Just Redid My Music Site- Need A Little Advice

[Bryan R. Tyler]

I've spent a few hours the past few days revamping my (very amateur) music site. Here's what it did look like:
http://bryanrtylermusic.web.aplus.ne...yanrtylercopy/

And here's what it looks like now:
http://www.bryanrtylermusic.com

I think it's better, but I may be wrong; I've never really taken it seriously before. Anyways, should I keep the borders I've added around the pictures in the Equipment section? All the mp3s are currently organized alphabetically- should I change it so that the most current ones are near the top?
Should I add a drop down menu for the Equipment section? Anything else I should add or any other advice?

[hover]

I'll be honest in that I like the first version better, but would only suggest, on that old version, that you change some fonts. Otherwise, I like the "cool green" ethery layout.

[Ben Lesser]

The header on the new website is way too big. I mean, it's just flat-out beastly. Very distracting and, imo, off-putting. A good website in my opinion should be clean and very un-busy to leave room for the content.

Also, MP3s are best in chronological order, or some sort of chronological grouping. It helps the listener to pick other pieces written closely to the timeline of whatever they may have just listened to (speaking from experience, pieces in close proximity tend to have more stylistic similarities than something that was written, say, 6 months prior).

The tables in the equipment section are very 1990's Geocity-esque, which is not a good thing, as far as I'm concerned. Also: having contact info and a guest book seems somewhat redundant. I'd stick with the contact info, since the latter is equally reminiscent of Geocities.

The drop-down menus are good, though. They save a lot of unnecessary page navigating.

Just my toonie worth of advice. Haven't designed a website in years, but I know what I like. Go to websites that you like, from an aesthetic standpoint, and see what makes them work so well, and then integrate elements of that into your own webpage.

[Bryan R. Tyler]

Originally Posted by Ben Lesser

The tables in the equipment section are very 1990's Geocity-esque, which is not a good thing, as far as I'm concerned. Also: having contact info and a guest book seems somewhat redundant. I'd stick with the contact info, since the latter is equally reminiscent of Geocities.

Hadn't thought of those I left a counter off for that reason- should've thought of those as well. I'll see about the image size- I actually like it large, although it's probably too big for anyone who's not using a big monitor.

[L-A]

The topography of your new site, and the placement of its navigation bar is better. I'd suggest a bigger font size for it, though. Mainly because the top picture is pretty big. You can keep it that way if you balance out the nav. bar size.

Other than that, it's pretty straightforward and users will get to where they want to go with a minimal amount of clicks, which is excellent. You could anchor a div left or right on the home page and place your contact info directly there, if people often find themselves in need of contacting you.

[Bryan R. Tyler]

For some strange reason, people often do contact me out of nowhere, but it's usually via TB. I keep my 24" monitor on a very low resolution due to my vision so that the words/images will all be bigger for me- I'll view the page on my monitor's standard resolution to see how small the fonts look to normal people.