need a comparison review

[Nomad]

need a comparison review covering a;; resolutions of a site.

current site is here http://www.corkandcounty.ie

and the replacement I am proposing (Please bear in mind this is only a basic demo)
http://www.blogireland.ie/corkandcounty

As I say I'm looking for the full works resolution, design, usability, overall look etc..

be as harsh as you like guy's

[motorwatchercounter]

Hi Nomad,

I like the second version. A couple of points.

The heading works good but with the logo (which I think is great) and the Adsense it takes up half the page.
Try losing the calender on the left menu and if the breaking news is a feed reduce the number returned. The left column is too long basically.

The colours work fine for me.

[JWJ]

A nice clean design with a very professional look to it. I like it though I agree with MWC's comments.

I understand why you want to have the Adsense prominent, but it does push your main content into the bottom half of the screen. I've never used or considered Adsense so I have no idea of the importance of it's placement, but would it be a serious drawback to put the ads below the main content?

The left column is too long. I tried the Calendar. Advancing it from June to July made the screen refresh and I was back at the top but without any articles. I appreciate this may be work-in-progress. Is there anyway you can insert a bookmark (or similar) so that when the screen refreshes it is still showing the Calendar. If not then it may be more frustrating than beneficial for your visitors. Moving it over to the right, possibly at the top of the right column might resolve both the refresh and the long column issues.

The only other comment I have is with regards to the section headings ... Main Section, Search, Recently, etc. These, in my personal opinion, do not stand out as well as they might, especially on the right. Consider a very light background to them. A lighter shade of the colour in your logo would work ... something like #FEEBCE, or an even lighter #FFF7EB. Just a thought.

[jonra01]

Looks really nice.

I agree about the calendar. Wouldn't it be more appropriate on the right side near the link to the archives?

I don't agree with reducing the number of breaking news stories. There are only 4 of them. Maybe, you could reduce the top and bottom margins for those to squeeze them a little closer together.

The text in the content area is really small in Mozilla. A 10px font setting is quite small for most people. The default size is closer to 14px, so you are reducing it by 40%. My personal preferences are to set it at 0.8em - 0.9em. That's just me, of course. Other people have different preferences - some smaller and some larger.

John

[Sharron]

As I said before I love it, with or without the calendar.

You could go up one point or so on the text size, but and I mean but, the main reason I like the page is the clean look to it. I think that look is acheived by the white space that is not occupied by big text.

Comparatively speaking the original site is very crowded, because the text is so big. That is my humble opinion. I like the fonts on your page too.

Can you change the text color and size on the google ads? It appears at this point in time that those ads have precidence over the page contents, because they are in black and larger/

That is all, smile smile

[Nomad]

thanks for the comments guys - hmm yeah, I've been looking at the calender as a no no at the moment. It works in conjunction with the Archiving side of things so I'm thinking of excluding it for now.
As articles are added though - it should start balancing the left and right sides of the new site. The news feed I can do little about apart from some styling via css, so I'll look at that. I've noticed that font size looked of in higher resolutions but wanted to get ideas/thoughts on it first.

The prominance of the google adds currently is due to it being a demo. As I input more stuff to it - I'll reduce that with a less prominant feel or maybe drop them to the footer. I have other ppc's to add yet such as ebay.ie links - When they sort out the stupid referall program - currantly they have it pointing to ebay.co.uk, which is no good for Irish based users and as this will be a predominantly Irish user base site it makes sence to send them to ebay.ie not ebay.co.uk. It really annoys me that Ireland get's lumoed with the U.K.

(No offence to our British user btw)

BUT! EBAY CONTROL? HALLO? 'WE ARE NOT PART OF BRITAIN OR THE U.K. - GET IT?'

sorry to have a moan - but it's blooming annoying lol

Anyway - thanks again guy's.

hmm wonders if you would be upto doing a rating out of 10 for both sites under these aspects

Resolution -
Usability -
Design/Layout -
Navigation -
Professionalism

Results will be shown to the site owner. but to explain briefly, this was a contract of mine from last year. It fell by the wayside due to lack of content supply - i.e. as you know - no content from client = no site. I then came across the corkandcounty.ie site week before last and as you would imagine I was to say the least slightly pee'd off. I mean, it's a very poorly put together dreamweaver 6 template for crying out loud!

Anyway, the site owner signed a contract for that site so when I contacted her (nicely) and reminded her she said to put her a demo together. That is the basic core of the demo. She also promised (Yet again) to send two cd's of content - that was 10 days ago.

I'm afraid it's gonna be a solicitor referall next as that is a big contract, not only in terms of advertising revenue but also Administrative fees (50euro pr week/200 pr mnth) + 50% of any PPC advertising. Over a year a site like that should in PPC advertising make at least a minimum of 10k+.

Anyway, thats the long and short of why I need the comparitive review. If I don't hear from her by end of this week - I'll oblige with one final e-mail and then just hand it over to my solicitor for breach of contract. Don't really want to do that but - Thats business as they say...

[motorwatchercounter]

Here is the vote from the motorwatcher jury for the NEW site.

Resolution - 9
Usability - Hard to tell
Design/Layout - 9
Navigation - Hard to tell
Professionalism - 9

Oh yes your comment about the British "BUT! EBAY CONTROL? HALLO? 'WE ARE NOT PART OF BRITAIN OR THE U.K. - GET IT?"

You are right. We couldn't produce a decent Guinness. Not the same here. Remember Plato said "It was a wise man who invented beer"

[Nomad]

Plato said "It was a wise man who invented beer"

*ShokC* Ah fer sure laddie - te owld black shtuff is not beer - tis stout me boy - dang there go's our chance at being intellectual again - Cheers Lad *Clink of teh glasses and drinks up * - Hic

[motorwatchercounter]

Beamish and Murphys are stout. Guinness is Guinness, no comparison in my book. T' b shure.

[Nomad]

Originally Posted by motorwatchercounter

Beamish and Murphys are stout. Guinness is Guinness, no comparison in my book. T' b shure.

heh - pretenders 't throne lol