"a small half-Life 2 files index"?

[samtape]

So I accidentally made this website over the last few months.

http://qgn.cc

It's "a small index of Half-Life 2 mods and HL2-related files." I made it in my free time between college classwork and selling paintings. It has a terrible name and a boring layout, but it still might be good for something.

I was wondering, hows it look? I have a few ideas for making the site more interesting, but I'm holding off to see if there's any interest in the first place. But exploring Interlopers.net I see that maybe there is still a lot of creative interest in HL2 mapping and modding, maybe enough to bring this site to life.

Also, I live in California where it's all on fire at the moment and there's twilight at noon. It's been strange...

[Jest@]

Only had a brief look at the front page, but I quite like it. You've got a fairly clean, unpretentious visual feel to things, I'd keep it that way - don't go radically redesigning the thing with loads of gradients everywhere or futuristic fonts or whatnot. A slightly softer background image that doesn't repeat so badly would be nice

That said, it does all feel a little cluttered, a slightly clearer delineation of structure would help. And definitely some whitespace, it has a very late-90's crammed-in-close feel. Sorta reminds me of thewavelength.net. If I were you, I wouldn't be afraid to push the width a bit, it looks a bit odd having your sidebars wider than our news posts. Maybe even make it semi-liquid width. I had the briefest of pokes at your markup, and while it did seem a little OTT on the old div's, there's nothing that immediately jumped out as structurally unsound or terribly unsemantic.

Overall, I'm a fan. Not just of the look and feel - the execution seems solid enough, if a little unpolished, and I can't fault the idea. And I do hope you continue to insert quidgens into people's screenshots, that's a nice little touch

(although, just in case you didn't know, your cs 1.6 skins link points at the 1.6 maps page )

[samtape]

Thanks for your detailed critique Jest. Very glad you like it.

I want to explain my design reasoning here in case someone is looking for it.

• 1280x LCDs can go to hell.
• Something about compact birds and compact layouts.
• "Web 2.0" overall appears devoid of personality, though there are notable exceptions.