Websites with Live PowerPoint presentation and Embedded "blog"

I have revamped a few websites lately, and one of them now displays a PowerPoint presentation. The reason I did this, is because my client uses a couple of huge TV screens to display his current beer selections that he is offering in his pub/bar. (I designed the local powerpoint slideshow for him to make it easy for his bar staff to display the selection of beer on tap, as it changes a lot). By 'broadcasting' this screen, his customers can see what beers are on tap online, even before going there. Some of the designs of the labels are not particularly clear, but no more so than when viewing them on the 60" screens in the bar. Anyway, proof of concept done.
In this website, I also have the "Lunch Specials" board, which is maintained by the bar staff, so I do not have to update the whole website each week. I did this by embedding a blogger page which the bar staff have access to, which displays pretty well on the website, both the Desktop and Mobile site, (which i purposely made very different).
I use a redirect to desktop or Mobile versions, so unless you type in this url on your phone, you will only see the main site. But as website designers, you might be interested enough to see how different the two sites are and type it in, it is not a long url:
If you go to the desktop site, just check out the "BAZIL'S" tab and then "Live Beer List"
If you go to the mobile site,Click "Bazil's Pub" and then "View our Beer Selection Screen Here!"

See it here > http://www.bazilpub.com/

Tasty design. And fun, entertaining, and informative. All the things a great website should be.

Clever solution, though I'm not a fan of the website. :-(

Overall I like it and think you did a great job. Couple things I would work on but again overall great job! :star

Some nice work. How do I scroll the lunch specials?

I just checked the site with an iPhone and Android plus the desktop version and they all just work the same as every other page? Just scroll by dragging up or down the screen. Can you elaborate so I can fix what might be happening with you please?

On desktop, using google. CLick on Menu on left. Then click lunch specials at top of the screen (In red and blue). See the information has no bar for me to scroll it up and down. I positioned my cursor at the top and moved it down by hitting arrow down key. See attachment.

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Originally Posted by behzad

On desktop, using google. CLick on Menu on left. Then click lunch specials at top of the screen (In red and blue). See the information has no bar for me to scroll it up and down. I positioned my cursor at the top and moved it down by hitting arrow down key. See attachment.

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I hadn't seen the lunch special option when I looked before. So, I just went now and looked( using IE11, FF, GC, and Opera ). It is the same for me on all of them. You have to use the wheel on the mouse or the arrow keys as you pointed out to scroll it up and down. I agree, there should be a manual slide bar to scroll it.

99.99% of people will never know there is more there because there is nothing that indicates there is more content below what shows. Where it ends looks like a natural end so people won't go look to see more. So any extra info below where it cuts off will almost never be seen.

The area needs some type of manual slide or notice that there is more info below or people just won't realize it. I never would have known to scroll down using the mouse wheel or keyboard arrows if I had seen the lunch specials when I visited the site the other day. I would have assumed what was there is what was shown.

Also, FWIW, up top where it says May 16-20 the OP used a small case o instead of 0 on the end of 20.

EDIT - I just went back and looked and the OP's <iframe> code does not include the portion that inserts the slide so that is why it isn't showing. IT is the OP's decision obviously but I would add it in.

The current code is ( <iframe> left out or it messes it up here ) src=http://bazilslunchspecials.blogspot.com/ width="510" height="640". There is no provision to allow it to scroll up and down/side to side if there is more content than the display frame. It needs the scrolling="yes" command line in there.

Thanks gsthunder, and others, for helpful feedback, this is how all forums should be! No matter what I tried, including clearing my cache of course, and removing the website from the host and resubmitting it, I always got the full menu, from the top of the page to the bottom, no scroll bars required ( I actually hid the scroll bar with a coloured bar, the same as the background, to hide it). But of course, looking at your screenshot, there is obviously something wrong, so I simply removed the blanking bar and it is now displayed on the site.
This might not be the best solution for a customer to edit his own website, but I was trying to just capture that specific part-of-a-page-of-a-blog to display in that frame. Something must have changed since I did this, as this has been like this for over a year. I am definitely keeping this though, as I do not want to have to edit the site every time this food menu changes.
Many thanks for pointing that out.
I was surprised that no-one was even a little interested in having a method to display a live PowerPoint within a webpage, somewhat blase and underwhelming for you experts I suppose!
I have been looking online for ideas for the mobile version of this website, and I never really found one that inspired me, so I thought my mobile option is quite unique, with the homepage layout, and, very different from the desktop version. I would like feedback on the mobile version, and how to make it better, and maybe someone could point me to an existing pub website that looks really good in their opinion. (I understand looking good, and performing its function is very different, but I also understand that websites also have to look quite good initially, to create a good impression. Even if they have no real structure! (Not my strong point, but I do like using a lot of the functionality of Xara and being able to get something online quickly.) Thanks for your feedback.

