Chunky. (Close, but definitely no cigar)
[mood: schm':((((alrightiish] [listening to: radiogaga]
I was going to write a long piece on the art of writing... but now, I'm not. How ironic is that? I was going to address issues the new shape of the web is putting forth. How all content can now be percieved in any medium, not just the website. Half of the time I don't read your comments on theblacktop's comment page; I check them on my feedreader. And about how content needs to be in bite-size chunks for a new nation that has been living on bite-size chunks for news on TV and radio. And a bunch of other things. But now, I'm not. Too tired. How ironic is that?
Parth's Personal Project. He asked me to give suggestions. I am now going to slaughter it apart. This is fun for me.
- Ditch freewebs - If you want this site to be a professional site, ditch freewebs. There is nothing more unprofessional that blatent advertising of your host on your site (inconspicuous mentionings are ok). What is even worse is a terrible looking banner at the top coupled with advertising. Unwanted advertising of freewebs at the bottom is not good, either. Its like saying "okay, the content of MY site is good, but i'm sure the real reason you're here is because you want your own website, right?"
- Draw attention to your focus - First impressions of a website are everything. When I first visited your site, I did not see "The Better Constitution" as the main subject. The thing that stood out to me was your advertising at the top. It was only after I realized that I was looking at advertising, did I see the subject of your site. Again, ditch freewebs. People want to view the web in a logical order, and your order is anything but logical. Its like reading a newspaper and instead of seeing a catchy headline at the top you see a giant ad for Volvo.
- Repeating backgrounds larger than 10x10px are annoying - I don't think anyone who wants to treat your site professionally wants to see the Constitution over and over on the main page. Even worse is the Constitution reference page. If someone scrolls to find Article III, the images in the background get very dizzying and distract from our eyes and our brains actually trying to find the words "Article III." We think "wow, thats really distracting." The frequent repeating imagery loses a person in space. Everything looks the same, no matter where you are, especially if your content has a similar layout. Using a solid or "meshing" background is better for text-only content. Images provide more visual clues than words do, even emphasized words. For example, when you browse Engadget, even though the background is the same, the images for each post convey a different message that says, "hey, something is different here." Images are often more important than the words. You can, however, have a repeating background that "meshes" together and feels like one background, such as weebls-stuff.com, which does a dandy job at this.
- Don't have a guestbook - Guestbooks were the fads of the 90's. Then they were the Xanga bloobers, now the Myspace comments. Notice a line of best fit through them? Yeah. They're all unprofessional and personal sites. My site has a bloober because its a non-professional, personal site. Its not a reference site or a serious site, like yours will be. Nothing screams "tacky" more than a Guestbook.
However, there are some good things. In nonsequential order.
- Bland-looking color scheme - The Constitution is an old piece of paper writting on brown-ish paper. The color scheme of the site reflects that well. It also gives an aura of professionalism. If the backgrounds were not there, it would feel like a coporate webpage from early 2002.
- Font differences - In the Constitutional reference, there are definite differences in text between Articles, Sections, and Amended texts. This brings clarity to the reader and presents the content in a clear-cut way that anyone can interpret. I don't know whether this just happened to be a coincidence of you copy and pasting the Constitution from another site (plagarism, you need to site them)
- A ad-less title - Although its hard to see your sites focus by looking at it, its easy to tell what its about in the title. A better Constitution. However, you want to change the title from page to page. With more people using Firefox and IE7 and tab-enabed browsers, people could have more than one instance of your site open at once, and people don't want to get confused on which tab or which instance of IE is which. The best soluion is "Section of site - Site title." For instace "Constitution reference - The Better Constitution" or "Main - The Better Constitution." If people can only get a few letters of your title in a tab or taskbar, its better to have the section rather than the site, in my opinion. "9legged" is short enough so tha I don't have to do that, but with a longer title like yours, I'd recommend it.
I definately see potential in the site, but if you want for it to be a professional site, not just one thrown together in a weekend, go with my suggestions.
This is most definitely payback for "close, but no cigar."
