I'd like to get some good and bad criticism from anyone who can give it. I'm still kind of new to designing websites, and anything you could point out would be a great help. I can sometimes be totally unfamiliar with the most common website practices. I'm knee deep in this website and I don't wanna miss something totally obvious. I've had this idea for a website in my head for a long time, and I wanna make it as good as I possibly can, and your guy's input will be so helpful. I keep coming up with new ideas that would make it better and more fun, but I just don't know how to do a lot of it yet. My website is http://www.themovietimeline.net What do you think? Is it a good idea? Will it get much traffic? It has potential right? Please feel free to offer your opinion / advice on the Concept itself. OK. I think I am pretty happy with the way the site is looking now. I am about to move on to the next phase, but I just want more opinions before I get to far along. I know you guys will find things to correct yourselves, but here's some of the things wrong with the site that are bothering me right now. 1. In a Firefox browser, if the width of the browser is too small for my page, my background image doesn't stay centered with the body content, i.e. if you drag your bookmark menu towards the page (making the page smaller) you'll see what I mean. This is an obvious blunder on my part, and I'm already researching a fix. 2. Not all of my links are behaving correctly. 3. I'm kind of at a loss about what to do with my site navigation / layout. I'm not sure what's wrong exactly, but I just feel like it's not right. Should I use drop down child pages on the tabs? Should I have a bread crumb trail. Do I need top and left navigation? Is the navigation easy for you guys or confusing? Are there too many redundant categories, or should I expand on it more? Need suggestions. For instance, on my movie detail pages, I have movie quotes and a movie review on the same page as the Synapsis and everything else. Should I have a separate page for reviews and quotes like IMDB does? Like gladiator-main page gladiator-movie reviews gladiator-movie quotes? That'll triple the amount of pages on my site! Or is that something I should worry about when I have more than I can fit on a page. Should I have a search box on my site? 4. If you notice, I have the register | login on the right side of the header area. Problem is, I have no idea how to do something like that. I want to be able to keep track of my users stats and give them reasons to come back to my site. I have big plans for this site, and I need them to have to login or register to post, write reviews or to get into certain areas of the site (like the movie quizzes for example). I want to have a forum in the future, and lots more. I just don't know how to do it all, but I've been researching. Tell me if I'm wrong. From what I've read so far, it sounds like I need a CMS (Content Management System) to handle all of that kind of stuff right? Are they really hard to learn? I just started working with Joomla and ModX, but it's too early for me to tell. Can one person handle Joomla or a CMS by himself? 5. If you would look at the Movie Detail pages. I have a Movie Vs. History meter thingy on every movie (kind of a gimmick) I need a script or something similar to what RottenTomatoes has, so that users can rate the movies accuracy. Where do I get something like that? 6. On the home page, what do you think of the Timeline part? I'm still not quite sure about the look of it. I mean, can you tell what it is? Does it look enough like a vertical timeline? On the page Early 1900 Movies, you can see what the old timeline used to look like, maybe it's more clear. Maybe I'm worried to much about the looks, and I should just concentrate on getting content on there and optimizing it. I mean, I do wanna make some money off of this site, even though I like doing it. Maybe you have seen a better looking timeline template somewhere else that I could use or look at? 7. The bottom footer pretty much hasn't been touched since I started. Needs work 8. Not sure about the main Logo? Maybe bump the whole page down about 15 pixels so there is black above the logo and ad? Wow, that was a long post. I'm just indecisive right now about which direction to take. I wonder if I should stop updating the site with my current software right now, and just learn how to use Joomla since I'm going to have to eventually?
I looked at the top of the page and saw : "History told through movies" and expected the "Timeline" to include more topics on the front page other than religion. I see the menu links provide more categories, including one for "full movie timeline". You have literally "all" movies to put somewhere in your site. Make it a social site, where others can do the work for you. Software can do this, perhaps in the .php language. I am not a programmer, so I do not know the details about that. It is a great idea, I have never seen a site quite like it. With the right publicity, you should get many visitors and be able to monetize it, if that is your goal.
I didn't think the front page had that much religious stuff on it, but I guess a lot of the movies on the home page are religious. It's hard to think of other movies from that Era. I'll have to tone down the religious first impression. That'll turn a lot of people away. I know what you mean by expecting something more on the front page though. I can't quit put my finger on what should be there. What do you mean by more topics? What kind of topics do you think? Excellent feedback bro. I do plan on making it a social site. I'm learning how to use CMS as fast as I can, so I can transfer my site over. I never thought about trying to get a program that could do a lot of the work for me. It's crazy the shit people can program! I didn't quite know what kind of site this was going to be when I started it, but I would like to monetize it. Thanks.
