Review Request: Dave's Place

DSL
800x600
IE5

I'm not a huge fan of Flash, probably because I now so little about it, but I really liked your site. It loaded quickly and though the overall color scheme is a bit dark, it is still colorful and everything is easy enough to read. I liked your choice of font - it appears a bit futuristic and goes well with the site.

Two little things I did notice:
-In the Lounge you need to correct the spelling of "Discussion" and also "area"
-I would make the Dave's Place logo a clickable link to your homepage. Having the textual "home" link over toward the right when the navigation is on the left made it so it was not immediately apparent.

Very nice site.

Deborah Whipp
acleverpenny.com

do you have two intro screens? the skip intro link didnt work for me on two browsers, or maybe it skipped the first one but not the second.

very slow to load on dialup, it appears to be a nice layout (still hasn't finished loading) but looks very graphic intense. ok now its loaded but wants me to download flash player 6 (nope)

I see by the message (bottom left) it's a display of your work and also a playground which is good otherwise I would of said "just because you can doesnt mean you should ;)"

Have you actually got any text on this site? I noticed you dont have a PR (google page rank), so it might pay to change some of the images for text which would help the load time as well as getting you listed on search engines.

you suggest people send you funny pictures but there is address to send it to, if they go to the contact page they have to write it down, maybe make it a clickable image at least.

you need a home link or as dmwhipp suggested link the main banner.

I don't personaly like the font used for "daves place" but I suppose it has that alien feel. It's a fun site so you can use what you like

Edited thread title according to posting agreement.

This is taking a long time... jeez... it seems to be hanging on me... I'm going to go do something else and come back when it's done...

edit: 7+ minutes and it's still not here ?!?!? What's going on. Will try a different browser...

Okay, works in Mozilla. Opera was just hanging on something.

That intro really isn't bad. However, I'm thinking it should stop when it hits "Dave's Place" rather than repeating continuously. I agree about the font for "Dave's Place" - that's a pretty standard design font you're using there (I remember using it in a mock-up years ago). Look around at font archive sites and try to find something a little more unique.

Now, the big problem I see now that Im into the actual site is that the look and feel here doesn't match the intro at all. I liked the intro because it provided a nice clean, soft feel, but this is completely different. If you're going to have an intro you should make sure it matches the site in terms of look and feel. Think about what the introduction is for - it's just to set the tone for the rest of the site, right? So it should be designed to do that, not to contradict it.

That said, I like the look and feel you've created in the actual site as well. I really like that cave-like effect with the rock textures at the top. It would be tough to decide which look to go with.

You're using graphics in place of text here quite a lot - why? Plain text is much easier to work with, much easier to change, and just makes sense for the medium. Try not to rely on graphics so much. It'll also make your site download a lot faster too.

Another thing that bugs me about this is the repeating animations - those are really distracting and they're preventing me from focusing on the good static graphic you've got here as well. It's giving me a headache.

now that what some excellent advice. I was really thinking of getting rid of that flash movie in the center.
To tell you the truth I didn't know what to put under there, so I put a picture of the month thing, the email link must have passed me by, because I forgot all about that, thanks .
I'm still working on a nice clean intro that fits with the site, I just chucked that one in there for this week.
Again thanks a whole bunch for your expert advice, I will make the proper changes, and maybe you can check out the resultes later.
Dave

I agree that the intro doesn't go with the site, but then I'm not keen on flash intros as I find them a waste of time generally. I also prefer clean, fresh sites and I find yours a bit heavy looking with too much flash. I get a small horizontal scrollbar at 800*600.

If this is meant to be a business site I think it's too personal and you'll need to make some major changes to get it in the search engines.

The link to the lounge brings up a message that the message board does not exist.

Well, for one thing, it's at a fixed width, so it's not going to look very good on high or low resolution screens.

Your site takes quite a while for it to load...I was able to write a program in C++ before I could "use" your site...

I don't think your intro is really needed either, doesn't serve much of a purpose...

I think that the intro is not only suitable, but almost necessary in this case. It seems that the main focus of the site is to show off his flash work, and an intro is a good way to do that. If people are looking to have flash work done intro's are one of the main things they'd be looking for.

Hey, this is new ?!@?! You must be working on this - new intro, but it doesn't stop so I can't get into the site!!

That's better, you've got the right idea. What you need to do now is add something to that "please wait" screen to entertain people while they're waiting. Some sort of animation just so people don't get bored while they're waiting. A cursor trail is another idea that's sometimes used - even better if you can give them something to play with.

Nice graphic work, but please add a link to bypass the flash intro page. Seems a bit slow, but that is to be expected with so many graphics. I looked at it in IE 6.0 and NS 7.01 on Win98SE at 1024x768 over cable connection.

It's entirely up to you but IMO the first flash intro was better. Could be I'm not keen on this one because I don't like clowns and the one you have there looks like it's straight out of a horror movie!! Plus there is an awful long wait for it to not really do very much.

I think you might need a stronger objective for the site, IMO it lacks content because of this. You have an objective for the site, but this seems perhaps a little weak.

What is your target market? How are you going to get the site seen by the masses? If this is a fully fledged business, have you got a Business Plan?

If you work out a better set of objectives for the site the content will not be a problem.
Sorry if this opinion is a little too honest, just telling it how I see it

No problem at all,
I got some ideas floating around in my head. I was thinking instead of so many pages, that I could use the flash thing I have going in the center. Maybe If I make it so that when you press on , for example the links of interest, the content opens up in the flash movie. That way I don't have to worry about filling out the other pages with content.
That way the site will nice and tight so to speek.
Intro, I hate the intro myself, I am almost finished the intro that is supposed to be with the site, this weekend.
Thanks for the comments guys, when I started this idea of selling flash on the side. I didn't know how much work I would have to put into it , it's a good learning process, thats for sure. Thanks for your input. Dave