Rate Rockout please and thankyou (Full Version)

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rockout -> Rate Rockout please and thankyou (8/27/2006 22:48:22)

http://rock.profusehost.net

Has Forums, Chatrooms, slightly outdated HTML help, and is loaded with pages that will keep you coming back.
Purpose: anti-bordom and websupport
Goals: 2000 hits a day, 3000+ members, 500 well designed pages, Always has multiple users logged in.
Acheived so far: 200 hits a day, 50 members, 20+ well designed pages (10< pages on display for nonmembers, hardly ever has users online.)

Please rate colors, graphics, fit, ease, and content. Thx



swoosh -> RE: Rate Rockout please and thankyou (8/27/2006 23:51:56)

Hi rockout and welcome to Outfront,

Good job thus far, here are a few things that I noticed

IMO on the home page not sure what exactly it's supposed to be where you have "rockout" in orange with a deep dark blue background. Just seems like it just takes up space with no purpose. Is it a logo? of some kind? and not hyperlinks either so not sure what that is.

When I go to other pages "games" I notice that it looks like a repeated logo below the actual "rockout fm" logo is trying to show but the blue cross stitch texture with the date and time is overlaying it.......just looks like double vision to me

Also I may be missing it, but I don't see a link on other pages that takes me back to the home page.




Seventh -> RE: Rate Rockout please and thankyou (8/28/2006 0:23:57)

Welcome to Outfront, rockout!

*Disclaimer: Don't take anything I say after this personal...'kay? It is simply my opinion and personal observation. [;)]

As soon as I get to your site the last thing it says to me is Cool Games. There are spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, unnecessary graphics (as Swoosh mentioned above), no cohesive theme, and, as a person who visits gaming sites on a regular basis, it simply does nothing for me.

Overall, it seems you took pieces from other sites you've visited and made what we see now. Is that wrong? Not really. Most designers do this. But they take those pieces and make them their own by putting their personality into it.

So, after all that, I would say start over from a design aspect.

Feel free to flame if this sounds harsh. I'm a big boy.[8D]



rockout -> RE: Rate Rockout please and thankyou (8/28/2006 0:25:31)

Ok the links page im unsure why its doing that and about the logo trying to show up again... its the script not fitting the image. im going to eventually make it an all navy border with just a logo.

thx for your reveiw. still looking for more though lol
(ps: seventh... thnx! your being "harsh" is probably the best advice ive heard. Im not going to start over... just edit untill the old and the new dont have much in common at all :P. i really do apreciate it. Ill get to it big boy lol)



jaybee -> RE: Rate Rockout please and thankyou (8/28/2006 7:08:17)

Rockout FM. I expected to find a radio station.

The site is quite badly broken in Firefox which probably means it won't look too healthy in IE7 when that goes live.

There's nothing on the front page to tell me what the site is about as the graphic block about the games doesn't show up in anything other than IE6.

No way of getting back to the home page other than doctoring the URL in the address bar.

You say you get 200 hits a day. How many are unique hits and how many returns. Make sure you exclude yourself. It's all very well getting large numbers of visitors if they never come back.

At the moment I find your site confusing. It doesn't seem to have a subject or a purpose and the games can be found on other very well known web sites.

For a site to succeed you have to have something different.

quote:

JOIN NOW FOR FREE!

Theres so much to offer and Everything is free!

FREE - EASY - SIMPLE - What are you waiting for?
Well I'd kind of like to know exactly what I'm signing up for before I do it



rockout -> RE: Rate Rockout please and thankyou (8/28/2006 18:38:55)

Your right... the FM is based on radio. Radio isnt working out so well. just finding good SSH to run the radio server program. Think i may have found one will be done soon. and its 215 unique in 20 days... not 200 hits a day. ive got loades of embeded pages do total hits is probably in the 10,000 + (awstats so spyders and bots arnt included) and about knowing what your signing up for... just use those tabs to navigate around :l



womble -> RE: Rate Rockout please and thankyou (8/28/2006 19:01:13)

I think what Jaybee meant is that the purpose of your site - what it's about, what you can do there, etc. etc. should be instantly recognisable/visible - there was a thread around here recently about the amount of time you get to make an impression, and we're talking milliseconds here.

