A new site...

Hollowghoul · Post by **Hollowghoul** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 1:44 pm

Spring was still early when I first asked for help here. I was suggested to change my site, for it was confusing and, more generically, ugly.
Now, after having disposed of undelatable affairs, I have tried a new design, maybe a little naive.

May I have your advise?

Ghoul

Faub · Post by **Faub** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 3:25 pm

It's very simple, very consistent. It works, but there's not a lot to it.

Bwerith · Post by **Bwerith** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 6:51 pm

Hmms.

Nice and simple looking, nice font. I think the monochrome colour scheme works pretty well with your greyscale comics.

The animated whatnot on the "email me" icon is cute. Are the "stuff" and "links" icons supposed to do animation too? Because when I hover my mouse over them, there's just one of those "can't find the picture file" thingies.

Do you have an archive page? I didn't see a link to one. Or one of those mini calendars, that might be nice to put somewhere on the page, so people get an idea of your update schedule.

I thought the advertisement was supposed to be on the top of the page instead of the bottom...?

When I resize my browser window to be a little skinnier than what you've set up, the words "Other comics on keenspace..." end up being written right on top of your comic image, which is a bit confusing.

Are you trying to add a .txt file of comments along with your comic? I think something might have gone wrong with that, because right underneath your comic it says:
"This file does not exist.
Ghoul is hosted on ComicGenesis, a free webhosting and site automation service for webcomics."

And then it says "Ghoul is hosted on Keenspace" again at the end of the page. And the ad is displayed twice. So, I'm not sure what's going on there.

All in all, there are a few problems, but they should be perfectly fixable.

Hollowghoul · Post by **Hollowghoul** » Fri Oct 21, 2005 3:20 am

Well, it seems that I have done quite a lot of mistakes...

-Yes, there are three animations in the front page, and I wish to be able to make them work.
-The archive is one of the nice little things I have to do this week.
-I do no think a colorful advertisement like the ones on keenspace would fit very well on the top of the page, so I traslated it on the bottom while I think of a way to display them better.
-I have fixed the frame and now there should be a sort of livejournal.
-The words "Other comics on keenspace..." will disappear as soon as I solve the advertisement problem.

Do you know if the tag ***newsbox*** still works? I can not seem to be able to display banners.

Hollowghoul · Post by **Hollowghoul** » Fri Oct 21, 2005 3:26 am

Well, it seems that I have done quite a lot of mistakes...

-Yes, there are three animations in the front page, and I wish to be able to make them work.
-The archive is one of the nice little things I have to do this week.
-I do no think a colorful advertisement like the ones on keenspace would fit very well on the top of the page, so I traslated it on the bottom while I think of a way to display them better.
-I have fixed the frame and now there should be a sort of livejournal.
-The words "Other comics on keenspace..." will disappear as soon as I solve the advertisement problem.

Do you know if the tag ***newsbox*** still works? I can not seem to be able to display banners.

Blackaby · Post by **Blackaby** » Fri Oct 21, 2005 4:37 am

Haven't read the other comments but someone has prolly covered this, still...

On my screen 1078x758 or whatever those freaking dimentions are... the page is too big on one side. Also there's a freaking huge gap between the end of the comic and the firstt and previous buttons. .

Like the style mind you! Thos things just piss meoff, I hate scrolling in more than one direciton.

Post by **Mercury Hat** » Fri Oct 21, 2005 5:36 am

The newsbox has been disabled while the admins rewrite it.

Hollowghoul · Post by **Hollowghoul** » Fri Oct 21, 2005 10:18 am

Now the site should be thinner. Bear in mind, however, that it is still under construction, and that I will add some other things to it.

In the meantime, are the animations acceptable or are they annoying?

Dark Spider · Post by **Dark Spider** » Fri Oct 21, 2005 11:26 am

Here are some things I saw

-I guess this is because I'm a logical type of guy, but the site seems haphazard to me. The buttons are kind of just thrown anywhere. You have the e-mail button on the left by itself, then on the right side you have the "other stuff" button, the comic caldendar, and then the archives button in that order. Why is the comic calendar sepearating the two buttons like that. You should put all of the site navigation buttons together on one side and the comic calendar not seperating them.

-Isn't it against the TOS for the ad to be at the bottom of the screen? I'm not sure, but I remember reading something like that .

