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Young Writers Society


Personal Site as Publishing Center



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Fri Oct 03, 2014 1:00 am
theyouth says...



Featuring -

A Trinity Landing Page

Disclaimer -

b e t a 1.0.0.1

Elements -

1. personal website of

a.) weblog;
b.) art;
c.) social media connect;

a simplified WWW framework, illustrated at your center via -

a.) a place of reflection/refraction;
b.) authentic design, such as writing, art, business to rep;
c.) relationship to the good the bad and the ugly;

to interact with the framework -

www.blondyn.com

critique on the idea welcome
  





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Wed Oct 08, 2014 7:40 pm
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Rosendorn says...



So what is the point of this? You've given a rough idea that it's basically a hub, but is there any particular market you're looking at and goals the page can help you achieve?
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Fri Oct 10, 2014 3:34 pm
theyouth says...



Rosey Unicorn wrote:So what is the point of this? You've given a rough idea that it's basically a hub, but is there any particular market you're looking at and goals the page can help you achieve?


Yes

A hub exactly.

To start, the idea is, in part, this -

The internet is decentralized.

Chaotic.

There is no routinely used medium that allows us to know who is signed up with what service, and yet there is great opportunity to simplify and harness the potential of the WWW into three main parts, especially as an aspiring writer, artist, or even entrepreneur of some sort.

The concept is to use the personal site as a beautiful lasso to organize your share of identity amidst the WWW

theyouth wrote:
a.) weblog;
b.) art;
c.) social media connect;

a simplified WWW framework, illustrated at your center via -

a.) a place of reflection/refraction;
b.) authentic design, such as writing, art, business to rep;
c.) relationship to the good the bad and the ugly;



But this is just a beginning...

I am currently web-publishing daily releases of my novel Aladdyn on my website via a Creative Commons License.

I admire this medium for publishing, as it is future-friendly and allows a reader to read a story, without having to pay for something that they may/may not be interested in reading.

Though I would like to explain more, I don't want to delve too far just yet beyond the breadth of your question.

Rosey Unicorn, have you any thoughts on this attempt at clarifying so far?
  





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Fri Oct 10, 2014 5:55 pm
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Rosendorn says...



Quite a few more, and you didn't actually answer the breadth of my question at all.

You haven't answered what goals this page can help artists achieve, only provided vague possibilities without talking about how it actually works. You also haven't answered who's the ideal client for this website, what stage of career and what type of career is the best.

You've barely answered what the point of this is. At first it sounds like this is simply a managing service where you can keep every account in one place for personal use, but you're also talking about using this as a public promotion site, and you're using the word "artist" to describe your client which indicates to me this site is also useful for musicians, traditional artists, and graphic artists. You could also include crafters of all types in there, which adds a bunch more challenges. Entrepreneurs? You're suddenly targeting basically everybody, all of whom require different tools. What sort of tools are you giving them?

You say part of the goal is "art". Does that reference displaying art or selling art? They're two completely different beasts when it comes to the goal of a website, with different requirements for the server.

Is this a paid service or free? If free, will you have your url mixed in with a custom url (such as tumblr), or will people get a custom url? If paid, how much and what would that get you? Any levels?

How much customization is available? Will people basically be able to build whatever they want? Are there templates, and if there are templates, how many and to what extent can you mess with them?

If you're publishing, how will copyright and first publishing rights be handled? How will publishing means interact with the frame?

How will you make this searchable? How will people actually use your service? Will there be advertising anywhere on the site?

How will you compete with such services like wordpress, tumblr, square space, wix, facebook (fan pages), LinkedIn, and if art sales are included, etsy and society6? Wordpress, tumblr, square space, wix and facebook all have the ability to keep track of every social media profile you're part of and make blog posts. Etsy and society6 have the ability to put your social media profiles in the product or shop descriptions, allowing you to keep track of them, as well. Not to mention the dozens of subscription services that continue centralizing the internet.

So I ask you again: what's the point of using this?
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Sat Oct 11, 2014 3:03 pm
theyouth says...



