What website is better -

ninebeanrows

Picking 2 major weather websites in Ireland:

Which do you think is better, you make this choice on look,design
and content and whatever makes you think one is better than
the other.

http://www.weathercheck.net

http://www.met.ie

Serbian

Neither of the sites designs do much for me, they are both adequate but nothing special, though I wouldn't be expecting much from a weather site anyway.

As far as the homepages are concerned, despite the fact that Weathercheck steals the current weather image directly from Met Eireann (it's even directly linked to the Met Eireann site, bandwidth thieves ), I think it contains all the information I would need if I were checking the weather in Ireland, whereas with Met Eireann you have to dig a little deeper.

Content / Usability: I think the Met Eireann site is a lot more usable once you navigate past the homepage. What the hell is that Worldwide Metar Decoder on Weathercheck? I suppose it's for people looking more in-depth at weather but it started to annoy me immediately. I'd prefer a map of the world or something where you click on the regions. It seemed like I was visiting a new site as the design was a blank page with dropdowns. Also, Met Eireann has a lot of charts and graphs and fancy things like that which add to the content. I tried to look at the charts from the nav in weather check, but all the links just link back to the homepage. Even the contact link which is linked properly in the body check.

From a personal perspective, if I was using a weather site, I would go to Weathercheck as I would have no need to really delve any deeper than today and tomorrows weather and that's all on the homepage.

cgarvey

Met.ie is a fair bit better looking / easier / more logical layout.. but you do provide "all you usually need" content on the front page.

However, I probably still wouldn't use your site for 3 reasons.

1) You're copying what other sites do. Both content and purpose are ripped from other sites directly. You have a slight edge on other sites in that there is a good bit of detail on the front page. However I wouldn't use a website for the latest weather report .. I'd use a Konfabulator plugin or one of the many desktop reporting utilitites

2) Morally/Ethically, I wouldn't use your site, as you're ripping other sites' work, without giving credit to that site. So met.ie's cash invested in their reporting is being robbed from under them, as far as I can tell. Met.ie don't seem to have published copyright / terms of use, so an already grey area of deep linking is even greyer. It's normal to give credit to the site for the work though, even if permission is given for use. If you don't have permission, you should probably seek legal advice about your position. I don't know if you're breaking any laws, but would urge you to at least check it out.

3) The site looks a bit amateur / unfinished.. it's presented as a pet project site, rather than a useful site. It's presented as a site for your group of friends. That's how I view it, others may view it differently.

chump

I'd have to agree with you on all the above cgarvey.

To the OP, why don't you do something a bit original and different?

chump

Oh and the toolbar on your page doesn't work in Mozilla. What's with THAT?

ninebeanrows

I only stole 2 charts from Met.ie and i have credited them now.. i just
chaged the site earlier forgot about it.

As for the linkbar linking back to the homepage it doesnt for me..?

Anyway thanks for your comment and appropriate changes will be made

Seth Brundle

Weathercheck wrote:

I only stole 2 charts from Met.ie and i have credited them now.. i just
chaged the site earlier forgot about it.

you stole them and then at the bottom of the page you made a smal inconspicuous credit.
I would legally cover my ass before 'borrowing' another sites stuff!

ninebeanrows

I credited the maps?

I would hardly say there stolen when we tax payers pump hundreds
of thousands of our euro's for them to be produced i'm sure
it's our rite to have a look at what we paid for.

As for the others i will link them anois.

Cheers for your advice all and i will take aboard your friendly
criticism and by all means criticise until your hearts content!

chump

What tax have you ever payed weathercheck? What age ARE you?

And you're trying to earn money by selling services, I presume you're a registered company?

Seth Brundle

@weathercheck - you are offering a service based on other peoples work - this is copyright infringement and therefore subject to compensation. Get permission off the owner if you want to use their material.
As for paying them via your taxes, etc. Would you ever say something like this to a garda?
The ordnance Survey is a similar state body who have recieved money for their work off the state in the past. However, if someone uses their maps without licence then they willcrucify them. I suspect the Met Service have a similar policy!

@chump - according to weathercheck.net

Copyright © 2005 weathercheck dot net inc.

Anyway, back to the critique, the homepage table is centered, whereas many of the other pages are left positioned
The forum page forces my 1024 wide pc to scroll because of your google adverts.
Once on the forum you can't get home as all the links are relative to the forum and don't account for the fact that they are in a subfolder.
Seeing as Im stuck on the forum (I won't use back button!) - if you have no moderators, then remove the 'moderated by' text.
Seemingly it is a weather site. Why then is there a sports forum?
ALso, is a forum really necessary? I know I live in various web & car forums/fora(?) but are there really people that sad that chat about the weather all the time?

edit: oh and validate your code!
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.weathercheck.net%2F&Check=Check

mneylon

Weathercheck wrote:

I would hardly say there stolen when we tax payers pump hundreds
of thousands of our euro's for them to be produced i'm sure
it's our rite to have a look at what we paid for.

Then you'll need good legal representation if you are sued by them for copyright infringement.
You cannot rip off other people's content without their explicit permission.
It would also be a breach of your hosting provider's AUP.

Seth Brundle

Just seen this on met.ie...

©The material on this site is Met Éireann copyright. The name Met Éireann and the Met Éireann logo are registered trademarks.

