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Main page looks great!!!

 
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JustGreg




Joined: 07 Mar 2006
Posts: 3098
Location: Kenosha, WI


PostLink    Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 8:38 pm    Post subject: Main page looks great!!! Reply with quote


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The main Curt Palme page looks awesome Kal!!! Very nice. Very appealing. Colorful, easy to read and not overly busy.

One thing tho about Gary's power conditioner banner....used the wrong context of built. It says BUILD exclusively for.....should be BUILT.....I think..

Looks great tho!! Thumbs Up

Greg

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Greg

"Is it ignorance or apathy? Hey, I don't know and I don't care!" --Jimmy Buffett
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kal
Forum Administrator



Joined: 06 Mar 2006
Posts: 17850
Location: Ottawa, Canada

TV/Projector: JVC DLA-NZ7


PostLink    Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 8:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Not too busy? I think it's way too busy. Smile

Fixed the typo too - thanks!

Kal

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Person99




Joined: 09 Mar 2006
Posts: 4901
Location: Flower Mound, TX


PostLink    Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 8:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

OK, not that I don't think you were not adequately compensated for your work Kal or any of that. I'll be the nay saying. I don't like the look and think it is more difficult and kludgy to navigate and amateur looking.

Compare the way navigation on content is structured to some other sites. For instance:
www.oracle.com

www.apple.com

www.sap.com

www.amazon.com

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Dave

A train station is where the train stops. A bus station is where the bus stops. On my desk, I have a work station....
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JustGreg




Joined: 07 Mar 2006
Posts: 3098
Location: Kenosha, WI


PostLink    Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 9:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A novice coming to the site would respond more positively to the bigger lettering and the brighter colors. Consumers just flat out respond more positively to flashy shiny bright colored advertising, even tho boring B&W text based ads say the same thing. <shrug>
Oh well. I like it.

Greg

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Greg

"Is it ignorance or apathy? Hey, I don't know and I don't care!" --Jimmy Buffett
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kal
Forum Administrator



Joined: 06 Mar 2006
Posts: 17850
Location: Ottawa, Canada

TV/Projector: JVC DLA-NZ7


PostLink    Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 9:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

C'mon Dave. You've got to be kidding right? Oracle? Apple? Amazon?

When Curt becomes a multi-billion dollar a year company like the ones you mentioned, he can afford to hire a full time staff to constantly rebrand and upgrade his site whenever there's a simple change or addition. Their web team spends more time and money in one day on just the design phase to make things clear and easy to navigate than I ever would have in 2 years of doing what I do here. A team of 10 at these companies will easily spend a week just deciding what colour to use on the web site.... Smile

The site has grown enormously over time... To redo and re-org the data would be a full time job for me for months.

Curt never knew where it was going, what he wanted shown, or what sections or ideas would be added over time. So they were stuck on one piece at a time, with me TRYING to think ahead of what sort of structure would make the most sense.
I can't afford to spend spending hundreds of hours redesigning every time there's a change or new content that doesn't quite fit in.

I do this sort of redesign all the time in my real day job. Most contracts are $1M+ and involve a team of 5-10 people working full time for 6-8 months with all design work done up front, not piece-meal over time. I do Curt's site on the side (evenings/weekends) and already spend WAY too much time on it. If I spent the number of hours I do on this site working at McDonalds instead, I'd make x10 as much money. (Not complaining to Curt, just pointing out a fact...) Smile

Kal

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Person99




Joined: 09 Mar 2006
Posts: 4901
Location: Flower Mound, TX


PostLink    Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 9:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Take it easy big boy!!!!

I know the history and the why for and you are not a web designer and you spend way more time than you should and all that. As I alluded to, you have done way more work than your "payment" warranted.

That aside, my whole career is based on theft! Well, not really, I just joke. For instance, when tasked with something like doing this site, I would go out, find a major well done site that has to organize similar information and simply copy its approach. It is tried and true and they spend a whole bunch of money researching it. Why reinvent the wheel when the answer is right in front of you? That was the point of referencing those sites.

