whatsthecraic.ie - building new website, opinions wanted

Alligator Wine

How's it going. Just in the process of building a new website and would appreciate any feedback re: content and design. Our aim is to update it on a weekly basis with the best of the week's free and cheap events throughout Dublin. It's a little bit bare at the moment but should be updated with more content tomorrow. Here's the linky www.whatsthecraic.ie

Cheers

Handy.

Couple of things.

the masses are finally starting to revolt with more and more free events that are popping up all over the shop.

Fixed "that" for you.

The website needs to be continually updated, and this relies heavily on your involvement.

"Your".

Oh and I'm not exactly sure of this, but I *think* that you need to have a phone number and address in the "About Us" section or that could just be for e-commerce sites.

Looks grand though from a user point of view.

cpu-dude

Alligator Wine wrote: »

How's it going. Just in the process of building a new website and would appreciate any feedback re: content and design. Our aim is to update it on a weekly basis with the best of the week's free and cheap events throughout Dublin. It's a little bit bare at the moment but should be updated with more content tomorrow. Here's the linky www.whatsthecraic.ie

Cheers

Looks good. Free Event's is slightly off centre when you click that page.

Alligator Wine

Cheers lads, think I fixed those things. Keep the feedback coming! I was thinking as we get more and more events I might end up having to change the site to work from a database, but for the moment I reckon I'll keep it simple.

blue4ever

Alligator
I like the idea, but the site is a bit of an attack visually.

You based on tables, which “seemingly” is not “de rigueur” at all. It make life
very restrictive.

Look like you are on a two col setup, but its looks a bit parish newsletter.
I’d sniff out a decent free web template. But, I would go a step further. I’d set up a blog type site.

You can have people list the free events, and then, once it’s over, people can post comments, leave clips, pics – all related to that event. It’s practically already built for you!

You have to do something with the fonts in the meantime, they are a strain on the eyes.

zAbbo

Dublin Events Guide is in there already - http://www.dublineventguide.com

Would a blog format suit the content a bit better? Using an events or calendar plugin?

FWIW I don't like the design, it looks broken and the columned content doesn't sit right.

Alligator Wine

Thanks again for the feedback lads.

RE: dublin event guide.
I'm well aware of this site and wanted to work with the guy who runs this, but he wanted to keep the site more 'select' and felt that a newsletter was the best way of circulating the content. I'm not a big fan of the design of that site either. While I appreciate the work he does, I think we can do a much better job on both content, design, and marketing the website.

RE: design
yeah I agree that the 2 table layout is restrictive, but that was kind of the point. I'll keep it in mind though, and will start looking for new templates.

Your point about the blog type site is a good one. I was thinking about that too, that it would be great if people could add their own events; it would save a lot of work for us for a start, and it's always good to get people to interact with the site!
I'm not too familiar with blogging software though, and am a bit skeptical of our site looking like all those other wordpress sites out there. Do you know of a site that does some more interesting designs with wordpress?

RE: fonts
Do other people feel that way, strain on the eyes?

Thanks again,

Steve

zAbbo

Off the top of my head, customise a theme from themeforest and look at something similar to this plugin http://gigpress.com/shows/

That's what I'd do, allow visitors to submit their event as well, done properly it would get decent traffic.

I've had some insight on the top website for "Dublin Events" and the traffic received was staggering considering the amount of SEO optimisation required.

What you have right now would get blown away with my suggestion above, and would be easier to scale and maintain.

//Edit this plugin looks decent, has Gmap integration -
http://davidebenini.it/wordpress-plugins/events-manager/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/events-manager/screenshots/

blue4ever

zAbbo wrote: »

Dublin Events Guide is in there already - http://www.dublineventguide.com

Would a blog format suit the content a bit better? Using an events or calendar plugin?

FWIW I don't like the design, it looks broken and the columned content doesn't sit right.

Hola zab.

Jeese Louise! Loooong Time since I looked at that site, used to like the print incarnation (some time back). Could really do with a, well, a, redesign!

Alligator Wine

Defintely look into that over the next week Zab, thanks a mill. Hopefully get a more interactive site up and running in the next 7 days. I was a bit sceptical before about wordpress as I wasn't really that familiar with it, but looks like you can do a lot of cool stuff with it; Cheers.

zAbbo

Alligator Wine wrote: »

Defintely look into that over the next week Zab, thanks a mill. Hopefully get a more interactive site up and running in the next 7 days. I was a bit sceptical before about wordpress as I wasn't really that familiar with it, but looks like you can do a lot of cool stuff with it; Cheers.

If you need any help, give me a shout. I wrote a basic guide - 15 Step Wordpress Blog Setup, SEO & Analytics Guide

IdentityCrisiz

zAbbo wrote: »

If you need any help, give me a shout. I wrote a basic guide - 15 Step Wordpress Blog Setup, SEO & Analytics Guide

Really helpful guide, cheers.

Bonavox

I like it. Very handy idea.

Sites a bit dark in my opinion. Brightening it up would do it justice! Content is good, and I like where everything is placed.

Also a new logo would look nicer. Maybe even just put the current one in a frame and change the colour?

Just my opinion anyway, overall its a fairly good site and a great idea!

zAbbo

I see you've updated it with wordpress and a new theme.

I'd recommend fixing the twitter integration and the permalink structure (my link above explains it)

RedMaxP

Just in case you are not happy with one the thousands of free templates out there for Word Press here you can get a custom one at http://www.globalwebseller.com/, they are Delhi based and fairly inexpensive for what they do.

StuartC

Nice new design, id make the main bg color a tad lighter though.