Minecraft Forums

I just want to know what you guys think of this website that I've built from the ground up in HTML/PHP/CSS/Java with no template whatsoever.
I want to go for a more authentic feel, that it's not just some cheap layout copied and pasted.

I just wanted to make a straight to the point website with no messing around. No ads, no overdone layouts that are hard to navigate around. The customer can just find out the information he or she wants.

http://www.ravengames.net/

That's the website.
I'd also like to make a blog on the website, or a log-in form for them to keep track of their games that I'm fixing, and I can just easily switch their ticket to "In progress" or "Ready for pickup" etc.
If anyone would like to help me create either of these things, you're more than welcome to. (:

Take it easy on the whole "modification" service thing. Sony, MS and Nintendo are pretty lawsuit happy when you try and sell/advertise that kind of thing.

Usually they are fine with custom cases, but modchips and other hardware circumvention they will get on your case about.

Quote from Andq1

[/color][/size][/font]
[color=#282828][font=Verdana, Geneva, Tahoma, sans-serif][size=small]I really agree with you.[/size][/font][/color]

[color=#282828][font=Verdana, Geneva, Tahoma, sans-serif][size=small]Also in the contact page, you ask for the customers age? I really dont see the point of that.[/size][/font][/color]

It's not a required field.

Quote from StrawHatUra

A little too emo for my taste

Each to their own.

Quote from fm87

Take it easy on the whole "modification" service thing. Sony, MS and Nintendo are pretty lawsuit happy when you try and sell/advertise that kind of thing.

Usually they are fine with custom cases, but modchips and other hardware circumvention they will get on your case about.

It's only illegal if I'm promoting, encouraging, condoning or providing an active means for people to pirate their games. All I'm doing is providing a hacked firmware which, essentially, is on the BenQ/Lite-On/Samsung/Hitachi DVD Drives.
Despite all the drama they are pretty much fine with it happening lol.
Even if the modifications were to the consoles themselves, there's not much they can do other than take away my warranty.

Quote from teckmaster

IE users don't deserve the internet

I love you.

Quote from MrQuizzles

Oh boy, time for some really specific critiques because I know a thing or two about web development and design.

I have to agree with the consensus here, the background is too noisy and distracting. That said, what's with the navigation? The need to use Javascript is just bizarre. You've not declared a strict doctype or anything, so just put the divs inside an tag. Yeah, it's technically not valid to shove a block element into an inline element, but nobody cares. If it bothers you that deeply, use CSS to have those divs display as an inline-block.

Put some top padding on those link divs as well. The text is crammed up at the top, and it doesn't look good. The sharp edge to the top link also doesn't look very good since it all just abruptly ends without something else there to pick it up.

The use of a horizontal rule isn't as well-received these days as it once was, and its use as a purely presentational element is being discouraged. The use of an inline style on an HR tag is pretty terrible. Inline styles should pretty much never be used, there's just no excuse. Use CSS to put a border on the top of that article element instead, since that's what you're doing with it anyways.

On the price page, you never close your table element nor the paragraph element it's inside of (it's why the page doesn't display properly). Why is it even in a paragraph element? Why is it in a div? A table is already a block element, you don't need to shove it into more block elements when it's gonna be the only thing inside those elements. There is also, inexplicably, a tag inside the table but outside of any cells or even rows. Indent properly when making tables, like this:

<table>
<tr>
	 <td></td>
</tr>
</table>

It's miserable to try and read the code elsewise. Do this even in generated code.

If you want to center a block element an element regardless of its width, do the following in CSS for the element you want to center:

margin: auto;

You do this with the container element, but then you center a whole lot of other things using relative positioning for some reason. The only element I can see that actually requires relative positioning in your layout is the <nav> element. Just float that sucker left and the relative position it over a bit. Give the <article> element auto margins (instead of 11% on the left), and it should appear in the middle of the <section> element since the <nav> element is out of the way and not part of the document's flow.

Try not to use tags for vertical spacing of anything but text. Accomplish that through margins and padding in CSS.

Watch out for the red in the leading letter on your pages (like the W on the home page). It's painful to look at because it's at a low contrast with the background (it's also nearly invisible to color-blind people). Go here and download this simple tool that can tell you whether or not you have acceptable levels of contrast. I can vouch that it's a legit tool.

Thankyou for the detailed review, I have already changed the background but I'm going to get to work on the other adjustments soon. You addressed a lot of issues that I appreciate.

Quote from Strawberries

It's only illegal if I'm promoting, encouraging, condoning or providing an active means for people to pirate their games.

This is 100% incorrect. Look at your local, and federal laws. I've done a ton of research into this topic myself.

Not only that, but you are doing just that by providing them with hacked firmware.

All I'm doing is providing a hacked firmware which, essentially, is on the BenQ/Lite-On/Samsung/Hitachi DVD Drives.

Providing hacked firmware is the only reason they are lawsuit happy. Seriously, I run a business that also sides as console repair, I know what I'm talking about. Don't do it.

Despite all the drama they are pretty much fine with it happening lol.

No they most certainly are not.

Even if the modifications were to the consoles themselves, there's not much they can do other than take away my warranty.

