How does my new site look

BRENSH

Just finished a new website. I just want you guys to give me an opinon on it. I asked my friends and they could see a few of design flaws.

I have learned PHP, javascript, HTML, CSS, dreamweaver, MYSQL and I am close to learning photoshop in my journey of development.

The only thing I think I am lacking is a good design technique.

Also could anyone who is an expert on the subject give me a couple of tips on design and development if you do see any problems.

Thanks ,

MY SITE IS BELOW

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http://irishradioportal.com

jhegarty

At first glance....

Get rid of the google ads.... or at least one of them...for the moment at least , really get in the way....


don't like the color scheme....


Don't list county's with no listings... wait till you have one....


on the plus side it looks like a good idea....if done well I would find it very useful site to use....

BRENSH

Thanks for your comments jhegarty. Yeah I could see the color scheme was off myself. Yeah I will leave one of the adds up there only. A good online program for color is adobe color. Do you know much about Search engine optimization.

eamon234

Lose the lines on the edges they're extremely annoying - especially if you're viewing the site on a widescreen monitor like I am! Plain black or white is fine I'd personally go with dark background and light text - you need more buttons - give it a more radio feel just plain boring text links in typical plain boring font is not good enough these days - bad idea to run on IE only even temporarily Firefox users can be very tetchy!:D

zardette

Hi there,

I love the idea but it has too much information on one page - scroll up and down to see the counties

maybe if you have a drop down box to select a county or split it up into
province or even a click-able county on a map of Ireland if you are very good at programming

the way each county opens up is very nice

Also your email should be in a form ..

Keep up the idea its great

I viewed this on firefox btw!
Z

zokrez

Great idea. Why not just have a menu of all the radio stations in alphabetical order as your home page.

RTE Radio 2 (National)
Clare FM (Clare)
Phantom FM (Dublin)

Hover on the radio station and click to open with no mention of real player.

Simple idea. I have it bookmarked !

Seth Brundle

The main blurb of text is too much to grab my attention and I presume its the same for others.

BRENSH

Thanks for you comments but I think having it arranged by counties is better because I think it is more instinctive of Irish listeners to arrange stations by counties.

Seth Brundle

By county is fine but the list is too long and there is too much empty space as a result!

BRENSH

Yeah I know what you mean but the website has only started and I still have to add alot more stations at the moment. I might paginate it soon but Ill see. Could you give me a couple of stations you know. Just the names and Ill find the streams thanks .

randombar

Ya I like it, getting an error in firefox though

"c0 has no properties"

Maybe the banner is a bit big, since you're dealing with a list and all that?

One thing I'm discovering about lists is make sure there are a few ways of getting to the information, so many people use sites in different ways, i.e. straight to the search or look for a list etc etc

SEO stuff

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=985

Reckon looking for the .ie would be a good investment too!

TPD

I think if you had links to all the counties together - beside each other and visible all at once - it would help with the navigation of the site. Each county link could then point to a page with the various radio station details.

I was wondering, how much revenue do your ads make? Not in amount per click, but how long have you had ads up on your websites and how much have you recieved? I'm thinking of starting my own site soon and I want to know if advertisements would be a feasable way of funding it.

I know, each site is different, but I just want some idea.

BRENSH

Very poor indeed. I think it is a good idea but it has only started. I spent 4 euro on the domain name with free hosting from x10hosting.com. I am only starting the website. It is kind of all over the place. It is not easy to update and there is not a system in place for upgrade.

Every person has there own preference in viewing a list. I think this is a nice looking way. But I need to use many more methods.

ONE METHOD:
I will put up a map soon and it will take me a while. The stations will be accessed via google maps or my own Irish map. So when you click on a link a dynamic page will pop up with the station lists for that county.


I have been at it for a number of weeks now. But it is my very first project so it is only natural. I will learn much more soon.

I will also add a voting script to the website so that you can vote your favourite stations and maybe a forum.

Actually adding a forum to any website is a great idea if it is relevent as content in forums is varied and more dynamic. This helps your adsense revenue especially if your patriots are loyal to the forum.

Look at the success of boards.ie and that will tell you.

In summary the revenue will not pay for your car not even a cheap one. I would love for it to work.

I need to improve the search engine optimisation of the project. That can take a number of weeks. It has only been up one. Spread the word.

Do you think it is a good idea anyway?

TPD

Yeah it is a very good idea. Though would you need permission from the different radio stations or anything? Actually I'd say theyd just be happy to get extra listeners.

BRENSH

On the up side more listeners but on the downsied less web advertising revenue. Many stations have built in "active x" players so that listeners will stay on there site while listening. There are also many adverts on pages etc.