Rosey Unicorn wrote:Quite a few more, and you didn't actually answer the breadth of my question at all.

You haven't answered what goals this page can help artists achieve, only provided vague possibilities without talking about how it actually works. You also haven't answered who's the ideal client for this website, what stage of career and what type of career is the best.

You've barely answered what the point of this is. At first it sounds like this is simply a managing service where you can keep every account in one place for personal use, but you're also talking about using this as a public promotion site, and you're using the word "artist" to describe your client which indicates to me this site is also useful for musicians, traditional artists, and graphic artists. You could also include crafters of all types in there, which adds a bunch more challenges. Entrepreneurs? You're suddenly targeting basically everybody, all of whom require different tools. What sort of tools are you giving them?

You say part of the goal is "art". Does that reference displaying art or selling art? They're two completely different beasts when it comes to the goal of a website, with different requirements for the server.

Is this a paid service or free? If free, will you have your url mixed in with a custom url (such as tumblr), or will people get a custom url? If paid, how much and what would that get you? Any levels?

How much customization is available? Will people basically be able to build whatever they want? Are there templates, and if there are templates, how many and to what extent can you mess with them?

If you're publishing, how will copyright and first publishing rights be handled? How will publishing means interact with the frame?

How will you make this searchable? How will people actually use your service? Will there be advertising anywhere on the site?

How will you compete with such services like wordpress, tumblr, square space, wix, facebook (fan pages), LinkedIn, and if art sales are included, etsy and society6? Wordpress, tumblr, square space, wix and facebook all have the ability to keep track of every social media profile you're part of and make blog posts. Etsy and society6 have the ability to put your social media profiles in the product or shop descriptions, allowing you to keep track of them, as well. Not to mention the dozens of subscription services that continue centralizing the internet.

So I ask you again: what's the point of using this?


Amazingly post. Will spend today working on an answer that should be ready for tomorrow.

jb
  





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Sat Oct 11, 2014 6:41 pm
Rosendorn says...



With all due respect, you should've been thinking about this before you even started working on the wire frame. A lot of those things should've been in your first post.

Right now you have no way for people to build their own version of this, no business model, no positioning, and no functionality— absolutely nothing that tells me this is a legitimate site.

You've avoided my questions. You've provided vague replies without any specifics and expected me to be happy with them, then praised me for asking you questions you should've provided answers to in the first post. I should not have to ask those questions. You should be providing me the information that makes me go "yes, this is well thought out and has promise."

Right now, all you're doing is quoting yourself, using my own (vague) words as answers, and generally not telling me anything I'm asking for. If you want to have a reputable business, you can't do that. You have to be straightforward, to the point, and forthcoming.

I most certainly hope this reply will have lots of details.
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Sun Oct 12, 2014 9:13 pm
theyouth says...



Rosey Unicorn wrote:Quite a few more, and you didn't actually answer the breadth of my question at all.

You haven't answered what goals this page can help artists achieve, only provided vague possibilities without talking about how it actually works. You also haven't answered who's the ideal client for this website, what stage of career and what type of career is the best.


The goal of this is Presence.

Presence in the WWW through a network and community of §uper§tring§ites, where the rules and aims of the game are negotiated between those with whom you're connected.

One might be wondering - what is a §uper§tring§ite?

We'll get to that; from the start, it should be made clear, first and foremost, that this an Open Source Collaboration.

By wikipedia standards, an Open Source Collaboration is defined as “any system of innovation or production that relies on goal-oriented yet loosely coordinated participants, who interact to create a product (or service) of economic value, which they make available to contributors and non-contributors alike.”

Right now, every individual reading this is engaged/playing some part in an Open Source Collaboration called the World Wide Web, where each one of us exchanges and interacts with ideas -

Ideas of potential economic value -

That we yearn to share and discover and align with our own unique goals.

If one of your goals is Presence in the WWW, then consider the following -

This is an invitation - a calling and declaration for the ideal client, or individual, who wants to have real ownership and participation in the creation of an Independent Social Network, via the §uper§tring§ite.

