New mac rumors/news website, critique needed

[adrianveidt]

Hi gents, i'm in the process of putting together an Apple inc news/rumor website and thought i'd ask ya'll for some design/functionality tips, i'll be updating content daily and putting alot of effort into good design, but i wanna hear what you guys think of it.

www.eatyourapples.com

many thanks,
Adrian.

 

[125037]

Looks good so far. I mean, it does look a bit amateurish, but you've got to start somewhere because you can't just open up a site and expect it to be a MacRumors . But yeah, good job thus far.

Edit: I'd say maybe go with different headliners. The ribbon is making it look somewhat laymen. But that's just my opinion, others may rather it stay! Good luck with your site, btw.

 

[adrianveidt]

just updated the site after adding a little polish, i'm using squarespace for the wireframe of the site (couldn't be bother to learn html, css, dreamweaver...), made all the graphics using photoshop, i'm thinking of moving the ads to the left side, good idea?

 

[Consultant]

Is there a reason why don't you list the source of your articles?

Taking only articles from Macrumors does't make it a "new" rumors site.

 

[Zanthus]

Hi gents, i'm in the process of putting together an Apple inc news/rumor website and thought i'd ask ya'll for some design/functionality tips, i'll be updating content daily and putting alot of effort into good design, but i wanna hear what you guys think of it.

www.eatyourapples.com

many thanks,
Adrian.

One thing is the bright yellow type face is really hard to read on a i-mac

 

[Darth.Titan]

One thing is the bright yellow type face is really hard to read on a i-mac

Ditto. It's hard to read on a 23 inch matte display on Windows as well.

Look ma, invisible headlines!

 

[adrianveidt]

thanks for the font color heads up! (it looks fine on my laptop, i guess that goes to show screen technology variation) i've tweaked it a little to make it more readable,

also what do you guys think of the website name?
and the banner feels a little wrong, you agree?

(bear in mind this is my very first attempt at anything related to web development, so i am a TOTAL NEWBIE)

oh and how of much of each entry do you think i should show as an excerpt on the home page? it's pretty hard to gauge whether people will wanna click through to read the full article or just scroll past and pick up a few bits of info.

Many many thanks,
Adrian

 

[dpace32]

Hi gents, i'm in the process of putting together an Apple inc news/rumor website and thought i'd ask ya'll for some design/functionality tips, i'll be updating content daily and putting alot of effort into good design, but i wanna hear what you guys think of it.

www.eatyourapples.com

many thanks,
Adrian.

looks good! but also looks like squarespace... dont worry, my projects look like wordpress

 

[adrianveidt]

haha thanks, i plan to continue to tweak the site till it looks half decent, i guess it'll take about 2 weeks to find something i'm happy with (and also to fully comprehend the squarespace controls)

your site looks really interesting!, can i ask you if you make enough revenue of those ads to pay the running costs of the website?

dont answer if you'd rather not, i'm not sure about adsense etiquette...

 

[moneyman118]

ads

How did you get Ads already?

 

[smilinmonki666]

I do like the site, can be a bit slow and slow connections though, but not a biggie.

Another important part, your email address is in text format. Expect spam/ junk. I would use a php contact form with good validation.

Hope that helps dude.

 

[adrianveidt]

How did you get Ads already?

its just google adsense, no big bucks to be had here

I do like the site, can be a bit slow and slow connections though, but not a biggie.

Another important part, your email address is in text format. Expect spam/ junk. I would use a php contact form with good validation.

Hope that helps dude.

thanks for the advice, i truly have no idea about how to implement php, or use validation, but i'm sure google with be my friend. as for the slow loading, i think it was due to me using one HUGE file for the background image, whereas now i'm using a small image that repeats (again, i'm taking baby steps into the web development world!)

i'm thinking about moving the ad skyscraper banner to the left side and putting some navigation controls on the right. good idea?

 

[smilinmonki666]

thanks for the advice, i truly have no idea about how to implement php, or use validation, but i'm sure google with be my friend. as for the slow loading, i think it was due to me using one HUGE file for the background image, whereas now i'm using a small image that repeats (again, i'm taking baby steps into the web development world!)

i'm thinking about moving the ad skyscraper banner to the left side and putting some navigation controls on the right. good idea?