A few points:

  • when I did venture off the home page, there's no way to get back there without using the browser's 'back' button - you need to make navigation easy and clear to visitors
  • A lot of the text is very small - you need to make it a consistently readable size
  • As previously mentioned, it breaks badly on Firefox, and as FF is my browser of choice you don't find me visiting sites that don't work properly in FF very often
  • Having navigation that leads to a page that tells you that you don't have permission to access that page isn't a good way to attract visitors


quote:

Goals: 2000 hits a day, 3000+ members, 500 well designed pages, Always has multiple users logged in.
Acheived so far: 200 hits a day, 50 members, 20+ well designed pages (10< pages on display for nonmembers, hardly ever has users online.)

Goals is good, but what you really need is quality content and unique content that'll keep visitors coming back. All you have at the moment is a few links to other sites, a few reviews, and a forum with a post count in single figures. I'm sorry, but there's nothing there at the moment that would make me want to go back.



rockout -> RE: Rate Rockout please and thankyou (8/29/2006 22:34:54)

ok thanks. The forum would be a lot better if more people posted and some content is in the work.
games page has 300+ games and all i need is to create the frame around it and put it on, Reveiws have around 10 more virtual game reveiws and i might put on more than just virtual communities. Im also in the process of adding in free safe software. I have anti tracking toolbar (i know there are 100s out there it just gets my name out there though) and might make an easy navigation program for dedicated members. All i have to show for was made in 3 weeks so its not like its been like this for long



Tailslide -> RE: Rate Rockout please and thankyou (8/30/2006 3:54:39)

Hi Rockout

As Jaybee mentioned - the site is broken on FF and Opera (not checked other platforms). The text-size is really small and quite hard to read - If I resize it in FF it breaks the site first shift upwards and I can't resize it at all in IE (you use px for font-size).

As also said - it's hard to know what the site is for. You've got it all summarised nicely in your content meta tag - that's the sort of information you could do with on the page itself (in text too - not in images).



rockout -> RE: Rate Rockout please and thankyou (8/30/2006 7:35:47)

Im not remaking it for any minor browsers. its fine on monzilla and IE and I dont even have opera or FF to design it right. Please rate content and design not accesibility on other browsers. on content (message above) Im waiting for the OK from Atom Films to put there content on. everytime they reply they tell me something irrelevant so im trying to sink it into them



Tailslide -> RE: Rate Rockout please and thankyou (8/30/2006 8:41:01)

quote:

ORIGINAL: rockout

Im not remaking it for any minor browsers.


Apologies - since you'd said one of your goals was well designed pages I'd thought that this would matter to you. Also might be wise to look at "minority browsers" since if you're aiming at a young hip audience then these are also the most likely users of Mozilla, Firefox (which is basically mozilla), Opera etc etc. Some tech-orientated sites (W3C schools) have IE6 down as low as 54% useage and FF at 27% - hardly a minority!

Also not sure what the HTML help bit is doing there - doesn't seem consistent with games or music content?

In IE6 you're getting the Rockout FM banner cut off just above the content too.




jaybee -> RE: Rate Rockout please and thankyou (8/30/2006 9:02:43)

quote:

minor browsers
Does that include IE7? The one that's about to be released is modelled along the lines of Firefox so if it doesn't work in that then it probably won't work in IE7. Oh and I should mention that IE8, when it arrives with Vista, will functionally be almost identical to the "minor browsers".



womble -> RE: Rate Rockout please and thankyou (8/30/2006 11:03:07)

quote:

ORIGINAL: rockout
Please rate content and design not accesibility on other browsers. on content (message above)

"Minority browsers" aside, it's difficult to rate something on content when there is very little content - at least content that's accessible upfront (i.e. without registering). As I mentioned earlier, you have only seconds to make a good impression on visitors - you can't rely on them hanging around to dig around for information on what the site's about before they decide it's worthy of their attention or not.

You seem to have added some more graphics to the home page that weren't there the other from what I recall, and quite frankly I think they're a bigger turn-off than the lack of content. If you're going to use graphics, they need to be good quality graphics that look professional and fit in with your site.



rockout -> RE: Rate Rockout please and thankyou (8/31/2006 4:22:39)

Ok about the "minority browsers" Im not redesigning for browsers i dont have. I run on Firefox and IE7 which seems fine to me except the grey colored text im working around.
about content, I relize there is little content at the moment but just seconds ago I got the ok from Atom Films to place there content on my page. About digging around for content, I thank you i did not relize that and Ill work on fixing it but the login form is complex for checking user status and not glitching.
Finally, about graphics, I will work on that, its just I got a lot of remarks about the name being in the site more than once, and the banner at the very top doesnt turn off. So anybody who rated my page before please tell me if I should change it back to girl in the grass or start new... and any ideas on what the new banner should be? Im definitly not a profetional designer unless it comes to realistic people than I lack the models for the pictures. Thank you.



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