What is a §uper§tring§ite?

As of right now, a §uper§tring§ite is simply a website designed to connect, create, and evolve some Independent Network of §uper§tring§ites, run by individuals in accordance to their goals and objectives.

There is no 'sign-up.'

No 'account.'

No 'subscription.'

There is only the §uper§tring§ite, which can be as simple as a single homepage of hyperlinks, and yet at the same time, an integral link to a community at work for your promotion.

Rosey Unicorn wrote:You've barely answered what the point of this is. At first it sounds like this is simply a managing service where you can keep every account in one place for personal use, but you're also talking about using this as a public promotion site, and you're using the word "artist" to describe your client which indicates to me this site is also useful for musicians, traditional artists, and graphic artists. You could also include crafters of all types in there, which adds a bunch more challenges. Entrepreneurs? You're suddenly targeting basically everybody, all of whom require different tools. What sort of tools are you giving them?


The scope of this project is beyond any one person; the fact is this – I stay committed.

Right this second - whether you are curious, or somehow, completely opposed to the idea already – this is happening.

This will continue to be in development, at least as long as I continue to exist, or anyone, for that matter, who has a vision of their own for something akin to the framework being explained here.

The framework has already begun evolving.

Because of the questions posed by Rosey, new considerations have already come to mind.
Because of the questions posed by Rosey, it has become clear that many things that remain to be figured.
That is why I am here.
That is why you are here.
To engage in a quest for further resolution.

The target audience of this framework is the one whose wish it is to simplify and strengthen their bond to the World Wide Web through a bond of higher order - of greater transparency – a bond of power that you control; for which you are responsible.

The tool is the html/css document - an html/css template that features a Trinity Landing Page.

Rosey Unicorn wrote:You say part of the goal is "art". Does that reference displaying art or selling art? They're two completely different beasts when it comes to the goal of a website, with different requirements for the server.


Here is perhaps a good point for further explaining

The idea was inspired by a need for higher order in a World Wide Web of Information Cascade.
The design was organized according to a desire for virtual singularity, or foundation, to call one's own.
The §uper§tring§ite is a social network, a showcase platform, a personal hub that starts with dividing the WWW into three parts -

The Self, the Scene, the Social.

Each of these are hyperlinks of your §uper§tring§ite homepage that are connected to the three facets of the virtual-self you are representing.

The Self: Here goes a record of your thoughts, learnings, objectives, goals; it is a place of reflection - a journal - a stream of conscious diary designed for revealing your growth as a human being in this WWW; for aspiring writers, this is essential in more ways than one.

The Scene: This is the area for your business, your craft, your love to prove. It can be a PDF document of a work your are publishing. It can be a portfolio detailing various fields of your expertise.

The Social: The page for your social networks. A regularly updated place of where you presently interact. Your bond to friends and family of the WWW.

The Self, the Scene, the Social serve as the core for your virtual-reality portfolio.

It is like creating your own executive profile of transparency.

Envision a business card that reads http://www.yoursitehere.com, where can be found some facet of your intellectual pursuit, the work you have accomplished, not to mention the Independent Social Network you personally represent and maintain.

As far as the question is concerned, the goal is Presence; if it artistic, beautiful, professional, then all the better. If you are selling art, your 'Scene' html page should be set with a hyperlink for connecting to the third party vendor where your art is being sold.

Rosey Unicorn wrote:
Is this a paid service or free? If free, will you have your url mixed in with a custom url (such as tumblr), or will people get a custom url? If paid, how much and what would that get you? Any levels?


This service does not cost you money; it costs you time. But in retrospect, its not so much a service as it is a model for each member of your network serving one another.

The idea here is simply for you to have your own §uper§tring§ite with a clean homepage that embraces your realm of the WWW with three hyperlinks.

This is open to one and all; exclusive through our interactions and improvements we make to this P2P (Peer-2-Peer) Social Network for which we are responsible.

