Review of my site please

bacon?

Hi, can I get some feedback on my site please, still testing, so there's probalby the odd broken image.

http://www.nextrandomcam.com

Cheers.

colly_06

I know someone on here who won't be too happy :eek:

bacon?

Me too, but as Steve Jobs puts it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU

hatz7

I had a look at it,
its cool, the 2nd camera didn't come up, the third did.

The 'Next random cam' button, change the way it looks, if you know what I mean, maybe make it bigger or something,
Maybe a link for just looking at cams from a specific country?

its a cool site though

bacon?

hatz7 wrote: »

I had a look at it,
its cool, the 2nd camera didn't come up, the third did.

The 'Next random cam' button, change the way it looks, if you know what I mean, maybe make it bigger or something,
Maybe a link for just looking at cams from a specific country?

its a cool site though

Thanks, yes, still ironing out some kinks.

cormee

colly_06 wrote: »

I know someone on here who won't be too happy :eek:

He'll be too busy patting himself on the back to notice.

OP, much nicer job than the other random cam site, well done.

As hatz7 suggested, make the Next Cam button more prominent and maybe move it under the image, and maybe add in a tag cloud to give the user some sort of control.

Also your symmetry is a little off - align the lhs of the logo with the lhs of the webcam image (or centre them), and put the chat box under the webcam beside the Next Cam button.

"Leave a Reply" - to what? You might want to rephrase it.

Nice use of WordPress.

SlanGoFoil2011

whats the point of this website?

bacon?

cormee wrote: »

He'll be too busy patting himself on the back to notice.

OP, much nicer job than the other cam site, well done. As hatz7 suggested, make the Next Cam button more prominent and maybe add in a tag cloud to give the user some sort of control.

Nice use of WordPress!

Thanks dude.

Hmm... I haven't been using tags, but I have put them in catagories... I can figure out the tag cloud tomorrow... I'm in China, so it's very later here.

And yes, wordpress rocks.

As for the button, I'll definitly look into this... I'm trying to keep it clean and simple... but a slightly larger button wouldn't hurt.

bacon?

SlanGoFoil2011 wrote: »

whats the point of this website?

I guess if you're bored in work, each to their own, I love the concept.

SlanGoFoil2011

Didnt work properly last time.

Worked now.

Logo is bad - doesnt catch the eye - ie not memorable.

The tag in firefox has the name of the cam - better to use the website name.

Bigger buttons needed.

Cool site and chat box

SlanGoFoil2011

And who is the guy that wont be happy???????????????

SlanGoFoil2011

Can people submitt webcams to the site?

jetsonx

SlanGoFoil2011 wrote: »

whats the point of this website?

This sums it up. I cannot see the point of this site.


Does it engage me? no
Does it inform me? no
Does it excite me? no


....and the logo is weak.

bacon?

SlanGoFoil2011 wrote: »

Didnt work properly last time.

Worked now.

Logo is bad - doesnt catch the eye - ie not memorable.

The tag in firefox has the name of the cam - better to use the website name.

Bigger buttons needed.

Cool site and chat box

Thanks for the feedback. That was kind of the point with the logo, I didn't want anything too striking, I wanted the main feature to be the cam.

I'll definitly look into it.

I've made the button almost twice as big I think I'll stick with that size.

bacon?

SlanGoFoil2011 wrote: »

Can people submitt webcams to the site?

Yes, there's a suggest cam link in the footer.

bacon?

SlanGoFoil2011 wrote: »

And who is the guy that wont be happy???????????????

I got the idea from a guy on here that posted a similar site a few weeks back.

Great idea that I thought I could improve on, but aparantly the logo is $hite

Is anyone using IE having any trouble with the site? Are you being re-directed?

lil_lisa

bacon? wrote: »

I'm in China, so it's very later here.

:eek: And I was gonna buy you a beer thinking you were somewhat local :P

Personally, I hate the site. I checked it out 3 hours ago and finally just closed it do some work. Its too addictive!!

I do think there's something missing to it.

I think having the "Next Random Cam" by the ads can be misleading. Maybe place it centre underneath the cam? Also, as someone mentioned, if you could do a geographical search, that would be nice.

Oh, something to think about in the future, generate a list of cameras which are awake depending on time and location. A lot of webcams are dark and still late at night so there's not much going on so if you could filter out and have just ones from say 6am to 12am or something. That's just a thought though. You can have a lot of different filters like that, it would be really good if your db of cameras grows, maybe even necessary.

