New to Gigalicous

lestaria

New member
Hi everyone! My name's Clarose and I just joined the Gigalicous forums. I'm 20 and from the United States. I plan on transferring my website called "Lestaria" (hence my username) here from Zymic Hosting. You can find my current site here: http://lestaria.zymichost.com/. (Please keep in mind that my site is not complete by a longshot. I am still in the process of finishing the css for the layout and adding pages.)

Zymic Hosting is okay, I guess, I'm just starting out with my website so I wouldn't really know. So far, I have experienced slow loading form zymic.com itself and I just found out that some countries block all websites hosted on Zymic. New Zealand for example blocks access to Zymic so my online friends from New Zealand wouldn't be able to see my new website. Which is why I have decided to start looking for another website host. I found Gigalicous in my search for a website host and so far it looks promising. The fact that you guys actually require your members to post 10 quality posts before applying for web hosting is a great idea! The requirement definitely helps make a more friendly (and helpful!) environment which is hard to find in a web host.

On to my site: Lestaria. I play an online game called Stardoll which is a game dedicated to fashion. For those of you who already know what Stardoll is, feel free to skip to the next paragraph of this lovely introduction. For those of you who have no clue what Stardoll is, Stardoll is an online site in which you make a doll to dress up with virtual clothes. Stardoll is basically an online paperdoll site.

My hopes for Lestaria are to create a fan blog for Stardoll that shows other users looks I come up with for my doll (my avatar is actually my doll from Stardoll). This idea may sound silly to some of you, but a lot of people who play similar sites create blogs for them.

I have been doing Graphic/Web Design since I was 11 years old and I am now 20 years old. I basically taught myself basic HTML/CSS from scratch. I also took some basic Graphic and Web Design classes in college. Before I played Stardoll, I played another site called Neopets. Neopets is still around, but I no longer go on my account there. I owned a few different Neopets related websites offering Graphics (layouts for Neopets such as userlookups or gallery layouts), Guides (helpful articles on how to do things on Neopets), and even Tutorials (Graphic/Web Design related).

Long story short: I am a self-taught Graphic/Web Designer who has a passion for what I do. I love owning and managing a website which is why I have chosen to make a Stardoll blog. Maybe I will become a web designer someday, who knows? All I know now is that I enjoy doing what I do: playing Stardoll and owning a blog for it.
 

lestaria

New member
helpremember said:
Hi lestaria. I'm glad to no longer be the most recent poster in this part of the forum!

I know the feeling! After I posted this, I went around to other threads and read what they had to say. Then I responded to a few of them and waited anxiously for a reply. Your reply just made my day. Thank you!
 

dxverm

New member
Welcome to Gigalicous! I use Zymic as well but lately the servers keep going down so I've moved to Gigalicous. You will find that everyone here will do there best to help out and are pretty nice! I've never heard of that game before but I did also start teaching myself web design, HTML, and CSS at an early age of 12 as well. I'm 24 now and am working on my portfolio as we speak that will be hosted by Gigalicous. If you need any help, don't be afraid to ask!
 

lestaria

New member
dxverm said:
Welcome to Gigalicous! You will find that everyone here will do there best to help out and are pretty nice! I've never heard of that game before but I did also start teaching myself web design, HTML, and CSS at an early age of 12 as well. I'm 24 now and am working on my portfolio as we speak that will be hosted by Gigalicous. If you need any help, don't be afraid to ask!

Thank you for the support! It's nice to see others who have taught themselves web design, HTML, and CSS at young ages. I would love to check your portfolio out once you get all spruced up and looking nice :good: I'll be sure to ask for help on here if I ever have any problems or just want to keep up with everyone on here. This forum is really cool. Everyone does seem to be pretty nice so far. Best community I've ever experienced in my time of free web hosting. That says something considering I'm not even hosted on here yet!
 

dxverm

New member
lestaria said:
dxverm said:
Welcome to Gigalicous! You will find that everyone here will do there best to help out and are pretty nice! I've never heard of that game before but I did also start teaching myself web design, HTML, and CSS at an early age of 12 as well. I'm 24 now and am working on my portfolio as we speak that will be hosted by Gigalicous. If you need any help, don't be afraid to ask!