Rosey Unicorn wrote:
How much customization is available? Will people basically be able to build whatever they want? Are there templates, and if there are templates, how many and to what extent can you mess with them?


Customization is up to you and your independent network.

If anyone is interested in getting started, I will provide the html/css templates for the Trinity Landing Page - the fields of which you can easily customize.

Though elementary knowledge of html would be a bonus, chances are anyone who has never set up a website before would still be able to have their own TLP up and running faster than they could finish reading Gone With the Wind.

Rosey Unicorn wrote:
If you're publishing, how will copyright and first publishing rights be handled? How will publishing means interact with the frame?


I am publishing right now on my §ite via a model that sponsors the CreativeCommons License. If your 'Scene' hyperlink connects directly to a novel that you are selling on Amazon, that is fine, too. What and how you publish is as you like it; copyright and publishing rights stand.

Rosey Unicorn wrote:How will you make this searchable? How will people actually use your service? Will there be advertising anywhere on the site?


On my Trinity Landing Page (the homepage at http://www.blondyn.com ) there is a hyperlink beneath the Trinity that reads '§ § §'

That is the symbol - the hyperlink - to the §uper§tring§ite, where is to be a list of those within your Independent Social Network.

Right now, only my website is listed. If you create your own Trinity Landing Page, your §ite will be featured on my §uper§tring page.

The idea is this - if you and I are on the same Independent Social Network, we must be featuring one another's §ite on our own §uper§tring§ite page. This is the beginning to accomplishing the goal of Presence, and while it is by no means the only goal, it is a starting point.

Rosey Unicorn wrote:How will you compete with such services like wordpress, tumblr, square space, wix, facebook (fan pages), LinkedIn, and if art sales are included, etsy and society6? Wordpress, tumblr, square space, wix and facebook all have the ability to keep track of every social media profile you're part of and make blog posts. Etsy and society6 have the ability to put your social media profiles in the product or shop descriptions, allowing you to keep track of them, as well. Not to mention the dozens of subscription services that continue centralizing the internet.


I am not competing with such services at all. This is not a replacement for a forum or a chatroom, but rather, a means for the individual to lasso one and all entities of the WWW into one Trinity, set upon one simple website of which you have sole ownership.

The internet is vast. Information is coming at us at exponential rates. Who can keep track of what's here today and gone tomorrow, not to mention where we spend the majority of our time?

If you were to take away every social network right now, what stake would you have left in the WWW beyond your e-mail address? What if facebook, or linked-in went out of style? Would you sign up with the newest service that is most appealing? How is another with whom you lost touch to know which service you chose to sign up with?

The above quote states -

Rosey Unicorn wrote:Wordpress, tumblr, square space, wix and facebook all have the ability to keep track of every social media profile you're part of and make blog posts.


Personally, I don't use any of those services. How am I to make a contact, unless I sign up for an account? In this day and age, I understand the appeal for an exclusive interface, but at the same time, you want to be accessible. While I could make myself more accessible by signing up for one and all of those accounts, I do not have the time to commit any degree of wholehearted effort to managing 8 social networks, an e-mail, and dealing with the real-world in between.

Like anyone else, I work, I interact with others, I try to improve myself via learnings gathered along the way. This is no special or original idea of mine, but rather another learning gained through my experience in darting to and fro social network after chatroom after forum - places of interaction that sufficed to some degree - until signing off and left feeling stranded in the WWW wondering something like: 'Where the heck I now?'

Now I think of a website as a home. A home that I organize, arrange and compose. My home is nothing special - three stories built into one - the one place where anyone is welcome to see where and how I spend my time on WWW.

It is still, by large, a work in progress, and in need of further building and refining until it holds true to the concept of a personal virtual center - an online resume - a dynamic portfolio of work done - of relations created - of journal entries illustrating something relative to an auto-biopic.

And who am I?

And why should anyone care to embrace this idea, let alone connect a website with me?

Presence. The goal is Presence, and presently, I am freely web-publishing a novel to fit the Picture.

