Graphic Design Contests

**Dinki** · 02-21-2005, 11:01 PM

THE STORY:

A few years ago, I put together a joke website. Due to hosting problems and a sudden lack of interest, I let the site disappear without archiving the contents. Over the past few weeks, I've rewritten the php and grabbed the cached html and images from www.archive.org ...

The site is now pretty much functional as it was back in 2000 (minus about a thousand jokes, but I'm working on getting them back in). The problem I'm having now is that I don't really like the way I am presenting the links to the joke categories (left bar), the main section (where the jokes or other text is displayed), and the ad/info bar (right bar). I think that the header section is groovy, and the footer bar is okay.

THE REQUEST:

I'd like some input on how to jazz up my presentation of the above mentioned sections. Any rough graphics of these ideas would be greatly appreciated. I'm not really looking for anything extravagent, but would like for it to be a bit more integrated into an overall look.

While this is not officially a contest, if I decide to use your idea, I would be willing to pay $10 via paypal. In return, I would like the table layout code as well as any graphics associated with the tables. I know it's not much, but money is a bit tight a the moment.

Here's a link to the site:

TheJokeJukebox.com

TIA for your time

**Jake** · 02-22-2005, 12:10 AM

Sounds easy enough, I'll take a look at it tomorrow afternoon.

**The Jasong** · 02-22-2005, 12:47 AM

I actualy think things look pretty good as they are.
If you just changed the font to arial and made some different text sizes, it would change a lot.
The links on the left I would leave alone because there are so many of them. If you made them fancy it would take up too much space.
My two cents

**Dinki** · 02-22-2005, 10:30 AM

Thanks for the advice. I would like to keep the category links (on the left) basically the same, but have a way to isolate theat data from the data in the main part of the screen (where the jokes display). I'd also like to do the same for the links/ads on the right side of the page.

I think this can be done using a similar technique that this forum uses (see links to the right on this page). Looking at my page a bit more, I think I have entirely too much white space. Perhaps I need a bit of color for the background?

I'm really just trying to figure out how to 'liven it up' a bit.

**Dinki** · 11:52 PM

I've taken my own advice and changed the presentation of the left and right bars. Here's how it looks now:

http://thejokejukebox.com/testing.php

I think I'm on the right track now.

I guess I might have to move this thread to the review-my-site category ... Thanks for your interest.