Ripples Puppet Ministry

[Intozlight]

I have used Xara for a while and love it to make keeping our site up to date so easy.
www.ripplesministry.org

[Rik]

On the Menus, on mouseover, the text style changes.
Is this deliberate?

[TXAlba]

interesting logo, you might want to reign in that top half of the R if not intentional

[Cloud]

I see it too NIPPLES, anyway as a minimum the rollover text needs to change, navigation menus should be clear and easy to read. As for the site in general perhaps a less dark theme, seems a bit dark and would more suit something like some of the dark circus acts out there, for a ministry and and site for kids puppets it is far far too dark, kids these days are weary and scared of puppets and clowns etc so I would lighten it all up. I would also bring some sort of order to everything, for instance on the pages about the puppeteers the heading text (slanted name) is not at all professional and seems out of place.

You have the content there, I would re-do the site from the beginning and keep it as simple as you can get away with, keep elements in the same place from page to page, align objects such as text correctly etc etc.

Here are some sites which are modern and look great, the looks can easily be achieved in xara.

http://www.littleangeltheatre.com/lat/

http://www.puppettheatre.co.uk/index

http://www.puppettheatrewales.co.uk/


I may seem more critical than usual but I think it would help more than just saying 'nice site' particularly as this is for a business. You have obviously done a lot of work there but please remember that the simpler the design the better it is, I have looked at some of the sites I did a couple of years ago when I started out and I made some terrible mistakes and have hopefully learnt from them; I have a background of design (25 years experience in graphic design) and have learnt that web design needs to be different to print design; what looks good on a leaflet will not look good on a screen, and certainly not on a small phone screen.

[Craray]

Those puppets rock!!!
(sorry about not talking of the webdesign...just had to throw it in here after seeing the site )