Rosey Unicorn wrote:So I ask you again: what's the point of using this?


If you're an aspiring writer, and I'm an aspiring writer, and both of us have a website, why not connect those websites, and thus create a network where you and I are the focal center - all via orderly, succinct web-design.

A virtual home should have a virtual neighborhood; it could be beautiful.

Questions/constructive critique welcome.
  





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Sun Oct 12, 2014 10:36 pm
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Rosendorn says...



Congratulations, this is a combination of Web 2.0 and The Semantic Web, which already exists in the thousands.

You've described every single social network on the internet, only this one doesn't have an account so you have no idea who's hosting the server and how you get the domain (what, you thought the internet just existed for free and no website had to pay to be online?).

Having an unknown server is the single most dangerous action you can take as a web host, because it opens you up to every infection on the internet.

I'll ask you a third time:

What's the point?
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Sun Oct 12, 2014 10:51 pm
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Aley says...



theyouth wrote:If you're an aspiring writer, and I'm an aspiring writer, and both of us have a website, why not connect those websites, and thus create a network where you and I are the focal center - all via orderly, succinct web-design.

A virtual home should have a virtual neighborhood; it could be beautiful.

Questions/constructive critique welcome.


Hey theyouth,

I'm here to welcome you to an amazing website where we have a lot of aspiring writers that all have their own individual portfolios which sounds a lot like this idea you've smashed together.

It's called Young Writers Society and on YWS we not only have connections to people's work, but we have a lot of active members who do a lot to help each other improve their writing!

Unlike Fiction Press we here on YWS love to give and receive critiques. If you're just interested in publishing your novel, you could try using Amazon, or WattPad or even something like a WordPress blog! On all of these people can see, connect, interact, give feedback, and even follow you between sites if you use the same penname.

Pennames are devices authors use to make sure that people know it's the same person writing story A as story B. Online, they're usually usernames, but with some sites, like Facebook, require you use your real name, which isn't always safe on the internet. While you can connect backwards and tell people your real name and your Penname here on YWS we prefer to maintain a Penname alone.

Now that you've got your own Penname, why not give us a taste of that novel you're gloating about and see how we do critiquing it ^.-

I'd love to see how you do reviewing some of the works we have in our Green Room too because what better way to focus on something than to focus on improving what you love?

Nothing's perfect,
-Aley
  





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Thu Oct 16, 2014 9:21 pm
theyouth says...



Rosey - your 'Reply'

(1) lacks specifics; (Web 2.0? Web Semantic? What?)
(2) avoids nearly every detail of the message, completely;
(3) fails to promote any kind of creativity, curiosity, momentum.

Aley - gloating?

Kids - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIEOZCcaXzE

The original post was riddled with questions that sparked interest.
Questions that provided insight, while opening channels to give the discussion direction.
They asked for a picture of the architecture; the expression of its interface.


'Yes.' I thought as reading. “This is a reply I can dig; this Unicorn has challenged my thinking.”

Upon returning to the program after my latest post, there was little beyond a few generalizations alongside a comment on what a Wordpress Site is, etc.

With all due respect - neither of the latter posts posit anything of any relevance to the 'Personal Site as Publishing Center'... nothing.

They attack. They miss the mark, and yet remain aimed at shooting down every part of the idea and all at once as if it could all be so convenient; come on.

The post stands as a skyscraper before the rest -
a hypothetical build for an engine to stimulate your thought-process.
To get the train back on track, some more fuel to ride -

How do we want to frame 21st Century Publishing?
What will be expected of the relationship between Reader and Writer?
Where is there room to grow?

Following are only some ideas.
Some opportunities to consider and discover.
The most important thing is that you get something out of this thread.
Each post should be written to extend our creativity, like §uper§tring§ites,
across the universe - ideas to add some spin to your moment.

With high-tech on our side, why not begin to create our Publishing Platforms for the 21st Century?

In the meantime, you might like to have a look at this one - http://www.blondyn.com - see what you think; seek what you think.

