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General Talk: Critique my new website - DaisySpace.com

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    After much technical discussion in this thread, I'm ready to release DaisySpace.com to the public. What is DaisySpace? Glad you asked!

    From http://daisyspace.com/about.phpHi, I'm DaisySpace.

    Let me introduce myself: I'm a free service for non-profit organisations and small businesses to create their own website. People like you can register their organisation or business with DaisySpace, and create a professional-looking online presence.

    Once you're registered, it's a snap to customize your website. Type in the content you want, just like any word processing software. You can also add links, pictures, and tables to your website's pages. To see this in action, you can watch the DaisySpace video tutorials. You can even make some pages password-protected!

    I want to be the easiest web service you've ever used. You don't need to know a single thing about programming or design to create your very own DaisySpace website. When you register, you'll get a website - yourname.daisyspace.com - that's instantly editable to your heart's content. If you have any questions or comments, we'd love to hear from you.

    I'd love to hear the Community's feedback on this new site. Whether pertaining to design, backend, wording, accessibility... any suggestions and constructive criticism would be great!

    DaisySpace.com
    • CommentAuthorgillweb
    • CommentTimeAug 9th 2008
     
    Very nice design. Very nice concept. I wish you great luck with it!!! ;-)

    Are you using a custom built script written for that site or something open source?
    • CommentAuthorfernbap
    • CommentTimeAug 9th 2008
     
    Great design!
    The script is fantastic too wink
    Really, looks very nice
    Bakies for you bakie
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      CommentAuthoracousticsam
    • CommentTimeAug 9th 2008 edited by acousticsam on the 09th August 2008 at 22:29:50 EDT
     
    Posted By: fernbapThe script is fantastic too wink
    You should know, you wrote it smile

    @gillweb, I'm using a modified version of fernbap's LightNEasy CMS for the backend.

    FYI, I got the design from here, it's a template by FreeCssTemplates.
    And the daisy logo is from BittBox.
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      CommentAuthorSean
    • CommentTimeAug 9th 2008 edited by Sean on the 09th August 2008 at 23:46:37 EDT
     
    @acousticsam: Very cool project. I'm sure you'll get a lot of users on it.

    I was looking at your gallery of available design layouts for people to use as website templates and some of them are from Open Design members.

    Do you get credit links to those designers in the final website put up by you/a user of your site? I did see your credit/thanks link to OD, so thank you for that bigsmile

    Good luck with your project.
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      CommentAuthorSean
    • CommentTimeAug 9th 2008
     
    P.S. If you want to help your site's SEO, register your domain for at least 2 years. Right now it's only registered for 1 year and being a brand new domain, search engines will not give you the best rank for much longer of a time period.
    • CommentAuthorfernbap
    • CommentTimeAug 10th 2008
     
    Just a suggestion: perhaps you could add a community forum for the site owners to share their experience.
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    @Sean: The LightNEasy CMS came with a bunch of templates, so those are the only ones up there right now. I haven't ported any other designs yet, but it seems pretty easy. If the design has a credit link, that will stay on the client's final site. (And no problem about the link to TODC. It's got to help my search engine rankings, doesn't it?)

    @fernbap: great idea! I'll see how much free time I have before I need to head back to school...
    • CommentAuthorseptor
    • CommentTimeAug 11th 2008
     
    Tutorial video is too big for that tiny box.
    • CommentAuthorXSQueen
    • CommentTimeAug 11th 2008
     
    Just out of curiosity, Sam, what is the source of the "Daisyspace" name? I ask because it sounds a tad feminine (there is a ladies' shaver here in the US known as "daisy" razors and they are a bright pink and very girly, perhaps there is a different connotation in the UK for the term Daisy?)

