Http://www.stmaryhighschool.com

Hey guys,
I am trying to develop a website for my old high school and need some help.... This is the link to the site so you can take a look and tell me what you think. Any ideas are welcome and your help is appreciated.

Http://www.stmaryhighschool.com

Thanks

Well, there's not too much there yet.

First off, lose the tables or you'll have Three gnashing at your ankles.
Seriously, using tables for layout is a poor choice-it increases load time, your source is illegible with all those <td> and you can accomplish most anything with a few carefully placed <div> for primary structure and CSS for styling.

It looks like you've used an html editor to create this? That's okay, but look at how much duplication there is in your source-again using CSS mostly from an external file and in the head/inline where needed can reduce the filesize/loadtime and your ability to easily change things around.

You'll need a proper doctype to avoid quirks mode in some browsers. Go with xhtml 1.0 strict or html 4.01 strict if you want to use 'target' in anchors, etc. If you aren't familiar with this, just search this site or google for the term. W3C schools also has a number of good tutorials on html/xhtml.

I like the green color, although with the red I get flashes of Christmas. If those are the school colors pick one as your primary and accent with the other.

I wouldn't go with pure black on white for your content area-it's hard on the eyes. Choose a complimentary color or just knock it down a few steps (#eee or fdfdfd) to reduce the glare a tad.

Does the school have a logo/mascot/recognizable symbol of some sort you can use?

How about fonts? I usually advise a serif font for headers, but a sans-serif font for content (again, easier to read). Also, use relative font sizes (em, %) instead of a fixed font-a school site will have people of all ages/visions visiting and they should be able to adjust the font so they can read it without strain.

Other than that I don't see too much more to comment on. Good luck with your site and let me know when it's further along.

NotGoddess

lol, too true... oh dear, I have a reputation for anti-table flaming

I agree with just about everything NotGoddess said, however, I don't hear those jingle bells a'ringing i.e. I quite like the colour scheme

Also, I'm not a great fan of flash intros (or splash pages) for usability it's generally best to get your user straight to that precious content.