I really dont know. Look at international stations and look at itunes. They are so many on itunes.

Seth Brundle

From a usability perspective, there are no descriptions of the radio stations (talk/easy/rock/alternative/country/etc.) It doesn't make me want to tune in to them all to find out.
So, set up a 'by county' index and also a category index.
Maybe set up links to international stations under the same categories.

What order are the stations currenly listed in? Its not alphabetical, frequency, media player type or bandwidth.

I don't like the bold hover effect. Maybe change it to a subtle background colour change.

ON the FAQ page, your headings & paragraphs are left aligned whilst your google ads are centred.

BRENSH

Thanks for your comments

Sully

Iv taken a look at your site. The design I personally wouldnt pick for any project id do, but saying that - I think it still works. Its not horrible but it aint beautiful. Its simple.

Content wise, its nothing professional so for a simple site most of it goes well. It starts to go rapidly down hill having pretty much ALL the content shoved onto the front page.

Here is what I would do, if I was the webmaster:-

1) Keep the main page a more of a greeting page explainging what the site is about and any news you may have.

2) Add a new link to the navigation, something like "Stations".

3) The stations page should be layed out similar to a photo album. You come to find a list of different albums, and clicking each one brings you to the content of that album.
-> So the station page here would be a list of all different countys (keeping the number of stations beside it)
-> Clicking the county brings you to a new page with the information layed out neatly. If the page is getting long, split it into two pages.

4) Move the Google ads so there like a skyscraper on the side of the page - rather then having them shoved into the middle of content like the FAQ page. Plus, there more out of the way and not intrusive.

5) Give a nicer look to the FAQ page. Yellow and boxes looks horrid.

And obviously - Firefox users and IE Users should work fine.

BRENSH

Thanks sully ill do that

steveland?

Nice idea. It may look a bit better if it was arranged by county but leaving out the ones with no links in them. Also get rid of the borders around each of the counties.

Maybe have more than one column of counties. Given the amount of white space you should be able to fit in two or three columns and get rid of a lot of the scrolling.

The XHTML doesn't validate. Maybe try and get it all valid before changing things:
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Firishradioportal.com%2F

Other than a few design issues it's a nice site, it's functional and that's the main thing. Fair play

Edit: Actually, thinking about this now if I was doing it I'd break it up into 4 tabs on the top of the page, one for each province, which lead to just displaying the counties in that province. Adds an extra click or two but it'll look cleaner.

I like that dropdown menu for the counties though, nice work on that

Mike...

You need to update the counties your missing loads,on the layout bit...think its a bit longwinded i.e. all the scrolling,the idea is good but you have too many catogories,remember in rural area's some radio stations are not country specific,maybe a provincial layout would suit and keep the major urban area's seperate again i.e.
Connaught
Ulster
Munster
Leinster

Cities

Dublin
Cork
Galway
Limerick

hope this helps a bit

Sully

mono needs to learn his geography Waterford is a city to, and one of the oldest.

Duckjob

Sully wrote: »

mono needs to learn his geography Waterford is a city to, and one of the oldest.

and Kilkenny !

Sully

Duckjob wrote: »

and Kilkenny !

Nope. Not really. They like to think it is but it isnt really, in older confusing legislation it half stated it was but really, its not. Population size dictates whether it is a city or town. But, thats a different topic

bangersandmash

I see that you added an external link on the irish radio wikipedia page

is that for seo or releance or both?

Deliverance XXV

Sully wrote: »

Nope. Not really. They like to think it is but it isnt really, in older confusing legislation it half stated it was but really, its not. Population size dictates whether it is a city or town. But, thats a different topic

Off Topic: Yup! In Kilkenny we do like to think so

On Topic: Great idea for a site. I will certainly use your site.

BRENSH

Yeah I tried to put it there as I thought it would be a good idea for SEO. As they say the more links one has to their site the better. I don't think it is any type of infringement to put your relevent site on wikipedia, do you all.
Thanks "King Nothing", Working on an improved version at the moment. It will be up in about 2 or 3 weeks. More stations,voting,(forum/ maybe more than 3 weeks),easier to search for stations, map view as well as a provincial/county view.

In college at the moment and have to study as well though.

randombar

Ah come on it's not even christmas! no need for study!

Sully

GaryCocs wrote: »

Ah come on it's not even christmas! no need for study!

Always a good idea to start early. Trust me, I learned my lesson the hard way by leaving it till the last min.

BRENSH

Its back up again

steveland?

Also by the way the link in your sig to it doesn''t work. The text is fine but the link itself sends you to irishradioportral.com