The Finish Line is in Sight

The last week has been an intense onslaught of mass writing. For those pages that i don’t complete i’ve found an ‘Under Construction’ design that i can place on the page. This will only go in place of an actual article that hasn’t been written. The buttons running down the side-nav will all link to a content page for that section. The content page will be made up of the titles for each article (each of which will be hyperlinked to the relevant article page) and a brief explanation of what that article is about. The structure of the site shall therefore be complete even if the articles aren’t.

Today i’ve also been fine tuning some of the small details in the design of the site. For example, I’ve noticed inconsistencies in page width around the site. These have been corrected. It was quite a long process trawling through the website and adjusting sizes but i’m now happy that everything is consistent.

Tomorrow i need to write up a critical evaluation, produce a source list, and burn the website onto a couple of CDs.

Progress

As i’ve been adding content to the site over the past week i’ve come across some technical problems. Firstly, i’ve been designing each page of content in Fireworks then inserting that page into a layer on Dreamweaver. I felt that this would make things easier for me as the designer and would limit potential problems that might occur if one were to open the site in a different browser.

As it turns out, this method doesn’t allow me to create hyperlinks and, if i come to edit a page in the future, will make things more difficult than they need to be. So what i have done is remove any copy that was added in Fireworks and instead add it to the page in Dreamweaver.

Something i’ve noticed with the design is that it leaves enough room for only a narrow body of content which can be very restricting. I think the page design is very smart, though, and it works well on http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/index.html.

I’ve been putting together the Interactive section today. There will be three links in this section. A videos link which will have several videos from YouTube that have been imported onto my site by embedding the coding in the appropriate space. Videos include stand-up comedy as well as some more serious and factual videos. There will also be a link to a Cyber-Cocaine article that will analyse what people are searching for on the web these days. The last link will be to an article entitled Facebook Groupies and Cocaine which will actually question whether or not Cocaine groups on the social networking site, Facebook is a good or bad thing. I put this together after reading an article in the Metro about the problem.

Fixing Inconsistencies and Copy Writing

Fixing Inconsistancies

Over the past week i’ve been adding minor details to the general design of the website and adjusting minor inconsistencies between the various pages. Inconsistencies have included such things as font, font size, font position, layer positions and effects. As far as adding detail is concerned, i’ve added borders around certain layers and a feathered effect around others.

Copy Writing

Feature Article: A rough draft has been completed and is ready to be rewritten. It has been entitled “From the Horses Mouth” and is made up of various interesting quotes which have been broken up with a bit of narrative. I’ve tried to contrast the narrative with the phonetics of the interviewee as i thought it would make for a slightly more interesting read.

I also wrote another small feature entitled ‘Barman’s View’ to bring the word count up. I found the information very interesting and not quite what i was expecting.  The Feature articles  can be found in the  Users section.

History Page: The History notes have been put together and are ready to be added to the website. The History section will be divided into five pages -

1. History Home Page – i.e. contents page
2. 16th & 17th Century Page
3. 19th Century Page
4. 20th Century Page
5. 21st Century Page

Links Page: Complete. I’ve added links to Cocaine Anonymous for those who have stumbled across the site looking for help. A link to Frank has been added for those searching for the facts about cocaine and a link to Cocaine Energy Drink was thrown in for those interested in the craze that has been sweeping across the US.

Donations/FAQ/Contact Pages: Complete

Today’s Accomplishments

Today was spent writing up some of the feature article which is coming along quite nicely. I’ve also put together a Donations page which uses an authentic Paypal button to allow the user to submit a donation. I discovered that it was possible to copy the coding for the Paypal Donations Button from the Paypal website and paste it into the relevant section of my website. Here are the instructions. When the user clicks on this, a page from Paypal opens up where they can either enter their Paypal username and password or sign up to the service and post a donation. The user can then feel safe and secure that their money is being handled by an official authority.

Having a Donations page is a bit cheeky, yes, but  there’s no harm in trying. I’ve also put together a Contact page so that people can email suggestions to me and a small FAQ page.

Having difficulties uploading the screenshots but will try again tomorrow.

Buttons

I’ve been messing around with the buttons today to make them look a tad more professional. It’s very tedious work but it’s the little details that sets a professional’s work apart from his peers. Here’s a look at the home page in its current incomplete state.