Thank you for the support! It's nice to see others who have taught themselves web design, HTML, and CSS at young ages. I would love to check your portfolio out once you get all spruced up and looking nice :good: I'll be sure to ask for help on here if I ever have any problems or just want to keep up with everyone on here. This forum is really cool. Everyone does seem to be pretty nice so far. Best community I've ever experienced in my time of free web hosting. That says something considering I'm not even hosted on here yet!

I'm working on it on an alternate server until its done, you can preview it here http://obliviondesignz.frihost.org.
 

lestaria

New member
dxverm said:
I'm working on it on an alternate server until its done, you can preview it here http://obliviondesignz.frihost.org.

That looks awesome! You've got some talent there my friend and I can't wait to see more from you. Good luck building your portfolio :good:

I used to be big into anime but not as much as I used to be (I saw some of your designs were anime related.) though you can a ton of things with anime themed graphics. I always found it fun to play around with the characters and colors in the pictures.
 

whsecurity

New member
Hello Lestaria! Welcome to gigalicous! As a programmer and not designer (and not in fashion world! :p) I think that your site have a lot of work - redesign to do. First of all keep in mind how users react with your page. Keep user experience at the first place in your to-do list. If a user finds difficult to navigate to your site it will close it!
 

lestaria

New member
whsecurity said:
Hello Lestaria! Welcome to gigalicous! As a programmer and not designer (and not in fashion world! :p) I think that your site have a lot of work - redesign to do. First of all keep in mind how users react with your page. Keep user experience at the first place in your to-do list. If a user finds difficult to navigate to your site it will close it!

Thank you so much for the advice, it's greatly appreciated! Could you expand on that some more though? I would love to hear more about what you think in terms of making a website easier to navigate. I couldn't agree with you more on that point where you said if a user finds it difficult to navigate the site it will close it.

I'm currently in the process of changing things with the HTML and CSS on the layout so keep that in mind :) I can make any necessary changes I want to get it running smoothly.
 

Sander k

New member
Hi,

I never heard of neopets or stardoll in my life, I wish you the best of luck with your blog tho.

What script are you going to use for your blog?
 

lestaria

New member
Sander k said:
Hi,

I never heard of neopets or stardoll in my life, I wish you the best of luck with your blog tho.

What script are you going to use for your blog?

Thank you for wishing me the best of luck in owning my blog :)

I plan on coding my layout in HTML and CSS while having a PHP based news updating program called CuteNews. So it's a mixture of things really.
 

GigaGreg

Moderator
Staff member
Hello and Welcome here! I hope that we will share good thoughts and ideas through the forum :)
 

whsecurity

New member
If I'm correct your site addresses to global community. (I don't know anything about the game you mentioned!) So keep in mind that you have to use more "global eye". For example your menu at the right is something different but most of the "west people" reading from left to write. Also our designers bagging me about the new flat design and parralax effects (from apple both) and fullscreen - mobile view etc.

I'm waiting to see the final website because I think you must rethink the color compination you are using (personal opinion).

We have a few designers in here they can give you a few ideas!
 

lestaria

New member
whsecurity said:
If I'm correct your site addresses to global community. (I don't know anything about the game you mentioned!) So keep in mind that you have to use more "global eye". For example your menu at the right is something different but most of the "west people" reading from left to write. Also our designers bagging me about the new flat design and parralax effects (from apple both) and fullscreen - mobile view etc.

I'm waiting to see the final website because I think you must rethink the color compination you are using (personal opinion).

We have a few designers in here they can give you a few ideas!

Mostly girls play Stardoll as it is a fashion based dressup doll site designed for girls. Though some boys do play it which is why the layout looks "girly". Simply because it's targeted to a more female based audience such as myself for example. I'm still working on the CSS so those colors are not necessarily the colors I'm going to use. I'm tinkering around with colors and styles :)

Do you think I should flip flop the iframe and sidebar? This way the sidebar is on the left and the iframe is on the right. As for the color combination, what colors (or shades) would you suggest?

Thank you so much for your feedback!