, but these are so limited (no persistence between pages, very poor standardization, abyssimal typography, etc.) that Flash is sometimes – alas – necessary.

Sometimes it helps to make a "site tree" of all of your pages and where each page connects to another. This makes organizing and naming your pages a little easier, or at least it does for me. After your site is up, it can double as a site map for your visitors.

Gosh..I need to design another website..

I tell you, Syn is the man to ask. As he does this by trade I believe.

Yeah, i liked the design of Syn's Freedom Asylum.

As well as Hero Force v2.0, New Power Inc, Mesh works, Alex's Freedom Fortress, FX Force, Fundament Zero, Freedom Force Forever, Gryphon's Freedom Force, Renegade's Toybox, Freedomfans.... :huh: (wait a minute)

Seems like anything with Freedom Force looks good to me. :P

 :cool: it's hard to say. their have been and still is some awesome website out their.
but here is a few that i love going too.
1.freedom reborn
2.four color exp.
3.toybox
4.tommyboy
5.npi
6.gren
7.mod graveyard
8.draven
9.hero force
10.alex's freedom f.
like i said their are hell of alot of site that i love to go to.
if i left anyone out it because they are gone or down.

Yes. The audience is FR & other FF playing people. But if the characters of the mod are well liked I would in fact want to take it beyond a mod.

The site will mainly be for downloading the mod but also host the bios of the characters to supply extra info for players and lastly very important proper credits as thanks to those that gave so much for this project. 

I decided to put together something which would look good (hopefully) but be very simple and easy to navigate. No fancy flash & other stuff. And if I get to the beyond part then look towards a more advanced re-design.   

If it is acceptable to do so, I will show my drafts in this thread.

I appreciate the help guys.  ^_^

sorta thread jacking, can anyone recommend a good cheap host. i was going with hostgator but they have stopped windows hosting, and i'm now looking at bluehost

anyone any advice or experience with them