Burlington Underground Critique

[chordsoflife]

Hey all- mind critiquing another?

 

We're set to launch in probably 2 weeks or so, so I just wanted to make sure it was solid!

 

http://www.new.burlingtonunderground.com/

 

There are some alpha-transparency issues with older versions of IE. I might throw a transparency hack on there, but then again- why give them less motivation to switch?

[sKunKbad]

You ought to try turning off style and images, and see that your page doesn't have much content to get indexed. If you don't care about that, then I guess it doesn't matter, but without organic search ranking, most sites don't do well. Somewhere in the actual text you should state the summary of what the website is. There are artistic ways to accomplish this. The site does look nice, but I just don't think it's going to give you what you really want.

[rarebit]

I have noscript on as default and theres no way to see the 3 day forecast without it. You should be able to do all nav with and without js.

 

Nice site visually though. As to what sKunKbad said, yes you need an intro or something describing what it's all about.

[chordsoflife]

Thanks, definitely important things so far. I'll work that in some how.. I'll have to think about how to not cram it somewhere. Would sticking it in the meta data or a comment or something like that not do anything?

 

I don't know much SEO- I should really read up on it.

[chordsoflife]

Hello hello ello ello llo llo lo lo o o

 

anyone anyone nyone nyone yone yone one one ne ne e e

[dropfaith]

theres seo forums here with some good tips on seo already

[cupidstoejam]

The good, the bad, and the ugly,

 

1. The cork background seems over-powering to me.

2. The staples could look more realistic.

3. Shouldnt a music site have some kind of music player?

 

[nrg_alpha]

Overall, I like it. There are some issues however:

 

- your site doesn't validate.

- When I scale the font size (Ctrl plus +), I notcie two things.. a) your 'filter by venue' dropdown pops over to the left hand side (as it is too big in it's default location), and b) under 'Today's forcast', you must be using a div with an explicit height declared. The result is that text clips when scaled. Best to not set heights in divs so that they can adjust vertically to display all content within them, even with larger font sizes.

- Not sure why the polaroid photo is of a bar graph. Could perhaps use a pic of some band (perhaps a random band image?)

- I agree with the comment about the staples not looking realistic. Grab a digital camera and head over to an actual bulletin board and photograph a sheet stapled to it. Then in photoshop, lift that area off and use it in yours.

 

I do like the look and feel though.

[chordsoflife]

Awesome, thanks for the input- very very helpful.

 

Cupid- Yes, I completely agree. Much more is coming, including user submitted photos, reviews and a live music archive. We're basically just looking to organize Burlington's music scene. Possibilities are endless.

 

Other than that, I'll work on the div thing, and validation is going to be rough. I'm a designer by hobby, profession, and nature, and this is the first site where I'm working hand in hand with a programmer, so finding what I need when it's all split up by PHP is a bigger task than I expected. Validation is something I'm going to try to fix in the background over time after the launch.

 

As far as that bar graph picture- yes, we're going to change that, preferably to our non-existent logo. Anyone got any freelancer recommendations?