Site Critique

[Lee Marsh]

Well, I've made this website, but at the current moment am having little
luck attracting (and keeping) users, and I think the reason this is, is that
I am having little to no input from users. So, if the folks that frequent
this newsgroup would be so kind...please take a look at my website, and let
me know what you think. I'm mainly looking for criticism of the aesthetic
design and usability, and I need help finding any sort of technical errors.
There's one existing one that I know of right now that I'm trying to take
care of. I know many times this group will point out formatting problems
with a site's html or css, but that's not so much important to me as these
other issues. In any case, let me know what you find, and you think. The
link is in my signature. Thanks!


<=============>
--Lee
http://www.inaneasylum.org


Goodbye, adios, bis bald, see ya later, wiedersehen, and everything in
between

 

[Els]

Lee Marsh wrote:

[http://www.inaneasylum.org]

I'm mainly looking for criticism of the aesthetic
design and usability, and I need help finding any sort of technical errors.
There's one existing one that I know of right now that I'm trying to take
care of.

How about mentioning that one here so people don't have to explain it
to you in vain?

I know many times this group will point out formatting problems
with a site's html or css, but that's not so much important to me as these
other issues.

Other issues as in... not html or css?

Maybe better post it in a visual design group then

In the mean time, if I'm asked to give design advice on this page: I
don't see a design. It's just a large paragraph of text and a picture
(which would look better floated so the text goes underneath as well).

As for why you don't get many visitors to register: there is no
example of what their gallery would look like. Nothing to entice
anyone.

 

[Lee Marsh]

How about mentioning that one here so people don't have to explain it
to you in vain?

Ah yes, this error is as follows: when uploading a picture that is very
large in its dimensions it can crash the script and/or not upload properly.

Other issues as in... not html or css?

Well, the ones I mentioned: aesthetics and technical problems.

Maybe better post it in a visual design group then

What can you recommend? I wouldn't even know which newsgroup to post to.

I
don't see a design. It's just a large paragraph of text and a picture

Yea, I'm kind of going for a minimalist approach. I want to keep in real
simple, you know. I think you're right about the floating text bit though...

there is no
example of what their gallery would look like. Nothing to entice
anyone.

You know, I actually thought of that myself today, but wasnt sure if it
would really matter. Now that you said so though...I think I'll do just
that. Thanks thus far for the suggestions!


<=============>
--Lee
http://www.inaneasylum.org
Goodbye, adios, bis bald, see ya later, wiedersehen, and everything in
between

 

[Els]

Ah yes, this error is as follows: when uploading a picture that is very
large in its dimensions it can crash the script and/or not upload properly.

I'll take your word for it - I'm not registered, so I can't test it.
If it's like that, it sounds like a serious problem though, and it
should be fixed a.s.a.p.

What can you recommend? I wouldn't even know which newsgroup to post to.

alt.design.graphics and microsoft.public.design.gallery seem
reasonably busy groups, but with your current page I wouldn't ask them
for a review yet, as there is nothing for them to look at atm.

Yea, I'm kind of going for a minimalist approach. I want to keep in real
simple, you know. I think you're right about the floating text bit though...

Real simple and minimalist is not the same as no formatting at all.

Look for example at these:
http://johnbokma.com/
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/
http://positioniseverything.net/
http://meyerweb.com/

None of them are complicated designs, but it is visible that someone
took some time to make it look nice.

An example of your own page with a bit of formatting:
http://locusmeus.com/temp/lee.html

You know, I actually thought of that myself today, but wasnt sure if it
would really matter.

How often do you buy stuff unseen? (other than tinned beans ;-) )

Now that you said so though...I think I'll do just
that. Thanks thus far for the suggestions!

You're welcome.

 

[Carolyn Marenger]

Lee,

Nothing at the site makes me want to read more. The plain black on white is
harsh. The large white space at the right edge of the screen is wasted
space. Why did you use tables for layout?

I would set the background to a very light grey, or maybe even mix a little
colour into it. Something very close to white but not quite there.

I would also chop down the amount of text on the main page. Reduce the
amount of reading that has to be done to figure out what the site is about.

I would also make use of the full width of the user's viewport. Set a
margin of 1 or 2 ems, not 20%!

Carolyn

 

[Leif K-Brooks]

Well, I've made this website, but at the current moment am having little
luck attracting (and keeping) users, and I think the reason this is, is that
I am having little to no input from users.
http://www.inaneasylum.org

I stopped reading when I came to this bit of the TOS:

"Once a file has been uploaded by a user, that file becomes the property
of Photoshack and it's [sic] proprietor."