I created an up state and a rollover state for each button in Fireworks. The difference between the up state and the rollover state is that the rollover state has been italicised and bolded. The border has also been brough in by two pixels. I still feel it needs some slight adjusting, however, and that will require some experimentation.

I found the old blog!

The ‘Round the World Ticket Blog‘ has been found.

Check it out.

Barman Interview

I noticed i haven’t already documented this so here’s another post.

About a week ago i interviewed someone who works behind a bar of a popular club in Essex. Again, he doesn’t want to be identified because of the nature of the interview. I learnt a lot from our discussion and was in fact quite surprised by some of the things he had to say so it should actually make for a good article.

Feature Interview

Great news!

Last night i conducted the feature interview at a quiet pub. It was all very last minute as i’ve been trying to get this interview for some time now but other commitments have made it hard for us to find a time to meet.

He agreed to the interview which took place at a quiet local pub on the condition that i don’t mention his name in the article itself. I asked if i could just use his first name but he refused believing that people would put two and two together when i put in other details (he’s an old school friend) so i accepted his conditional offer and we headed off to the pub.

I chose the pub as a venue for a couple of reasons. One, it’s a mutual ground – no one is a guest in someone’s home and two, a pint or two often gets people relaxed enough to open up. I used my phone to record the interview which was more of a casual conversation between two friends than anything else.

The pub itself was very empty – it was small and only had a couple of other people in it so there was very little background noise. The music wasn’t on loud either. I came across the pub as i was doing my rounds reviewing pubs in the local area and kept it in mind for the interview. It paid off – though the drinks were nasty.

So today i’m going to transfer the interview from my phone to my computer and make a start on the article. I’ve got to review and write up three pubs today so i won’t get much done on the final project but tomorrow i should be able to write a first draft of the Feature .

Article Presentation

One of the biggest problems with putting an article on a website is that a page full of text is very overwhelming and often results in the viewer leaving the site without bothering to read anything even if they’re extremely interested in the topic of discussion. There are loads of sites, however, that have hundreds, if not thousands, of long articles online and have no problems attracting millions of visitors. With a bit of research i think i’ve discovered how they’ve succeeded in not allowing the length of their content to put their visitors off.

Firstly, the article is broken up into small paragraphs each providing a bite size chunk of information. Secondly, each line of text consists of approximately 11 -16 words. This also helps keep each bite size chunk compact.

The text is also broken up with pictures, links, graphics etc. Check out the screenshots below.

New Design

Yesterday i interviewed a contact about the joys of working behind the bar of a popular club in Essex where, in his opinion, the vast majority of clubbers are on cocaine. It was a very interesting interview and i learnt a lot from the conversation so today i’ll write that up.

I know i said i wouldn’t work on the design until i’d completed most of the content but i had to kill time on the train so i decided to develop a new look for the site. The hyperlink navigation bar has been changed and now consists of six buttons and the main body of content has changed from appearing on a white background. It will now fall onto a dark grey background with a white feathered border.

I noticed that the professional looking websites don’t always use solid colours. It’s little details like that that seperate them from the amateur looking sites. Take YouTube for example, it should look quite amateur. Everything lies on a white background and there’s text everywhere but the buttons have been given a fade effect as has the search bar. Digg.com has three different navigation bars at the top of the page – on in blue and the other two in slightly different shades of green. The yellow boxes illustrating how many diggs an article has received has been given the fade to white effect. Play.com, StumbleUpon, BBC.co.uk… they all have a fade effect on some of their buttons or on a banner or somewhere else on the site. This gives the design greater depth and the design a softer feel as it breaks up all the solid colours.

I’ve used these little tricks in the new design and i’ve found it quite astonishing how such a minor alteration can have such a monumental effect. That coupled with a minimal approach to the design has transformed the look of the site from something that looked extremely childish to something with a bit of class and sophistication.

The only thing i might add is that i still feel the top banner needs some sort of refinement and so i’ll have to do a bit of experimenting to find something that sits well at the top of the screen. I’m happy with the image but as a banner it feels like it’s lacking something so i’ll play around with the design and see if it can be improved, otherwise i’m very happy with the new design.