talkmagic.co.uk

*********site launched* 17/10/10 *************
Thanks for all the feedback below...
The site is up and looking much better now. Got rid of the annoying hovers and simplified the layouts.

Anyone wanting to enter their details please login as 'newuser' (no password) then follow the instructions.
*******************************************

I was looking for a better email address and decided to purchase the www.magic4charity.co.uk domain.

Apart from using the site for my email address I decided it would be a good idea to set up a website to promote other magicians who offer discounts for charities or who perform solely for charity. The website is almost ready to launch perhaps sometime in the next couple of weeks (you will see a couple of loose ends and rough corners)

I would love to hear your feedback on the design and the concept of the site.

This site is not a commercial venture, it is simply a directory of UK magicians who donate some time or some of their fees to help charities.

I have not been a computer programmer for many years so I had great fun learning html, css, php and sql.

I think its looking OK but I really need your constructive criticism.


Thanks.

Great idea, and looking good.

bmat wrote:Great idea, and looking good.

Thanks.
If the UK site works well then it would be an easy task to produce a USA version. I'll keep that idea on a back burner for a while.

I LOVE the idea, though I'm not in love with the site as it is... that main display in the middle just doesn't look very thought out or designed.

Personally, looking from the non-magician end users point of view I'd rather see a few quality paragraphs of text and one or two inset photos of magicians working a charity gig. Leave the search results for when they actually search and display them simply in a table/list.

Do LOVE the idea though

Van_der_Belt wrote:I LOVE the idea, though I'm not in love with the site as it is... that main display in the middle just doesn't look very thought out or designed.

Personally, looking from the non-magician end users point of view I'd rather see a few quality paragraphs of text and one or two inset photos of magicians working a charity gig. Leave the search results for when they actually search and display them simply in a table/list.

Do LOVE the idea though

I started off with some simple lists, but the programmer in me took over !

The playing cards look good on a large screen but when it gets down to a 1024 x 768 resolution (and 60% of users use that size) its starting to look a bit crowded and I am not so sure it works visually. Also I make a lot of use of hover and IE6, although obsolute, does not support hover.

I might try a second design with your suggestion and see which design is best.

If you're doing a charity related site, you need to think more than usual about accessibility, as a greater percentage of people who will visit your site will be disabled in some form

There's a couple of accessibility related stuff that springs to mind - namely showing important data on a hover state (the hover state assumes that the visiter is using a mouse) and the sudden appearance of information (and disappearance of other information) when you move your mouse in a particular area of the site will confuse visitors, especially if they're using screen magnification software

(Not to mention that the code you've used to perform the hover thing isn't very elegant)

Sorry to say it, but I think you need to rethink the design. And I think you need to do some user testing on it

I love the idea but as others have said I'm not too sure about the hover over pop-ups. I found them quite anoying when for instance I wanted to go to the search box but on my way moved my mouse over a playing card and the pop-up covered the box I wanted to get to. Nice idea though!

I like the idea of the site.

I don't like the visuals at the moment, the playing card thing in the centre, is confusing, and the card images aren't sharp, they look a pixelated.

site available.
Would still welcome any comments/suggestions

Enjoy. www.magic4charity.co.uk

Still don't like the site, still love the idea!

Clicking a link opens in a new tab and that page isn't formatted.
Where's the page/link for a magician to register?
What's with the giant picture in the middle of the page?

login as 'newuser' password 'erdnase' to register yourself as a new user.

Links at the top of the page are still to be formatted.
Big picture is a stock image. I'm looking for better image(s) for the future.

Logging in doesn't do anything!

I'll reiterate how much I love the idea of this site but I think it's a long way from 'launchable'.

I'm FAR from this forum's expert on web development but I know enough html, css and a sprinkling of php to get by.

Being the 'functional' site that it is, perhaps a CMS back-end might be in order?

I cant find any problem logging in, and I see that you are now signed in.
I'll read up on CMS as that's new to me.

Probably best to keep the technical discussions offline from this site.

You can PM me here, or at magic4charity, if anyone else has any problems using the site.

I hope you like it.

Gordon

I like the idea and the design on the home page. The simplicity works for me.

Only the first link works at the moment which I suspect is correct but - and a big but for me is that the layout of the page from the first link needs to be more than a squeezed page of black type on white background.

I agree. The pages in the links are my next area of work. The main flow through the site (find a magician > search or scroll > click email or click their website) have been my main focus.

Hopefully you will see the link pages looking better when I get some time this week.

I could spend years on the design and never actually launch anything. There comes a point where you have to just go for it and see what the reactions are..... dare I suggest its a bit like trying out a new magic effect on an audience for the first time. I know it works but I could always make it better.

Thanks again for the feedback.