Questions/critique welcome.

jb

(last edited:17:43)
  





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Thu Oct 16, 2014 10:16 pm
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Rosendorn says...



See how many words in both mine and Aley's posts are blue? That means they're hyperlinks, so you can click them and find out all sorts of things about what the concepts are. It means we don't need to include specifics in the post— the specifics are in the links.

neither of the latter posts posit anything of any relevance to the 'Personal Site as Publishing Center'


No, we were pointing out how literally everything on the web relates to 'personal site as publishing centre'.

Literally.

Everything.

You are not giving me anything at all that's new about personal sites as a publishing centre. I can post my work on YWS and get a network of people following my writing. I can create a fan page on Facebook and get a network of people following my writing. I can post my work to tumblr, wordpress and blogger (to name a few) and get a network of people following my writing. All of those things are my personal sites, and all of those things are my publishing centres that give me presence online.

If you want to avoid social media, Wix and SquareSpace (among others) are both personal sites tied only to your email. No account needed to get a personal site that acts as a publishing centre and gives you presence online. Sure, there's sign up, but you kinda have to sign up to anything to get a server.

You haven't addressed how this concept of yours gets online in the first place. That was the point of my last post— how does this thing get online. The internet doesn't exist without servers, and you have to pay to use servers. This concept of yours can't exist for free, and I notice you avoided any and all questions about how this will actually sustain itself in a monetary sense. I've already asked those. You were the one who avoided the questions.

I'm consistently asking what is new and different about this concept of yours. What makes it better than all these other services I keep listing? That are already established with huge networks and tons of creative flexibility and other artists just waiting to collaborate and no need to know HTML or CSS (but you can do so much more if you know them) and extreme amounts of personalization and being tied to google so people can find me online and absolutely no worry about servers or paying or whether or not the website is sustainable and I just get to have fun online.

Honestly— what does?
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Sat Oct 18, 2014 3:33 pm
theyouth says...



The design is clean, light, future.

The picture is pure, beautiful, mysterious.

The Publishing Studio speaks for itself - http://www.blondyn.com ; this is a beginning.
  





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Sun Oct 19, 2014 12:34 am
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Aley says...



Hello theyouth

It seems we didn't quite see eye to eye. I wasn't attempting to gloat, I was attempting to get you to join in to the site you're attempting to advertise on. Since you still aren't posting and interacting with YWS, I'll come to you.

I will now critique the website. As I have had plenty of design experience (I'm a fine artist with over ten years experience with four professional mural installations to my name, and I also have advertised and helped prepare multiple events which have been highly successful) I know that my knowledge of design is sound.

To start with I'd like to say that I understand the website is incomplete and just a prototype, but as a prototype, it still must maintain a level of finality to impress the viewers into joining the project. This is why I will critique it as a final project.

Websites have several main components,
Design
Layout
Clarity
Target Demographic
Access
Information
Unity

I would say that your website needs work in all of these areas.

Design
The design element deals with the images, color scheme, logo, and basically anything not included in the other topics. For now I'll critique these three above. Starting with the Logo, it is almost consistent, but with the genie's lamp, you sort of lose it. A genie's lamp seems to have nothing to do with the rest of the website and if I was asked what your logo was I would say it was SSS because I don't want to bother going to the script and we all know that your script 'S's are just 'S's you're using to be fancy like Krazy Kar Kleaners. It's a gimmick that's long since gone out of style. I would suggest you either put the weird 'S' in the lamp, or ditch the lamp and just go with the weird S.

The next thing is the color scheme. You don't have one. This is a problem for many reasons. Color schemes are used to simplify and unify a website. You have all of the colors in your picture, and you use this gaudy yellow flower as the header, but I have no idea what a yellow flower means to you aside from it hurting a bit against the dark black background with the specks of white boxes and a broken prism. To make a color scheme, you should simplify your website so that you only use a few colors, 3, max. Use one color as your primary, another as a complementary, and the last as a supplementary. If you're not sure about these terms, ask me about them and we can have a discussion about colors. Now onto the images.