Hi Andy,

I can see that you've worked hard on these sites and back in post I said I didn't like the website and I wondered if you'd ask why, but it didn't happen.

No you've asked for feedback, I'll explain why I don't like the website. Others may disagree, and I guess that your customer is happy with what is there.

My main objection is that the site is very cluttered, loads of text, small pictures, loads of graphics, things whizzing in and out and a background changing all of the time. It's hard to know where to look.

For me, a bar/pub/restaurant site should be about establishing atmosphere, be welcoming and inviting and not cramming in small text. As a punter I'm looking for somewhere to have a drink, not a place to read a pamphlet before I make a decision. Most people decide really quick when they visit a site if they will stay or go. The site will benefit from less stuff being in the visitors face and simple focussed messages. The website should be using far fewer bells and whistles.

The Bazil pub site has a real identity crisis. You go the the web page and it's telling you about other bars! It's clearly such a great pub, that you need to be somewhere else. Refer to the other bars, but not so prominently.

There's a changing background. The background is an absolute pain, because the main content is translucent and the background makes it less readable, but worse still it keeps changing, yet the main content obscures it so much it's all but impossible to see what the background is.

The specials. They look very bad on my iPad, they look wrong on my desktop. The top of the specials gives me a cookie notice, little bits are missing from the specials screen ( the slider tells me that, as does tiny bits of orange poking out below the cookie warning). Scrolling down gives me a mess at the bottom.

Less is more. Refine this site to have less text (with plenty of room for the text to breathe), more atmosphere, a clear welcoming message, less gizmos.

In fairness, my quick search for bars in the same area, didn't find one website that I thought was any good!

I really do mean well. Take a look at the examples that Cloud posts.

Paul

http://www.districttaphouse.com/
http://www.69colebrookerow.com/#about
http://www.flutebar.com/location/new-york/ (a bit cluttered, old-style)
http://www.overlooknyc.com/

Thanks Paul, real advice from a pro. I totally agree with everything you say! Less is more, I keep telling myself, but I like to 'play', my bad. I will genuinely look to taking your advice in my next project.
With this specific bar/pub, there are three bars in one place, same owner, same punters, just different atmospheres. So when you walk into Bazil's building, you have three doors to choose, literally like that, left, right and center. So I was trying to convey that, maybe just too jumbled as you say. I will be disabling a lot of the animations now I have finished playing with them. And I will be decreasing text amount and putting it on a more solid background. I will be looking more at the large graphics with parallax scrolling as you sent as example, less text more large graphics.
I am a big fan of everything that Cloud does, his websites are the very best on here, but he does not use Xara for those. But the design and layout will always be a great resource on how a site should look.
With the Specials food menu, I will look at finding a way to tidy it up, maybe embedding a whole page from blogger within an iframe that will look like a notice board, with more than just the daily menu, so it looks like a complete page.
Many thanks for the feedback, it is great when someone in the same field takes time to help others.

I am a big fan of everything that Cloud does, his websites are the very best on here, but he does not use Xara for those.

It matters not what people use to construct a website, you can make similar sites with Xara.

This site shows how a mobile and desktop site should differ. The mobile version has the essentials.

http://www.hollybushhampstead.co.uk/

Here's a side-scroller:

http://www.whistlingshop.com/

Hi Andy, as your thread title relates to Live Power Point presentations and Embedded Blogs I'll restrict myself to commenting on jmainly these points.

PP: For me the Live Power Point dosen't load in FF (v42) just stuck on the loading page. Fine in IE, Chrome & Safari. What's the advantage of using PP? You could equally create the site as a Xara Presentation and load it via an Iframe. The presentation should work equally as well on the bars TV's ???

