Suggestions for improvements and fine tuning, and bug checks, for Cancer Connections

My preference would be for darker text in the forums and throughout the site - it's by a considerable margin too pale for my eyes. And the orange-colored text in the forums is also too pale for my eyes - I'd like to see a darker color used.

If you have an opinion about text and font-related matters relating to Cancer Connections please do post it so we can (maybe) get a consensus. In today's world we need everything going for our eyes as they need to to an immense amount of reading and other close-in work over the course of our lives.

I like the size of the text on the forums and throughout the site - I find it quite easy to read.

Cheers,
Ed.

Raul and everyone hi,
My impression is that the website generally, including the forum, is beautifully set out - spacious, not cluttered, easy to find items on the pages. It's a work of art!

And I really like the font - I don't know what its name is as I don't seem to have one that matches it on my computer (by font I mean eg "Times New Roman" - I hope that's what the term font means to readers of this post). It's probably better than ANY font I have on my computer. It just needs darkening. I only have experience with simple webpage construction and free webpage editors such as Netscape Composer (and have never buit any website as complex as Cancer Connections). I'm not familiar with photoshop. The free webpage editors I use have facilities to choose the font colour from a rainbow spectrum, so I imagine photoshop has similar text colour selection. My suggestion to to experiment with dark navy blue or purple - something of that nature, or simply a darker version of the colour you are currently using.

My feeling is that orange should be replaced as a text colour throughout the website, even if it's the team's favourite colour. It simply isn't dark enough against the pale background and I doubt if it can be made so, not for text anyway - it's not a colour that stands out sufficiently to the eye. I would replace it with a dark colour somewhere between dark blue, dark electric blue, dark navy blue or you could go round towards magenta, but not greens or reds or yellows.

I test out text colours in an experimental file I open just for that purpose - I type or copy some text into it and then set the font to whatever I want my text font to be eg Arial and try out different colours, and when I find one that looks suitable I get the code for that colour by viewing the source code for the page.

I emphasise again that I think the website including the forum is beautifully composed - I don't think you'll be needing to make many changes somehow

These are my suggestions anyway.
Cheers,
Ed.

Hi Raul,
Yes the new darker gray definitely makes it easier to read and for longer periods

That was really my chief concern, the orange being a secondary issue.

I understand now about why the orange is there. Sounds like it would be best to stay with the orange and in the future it can always be changed if someone comes up with a suitable modification. A good thing about using orange is that it goes well with the blues in the pages whereas as you say there would be issues with using blue in place of orange.

I hope others will post their opinions if they feel there are any eye or colour issues for them - we all have our preferences and I'm but one of the users.
Cheers,
Ed.

Raul hi,
Here's a wild and ambitious idea from left field.

If the software that Cancer Connections is currently running on does not have scope to add photos, videos, music etc, you could consider switching to the Ning social networking software that Planet Cancer runs on, at least for the young adults section.

Eek! - well I did mention this was a wild and ambitious idea

The basic software is free, and very easy to set up and use, but it comes with advertisements that Ning places, and storage and bandwidth limitations. Here's a brief summary in US dollars of what it might cost to have your own domain name rather than one with the word ning in it, remove the ads, and double the free storage and bandwidth quota. I'm mostly quoting from the Ning website here. All moneys are in US dollars.

To use your own domain name (which you need to register elsewhere), you need to purchase the premium service called "Point Your Domain Name to Your Social Network" for $4.95 per month and configure your domain name to point to your social network.

To remove the advertisements that run in the right column of your social network, you'll need to purchase the "Go Ad-Free" premium service for $24.95 per month.

By default, your social network comes with a quota of 10GB of storage and 100GB of bandwidth. This is a social network with approximately 5,000 photos or 500 videos. If you exceed this you can purchase one or more units of Get More Storage and Bandwidth for $9.95 per month. Each unit purchased will add another 10GB of storage and 100GB of bandwidth per month.

As I say, rather wild and ambitious, but nevertheless I throw it in the ring for contemplation

Cheers,
Ed.