Website feedback, please?

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

KKBattousai and I have been working on a website, dubbed Six Degrees of Nothing, for a few months now. We’d really appreciate some comments on our progress.

We figure the earlier in the development stages we make changes, the better. That said, all we’ve got up at this point is the News page. Rest assured, we’ll be adding much more in the future.

So… take a look at the site, and tell us what works (and more importantly, doesn’t work) for you. How are the aesthetics of the site? Does the layout fly? Is there anything we should add or change or take out? Tell us what you think. Brutal honesty is encouraged. :slight_smile:

Many thanks in advance.

#2

Here I was, getting ready to criticize you for not having porn, but then I actually visited. There it is, clear as day: porn. Looks like you have all the bases covered.

#3

It looks very nice. I love weirdness portals. If you haven’t, you may want to check out http://www.fark.com and http://www.memepool.com to see what similar sites are up to.

#4

Hmm. Content is cool, and the design is straightforward and nice enough. Excellent

My only criticism is it seems a bit bland looking so far. Maybe a splash of colour would be a good idea.

#5

I like the design very much. Very elegant. I would like to see a little more color, though. For some reason, that thin little blue line near the top title bothers me. I think you need some other noticable splashes of blue elsewhere to balance it out. (Not HUGE bits of blue, but something more than just the link color.)

Also - I have been learning this from making my own sites. (Not that I’m an expert at all, I assure you…) A lot of people have their resolutions set to 800x600, or even less. I know when I first had a computer, I had it set 640x480 for about a YEAR, out of sheer ignorance. I visited a friend who had been into computers far longer than I did, and he had his 17" (or was it 19"?) monitor set to 640x480!!! He just didn’t know any better. Never underestimate people’s ignorance, or just apathy. However, the general consensus I’ve gotten is that if you “optimize” your site for 800x600 (and up), you’re doing OK. I notice on the stats on my sites that most people have 800x600 on up. I find most people hate having to scroll across because the page is wider than their screen, so I always try to avoid this.

Also - (and this is a personal pet peeve of mine, but I’ve heard other people bitch about this as well) I don’t like to see “Best seen with Netscape (or IE) at XXXX-XXXX resolution”. I get the feeling that if my system isn’t set up like that, then the webmaster expects me to change it just for their site. I mean, why else mention it? (I know, I am guessing that the webmaster sort of wants to “warn” people that if the site looks goofy on another resolution or browser, there’s a reason.) But a lot of people don’t see it that way. Besides, the site OUGHT to look pretty good on the main two browsers anyway! (And, I think your site looks great in Netscape.)

Well, I know I am being a windbag, and I don’t want you to think I don’t like the site. I think it looks very elegant, and I LOVE to title graphic. Very polished and professional, and loads very fast. Overall, just excellent.

#6

Thanks for the kind and constructive words all. As for the size thing, I do have one confession to make. [sub]It was supposed to be 800x600.[/sub]

At the very beginning, that was the resolution. Then, somewhere when I was adding the shadow effects, I realized that I had to make the work area larger. So I did. Despite the fact that, doh!, the smart thing would be to shrink the size of the object being shadowed… Now it’s just a hair too wide for 800x600 (about 14-16 pixels, IIRC). I guess I’ll try and fix it when I have time, though, man, ImageReady’s image slicing is more exacting than I expected.

As far as the browser thing goes, the only difference between MSIE and NS (that I’m aware of - reports of any other discrepencies will be greatly appreciated) is that the horizontal rules above/below the dates are black (as they should be) in MSIE and dark grey in NS. A subtle difference probably not noting a browser preference for, huh?

As for more color, well, we’re obviously aiming for a B&W look, but we’ll see what can be done. :slight_smile: [sub]Hm, maybe the nav…[/sub]

And, yosemite, thanks for mentioning the title graphic. That is ALL Audrey and I love it as well. Best part of the whole darn site, IMHO.

And Purd Werfect, thanks for the links. I’ll be sure to check them out.

#7

That’s my next project. Thanks. :slight_smile:

bibliophage, we aim to please.
[sub]You guys really like the title graphic? Aw… thanks![/sub]

#8

:eek: - are you sure ??