But to be clear, if I was asked to do the work you have done, I'd have demanded two Cine 9s and a blendzilla. Smile

Dave
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Person99




Joined: 09 Mar 2006
Posts: 4901
Location: Flower Mound, TX


PostLink    Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 9:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Just for fun, I'll be more specific because you love me.

For instance, I don't like the navigation. I would prefer all on the left with breadcrumbs at the top and a home for this site. But lets say you want to do a primary nav on the top and secondary another way. There is a lack of consistency. For instance "Products for Sale" has the secondary navigation at the top of the section landing page whereas the "FAQs..." has the secondary as a vertical nav bar and the tertiary at the top of the section landing page. Navigation paradigms should not change--i.e. different mechanism should not be inserted into the nav flow.

Had it been all vertical nav with breadcrumbs, you could have flowed it very nicely and the user would know exactly where they are, how to get back to main, and how to keep drilling down. And navigation would be consistent.

Just my 2 cents, take it for the .25 cents is worth. Smile

Dave
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Curt Palme
CRT Tech



Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 24296
Location: Langley, BC

TV/Projector: All of them!


PostLink    Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Actually I get compliments on the site all the time..

'holy sh*t there's a lot of info here!!'

and the like.

Thanks to Kal for this work, I really like the new 'splash' of color, without overdoing it. My favorite radio station just changed their site (www.kisw.com), and considering those are supposed to be pros, it's ridiculously busy. I think that site sucks.

I think changing the layout of this site now with over 200K hits would throw everyone for a loop. I need to get busy and add more stuff to the site, it's been a while. I'll set up the XG again this weekend and take the remaining pictures that I need for the NEC setup writeup, and will get that added to the site. That's been a long time coming.
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draganm




Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 8990
Location: Colorado


PostLink    Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 11:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think the web-site looks fricking awesome, I can't believe it was done part time by a single person. Very Happy I have seen some real crap web-sites wher half the links don't even work. If Dave wants something to complain about go check out VDC's messed up dump of a site. Or better yet, check out this place I just ordered tools from this week, what a POS. Mad
https://www.travers.com/index.asp
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kal
Forum Administrator



Joined: 06 Mar 2006
Posts: 17850
Location: Ottawa, Canada

TV/Projector: JVC DLA-NZ7


PostLink    Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 3:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Person99 wrote:
For instance, I don't like the navigation. I would prefer all on the left with breadcrumbs at the top and a home for this site. But lets say you want to do a primary nav on the top and secondary another way. There is a lack of consistency. For instance "Products for Sale" has the secondary navigation at the top of the section landing page whereas the "FAQs..." has the secondary as a vertical nav bar and the tertiary at the top of the section landing page. Navigation paradigms should not change--i.e. different mechanism should not be inserted into the nav flow.

Had it been all vertical nav with breadcrumbs, you could have flowed it very nicely and the user would know exactly where they are, how to get back to main, and how to keep drilling down. And navigation would be consistent.

I agree with you 100%. The lack of consistancy is something that has bothered me ... it's been very difficult to keep things orderly with new information constantly coming up.

When I first designed the site, it was based on the fact there were only going to be about 10 pages. Total. Not 10 sections, 10 pages. But then that grew. And grew again. And again... Until it got to nearly 600 pages where we are today. Since all the pages are simply flat files (no database driven content management system here), it would be an extreme amount of work to reorganize today. Almost not do-able. I know I certainly don't want to spend 80 hours doing it. Smile

The piecemeal approach has unfortunately led to a non-consistent approach to navigation. My own fault 100%.

Kal

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Gary Murrell




Joined: 05 Apr 2006
Posts: 590
Location: Kentucky


PostLink    Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 6:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I agree the site is fabulous, I have worked on a few sites in my time, I don't think people realize all that goes into it Shocked and that is a understatement

-Gary

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