I was expecting something that would make me cringe, instead I think it’s a great simple layout. I would have suggested stretching the top logo a little bit too.
Thanks - good suggestion. It’s easy to get bogged down with stuff you’re familiar with, and it’s good to have someone else say ‘hold on, tell us what you mean!’ 
I’ll have a think about the opening stuff.
Oh, don’t worry, we can supply them 
I wanted to be sure I’d got things right with the general setup, before getting carried away with content. And I’ll have to decide how to set up galleries ‘n’ stuff…suggestions (and forewarnings) welcome…
Congratulations
It is one of the better ones that I’ve seen.
It’s probably because there were no popups or blinking banners. 
More content = good, but make sure that you don’t present so much information on the website that people feel they have learned everything they need to know without coming to visit.
Maybe I could add some sound effect…
A tiny thing I noticed was that when you go to a page with more content on it, for instance “Visiting”, as you scroll down there’s a big gap on the left. The margin on the left could maybe be a little smaller.
The only other thing was the navigation buttons - I like the grey colour scheme but the black text on the dark grey background (particularly when you mouse over) is quite hard to read. Perhaps white or light grey, rather than black, text would be more legible.
Would anyone be terribly offended if I asked you to criticise my website?
Looks good to me. Believe me, I’ve seen a helluva lot worse!!
Looks OK to me. Check the markup for the headings you use, though. (e.g., the “Maps” heading is left-aligned, and then the “Group visits” is centered)
I don’t really notice a change. Do you maybe want to try using stylesheets rather than tables for layout, though? (I have more experience in GML than HTML, so I firmly believe that Thou Shalt Not Use Tables For Layout.)
Another option (disclaimer: I am not a web designer)–For the banner, try making the graphics that you use on either side of the heading the same width as the navigation buttons plus some border space. Then have a fixed area on the left that fits the left-hand banner graphic and the navigation buttons; have a similar fixed area on the right that just has the right-hand banner graphic, and when the user resizes the window, the main area of the page (with the banner text and the text in the page) resizes.
WinXP Pro, IE 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519. That being said, I don’t see any highlighting in any field in your revised page.
Those four buttons on the side ,would probably look better side by side on top , below the banner
[ Home ] [ The Shelter ] [Visitor ] [Contact ]
instead of
[ Home ]
[ The Shelter ]
[Visitor ]
[Contact ]
Sorry if it looks mangled but thats what I meant.
As someone already pointed out , the site looks stark and dreary , which is fine if thats the look you wanted , myself I would probably add WW2 propaganda wallpaper and adjust the colors of the buttons.
Sound would be nice , an air raid siren that has a button to turn it off , would be a good addition.
Other than that , the special open week thing , should be hyperlinked to another page, your need to know information should be front and center ,rather than having someone scroll down to find out about it.
I also would think a nice addition would be an RSS feed that sends current info and promotions out , with a hyperlink back , to the promotion in question.
Declan
Oh God, is that a whoosh? I hope so. That would be the single most annoying idea I’ve ever seen/heard for a website, and I’ve been online for a long time.
Not really a whoosh , he did ask for suggestions , and it would have fit the motif of the site. You can add anything to you site that you want , its just only polite to add the off button for people who don’t want to hear it.
Declan
I’ve made a few simple changes from the suggestions here - reporting them in partially to not confuse any newcomers to the thread
I’ve moved the navigation to a central position up top. Having several observations that things looked off-centre was useful - clearly I was expecting where to look next.
Regarding the yellow fields on the Contacts page - there’s nothing in the basic setup that is indicating this. I’m suspecting a bug, and I’ll make it a priority to replace this with a cgi setup or similar, where I know what’s actually happening (any offers of help, or links to useful ‘so you want to make a form’ pages, welcomed )
Hunter Hawk - I can understand tables, while I’ve no idea how to use style sheets for layout. So I’ll pretty much stick to what I’ve got, even if it’s more work (or less versatile).
Declan (and others) - yes, I agree it’s too dull at the moment. I’ll certainly use colours in frames etc to outline blocks of content, etc. Ajd a little bit of propganda material is a good suggestion (although we obviously have to be careful about copyright). On the other hand, no, I’m not going to include a siren sound! The RSS feed is a nice idea - but probably would be more trouble than it’s worth. We don’t have many special events, so an opt-in email newsletter would probably be the better option.
I like the principle of this idea, but don’t know how to do it - is their any way to ‘cetrally crop’ or stretch the centre section of the banner in use at the moment, to suit the section between the graphics on each side?
An excellent point. And, in a roundabout way, one I’ve been making to other people who have ideas about what should be on the website (without knowing how to use ‘this internet’ themselves).
Aha - I’ve found out about the yellow fields. It’s due to the Google toolbar, showing fields it will save information for, or something…
I don’t like it.
Not only is there no monkey to shoot, but I never win a prize!
Seriously, very nice job.
Simple is best, as I said before, you probably don’t have to change it.
But if you do decide to get fancier…ask us again!