When users first open a website, we don't want to be overwhelmed, but we also want to have enough knowledge to see what is going on, and have things happen up front. The best designs usually combine something simple, with something easy to understand so that the interface is quick to comprehend. The background is interesting as a picture, though it could use some technical help and it almost rips off a cover album, but it is too chaotic for a background. With so much to look at the images on top are completely lost within the background, not something you want in a website when these images are our links to get around the site. The images within the triangles to either side are too weak to stand out and have no intrinsic value as Life and Love as they are titled, if we don't realize they're hyperlinks. It's easy to lose your cursor on the page due to the speckles of black and white as the background, so it's understandable if people miss their little pointers changing from a pointer to a finger.

Some ways you can fix this include changing the background image, including a header or footer, making a 50% translucent text box to protect the viewer from the background image while still allowing them to see it, and changing the layout.

This section: http://www.blondyn.com/superstringsite.html has a much better layout than the main page. With the monochromatic background you've developed something easier on the eyes. I suddenly know where my pointer is. There are still problems with this on the design level though. First off, the text color is white. Due to the high-light image as the background, white is the inappropriate text color, and black may be more legible, but only for that text which appears over the monochromatic image.


Layout
As time moves on, people are appreciating more and more simple layouts and designs when it comes to websites. A bold header, simple footers, simple tabs, and navigation buttons are a must. Your website has none of these.

If we look at websites like Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, and Google, we can see these things in action. As a homepage, their layouts are simple. Wikipedia's main opening page has the homepage condensed to have the key part of it included all on one standard, small monitor. Though there is an option to scroll down for more information such as contributors, Wikipedia's variations, and information, the main page is all at the top. Your website doesn't succeed at that. The page stretches out for a pretty long time. for a homepage. It should all fit on my monitor no matter what my monitor size is. Twitter and Facebook use the same set up pretty much. Both of them have an invitation to join the website or to sign in because these are sites where you need to sign in to interact with the website. These, also, are condensed down to the first page. Google's homepage is even simpler just with what you want and a couple buttons in case you're not sure what you want.

With this trend influencing the younger generations, I don't think you can claim that your website is futuristic, clean, pure, light, beautiful, or mysterious. Mostly I don't think you can say that because most of these words mean something different to everyone, and claiming them about a website is foolish with such a variety of life in the world. Otherwise, I don't think you can claim it's clean, pure, or light because your website is on the darker scale of things with the majority of the backgrounds being black, aside from the blinding "Universe" page which isn't even on your website, but borrows from Wikipedia. Love also has a blinding white background, but that's two out four or five web pages.

Speaking of the different pages, let's take a look at the layout. Layouts should have some consistency between different pages for ease of navigation. Three of your pages are black, one is gray, the last is white. 5/6 are center aligned. Center Align is something that always sounds good, but honestly, it's not that good. Take a look at the forum where we're talking. The basic text area is center aligned, this is to avoid problems transferring between small monitors and large monitors. It gives the user space if they have a large monitor, making the website feel open and safe, and a cushion if they have a small monitor so they can still see everything without getting shoved into a corner. Within this area, there is an alignment towards the left. This creates balance between ads, and because people read left to right, gives people room for more information on the right when on the homepage, but a consistency if they're in the forums or the greenroom of the left being heavier.

Center align might, therefore feel like the way to go, but it makes it look like a myspace page. Center alignment is rarely the right way to go with anything, a poem, a speech, a website, a picture, or even a layout on a table. Ever been to a restaurant where they pile all the napkins, pepper, salt, and menus in the center? It closes off the people eating, gives everyone less space, and tends to get shoved off to the side somewhere. If it's something clean, short, and unobtrusive, [like a candle] it's alright, but usually it's not.

My suggestion to you would be to look at the templates and things provided for you on other websites like wordpress where you're hosting this page: http://www.blondyn.com/wordpress/ and look for the trends of how they design things. You'll see a few that are center aligned, but you won't see them used very often. Mostly it's going to be the clean ones that have the information on the left in navigation buttons, and the actual text on the right. This is how people expect a website to be, and there is a reason for the norms.