    Its also a possibility that potential users may be put off a bit by the name in their potential small business url (I guess it depends on the business). The design and CMS backend is lovely and seems to be very smooth, I am just wondering about the name and the potential impact it could have. Just my two cents worth ;)
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    When I read "DaisySpace" my first thought was Daisy – the CMS.
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    Posted By: septorTutorial video is too big for that tiny box.
    Hehe, yeah... the screencast program I'm running won't let me resize the SWFs it creates. I'm now using a trial version of SnapzProX, which should work fine. Videos are going up soon!


    @XSQueen & Chris:

    The name's definitely open to discussion... I suppose I shouldn't have registered the domain already but oh well. If I decide I really need to change it, I will.

    I had never heard of Daisy the CMS before... I'm surprised because I took a look at many many different ones before settling on LightNEasy.

    The name DaisySpace reflects on the fact that it's a service for people to "grow" their online presence, and their website is a space to facilitate that growth. The whole point is to strengthen the client's relationship with the public, get their name out there, and (for the businesses) keep up with the big corporations in terms of customer convenience.

    The aim is fiscal growth, growth in public awareness, growth in customer relationships, and growth in the public's trust of the organisation/business, through the use of a professional-looking online presence. So, I thought that some sort of plant metaphor would be appropriate to represent all that growth.

    Maybe it is a little feminine... I live in Canada, and the word "Daisy" has the same connotations as in the States. But I think the name does have a nice ring to it...
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    OK, I've updated the tutorials page with a video that actually works. Problem is, I think the video looks too small. What should I do: get rid of the sidebar and expand the video to the full width of the webpage, or put the video in a lightbox?
    • CommentAuthorXSQueen
    • CommentTimeAug 12th 2008
     
    @Sam: I figured it had something to do with simple or growing (a daisy is considered a very simple and innocent flower ;) ... the folks at "LetsEat.at" had a great idea as a name ... How about something like "GoodToGrow.in or .at" ??? Sort of a play on "good to go" and growing ...
    • CommentAuthorseptor
    • CommentTimeAug 13th 2008
     
    Make the tutorial page not have the side bar. If your video is good it (didn't watch it past a few seconds) will include all the information you have in the side bar anyways. I'd steer away from the lightbox idea. It may be confusing for people.

    Also, video looks much better now (though as you said it's a bit small).
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    Thanks septor, I was leaning towards the no-sidebar decision but it's good to have someone else to back me up. The videos are quicktime now (.m4v) instead of flash, and they're 640px wide.

    I think I'll put a horizontal nav below the page header to replace the list of videos on the sidebar.

    Any more comments?
    • CommentAuthorseptor
    • CommentTimeAug 17th 2008
     
    Can't comment any further. Your site is down.
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    It's back up now smile

    I must've been editing it at the time...
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      CommentAuthoruberlemurguy
    • CommentTimeAug 18th 2008 edited by uberlemurguy on the 18th August 2008 at 17:33:50 EDT
     
    your site is being quite slow. any reason? also one of the design's image is gone cry.

    also NO quicktime (very slow to load on my machine and I have a 9800GTX and 3.2GHZ dual core processor) use FLV (conversion with mediacoder if need be) and use JW FLV Player to play it (http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=JW_FLV_Player). It has all the things you want for playing videos, also I think that lightbox (but maybe litebox instead) would be better because it adds some cool professionalism to it.
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    Alec: Which design is missing an image? They all show up fine for me.

    As for the videos... You're right, I should use flash. I just used Quicktime because it's the only format that iMovie '08 exports to. I'm on a Mac though, so MediaCoder won't work for conversion. Do you know of any good conversion tools that work with Leopard? I was thinking that Automator might be able to do it, but I haven't had any luck.

    Litebox only supports images, unfortunately. And, I don't really feel like implementing a big scriptaculous/prototype lightbox to support flash video. But JW FLV Player is great, I've used it before.
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    I finally found a free program for Mac that converts to FLV (among many other video types). It's ffmpegX, an awesome shareware app. In case there are any other Mac users out there looking to convert/resize video, it's an excellent program.

    Seeing as I've got flash video now, the video tutorials on DaisySpace have been changed to FLVs, and I'm using the JW FLV Player. Yay!

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