Your "suggest a cam" page has the "Leave a reply" form at the bottom, looks messy. Also, for "suggest a cam", have a box for "cam address" so people can fill it out. When you're dealing with an audience on a random site you have to hand feed them.

bacon?

lil_lisa wrote: »

:eek: And I was gonna buy you a beer thinking you were somewhat local :P

Personally, I hate the site. I checked it out 3 hours ago and finally just closed it do some work. Its too addictive!!

I do think there's something missing to it.

I think having the "Next Random Cam" by the ads can be misleading. Maybe place it centre underneath the cam? Also, as someone mentioned, if you could do a geographical search, that would be nice.

Oh, something to think about in the future, generate a list of cameras which are awake depending on time and location. A lot of webcams are dark and still late at night so there's not much going on so if you could filter out and have just ones from say 6am to 12am or something. That's just a thought though. You can have a lot of different filters like that, it would be really good if your db of cameras grows, maybe even necessary.

Your "suggest a cam" page has the "Leave a reply" form at the bottom, looks messy. Also, for "suggest a cam", have a box for "cam address" so people can fill it out. When you're dealing with an audience on a random site you have to hand feed them.

Cheers, agree it still needs to be tidied in places.

But I'm happy just leaving the 1 button. Kind of like a 1 armed bandit.

Nearly all of the cam sites are overloaded with too many options, I kind of like the mystery factor.

Cheers for the input.

SlanGoFoil2011

Can you leave the chat box open while changing cams - dont think you can

tricky D

bacon? wrote: »

I kind of like the mystery factor.

Much more importantly, what do your users like?

You can cater for both users who like the mystery factor and those who don't. It's a type of redundancy for navigation e.g. http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/redundancy/(half way down). So add categories, locations and voting system/most viewed. Also you could have a page with a selection of say 6 random cams that users can choose from so they can filter out less active/interesting ones.

stephenpalmer

SlanGoFoil2011 wrote: »

And who is the guy that wont be happy???????????????

Me

brosy

Haha! What a dick move posting it on the same board like it's a fresh idea.

SlanGoFoil2011

http://watchthiscam.com/49/49.php

is a far better site - from a user point of view.

how many hits are you getting

SlanGoFoil2011

Do or can you make money from it.

cormee

bacon? wrote: »

Thanks dude.

Hmm... I haven't been using tags, but I have put them in catagories... I can figure out the tag cloud tomorrow... I'm in China, so it's very later here.

And yes, wordpress rocks.

As for the button, I'll definitly look into this... I'm trying to keep it clean and simple... but a slightly larger button wouldn't hurt.

The MapPress plugin would work well the site. Give the locations some context and maybe flag other cameras nearby etc.

worc

stephenpalmer wrote: »

I think its great that you have come up with such an original idea. In fact it seems extremely familiar to my website, actually you have taken every single webcam from my site, and placed them on your site. What site you ask? http://www.watchthiscam.com

Now I cant say i'm annoyed its bound to happen, it is the internet after all. But to think that you have the cheek to submit it on boards.ie and request a site review a month after I submitted mine?

Good luck with yours. :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

So you came up with this idea yourself originally? There isn't a single site like this online anywhere else before you set yours up...? Since when does posting in the forum about your site first suddenly mean no-one else can ask for feedback on a similar site? If this bothers you dude you won't get far setting up online businesses...everything gets copied.

The dude is perfectly within his right to post up his site for feedback - cheek has nothing to do with it. In fact I'd say you're the cheeky one to think you have any right suggesting he can't ask for feedback.

Bacon personally I think you've done a really decent job of making a nice clean site, so often I've seen people new to this and they have the notion the site has to be full of complete nonsense text/graphics. It's really clear what your site is and it won't make people think...which is actually a really good thing. Well done.

I'd consider putting your "Click to report broken post" underneath the NEXT RANDOM CAM button and just make the text grey so it's not standing out too much (also change "post" to "camera"). I came across a broken one and was too damn lazy to move the mouse to the bottom of the camera to tell you about it so I just clicked next - the quality of the site will be maintained as long as not too many are broken so having this as an easily accessed user feature could pay off long term and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people are as lazy as me!

pfurey101

SlanGoFoil2011 wrote: »

whats the point of this website?

Adsense?

bacon?

stephenpalmer wrote: »

I think its great that you have come up with such an original idea. In fact it seems extremely familiar to my website, actually you have taken every single webcam from my site, and placed them on your site. What site you ask? http://www.watchthiscam.com

Now I cant say i'm annoyed its bound to happen, it is the internet after all. But to think that you have the cheek to submit it on boards.ie and request a site review a month after I submitted mine?