Gordon

Hey Weathercheck, how do you like my sig?

How are those appropriate changes coming along?

ninebeanrows

Love it Gordon very good

ninebeanrows

Hope ye like what i've done...

Im only stealing 3 images now.. have written to Hamweather and
will write to Met.ie tomorrow.. thanks all

How do you like her now!

http://www.weathercheck.net/

mneylon

Weathercheck wrote:

Im only stealing 3 images now..

And you're proud of this?

You DO NOT have permission to use that material. You are currently breaching their copyright.

Gordon

Ah but winkie smilies nullify any possible illegalities blacknight, sheesh I though you knew that by now at least.

mneylon

Oh yeah. Sorry about that!

I've noticed someone else doing that as well. I should have known better

Seth Brundle

Im not mad on the logo. The 'e's look too white against the background. What about using the old one but make it a wee bit darker so the name is more visible?

Also my hands tend to shake at the best of times and without any coffee or nicotine they get even worse. I would prefer if the top row of links (that you hover over) linked to the index page of the chosen folder or whatever instead of the need to hover, move mouse down and then left, etc.

Also as said before, fix the links in the linkbar in the forum.

Ph3n0m

Sorry but http://www.weathercheck.net/ is not a very good site - nothing new, vibrant or even unique

Plus the fact that you are "stealing/borrowing" images really tells a lot about how much you care about making the site your own.

The navigation is truely mind-numbing

On sub pages the navigation changes completely - no consitency there

The site goes from centered to left aligned!!

Validation of the site fails big time (http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A//www.weathercheck.net/)

The CSS of the site fails aswell (http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?profile=css2&warning=2&uri=http%3A//www.weathercheck.net/)

I am sure there is plenty more issues with the site - but I will leave that to you to find

That said met.ie is guilty of the following

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A//www.met.ie/ - lower number of errors then the previous site

Invalid CSS (http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?profile=css2&warning=2&uri=http%3A//www.met.ie/)

However, and this is the main point, met.is is a consitent site, its look and feel does not change from page to page. And that does not distract the user from the content - which is what met.ie is all about

Serbian

kbannon wrote:

ALso, is a forum really necessary?

I think a forum is a nice addition to most sites. If you can build a community around your site, then you can add advertising and make a bit of cash there too. There is a market for just about anything on the net. I took a quick look in google and found a few Weather forums already, including one that had over 40,000 posts!. If there was no forum there would be a lot less of a draw to the site.

ninebeanrows

Hi guys thanks for your comments!

To help the shake handed all of the links in the linkbar will soon
link to a page witht he links in it as well the hover utility.

I will try and come up with a new logo over the coming hours
and im changing the look of the site slightly before changing
the entire site to the new look

I have gained permission from Ham-Weather to post their image
so im waiting for met.ie next.

I also will be scrapping the forum in the coming days and adding
a simple message board. The reason for this is so that things will seem
busier.

Thanks guys and by 11 tonite come back and have a look at the new look!

ninebeanrows

Got a question for yw wise folk...

Is this design acceptable??

http://weathercheck.net/test58

Seth Brundle

I think the banner is wrong for the site.
Firstly, the text doesn't look right [difficult to read the copyright] but the bug manky grey cloud possibly conveus a negative feeling.
What would it look like with some kind of border around the whole lot?
What about removing some of the white space @ the bottom and bottom-left?
just my €0.02c

Howitzer

The image in your banner looks like an atomic mushroom cloud to me.
Banner really needs sprucing up.

Plus points are that you are giving this a go. Thumbs up
And on a 30sec look at the site yours looks better than met - which is broke in f'fox

Ph3n0m

Howitzer wrote:

The image in your banner looks like an atomic mushroom cloud to me.
Banner really needs sprucing up.

Plus points are that you are giving this a go. Thumbs up
And on a 30sec look at the site yours looks better than met - which is broke in f'fox

what? where is met.ie broken in firefox?

Seth Brundle

Ph3n0m wrote:

what? where is met.ie broken in firefox?

I think met is broken in all browsers. It tells us it will be a nice day and in reality it rains

rsynnott

Weathercheck wrote:

Picking 2 major weather websites in Ireland:

Which do you think is better, you make this choice on look,design
and content and whatever makes you think one is better than
the other.

http://www.weathercheck.net

http://www.met.ie

This wouldn't be an ADVERTISEMENT, would it?

Do you realise that Met Eireann could (and should) make a copyright complaint to Google, leading to you being delisted, and losing the right to run AdSense? Also, AdSense is verboten on registration pages.

You can't steal things just because your taxes payed for a minute fraction of them, you know.

Do you have any non-ripped-off content?

mneylon

And he's already been in trouble over copyright:
http://www.weathercheck.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29

It's also in breach of Yahoo's TOS:
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/tos/tos.php
section 7.2 clearly states that copyright material is not permitted without license.

rsynnott

Hmm, Yahoo hosting; how eccentric.

This isn't the only board he's spammed about it, it seems. There's a complaint from someone else on his forum.

And his links are inviting me to go to something called "My Documents" on something called "C:"

mneylon

rsynnott wrote:

This isn't the only board he's spammed about it, it seems. There's a complaint from someone else on his forum.

http://www.weathercheck.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18 that thread?