Lights... Camera... ACTION!

They have: 84 posts

Joined: Jun 2001

Hello, this is my first post here, as I've been scouring the web, looking for a webmaster forum - looks like I've finally found a great one!

I'd be very appreciative if you could critique my site Movie Vault, located at www.movie-vault.com.

We currently have 295 reviews, and more reviews are added each day. I've created a 'staff' area, which is run off various custom Perl scripts I've written for my writers to easily submit their reviews, edit them, etc.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to critique my site.

Tyler Cruz

Tyler Cruz

The Webmistress's picture

She has: 5,586 posts

Joined: Feb 2001

Welcome aboard m0dulus.

Firts look at the site, not too bad but rather at lot on the first page that you have to scroll for ever to get to the bottom of!

I have a proper look at it later but in the meantime we do ask that before your site is critiqued that you yourself give your opinions to at least three other sites and you have plenty to choose from in this forum. You will recieve lots of help & advise on your site but looking at what others are doing will also be of great benefit to you.

Thanks

Julia - if life was meant to be easy Michael Angelo would have painted the floor....

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

I've got some burning ideas for this one so I'm not going to wait until the author reviews his 3 sites (and I'm bored at work too... killing time before the weekend Smiling).

I was looking at your site and thinking that the colour scheme is rather dull. Then I saw that Charlie's Angel's poster on the right there and thought that would be a really good idea for a colour scheme. White background still, but add in some black, hot pink, orange and bright yellow. I was thinking that your tabs along the top are very blah looking - they're not even very noticeable up there. If those were done more like Amazon's in the colours I mentioned it could look really good (or not... ). You're probably going to want to market this towards a younger audience (teens and 20-somethings, given your writing style), so a brighter colour scheme would be effective.

Also, since the tabs are so unnoticable, the left side menu is more prominent, but it doesn't have much that's directly related to your site topic - it's all the extra's. I'm wondering where the reviews are.

So finally I see the tabs up there and click on the Archive. I'm really wishing that there were alternative ways to view this. How about offering several ways to view the archive - alphabetically, by rating (so I can just look for stuff that's going to be good), release date (maybe organize by where you'd be likely to find them - in theatres, new releases on video, older movies), and by genre. That would really make it easy for people to find what they're looking for.

The Scratch Flicks kind of caught my interest - I had no idea what it was so I just clicked out of interest. I take it that's your own production company? That's kind of a good trick - not explaining what it is so people click out of curiosity.

Couple more things - watch your spelling and grammar (at least plug that text into a word processor and run a spell check before you post it. It really should be proof-read thoroughly though). Also, on your staff list, post the full names of people not first names or nicknames or whatever - it'll look more proffessional.

Quote: Hello, this is my first post here, as I've been scouring the web, looking for a webmaster forum - looks like I've finally found a great one!

Oh, you have Wink I hope you enjoy it here !

Hey, Film Sorcer lives in the same city as me!

They have: 84 posts

Joined: Jun 2001

I've actually critiqued 3 websites now Smiling

Okay, thanks for your ideas and suggestions. Unfortunately I've dug myself into a hole; By changing the color scheme of the site, I'd have to begin from scratch, as I don't have a database on my webhost, and thus kept the template and 'glued' the links on the left and right, etc, with SSI.

Not having a database also makes it difficult to do that archive sorting you suggested which is a good idea..

I don't add the reviews myself, but my staff do - I coded some Perl scripts for them to add the review automaticall themselves, and then it updates the entire site, and adds itself to their profile and the archive.. etc.

If you have a solution other than me starting from scratch I'd like to hear it, thanks a lot

Tyler Cruz

Tyler Cruz

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