Good luck with yours. :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

actually you have taken every single webcam from my site, and placed them on your site. - complete lie.

But to think that you have the cheek to submit it on boards.ie and request a site review a month after I submitted mine? - Are you serious?

You're going to need a thicker skin and be a little more careful where you post your sites, if you want to make it IM. Also, you shouldn't take things so personally, almost every good idea online has been copied or re worked somehow.

bacon?

brosy wrote: »

Haha! What a dick move posting it on the same board like it's a fresh idea.

I never claimed it was a fresh idea.

You think this is the first random cam site out there?

bacon?

worc wrote: »

So you came up with this idea yourself originally? There isn't a single site like this online anywhere else before you set yours up...? Since when does posting in the forum about your site first suddenly mean no-one else can ask for feedback on a similar site? If this bothers you dude you won't get far setting up online businesses...everything gets copied.

The dude is perfectly within his right to post up his site for feedback - cheek has nothing to do with it. In fact I'd say you're the cheeky one to think you have any right suggesting he can't ask for feedback.

Bacon personally I think you've done a really decent job of making a nice clean site, so often I've seen people new to this and they have the notion the site has to be full of complete nonsense text/graphics. It's really clear what your site is and it won't make people think...which is actually a really good thing. Well done.

I'd consider putting your "Click to report broken post" underneath the NEXT RANDOM CAM button and just make the text grey so it's not standing out too much (also change "post" to "camera"). I came across a broken one and was too damn lazy to move the mouse to the bottom of the camera to tell you about it so I just clicked next - the quality of the site will be maintained as long as not too many are broken so having this as an easily accessed user feature could pay off long term and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people are as lazy as me!

Well put dude. stephenpalmer is just showing his inexperience in IM. I probably would have had the same reaction a few years back. If he plans to post any more great ideas or niches on a public forum such as this, I'd be more than happy to copy them.

It was a fun project that I thought I'd try out, I know there's room for improvement with the usability, but I'm concentrating on more important projects at the moment. Thanks for the tips though.

And trust me, most internet users are very lazy and fickle... some people aren't even willing to wait an extra few seconds for the cams to load.

bacon?

*Update* Hey guys, I decided to go for a darker look... I think the white was a bit too clinical.

Let me know what you think.

Next Random Cam

but43r

Looks like a scam to me. Too many adds and the content ties in with the adds so you think pretty much everything is an add when first going on the site (even the content on the right hand side). I would check out the loading time of the site too, it takes pretty long to reload cams.

bacon?

but43r wrote: »

Looks like a scam to me. Too many adds and the content ties in with the adds so you think pretty much everything is an add when first going on the site (even the content on the right hand side). I would check out the loading time of the site too, it takes pretty long to reload cams.

I don't see how it's a scam? It's just an adsense site, like millions of others online. I put a lot of time and work into it, so, I've included adsense. There's also a privacy policy included that explains this.

http://www.nextrandomcam.com/privacy-policy/

Agree with the loading times, I would prefer if they cams loaded quicker, but I can't really help this.

cormee

I visited three pages - one had a 'Click here to unlock..' and the next two had some error message about Internet Explorer (I'm using Chrome), so I left.

bacon?

cormee wrote: »

I visited three pages - one had a 'Click here to unlock..' and the next two had some error message about Internet Explorer (I'm using Chrome), so I left.

Sorry about that.

The error message you saw has 2 different messages.

1) ie can't seem to display streaming cams, well at the moment anyway.

2) some of the cams go down... this is because i'm hot linking from other sites, and when they have trouble with their cams, so do I.

It aint perfect, but it generally works ok, if you have a decent browser that is.

cormee

bacon? wrote: »

Sorry about that.

The error message you saw has 2 different messages.

1) ie can't seem to display streaming cams, well at the moment anyway.

2) some of the cams go down... this is because i'm hot linking from other sites, and when they have trouble with their cams, so do I.

It aint perfect, but it generally works ok, if you have a decent browser that is.

I was using Chrome and getting those messages.

montreal2011

I think it's terrible, mostly because of this:

"Unlock the content with a “like” or a “tweet”."

You expect people to like the content before they get to see it?

http://watchthiscam.com/ is so much better. Not littered with ads, can VIEW a web cam, can choose to like on fb AFTER having viewed some web cams, has some design.

FYI, when you copy something, you should try to improve on it, or at least try to match it. The simplest way to fix the problems with this site would be a re-direct to http://watchthiscam.com/. :pac: