New 5.1.1 site about to go live
Last Post 08/10/2009 2:43 AM by Lee Sykes. 3 Replies.
Author Messages
Steve
Nuke Active Member
Nuke Active Member
Posts:33


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08/06/2009 6:13 PM
    I'm about to take my test site live and would appreciate any feedback you might have! I started with a div skin, but had significant issues with the developers design and had to convert to a table based. Not my preference, but without spending a lot of time I didn't have tinkering with the div skin to get it right, I didn't have a lot of choice. The site is currently at test.unclehowards.com but should be live at www.unclehowards.com after 8/7/09. It's a stock install of DNN 5.1.1 and performance seems a little slow to me, so I'd appreciate any comments you may have regarding load times and page transitions. I'll be adding some additional modules and probably adding pageblaster at some point, but my old install is very buggy and crashes intermitantly (very odd ... even stumped Bruce Chapman), so I've had to make the switch a little faster than I would have liked. Thanks for your time!!
    Lee Sykes
    DNN Creative Staff
    Nuke Master VI
    Nuke Master VI
    Posts:4945


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    08/07/2009 3:35 AM
    Hello,

    I found the small white text hard to read on the green background, rather than reading it I just skipped, it could be worth trying a different font such as verdana.

    At the top where you have the logo and menu, they seem to clash with the background design, you need to get the logo inside the curved section, or remove the curved section altogether, it seems jarring, especially the menu over the curve. - this also applies to the footer at the bottom of the page.

    For some reason the skin.css file is called in twice, use the web developers toolbar and you can see there are two tabs named skin.css:
    Troubleshooting DotNetNuke Skins

    you may have placed a call to the skin.CSS file in your skin HTML file which is not needed, this is worth checking out.

    Once you have your site running as you wish, it's worth having a look at Snapsis page blaster module, as it can really help to speed up page loading times.

    Thanks,


    Lee Sykes
    Site Administrator
    Subscribe to the website : DotNetNuke Video Tutorials : The Skinning Toolkit : DotNetNuke Podcasts

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    Steve
    Nuke Active Member
    Nuke Active Member
    Posts:33


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    08/07/2009 1:32 PM
    Thanks for the feedback! Very good suggestions. The cadre of folks here have a certain mentality. It's helpful to get another perspective.

    I've been fighting the logo placement from the beginning. The intention was to put a rotating photo in the upper left corner, but it was distracting. I'll try to get it repositioned. The logo coloring is slightly off as well. It blends into the background color a little too much.

    The duplicate call for the skin.css is really boggling to me. I'll watch the troubleshooting video and see if I can find what is causing that. We went through several revisions with the skin provider to get to this point. I wonder if that created a problem. We started off with the skin in div format, but had to use tables to avoid having the content drop below the menu when the window was resized (really didn't understand that, but went with what the skin provider told me). I've fumbled and bumbled my way through making this work and I'm learning a lot about skinning and css along the way (still a long way to go though!). I've gone from stone cold ignorant to moderately confused in the last few weeks. With any luck, I may graduate to having a foggy idea of what I'm doing in a month or two. :-)
    Lee Sykes
    DNN Creative Staff
    Nuke Master VI
    Nuke Master VI
    Posts:4945


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    08/10/2009 2:43 AM
    great, well if you need any further help, do not hesitate to ask, cheers,
    Lee Sykes
    Site Administrator
    Subscribe to the website : DotNetNuke Video Tutorials : The Skinning Toolkit : DotNetNuke Podcasts

    Twitter: www.twitter.com/DNNCreative

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