Hi Ladies – hope you don’t mind me chirping in with a comment or two –I’m in a similar position to ** yosemitebabe** (sort of semi competent but with a lot still to learn – I think that’s almost always going to be the way cos there is just so damn much to know !)

IMHO…

I’d be tempted to regain those necessary pixels (I think it’s important that the page sits nicely in the browser at 800) by reducing the size of your navbar / buttons. That might work as it looks like you’re going for a clean, elegant look and the buttons could be seen as a little overbearing (big and plain black). If you are going for that look, the slightly larger space between the text and border (that you would have if you reduced) might also look nice. You have nothing else that would cause problems (if you reduced) in that left hand column. Just an idea

Like the choice of font type and size and the border very much. The way the page divides up with the sub headings font and <HR>'s also works for me.

Although the domain is one single word, I might be tempted to have the header as separate words although I think your choice of style and shadow is perfect.

As said, the blue lines do feel a little incongruous but that might have not a little to do with mastering a graphics programme – ladies, that’s the next step (and you know it !! LOL…). Another benefit of graphics is you can design a little site logo if you want.

Great layout. In terms of content, there’s no intro to guide me in. Need to read a little before discovering (rather than being told from the start) what the sites about. I guess there are two ways of playing that: Either make do with 100 words of ‘who-we-are-and-this-is-what-our-sites-about’ or extend that intro an ‘About Us’ page. I think this is a ‘personality site’ and, if so, might benefit from the surfer being able to connect with the authors.

One of the more difficult things to do (I think) is to write genuinely good 30-50 word hooks. An art in itself but the bottom line is they need to hook and I think (depending on who you’re aiming the site at) yours generally do. Pitching the humour is also a bloody nightmare but I like the way you’ve done it.

The inline links are a little misleading for me. Links to articles are great but you also have e-mail links in there without distinguishing the two.

I’d also run the page through a programme to clean up the code – a lot of unnecessary code can affect the page weight and therefore loading speed. Think I spotted a closing body tag </Body> about ¼ of the way into the body…there may be more.

Don’t want to sound at all negative because it looks, very, very good to me (and it’s only me - who’s too picky by half). I only mentioned the above cos we’re all on a learning curve and sometimes it can be useful to have non-family and friends speak up. For me, the most difficult thing is objectivity and making sure my web sensibilities aren’t being seduced, friends and family are just to nice !

#9

Your link to the Washington Post article of the guy who sneaks into the dotcom…

…goes to another article about Mr. TwentyMil; Space Cowboy.

#10

This leads nicely into a question of mine. Namely, does anybody mind that each and every link opens up a new window? (FTR, it looks like the dot com article is properly linked to http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,20534,00.html?mail. OTOH, I’m biased. ;))

And London, brutal honestly really is appreciated. Most importantly, thanks for the tip on the code. I use a bunch of server side includes, and I very well might have missed the pre-written body and HTML tags that homesite gives you.

As for the nav stuff, well, we’re redoing it for color so we might as well retool it for width as well. Odds are we’ll look to reclaim only a few pixels there (as trying to get all 16 or so back might cramp the quote of the day thing too much) and get the rest from the body of the page. Of course that would mean even more wrestling with the ImageReady’s output HTML, and though I have it pretty clean now, the pixel-perfectness of the beast could make that bothersome. Well, we’ll see…

As for an ‘about us’ page, well, that’s not a bad idea. Right now my priorities are the deals page (to help put me through school) and adding a PHPbb forum. So what info would you like to see on this about us page (which, come to think of it, should take all of 15 minutes to write and code)?

And, finally, what’s up with this ‘ladies’ stuff? I mean, I see how that applies to AudreyK…

#11

Too wide. :frowning: Sorry, that’s a major turn off for me.

Otherwise it looks great. Cool content too. Bookmarked it.

I’ve found PrettyPrint to be a very handy HTML liner-upper and checker-outer. Yours is very good indeed.

#12

Thanks, Shiva, for bookmarking the site and for the PrettyPrint link.

We’ll see what we can do with the width (that’s fun to say out loud! :)). I’m optimistic we’ll come up with something we’ll all be content with.

Oh, and KK’s link got snafued. Here’s the corrected link.