Terry

I like your content. My job is in online publishing (Newspapers and magzines online). The main thing you have going for your site is the content. The newspaper guys I talk with are all about content, content, content!

Never reduce that.

What you need, in my opinion, is basically a different container to hold your content. Here are a few of my suggestions.

Note: Not all of these suggestions apply to your current site. These are intended as a refernce for your next design.

1. I agree getting rid of the frames. Those have not been popular in quite a few years.

2. No image backgrounds. Makes the screen appear to busy and hard to read. Make it a solid color, the lighter the better.

3. Catagorize/Sub Catagorize your content and flow chart your navigation. Insure there is a logical path to follow through your site. No dead ends.

4. Not alot of extra graphics. If theres one thing people hate is to get to a site. Have to wait 5 min to download a page. Only to have this huge picture of nothing sitting there and they have to go somewhere else. Keep the look and feel graphics to optimized smaller images. Any extra graphics should be content oriented.

5. Use thumbnails for your chip pics. This gives the user a smalll glimps of the chip and allows them the choice to view the larger image.

6. One of the best design tools is other peoples work. No I'm not saying copying peoples designs. If you find a site the appeals to you then think about what they did that makes you like it. Is it the color scheme? Is it the organization/navigation? Or maybe you just like one piece of it? Take these ideas and incorporate them into your design. Also go outside just the chipping community to find other sites. Some of the best ideas came to me from a jet engine hose sellers site.

7. Consider maintenance on the site. Get a good internet programming book. There are lots of options out there that can make your site more easy to maintain. .Net, PHP etc. If you design your site to possibly look at databases for example. Then all you would have to do is add an entry to a database to change your content. No touching pages everytime you want to add a chip.

8. Most important have fun! Think of it as a clean slate. You can do anything you want.

If you need help or need to ask any questions drop me a line.