.......... How ignorant are you? YOU COULD GO TO JAIL.

Has everyone completely forgotten about this fiasco? He did far less than you are offering to do and look what happened. All he did was provide the method to bypass the firmware on his blog. That is it. You are offering to not only provide that service (which he was not), but to flash the firmware yourself. This is EXTREMELY illegal.

http://en.wikipedia...._v._George_Hotz

Let us not forget about Sony, MS and Nintendo suing and shutting down hundreds of game stores between the mid 90s and now because they were modding customer's consoles with firmware and modchips.


You really have no idea, do you? You can't just offer something like that and act "lol its fine ill just stop if they ask me" that is not how the DMCA, copyright infringement, or misappropriation work.

FFS people, look it up yourselves before shouting "they dun caer wut are they gonn do take my warranty away?". Thhis is not like a phone or tablet where you can flash whatever you want on it.

Quote from fm87

.......... How ignorant are you? YOU COULD GO TO JAIL.

Has everyone completely forgotten about this fiasco? He did far less than you are offering to do and look what happened. All he did was provide the method to bypass the firmware on his blog. That is it. You are offering to not only provide that service (which he was not), but to flash the firmware yourself. This is EXTREMELY illegal.

http://en.wikipedia...._v._George_Hotz

Sony V Hotz is not really evidence or proof that modding is illegal by any means.... They settled out of court, for one... It's merely an example of how someone might get sued by people with tons of money to spend on lawyers (which is possibly just as frightening as the possibility of going to jail).
And two... Hotz was sued for exposing a vital key to the hardware's firmware system, it had nothing to do with modding nor DRM.

Of course, that doesn't mean Modding IS legal.... The line between 'mod' and 'DRM circumvention' is extremely thin...
Typically it has held in court that anyone modifying hardware they personally own is NOT illegal, but there are also some specific cases where modding was considered to be an infringement.

In the Hotz lawsuit, Sony was aiming to prove that Hotz knowingly gave out a way to circumvent Sony's DRM. Hotz's defense was that it did not break the DMCA because it was his own hardware he was hacking/modding, which has been upheld as legal in the past, and to provide that key to people did not infringe against any current laws or rules.
In this case, Sony was simply just seeking damages for exposing their system by what could have been seen as a malicious attack by Hotz.
And generally it is even considered that Hotz would have won the court battle, because Sony basically had nothing against him which previous court decisions had not already acknowledged as legal. (But it was a gray line, and that is likely why Hotz settled with them, as well as the cost of legal fees.)

Furthermore, modding your own console is NOT ILLEGAL, as you even noted when mentioning "tablets and phones"... Hardware is hardware. Modding is modding..... Modding a phone or a game console is basically the same thing, and there is absolutely no difference between them in terms of the US court system.

On the other hand.... Making a business out of modding other people's hardware with something that could be used for circumvention? That is probably another gray line you don't want to cross... Although it may already be totally illegal, I'm not entirely sure on that one.
And so I'd recommend avoiding it.... if not simply to avoid a extremely costly lawsuit which would likely bankrupt you (and it would, if you were ever sued for it), but then simply just to avoid the small possibility of going to jail for it.

Sometimes you need to be blunt and to-the-point to get through to people regardless of the grey areas but yeah.

Furthermore, modding your own console is NOT ILLEGAL,

Oh no of course not. I'm of the belief you own hardware you buy, not rent it like most of these companies would like you to believe/would like to push. Furthermore I don't entirely agree with the Hotz legal issue, especially when Sony pulled him violating the TOS/ELUA 'illegal' as a "breach of contract", I mean really now? This is hardly a legally enforceable contract, especially since 99% of people do not even read it.

On the other hand.... Making a business out of modding other people's hardware with something that could be used for circumvention? That is probably another gray line you don't want to cross... Although it may already be totally illegal, I'm not entirely sure on that one.

Federally it's covered under the DMCA and attributed as a form of copyright infringement and some word I don't actually recall that basically means "illegal reverse engineering" (reverse engineering in itself is a grey are but IIRC usually legal, which of course makes this all a bit too complicated).

Locally the laws vary, and some areas don't even have any laws related to it. The OP's location is the name for several areas so I can't look it up directly, I'm mainly going off the research I did in my own area.


I really wanted to use other examples than Hotz's case (there was one dealing with Funcoland just selling modchips, though not installing them, from the PS1 era days) but for some reason the wikipedia entries for the ones I searched for were deleted.


Also so other people reading don't get confused, we're talking modding as in firmware, modchips, etc. Not custom cases, adding a bigger HDD or any of that sort of thing.

Quote from BKrenz

I personally don't see modding consoles as an issue until it affects other people's gaming experience.

Which is fine and all, but that is not how the law or these companies look at it, so you need to tread carefully, if you even tread at all.


It doesn't matter if something is "morally right/morally fine" if it's illegal. Pirates like to use this type of argument as well (which I somewhat agree with depending on the contex, eg: for education) but it simply does not hold up.

Quote from Nucco

Playstation 1 Overclock (lol) $170.00

I didn't even see that.

In addition to it being laughably expensive for those types of services, how exactly do you plan on overclocking a PS1 and for what purpose?