(this is all meant as constructive criticism) looks kinda generic. i dont like the color scheme at all. the pink is kinda ehhhh. also the grade on ur navbar is red and green. which isnt a good combination unless its Christmas. there is also absolutely no mixing fonts. i would make your headings in photo shop or gimp and use a transparent bg on them. but the biggest thing is its REALLY cluttered almost to the point of being confusing. Spread your text out a bit man. use some padding. or something. lastly ur banner is like 200px wide. its uber small and its the only consistant image on the page. try adding more images to the layout. i hope i didnt offend but when i see these threads i try to be harsh cuz i know that if i see problems others will too
When I think of movies and history... I think of all movies and all titles and how they apply to all history. If this is your goal with this site, it is a big one, but can be done with software. Getting a computer to crunch a database of movies should seem to be a "monetizable" goal. You should get thousands of visitors, because there are millions of movie-lovers in the world. Dont forget to use joomfish to get it into a second or third language for even more visitors from other countries. Good luck.
Topics = Categories. Your site is based on a broad topic/category. It needs to break down into consumable topics. People like specific genres of movies: Action, sci-fi, drama, etc. You would need to break them down into historical timelines in their genres/categories/topics. If you know about digg.com, they have people adding to their sites on specific topics. You may be able to do this with movie-lovers. It is ultimately for their benefit, anyway, right ? Let them have their own input.
I don't take offense, because I sometimes feel the same way about it, as far as it being too cluttered and looking a little generic. Not because of the color scheme, but for some other reason that I can't seem to fix or figure out why it looks that way to me sometimes. I've been slammed for my text being too hard to read in the past, but they just said that I need to stay away from px metric fonts, but I don't know what's better. The research I did said that Ariel is a fine font choice for the Web. Should I change the sizing to pt instead of px? As far as the rest of the clutterness, I'll try spreading things out a bit more, but I was thinking that a larger line spacing might help more than padding. Perhaps both. With the color scheme, it's frustrating because I'm partially color-blind, I forget what the official term is called, but I definitely didn't think I was using pink. I thought it was some sort of Tan color! And the red to green grade, I thought it was just a red to a lighter shade of red! I've heard it's a good idea to have an Ad placed on the top of the page, and that's why I shrunk my logo down so much. It used to be quite a bit bigger. I'll see what I can do to alieviate that. More images on a page that you just called cluttered!? I scoffed at you at first for saying that, but looking at some of the bigger, well known sites, they all have way more images than I do. And I was actively getting rid of images. Good Call!
Thanks for the input. Yes, my goal is to add as many movies as I can. I guess, as long as they appear to be based off of some supposed real event in history, then I will add them. I don't see how all movies can find a proper place on a seudo-history timeline, but I could always add a future timeline, or a sci-fi timeline further down the road. This site seems to get further away from being completed the more work I put into it. If you really know of software capable of "crunching a database" automatically, or at least faster than me. PM me with a reference or a link to it or something. I will have to/want to acquire help somehow in the near future to get this site to where I want it to be. This is simply taking too long using my current methods. As soon as I get the current build/website/template all dialed in, then I think my next move will have to be to transfer this site over to a more capable program/system.
It's a very interesting idea for a website - I like it. The user comments would be a great addition. Also, I agree with BlueStar where .php could probably do most of the work for you. I'd just be careful with the decoration on the text...it makes it look a bit cluttered, so maybe you could just go with a plain font and decorate it with rollover attributes or something in CSS. Great job, though
This is a great idea, and you've got a good start. I'd say you need to get rid of the green to red gradient...looks too 1990ish. The header is also a little too jumbled for me, but that could be a personal preference.
Thanks. Yeah, like I said, I'm a bit colorblind. I thought it was a dark red to a lighter red. I'll change it pretty soon, but I'm working on transferring my site over to modx right now. I agree that the header is a little jumbled. I wanna keep that advertisement up there tho. I'll re-design it eventually.
I wish I knew how .php could do the work for me? Do you mean like, it could pull all of the "synopsis', actors and other info" automatically from another site and populate it on mine?
You make your site into a social site where people sign up to provide the content. You let them finish your site for you. You may need to do some corrections, but having your users provide the content will mean the site gets finished quicker... once all the information is there.
I LOVE the information that your site provides. Not only does it give a timeline of movies, but it also shows a timeline of history in general. It is easy to navigate. The only negative thing I see about it is that when someone stumbles across this site, they are going to have a hard time trying to figure out just what it is, and probably won't take the time to find out. My advice is to place a short paragraph at the top explaining the purpose of this site and what viewers can expect to find. Great job though!