With the blog I find that the blog is not fitting the window (see screen grab). Perhaps Atom can advise you here?

Finally, as a visitor with no idea that Bazils is three bars in one, a point Paul stated. For all the first time visitor knows they may be in different cities. I've know idea where Appleton is, give visitors a clue, "Appleton, Wisconsin, USA". But more than this try to bring over the point that it's three bars in one.

Egg, how are you? I love your name :P

That's fine, but no kissing with tongues ;)

LOL ;)):-O

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Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

What's the advantage of using PP?

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I think the bar staff can use powerpoint to do the specials menu.

It does make me wonder how the powerpoint gets onto the web server.

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Finally, as a visitor with no idea that Bazils is three bars in one, a point Paul stated. For all the first time visitor knows they may be in different cities. I've know idea where Appleton is, give visitors a clue, "Appleton, Wisconsin, USA". But more than this try to bring over the point that it's three bars in one.

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I think there should be a "gateway" page leading to the three separate bars.

Each bar should showcase itself, but could have a more subtle link to the other two bars.

On Bazil's bar the advertising of the other two bars is just too prominent - Basil's bar is so good you should be somewhere else!

I think that for a bar or restaurant, people need to know:

1) What kind of place it is, what can they expect?
2) Menu,
3) Opening hours,
4) How to get there

1) is what makes people decide to investigate further.

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Originally Posted by pauland

I think there should be a "gateway" page leading to the three separate bars.

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With some graphics (and possibly a bit of text) making it visually very clear that punters (funny word to a non-Brit) can choose between three different experiences.

Absolutely.

In my defence, using the largest text on the home page and making them the the very first words on the website, I state exactly " One Venue, Three Bars, Your Choice" then list the three bars. But I understand if this is not getting the message across. I will look at some less 'in your face' whirlygigs and tighten it all up a bit.
But apart from all the problems you guys have kindly pointed out, I do have one major technical hitch that I cannot fathom, and it will take the best brains on here to help me out. Someone other than my client 'owns' bazilspub dot com < this URL includes an 's' in bazils. The domain I am working with is bazilpub dot com, with no 's'. The owner of the one with 's' arranged a redirect and both spellings should resolve in the website being viewed correctly. However, if a punter ( potential customer) types bazilspub with an 's', the website only shows the nav bar and nothing else works. I suspect it is something to do with the way this site is built, a single page with the others using layers.
I would really like some help to find out what is causing this.
Correctly viewed URL: http://www.bazilpub.com/
Incorrectly displayed URL: http://www.bazilspub.com/

Hi Andy,

No need for any defence and I agree with what you state, but it's obviously not simple for punters to grasp as several folks have raised the matter, so I'd suggest you try to make it easier for your visitors to grasp.

Re the redirect not working I'm almost sure it's due to your menu on the "S" site having incorrect links back to the non "S" site.

For example your MENU page on the non S site is on page link:

http://www.bazilpub.com/#xl_xr_page_menu

But the S site MENU is incorrectly linking to:

http://www.bazilpub.com/index.htm#xl_xr_page_menu

Remove the index.htm element of the link and on the remainder of the menu items ;)

Here's what I might consider as a landing page. No other fancy clutter behind it. Just an Enter button. I think it gets the main point across without being lost in the background clutter. Just a concept of course :)

http://www.parkeston.com/swiffy/brazils.html

I think the Bazils bar URL should be about Bazils bar. If your client wants a gateway, then it should have a separate URL.

As a proprietor I have three bars and I want punters in all of them. Doesn't matter which ones they choose.

As a potential client, I'm looking for a place to spend my time. I can come across any of the bar sites and see if I like the offer (offer, as in offer of a good experience). If I look at Bazils bar, I don't particularly care if the owner has two other bars, even if they are next to each other.

With the holding page I can make a choice and the proprietor can potentially get three bites at the cherry to get people in, but trying to do that off the back of one bar is confusing the offer for that bar.

Egg's example illustrates the principle, but I'd abandon any gizmos. Keep it simple.

Websites like this are about selling, not what you can make a website do. Always think about websites from the perspective of the visitor not just what the client thinks they want to say.