Hey everyone,
I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone here. Without all of you out there pounding the pavement, and learning different ways to implement various techniques in ExpressionEngine, I wouldn’t have had so many people to learn from. So, thank you!

This is my first time around doing an EE site- and I’ve been wanting to create this site since 2001. It’s a creative community that ditches the mega-community vibe that’s been going on lately. I wanted to created a place that was laid back, and let the artists and their work get the spotlight for a change. I have to admit, it feels good to finally cross this one off the list! 

I may incorporate the forum module and do a site-wide login later on, but that is still up in the air for now.

So here it is: Studio Shadowlight

Let me know what you think!

-James

Looks great!! Has a unique feel to it. Love ur header too.

wish I could come up with something like that

Thanks! I really appreciate that. I’m actually putting together Photoshop tutorials as we speak, and I’ll be covering the technique that I used to do the header, if you’re interested. 

The design looks nice. I did find some irony in that one of your tutorials is about setting up a forum, something you don’t have (yet). You also reference this in you gallery. Nice “bones” though.

I like your paper layout. Something I was trying to do with my site, but couldn’t quite get to look decent, so I went with swatches instead of worrying about it.

I bookmarked the site and made a note to check back in a month or two when it has more content.

That’s weird. There is definitely a forum there, I guess you over looked it. Click on community. Maybe you can come back and join when you get a chance! 

Right now I’m using PHPBB3, but I’m thinking of making the switch to the EE Forum module, with a site-wide login.

I had issues at first with the paper background until I got the margin and padding squared away. repeat-y was my go to on that one.

Thanks for the bookmark Christopher, and for checking it out!

What size is your page? It looks more than 720. Can people with small monitors still see the whole page? I am just curious. I have seen a few other websites do this, but wasn’t sure if it worked.

Thanks!

960px wide.

I made a conscientious decision to take the width to what I felt was a nice middle ground. Since most of the people who will be visiting the site are photographers, designers and artists, the grand majority of them should be running at a resolution of 1024x768 or higher. Of course with that said, if you’re running a resolution lower than that you can’t see the whole page without scrolling to the right. I could have gone with a fluid layout, but most browsers have a “zoom” feature (hold control and press +) to increase the text size and it sometimes breaks the layout.

Logo reminds me of the Dreamcast one! :D

Yeah, I’ve always been a huge fan of spirals (I even have one tatooed on me).

Man, I loved my Dreamcast! I still dust that thing off every now and again for an afternoon of Shenmue or Skies of Arcadia, Marvel Vs Capcom and ..well, you get the picture! 

Hi James,

Looking great! Well done.

I’m sure we will see even more from you now that you have “one under your belt” so to say!

Best wishes,

Mark