 

[Travis Newbury]

Well, I've made this website, but at the current moment am having little
luck attracting (and keeping) users, and I think the reason this is, is that
I am having little to no input from users...

No the reason you are not attracting or keeping users is that you aren't
offering anything to the visitor they can not get somewhere else like
Yahoo photos, or a billion other professional photo sharing sites. All
of which are professionally done, featured filled, and free.

The best you can hope for is a few friends and family will use your
site. That is until they find one of the other free photo sharing sites.

 

[dorayme]

From: (e-mail address removed)

Have a look at the photographers section of
http://www.niziblianreps.com/
to see a great looking way of displaying photos. I think that you need
to
be aiming for that kind of boldness.

Ta,

Dan

Yes, the pics display well, it is *actually a plus* the way they are not
catered for with width and height in the html (I say without looking) and
grow out of the little img sqrs... A nice case of going against the normal
rules of thumb in mark-up - for aesthetic purposes. On dial-up, it all
dances about nicely till all the pics are assembled but not too jarringly,
the arrays are indicated early on and each marker pops out to claim a
space...

Having said this. Don't aim to follow the site's other features like not
resizing gracefully when browser window width is reduced, there is no real
point in it being *that* uncompromising. This is apart from the seemingly
unnecessary use of frames...

dorayme

 

[daninbrum]

Yea, I'm kind of going for a minimalist approach. I want to keep in
real

simple, you know. I think you're right about the floating text bit

though...

If you intend on taking a minimal approach, you should go full hog. At
the
moment, there isn't anything holding the site together visually.
Nouthing
looks polished to the level that people expact of a professional site.

As much as the idea of branding p*sses me off, I think that you should
site down with an A3 sheet of paper and a black marker ben and work
out exactly what it is that you want your website to provide to people?

What is the most important thing to them? Their photos! They must take
centre stage, and the gallery must look amazing, that's where your
efforts
should be focused - that's what your users care about.

Yahoo photos and the like all fall down on the fact that they are too
business-like. I would consider using the service if the gallery was
attractive.

Have a look at the photographers section of
http://www.niziblianreps.com/
to see a great looking way of displaying photos. I think that you need
to
be aiming for that kind of boldness.

Ta,

Dan

 

[Els]

(e-mail address removed) wrote:

[snip good advice about look of gallery]

http://www.niziblianreps.com/
to see a great looking way of displaying photos. I think that you need
to be aiming for that kind of boldness.

Only don't aim for their setup.
First you have to have Flash installed, and your browser needs to
support frames. Then you have to wait till you get to see a
navigation, and then wait for the next navigation. No shortcut.
Then, if your window is narrower than 917px, thumbs will start
'falling' off, and there isn't even a scrollbar to get to them.

The only 'attractive' bit about this site is the black background
colour and the 'nice' flash navigation. IMO of course

 

[Els]

Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 17:31:06 +1100

dorayme

Not sure if your PC's clock is off, or some daylightsaving has started
or ended, but your post shows up as one hour old

 

[Leif K-Brooks]

Have a look at the photographers section of
http://www.niziblianreps.com/
to see a great looking way of displaying photos.

After waiting about five seconds for the annoying Flash effect which
fades the menu in to finish, and then waiting another three seconds for
the same effect to finish on the "photographers" page, I finally got to
click on one of the photographer's names. I expected a mind-blowing
gallery to pop out. Perhaps it would sense the photo I wanted to see
before I clicked, or make hard copies of the photos materialize before
my eyes. This gallery must be the greatest innovation of all time, I
thought!

And then, it loaded. I saw a bog-standard photo gallery: nine photos
displayed in a grid with no spacing between them.

No offense, but the only special thing I saw on that site was the
artificially-inflated loading times. Hardly usable, and not particularly
beautiful to my eyes.

 

[Lee Marsh]

I like the gallery you showed me, but kind of on the same note as what Els
responded to your reply with, with the flash and all I think it might be a
little to0 riddled more shabang than I'm willing to invest in a site im
making for a hobby more than anything. However, I totally agree that the
galleries need to look nice and that's what I'm having the hardest time
doing. Originally I was going to have a feature that allowed people to
custimize their galleries (and that is the main reason my css is so messed
up right now). Do you think that's the sort of thing that people would go
for?
Anyways, I'm taking in everyone's suggestions and I am going to be working
on this for the next couple of hours, so uh, I'll be back later, I guess.

--
<=============>
--Lee
http://www.inaneasylum.org

Goodbye, adios, bis bald, see ya later, wiedersehen, and everything in
between

 

[Stewart Gordon]

Lee Marsh wrote:

--Lee
http://www.inaneasylum.org

A few starting tips:

1. Consider validating.

http://validator.w3.org

2. Give your pages individual titles. Loads of pages with the same
title are difficult to distinguish in the back button history and in
search engines.

