New Xara Site - this time my own

[slavelle]

So, I've finally gotten around to doing some basic work on my own website, including some music tutorial videos, a few of the tweaks, paypal donation, google ads, etc. It's going to be very much a work in progress, but at least now I've got a working model instead of the hope of eventually uploading it.

Please check it out and let me know your thougts on the design (ignore the zzounds affiliate banners - they are ugly and will be getting replaced with something that at least matches the site, like the adwords.

Here's the site: www.blades85.com

[slavelle]

Hmmm. 92 views and not one comment.

Anyone have an option on the site to offer?

[steve.ledger]

Hi Scott,

I missed this until your bump.

Had a look just now.
Very neatly laid out site, but to be honest too much text to bother reading and frankly nothing to keep me from leaving rather quickly.
I'd suggest less text and add more interesting imagery.
Also I notice that the "Roland TDW20 Expansion Card is Incredible" link doesn't open in a new window like the other front page links.
Hope this isn't too harsh but in view of the subject matter, I think the site could be a lot more exciting

[fabbast]

Hi, I'm new here but been doing graphics for a long time. I hate it when no one says anything about my work either. So here goes (you can brutally cut up my two sites after I cut up yours, I look forward to it) 1) Your site is very clean and sharp looking. 2)Your logo/wordmark is nice but it doesn't tell me immediatly what you do/site is for, and I agree, to many words/feathers and not enough chicken. 3) Some kind of visual or actual movement would help to make it jump at the viewer and if you do that to your section headers or titles you will cause people to react which is what I aim for. Then its up to the substance to keep or build viewership. Hope this helps

[slavelle]

Hey - thanks for the comments.

@Sledger: I'll have to fix that link - I hate to send people off my page (possibly to never return) - though in this case, at least they would be going off to an affiliate page.

Right now, the "meat" of the site is on the Sonar page, where there are currently about 6 screencast videos - apparently not obviously enough - or you maybe never got to that page. Also, I suppose an interest in the subject matter at a deep level would probably help from a content perspective. Some of the things that I describe on the page ARE going to be a bit dry to read unless you are actually interested in the details of that particular thing - such as "Aim Assist" in Sonar - which I'd guess a majority of the general public wouldn't care about Sonar (or even know what it is), much less the particulars about the subtle changes of a particular tool - kind of like a non-graphics person would be bored to tears reading about how much cooler it is to have expandable layers!

In short - I'll have to rework the front page to draw people to the other pages more and on those pages, make more note of the fact that there are vids down there. I'm also currently reworking the page layout so Search engines have a better shot at finding and tracking. Currently, the videos launch as a popup layer on the Sonar page. I'm changing that to have each one go to its own page instead, so I can place some text for SEO and track better at a content level.

@fabbast: Yep - movement - maybe I'll do some Flash on the content dividers so it's more apparent that there are vids on the bottom of the Sonar page, and continue that through the site. I'm not sure that the logo/wordmark is really going to stick around anyway. The blades85.com domain name isn't really the best for this sort of thing, nor do I really want it to appear a "personal" site - rather more company-like. I own some other domain names (onthew3.com for example that doesn't go anywhere useful right now) that will likely take the role and replace the "mark".

Thanks again for your thoughts - I look forward to some other opinoins or commentary on the above-mentioned plans.

[steve.ledger]

Hi Scott,

Yes I saw the SONAR page and tried the video links, but nothing happened so I thought you were probably still working on them?.
For example the Beringer BCF2000 prt1 popup window just sat there without any content loading for over four minutes before I closed it. I'm an an 8Mbit DSL link, so I'm sure something should have loaded by then? What format are you using for the videos?
I did try again and this time I noticed a typo in the popup

Please note: If you are using Vista or Windows 7, you do not need the drivers from the Behringer site. When you plug it in, Windows will automatically detect it. There’s still some other useful informaton in theis video, so don’t just skip it

[slavelle]

Sledger,

are you using Firefox? I've had some issues with a few of the videos in FF on my system. They look like they aren't doing anything, but it's just that the play button doesn't seem to work right. I found that if I hover the mouse to the right of the play button (and sometimes slightly below), the green will light up on the button and you can click there and it will play.

I actually posted another post about this issue in the forum, but didn't get any feedback on it.

In my reworking of splitting the videos out to their own individual pages, the FF play issue goes away as well.

[steve.ledger]

No, I use Google Chrome.
There is no play button.
Same result in IE8, FF3.5 and Opera 10
All I see is the transparent popup with your text lines at the foot. No video player has loaded.

What player are you using?

[slavelle]

Sledger, it's an FLV being launched from a swf. It's the exact same as part 2, so I don't know why it's not working - but it's the same here now. Wierd because this was working except in non-ie browsers.

So...this will be corrected aumatically by the move of the vids to individual pages. I'm also trying some various repackagings of them as different formats as much as possible getting them all to one method instead of the several that I'm using now (due to size of vids and ones that have been with diffrerent restirctions at different times).

Thanks for pointing it out - that's why I ask!

[TXchuck2u]

Since your asking for feedback, I feel it could use some highlight colors dispersed along the way, especially in the opening graphic to help to define elements of the graphic. Since I am not into music creation, I didn't open any page links.

chuckray