http://news-tune.com/ Given that it's a startup, I'd like to hear some feedback by some bit-tech folks. Since you guys are awesome and generally quite intelligent.
Positive: Neat and clean design, easy to navigate and intuative to understand. Nothing jumps up and down and screams at you to get a attention. A very nice surfing experiance. Negative: Font seems to clash together in IE 8. Content is sparse, but I'm sure that cause It's just launched. /2cents
Thanks. Did you take a perusal at some of the content? This site just started about four days ago. I'm just a lowly writer there.
Very quick, and a bit nitpicky: Nice choice of font, and generaly pleasant. Now for some questions/comments: The big RSS icon and big FB like box pushes the tabbed box below out of alignment. IMHO it'd look better if it aligned with the reight side. The use of textured grey vs grey seems a bit arbitrary... maybe a bit more consistency there. The header could be more... just more... it looks a bit unfinished. Images at the top of articles stretch... ewww (seemingly not always though). Tables aren't padded enough, making them a bit rubbish to read (example, the pricing on the steam sale page). No permalinks to the articles? Sources could be compacted. No need for massive line spacing there. In general, not all the articles look the same in terms of formatting. Some uniformity would go a long way there.
Thanks, it's just a prelim starter, we're going to modify it. I'll edit the sources for the two articles I've written. The feedback is actually very much appreciated. Cheers.
It looks great, very professional, one grievance I have is the speed with which the news-feed on the front page changes. You you lower that speed? I find it a bit hard to read and understand each news item.
Thanks. We're still in the very early Alpha stages of ironing it out. Come to think of it, I'm going to have to figure out a way to have writer consistency..
Set up a standard Word layout with how your articles should be written? You could then just e-mail this layout to all writers.
Fair enough, I'm not one of the admins (yet. ) I'm just a content creator as of right now. Ironically though I've contributed quite a chunk already.
One generic piece of advice; News sitesa re a dime a dozen, and as such, you have to present people with a reason why they should read YOURS, and not RandomShmuck#11's. That reason should be clear right off the bat, and you should be making sure that EVERYTHING broadcasts that.
Yeah, I've been working on getting the rest of the team to be more focused. As of right now given that it's a starter project, most of us are still getting settled in. My main focus was not really flooding the site with tons of articles, but rather just few but very detailed and thoughtful content. It's vague but it's always been my habit when writing articles. In the long run, we're trying to expand into a site that can be capable of doing hardware (and software) reviews while simultaneously keeping a tab on the tech pulse. For my personal bit, it's quality over quantity, but the vision is still unfocused. Good advice nonetheless.
From my experience as a web developer, it always takes 2 iterations of the site before the focus starts to show itself. Mistakes get made, and lessons (about running a site, about the audience, about staff members, etc) get learned. It's perfectly normal, and as such a critical part of the lifecycle of such a project. Don't worry too much about it, jsut be consistent and stick with it for now...
Be careful with that and make sure you get your due. Be clear and open in your communications with the chaps that run the show. I've been burned a couple of times before with new sites and sites that were just badly run, because of my enthusiasm and generally laid-back nature.
small but somehow important: a picture that shows up in the browser tab. Right now its the generic 'document' icon. That really helps letting your website stand out: You directy percieve I have two tabs open on bit-tech, one on hyperbole and a half, one in hotmail, but what is that strange new thing? I have to read when I want to know what it is? How Inefficient! I wont go to that site anymore!
Cheers. And truth be told, I'm just putting in the initial effort because then I'll get more creative control as time goes by. Plus most of us are genial. That and I'm not writing any more until much later . I'll see what can be done with the Favicon. You guys are great.
