That Site AKA “Going Live”
Posted: Mon 24 April, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Own Business, Thinking About..., Web Development, Work-related |12 Comments »OK, well, it’s time to do the deed. I’ve been working on this idea properly for a month now, although the URL has been in my grubby little mitts for a while longer than that.
So. The site is called Wheres Good, and (logically enough) it’s at http://www.wheres-good.com . Nice URL, eh? The basic idea is to build up networks of people reviewing pubs, restaurants, shops, hotels, blah blah, and to then be able to rate other reviews (and users), building up a decent reference model of what’s good, where’s good to go, etc. etc. Along the way, you can set up a “hotlist” of places you want to remember/bookmark, and also set up events and stuff, so in theory blogmeets and so on could be arranged, including where to go, all on one site.
It’s still in beta (hey, like there’s a shock) but should all be working, which is a good start so far as I’m concerned. Anyway, let me know what you think of it…
Not so sure about the hyphen in the URL
Excellent! I think David has a point about the hyphen but the non hyphened one seems to be taken (unless that’s you too?) I started to write a review but had to leave the computer for an hour or so and now can’t seem to log in properly but I’ll definitely come back to finish it and look forward to getting involved.
Design wise – I’m not mad about the banner photo, hate the grey band for the login bar and wish there was more colour but it’s all very usable. Maybe I’m being girly 😉
Nice job!
I like the URL, like the banner, but dislike the prevalent use of grey, and really, REALLY dislike the absence of ‘Ireland’ in the ‘country’ drop-down in the registration form. Grrr! Argh!
Added Ireland.
I might change colour-schemes, but grey seemed to be as good a choice as any. I hated it with pure white – it looked shit.
I might go back and have another look though. We’ll see.
Any other colour-way suggestions?
Not really, apart from ‘not grey’. The grey background is nice, but as long as you don’t go all ‘web 2.0’ and pastel-ey and ‘exciting!’, you should be ok. It’s just the dark grey of the login/menubar that a bit off. I use this to pick colours, it’s quite good.
Cheers for that colour-picker link, you’re right, it’s pretty useful.
I’ve actually gone the other way now, and taken out the background colour on that section completely – be interested to know what you think.
And there’s little to no chance of me going all Web2.0 and pastelly, don’t worry. I’m just also very aware that my colour sense is notoriously shonky (play with the colour switcher here if you don’t believe me!) so I was trying to stay a bit more accessible and people-friendly.
Looks like the grey was still the wrong choice, though. Go, me.
Looks better now alright, but I’d still play around with couple of the colours, and get someone you know who’s a little bit ‘arty’ to lash you a banner together. I thought the original looked alright, but wasn’t ‘relevant’ or something. The “Where?s Good?” logo is good, I like it a lot.
It’s interesting watching a design grow (I was invited to see the site over the weekend). Much prefer the current banner and the grey works nicely. Still think it lacks “structure” but that’s just the way my eye works.
P.S. Looks OK in IE7 (as does your site).
Nice one Lyle.
Err… the ‘edit’ button on my home page doesn’t work (doesn’t look like http://www.wheres-good.com/editreview/11/edit exists?).
It does exist now, matthew – it was one of those pages (like “events”) that needed fixing, and it’s now been sorted.
Mea Culpa
Why not have a banner contest? You’ll get loads of yummy entries and can then base the colour scheme around that. I am such a bloody genius sometimes you know 😉