-This isn't about the site, but its about the comic. Your comic has a story to it, but its progressing one event at a time per day. This could be okay if done right, for example, the Spiderman newspaper comic strip (if you've seen it). But your comic isn't doing it right, and thus it seems like its progressing at a snails pace. For example, I have these three strips...

http://ghoul.keenspace.com/d/20050518.html
http://ghoul.keenspace.com/d/20050521.html
http://ghoul.keenspace.com/d/20050523.html

You have that single event spread over 3 comic days it looks like. I don't think that's good because it'll actually frustrate the reader because they'll finish your comic haven't been fulfilled and wanting more. This especially applies to the second comic I have up there. I know if I read that when it was new, I would've been like "WTF, that's it?".

I don't know how to explain this well, but you need to have one comic portray one logical event. For example, in one comic update you can start from the point when the boy realizes that he doesn't remember his name and continue on until the boy and the goat person finish their little fight. That is one logical event...the boy realizes he forgot his name, gets angry and fights the goat person, then the goat person retaliates. I hope I'm making sense.

Other than those things, that's it. I love the overall look of the website, and the comic story is looking good too. I just had a problem with how it was divided up between days like that, that's all.

Swiftbow · Post by **Swiftbow** » Fri Oct 21, 2005 12:08 pm

Interesting story!

My only complaints:
The background looks like it has little scanned artifacts on it. Maybe this isn't the case, but those are exactly the little spots I have to erase every time I scan something. But if that's how you want it to look, that's fine.

The comic loads REALLY slow and some of those animations between comics don't work. The animation problem is evident here:

Code: Select all

<script language="JavaScript1.2" fptype="dynamicanimation" src="file:///C:/Programmi/Microsoft%20Office/OFFICE11/fpclass/animate.js">
</script>

You're linking to a javascript file on your C drive, which doesn't work on the internet. You'll need to subfolder that and change the link. Something like this:
.

Code: Select all

<script language="JavaScript1.2" fptype="dynamicanimation" src="/Scripts/fpclass/animate.js">
</script>

As for the load times, you're hard-linking everything:

Code: Select all

<a href="http://ghoul.keenspace.com/d/20050427.html"><img border="0" name="previous_day" alt="Previous comic" src="http://ghoul.keenspace.com/images/previous_day.gif" width="164" height="67" /></a>

By linking all the way out to "http://" anything, you force the browser to reload everything by finding the site through DNS again, recaching any stored images, etc. Link within your site, like this:

Code: Select all

<a href="/d/20050427.html"><img border="0" name="previous_day" alt="Previous comic" src="/images/previous_day.gif" width="164" height="67"></a>

I'd also recommend sizing your images to 164/67 in your photo program, rather than with the browser. Because shrinking it in code still makes the browser download the big version, and, with that being the case, you might as well put the bigger one out there.

Bwerith · Post by **Bwerith** » Fri Oct 21, 2005 5:48 pm

The little animations seem okay to me. Especially because they only animate when you mouse-over them, so they're not always moving, which can be annoying.

I think I agree that the links to archive, stuff, email, and the little calendar, should all be in a line on just one side of the comic, keeping everything all together in one spot.

I would recommend moving the newsbox space down next to your sitejournal/news frame; it's less crowded down there.

I quite like your sitejournal thingy.

Hollowghoul · Post by **Hollowghoul** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 5:22 am

Well...

-The background is nothing more than the scan of a sheet of dirty, cheap paper not different from those I use for my drawings. The general idea is that the site should resemble the material I use to draw.

-Thanks for the drift about the javascript file: I decided to eliminate it since I do not know how to use it and to adopt a SPAN tag instead. It should be working now.

-I think the hard linking is provided by keenspace. I did not know I could change and, besides, the site works so I think I will postpone the solution of this problem. Again, thanks: I know very little of HTML.

-Fixed the images, or at least I hope so.

-I thought it would have been nice to scatter the links around the site to make them appear like doodles. Maybe I will do it after creating a new, and less desplicable, set of .GIFS.

Thanks for the help, and please do not refrain from posting your opinion: your advices are extremely helpful!

Bwerith · Post by **Bwerith** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 8:39 am

"Scattered doodles" might seem like a nice concept in theory... but most people want site navigation to be really easy to find and obvious, and putting everything in the same easily-found place is one way to do that.

But if you can find a happy medium, then go for it!