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New website feedback
Posted December 26th, 2008 by Dominik Lukes
Now that the new website beta has been on for a little while and we've heard good initial comments, it might be time to start to think about tweaks and improvements before we launch it live. In particular, comments regarding the following are welcome:
- color scheme of the front page (it is a bit grey)
- layout of the programme pages, presenter profiles
- ease of use and clarity of help texts
- additional functionality for volunteers and/or listeners
- anything else that comes to mind
For those knowledgeable of CSS/HTML/PHP/JavaScript, specific suggestions of code are welcome, for those simply interested in making the site better, any comments from a users' perspective are just as useful.
You can simply comment below or if you'd like to participate in an ongoing discussion about the direction of the website (a never ending process) and keep in touch with other of like mind, you can join the Future Radio Website Development group. The website was built using the Open Source content management system Drupal in case you're interested in finding out more about the background.
Me and Bensley are having a play... The buddylist...is there a point to it? And how do you add buddies? Sorry if this is not that important an issue, but we should probably iron it all out...
Terry
It is an experimental feature at the moment to approximate the creation of friends like on Facebook. But it's not working properly at the moment and may disappear before we launch live. Thanks for noticing it. If it's a feature people want we can pay more attention to it.
Hello all!
Feedback i've got is that the top right corner is a bit clustered and unclear - the whole 'listen on 96.9fm...' bit is a bit wordy. All we need is a 'LISTEN NOW' link, with a pic too perhaps. And maybe make all the stuff under 'join us on air' a bit bigger...
Terry Lee - Head of Recycling Paper
Good point. Although, the picture is now more prominent than on the old website (if surrounded by more text). Any suggestions from aspiring graphic designers out there? Ideally, we'll probably want a single graphic there and move the webcam and messenger links to replace the MySpace, Facebook, YouTube links. Not sure where those would go, though. Perhaps under contact? Any ideas?
'If things don't change they'll stay as they are', all this change this change that is worse than when my daughter was picking out her wedding dress, the site looks great as it is. Regards as always TC
When designing websites it is quite often a good idea to try some things out before it is launched, and that is what this beta version is for. I think that the orange conflicts with the black and white, and needs to fit better into the site, so all we are doing is trying a few different ideas to see how it looks. Weather the site looks good as it is or not is partly a matter of opinion. It is a bit like the fact that a lot of people like Take That, but I don't, however that is just a matter of opinion.
Me Again xD
Just to say that I saw this on Brickhams page;
http://www.sendspace.com/file/5dl27x
Also, when I log in there is no obvious way to get to my profile to edit it; I have to go to another user then change the URL in the address bar at the top changing the username on the end to mine, thats not very user friendly?
(so I can achieve http://beta.futureradio.co.uk/people/standard)
Also when I go to "Personal Files" (as I though I could upload my screen shots there) I am simply shown a large empty grey/white ares that says my directory is empty? I can't do anything like Drag 'N Drop a file, its just an emtpy space?
http://www.sendspace.com/file/vwogrw
Is "Dominik Lukeš" a seperate entity to Future Radio?
http://beta.futureradio.co.uk/blog/dominiklukes/2008/december/26/futureradiosunofficialnewyearsmessage
"New Year message from Future Radio and Dominik Lukeš"
On this page;
http://beta.futureradio.co.uk/news/2008/december/22/christmas
All the links at the bottom about the peoples play list, schedule and "details on all the shows", all point to the original website?
This link is broken;
http://beta.futureradio.co.uk/djssiteguide
It was linked here http://beta.futureradio.co.uk/usersguideforthenewfutureradiowebsite
Missing pictures;
http://beta.futureradio.co.uk/coporatetraining
http://www.sendspace.com/file/vuirr6
Listen Live - http://beta.futureradio.co.uk/listenlive
"Click on the logo below to download the free player", what logo?
On the advertise with Future Raido page - http://beta.futureradio.co.uk/advertisesponsor
Some non-stanard characters have been used next to the word council
http://www.sendspace.com/file/uy2o5v
I do hope I haven't come over as annoying Future, I am simply trying to help and spot the simple mistakes you might over look. I know what it's like devloping, you often miss the little things because you are so used to looking it day-in day-out.
Still a good site though xD
Thanks for the comments. Tom answered most of them but the first one re picture on Brikham's page. It was the result of a config error which has now been fixed. Thanks.
Hello there!
Firstly, many thanks for the in depth feedback and for getting involved with the new site, good to read through all your points.
In response to a few of them, we hadn't actually had a chance to 'assign' you a role on the site before your posts - all people who join the site need to have a role assigned (e.g. DJ, staff, listener etc) to allow access to certain areas/functionality of the site - we've now done this for your profile so you should be able to access things that perhaps you tried to use immediately and weren't user friendly.
You should now be able to access the 'Dashboard' in the top left sidebar, which should give you easy access to your profile page and how to edit it. The personal files section isn't really something to worry about and isn't for uploading screen shots etc, it would show any files you've uploaded but this access hasn't been setup for everyone at present.
Dominik is a volunteer at Future Radio and a webmaster on the site, the post was a Xmas message from him via the Future site.
As for other links, pictures etc - it's not that we haven't noticed these, it's just that we haven't had a chance to get to them just yet as we work through our 'to do lists'. The beta site is far from being finished and won't be launched until late January probably which should give us time to ammend the more minor areas such as links, missing images etc - thanks for alerting us to some specific examples though as we can address these first!
All the best and thanks again!
Tom
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