Clarity

I've already covered this a little. The clarity of your site isn't good because the font is hard to read. If you want to make the font easier to read, some of the layout options are going to help, but also if you used color on this chaotic background, you might get something to stick better. Mostly, you need to support your fonts in order to make it clear otherwise you'll always be floundering.

The other problem with clarity on this website is that we don't have a way to understand your titles. They're really obscure and abstract names which just sort of have the ideas lost on us. A picture might say a thousand words, but that's only if you read them, and you don't give us enough of a picture to understand how you're getting these things out of these images. The disconnect thus makes things unclear. Also clarity plays into navigation and unity so I'll cover this more there.

I'd like to be clear myself though. I'm taking quite a considerable time to write this up for you so you can understand why we're confused by your website and your posts.

One of the ways that this is unclear is that I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with this. Just going to the website, if I knew nothing about it before I clicked the link, I would just leave again because it looks like a site that's trying to advertise a convention of some sort. It's not something that catches my interest. If anything, because I don't know what this is, I have no interest in it, and that's because you're not clear about your message, your goal, or how I'm supposed to interact with this site. It feels like a virus trap because there's nothing to explain it.

Target Demographic

I have no idea what your target demographic is. It looks like Tea Party meets Gypsy Music Video. I say this because of the face paint, sunflower, triple letters, and creepy eye. These things don't say anything really to me. As a prototype, you shouldn't use personal things. You should use things like a box that says "Image Here" in order to get across to people that this is a template, and then have a link to it in action.

In other words, you're missing the interest of your target demographic. You can get better at finding out what they'd like by involving yourself in their websites such as word press, amazon, deviantArt, YoungWritersSociety, Facebook, and Twitter.

Access

One of the most disturbing things about your website is that you have no way to understand what is connected to it. There is no inventory, or index, or way to get back to where you were. Once you click on something, you cannot navagate back to the homepage to go investigate something else.

To fix this you can put a standard link bar across the bottom, top, or off to the side of your page. This will give people somewhere to go instead of ending up at a dead end. There's also no way to access other people's homepages if you really wanted to connect people.

Oh, and also, none of your links work. The imbedded video works, and the images on Life work, but clicking to the story, the tv, the IV, or the tree of life all just download a website onto the computer, and even if you attempt to open that, you get nothing.

What gives?

Information

Your website has no information on it. This is the information age. We want something to read that will tell us why it's there, at least, but you have nothing. There's no about, there's no SSS and you, there's no log in information, there's no information about where these things came from, who did them, or what they are. The only information is a link that goes away from your website, again, all together, and puts us to what a Creative Commons license is, and frankly, I think this is one of the biggest failings in clarity.

We need more information to get involved, if, indeed, you did want us to get involved. We don't know how to do it. People need instructions, and you barely have text.

Unity

The unity requires having similar elements on each page, such as links to get back to the other pages, the same font faces for titles and another font for information, and the last, third, font for special things like subheadings. It requires unification of color, and design, and layout. These things are all lacking on your pages. If you did create a uniformity among the website, such as the same background, a simpler background, it would improve the website quite a bit and allow us to understand what was going on, why it would be something we would want to use, and how we could go about using it ourselves.

As of right now I'd give this page a 2/10 because you managed to get the links between things working right, and it has the same tab icon.

To improve this score, you can develop a unification, information, layout, access, the target demographic, and design of the website. I've given you pointers on how to do that, so it shouldn't be too hard.
  





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Gender: Male
Points: 300
Reviews: 0
Tue Oct 21, 2014 12:29 pm
theyouth says...



yes, it's art
  








Too often we crave the extraordinary in life, without even learning how to cherish the ordinary first. Friend, I promise you this: if you can learn to take joy in the simple mundane things in life, the extraordinary will take care of itself, it'll be on its way, hurrying towards you. But if you skip the first part, it'll ever evade you.
— Arcticus