Looking for website feedback...
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From: Twin Cities, MN
Looking for website feedback... My wife and I have been working on a new website for our local (MN) camaro club, and we have it shadow hosted right now. This is a non-advertising site, and is fully funded by the club. The address of the new site is:
www.northstarcamaroclub.net
The site is still undergoing development, and is a major change for us, particularly the changes in security.
We are wondering if any of you would take a peek at what we have done so far and give us some un-biased feedback. Seems we can't get any constructive opinions from any of the club members. The store is not functional yet, and there are several areas of the website that require registration to view. We are not registering anyone to the main site yet, but I decided to enable registration on the forum while we fine tune it. Pleasse feel free to register and play around with it, just note anything that doesn't work, or seems odd. We have been testing for several weeks now, and have most of the really weird stuff worked out, and I just went through and cleaned it all out today. Any constructive opinions / advice welcomed!
Thanks!!!
www.northstarcamaroclub.net
The site is still undergoing development, and is a major change for us, particularly the changes in security.
We are wondering if any of you would take a peek at what we have done so far and give us some un-biased feedback. Seems we can't get any constructive opinions from any of the club members. The store is not functional yet, and there are several areas of the website that require registration to view. We are not registering anyone to the main site yet, but I decided to enable registration on the forum while we fine tune it. Pleasse feel free to register and play around with it, just note anything that doesn't work, or seems odd. We have been testing for several weeks now, and have most of the really weird stuff worked out, and I just went through and cleaned it all out today. Any constructive opinions / advice welcomed!
Thanks!!!
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From: Twin Cities, MN
The top banner is actually just a placeholder while the artsy guy works up something decent. It is just a quick Visio throw together. There has been a lot of discussion as to what it should look like. It was just a white rectangle for a while, so I wipped that up to at least have something there. Kinda frustrating.
Thanks for taking a peek!
Thanks for taking a peek!
I think it looks good, the only thing is the top menu, theres only 2 things with drop downs (3 total)... is the website going to get that big that u need to have drop downs? and until that time i would hold off on them
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Please give me an example of sites you feel look modern, and I will see what aspects of them i can use. The site is still growing and changing, and the skin we are using right now was priced right (FREE!). We have built the site up based on open source code, and have just under $70 invested. The platform is easy enough to use, but does have some limitations. We are looking for a better weather module and do have the artsy fartsy guy working on getting us more attractive banners and whatnot. More concerned with functionality and usefullness right now. Things like getting the map working right and fine tuning the forum. The old site gets very little traffic, so we are trying to provide a few more features for our members. There are a few sections for members only that fill up the rest of the menu bar, which is why there are dropdowns. Still trying to figure out the store portal, that has been a bit complicated for us since we haven't a clue what we are doing. Have not found a great solution for club video yet, but am pretty happy with the slideshows we are using for the members cars and the past events. Thanks for any suggestions!
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Okay, I implemented some of your suggestions, the navigation changes being the most major. Note that the current banner is still just a hoke-up, the design of the new one has been held up in committee (also known as a lot of bickering). I am still working on making everything faster to load, but the ASP.NET is a tad slower than a static page. I think I can get it at least 25% faster than it is though. The new color scheme is also a lot easier to read. Let me know what you think....
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whats suppose to happen when you click on the calender date thats linked? cause when i click on it, the calender just disappears? it just says return, probably need to just put a default value in ur db of like nothing scheduled, i see you do have that for march 11.
EDIT: http://www.northstarcamaroclub.net/C...7/Default.aspx
the calender on the sidebar im referring to
Another thing i would just display whats going on above it, dont remove the calender becuase its tedious to keep clicking "return" to see another date, or instead just have it say scheduled events and have a list there of the events going on. Otherwise it does look better.
What kinda idea do you have for the header, let me know maybe i can mock something up for u quick.
EDIT: http://www.northstarcamaroclub.net/C...7/Default.aspx
the calender on the sidebar im referring to
Another thing i would just display whats going on above it, dont remove the calender becuase its tedious to keep clicking "return" to see another date, or instead just have it say scheduled events and have a list there of the events going on. Otherwise it does look better.
What kinda idea do you have for the header, let me know maybe i can mock something up for u quick.
Last edited by bbplayer133; Mar 28, 2008 at 10:46 AM. Reason: added comment
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From: Twin Cities, MN
Wow, hadn't noticed that about the little events modules! Good find. I will look into how we get them working. They are referenced to the Schedule page, and are SUPPOSED to show the event when you click on them on any page.
As for the header, it depends on which officer in the club you talk to. I like the idea of using a few member photos like we have mocked up now, but I do kinda understand the arguement a few others have raised. Some sensitive members could feel shorted if their car isn't one of the ones displayed in the banner. The ones up there now are selected at random, but are sure to get a few hotheads fired up. Most everyone likes what we are seeing on other forums basing the banners on the new Camaro, and I am not against that per se, but everyone has done it. Our club logo (which is under consideration right now) has a generic 67 and a generic 02 in it, but is rather outdated. Something a few officers would like to see is a banner that has generic examples of every generation, plus the new convertible. I appreciate your offer to help, and we do actually have an art director that is supposed to do that stuff in PhotoShop, but he won't start on it until everyone agrees what to have him do. Can't believe that this is the hardest part of the new website....
As for the header, it depends on which officer in the club you talk to. I like the idea of using a few member photos like we have mocked up now, but I do kinda understand the arguement a few others have raised. Some sensitive members could feel shorted if their car isn't one of the ones displayed in the banner. The ones up there now are selected at random, but are sure to get a few hotheads fired up. Most everyone likes what we are seeing on other forums basing the banners on the new Camaro, and I am not against that per se, but everyone has done it. Our club logo (which is under consideration right now) has a generic 67 and a generic 02 in it, but is rather outdated. Something a few officers would like to see is a banner that has generic examples of every generation, plus the new convertible. I appreciate your offer to help, and we do actually have an art director that is supposed to do that stuff in PhotoShop, but he won't start on it until everyone agrees what to have him do. Can't believe that this is the hardest part of the new website....
Last edited by 67rsss; Mar 28, 2008 at 11:31 AM.