3. The box for entering an album password should be of type="password",
not type="text".

4. A few typos:

legal.php
- Two instances of "it's" instead of "its"
- "Users' of Photoshack" -> "Users of Photoshack"

help.php - Add New Photos
- "creat an album" -> "create an album"

help.php - Change A Photos Filename
-> "Change a Photo's Filename"
- "reads' Manage Settings'" -> "reads 'Manage Settings'" (also on some
other pages)
- "names.If" -> "names. If"

I haven't had the time to finish looking....

Stewart.

 

[dorayme]

Not sure if your PC's clock is off, or some daylightsaving has started
or ended, but your post shows up as one hour old

It is now 10.11 am Friday 20th of May 2005 here and my computer clock is
saying as much. I am on dial up. I am on a Mac. I am posting this now.
Daylight summer saving ended quite a few weeks back here on the NSW,
Australian coast. So what gives?


dorayme

 

[Mark Parnell]

It is now 10.11 am Friday 20th of May 2005 here and my computer clock is
saying as much. I am on dial up. I am on a Mac. I am posting this now.
Daylight summer saving ended quite a few weeks back here on the NSW,
Australian coast. So what gives?

No idea, but I'm also in NSW (Sydney, actually), and your post says it
was sent at 9.11AM, not 10.11. It's because the time zone is set to GMT
+11 instead of +10. Not sure whether that's set on your computer, or on
your newsserver though.

 

[Els]

No idea, but I'm also in NSW (Sydney, actually), and your post says it
was sent at 9.11AM, not 10.11. It's because the time zone is set to GMT
+11 instead of +10. Not sure whether that's set on your computer, or on
your newsserver though.

And I see your posts as respectively 1.11 and 2.22 here

 

[dorayme]

No idea, but I'm also in NSW (Sydney, actually), and your post says it
was sent at 9.11AM, not 10.11. It's because the time zone is set to GMT
+11 instead of +10. Not sure whether that's set on your computer, or on
your newsserver though.

Hmm... what to do? Hang on a mo...

I took a look at my Date and Time control panel (OS 9.1) and my extensions.
It is true that I have Time Synchroniser turned off as its main function
seemed to be its auto "daylight saving" updates. And it also "synchronises"
the clock with a "network time server". I have always figured I do not need
an auto adjuster for daylight saving and further figured it would need to
somehow, online, go somewhere unknown to me behind my back and do something
to my clock... It is not that I am paranoid so much as not trusting of this
and make do with as few extensions as possible. But here I might have been
over cautious. Perhaps it represents my clock to others somehow more
universally correct. Must read about this stuff...

Do my posts not go via my ISP somehow, and do they not somehow represent
"correct" time. Don't answer this, I am just thinking aloud so as to make
the pleasure of finding out the truth more intense if and when it happens.

I have now turned Time Synchroniser on and *next* time I start the machine
and get on line, maybe the problem will be fixed. I am curious now. What
will happen? Will my OE be informed by this software to check some
international clock and represent my post in some universally understood
manner as a result? Will my clock change in what it says in my menu bar?
Will it animate its way thru Polish, Chinese and Yiddish time
representations?

Thanks to Els and yourself for assisting me in this matter. I want that I
should be in the same time dimension as other people in the world. The same
planet... well, let me not get too ambitious yet...



dorayme

 

[tm]

It is now 10.11 am Friday 20th of May 2005 here and my computer clock is
saying as much. I am on dial up. I am on a Mac. I am posting this now.
Daylight summer saving ended quite a few weeks back here on the NSW,
Australian coast. So what gives?

Looks okay to me. Of course, I'm also on a mac and in the same time
zone and we don't do daylight savings.


Path:
attnet-tokyo!spinnewsgate!giga-nspixp2!newsfeed.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp!new
s1.optus.net.au!optus!newsfeeder.syd.optusnet.com.au!news.optusnet.com.
au!not-for-mail
User-Agent: Microsoft-Outlook-Express-Macintosh-Edition/5.02.2022
Date: Fri, 20 May 2005 10:11:32 +1100
Subject: Re: Site Critique
From: dorayme <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: alt.html
Message-ID: <BEB36853.11C89%[email protected]>

 

[Toby Inkster]

And it also "synchronises" the clock with a "network time server". I
have always figured I do not need an auto adjuster for daylight saving
and further figured it would need to somehow, online, go somewhere
unknown to me behind my back and do something to my clock...

All it means is that ever so often your computer will ask a particular
server what the time is, read the result and adjust your computer's clock
accordingly.

Nothing untoward.