I can send you the php for it if you like. It will have the validation as well. Esau to implement into your site.

 

[adrianveidt]

I can send you the php for it if you like. It will have the validation as well. Esau to implement into your site.

actually i think im good, i was playing around with squarespace and noticed a email entry box, ive added it to my site so i think i'll be fine

many thanks though!
adrian

 

[SuperCachetes]

Just curious... "good design" aside, since it is subjective anyway - why would I visit this site over MacRumors?

 

[Shakko]

I think it looks good.. but would probably fit the bill for a "blog" rather than an informational / news / rumor site like MacRumors / AppleInsider. I think you're off to a great start! I'd also size down the header/logo; its way too large. Let the content stick out!!

 

[Zanthus]

I think it looks good.. but would probably fit the bill for a "blog" rather than an informational / news / rumor site like MacRumors / AppleInsider. I think you're off to a great start! I'd also size down the header/logo; its way too large. Let the content stick out!!

Thats what I was going to ask too, what makes you stand out from MacRumours what would make me want to visit your site instead ?

Too me it seems like most of your info is coming from MacRumours in the first place you don't seem to have a unique selling point

 

[adrianveidt]

Thats what I was going to ask too, what makes you stand out from MacRumours what would make me want to visit your site instead ?

Too me it seems like most of your info is coming from MacRumours in the first place you don't seem to have a unique selling point

I'm not viewing this site as a long term prospect, just getting used to the web development/design software by learning as i go, having said that, i dont know what kind of USP i could have to get me the edge over macrumors...

also, does having navigation controls on the right= a bad design choice?

should they be under the banner?


many thanks

 

[WildGuess]

"MacRumors have found that Verizon iPhone 4 pre-orders..."

MacRumors is singular. So MacRumors has found.....

 

[Cabbit]

The site is way to wide, should be optimised for a minimum of 960px in mind.

Also to echo others there is no compelling content to make me want to go.

 

[kjbrown60]

You've got one big problem - performance. Just looked at your site with Mozilla and it took over a minute to load. I checked at this end by loading from another site at the same time without any trouble. Also, the Google ads on the left are trashy. The rest of the site is OK-ish. You can get away with it if you do something about the performance.

But it doesn't look or feel professional. You won't sell this style.

 

[Coheebuzz]

also, does having navigation controls on the right= a bad design choice?

should they be under the banner?


many thanks

I would much prefer the nav on the top or even the left side. Remember that we humans scan the monitor from left to right because that's how we were conditioned (Arabs work the opposite way). So you should rank your elements by importance and place them accordingly.

Also i am not sure about the alignment of the site, i would prefer it if it was centered. On a large monitor it forces me to turn my head, and also you can see the background repeat on the right side which is not a nice touch.
Did you align the site like that so the navigation is within visible range so to say?.

I won't comment on the graphics as you can tune that later, right now you should focus on getting the UI perfect. Don't try to re-invent the wheel here, see how the big guys are doing it and build on that.

My 2 c.

 

[notjustjay]

also, does having navigation controls on the right= a bad design choice?

I would say yes, because:

The site is way to wide, should be optimised for a minimum of 960px in mind.

My browser is a bit over half the width of a 24" monitor yet when I opened your site, all of the navigation on the right side was cut off. The only way I could get to them was to scroll to the right.

Sorry, but everything seems too big to me.

 

[adrianveidt]

I would say yes, because:



My browser is a bit over half the width of a 24" monitor yet when I opened your site, all of the navigation on the right side was cut off. The only way I could get to them was to scroll to the right.

Sorry, but everything seems too big to me.

Hey no worries, i plan to implement under-banner-navigation as soon as i make some good graphics for it in photoshop, i think i'll keep the ads on the left, i've just got to figure out how to auto-centre everything on squarespace...

does anyone know how to make squarespace Centre all the content as opposed to having my content align on the let side?

 

[macking104]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

1) articles are same as MacRumors... Why would I want to visit?
2) article titles run off edge, yellow text is difficult to read.
3) grammatical errors a plenty.