RapidWeaver Forums

http://www.dbwproductions.com

I’ve gotten my site pretty well optimized in terms of errors. It’s being seen well in google under “music producer los angeles” and some other key words. Here are my design questions concerns:
1)I use an accordion on the home page to squeeze a lot of content in a small space. Would the site be better off if everything was just out on the home page. I was trying to keep a short page layout but I’m just not sure that’s the best way to go.
2) On some pages I use a white background as I like the way the elements look in that. But, does that look odd compared to everything else?
3) Lastly, I’m so close to this thing that I could use some outside viewpoints as I don’t know how easy or hard it is to navigate. To me it’s easy and not very big but then again I’m not sure if I’m the best judge!

Thanks for any help.

Hi Dave; very nice job. I went for a quick look and ended up spending ten minutes! You seem to have covered everything; one of the things I like is that in that long list of FAQs, you answer most of the questions from people saying ‘can I … ‘ with a resounding YES! Very impressive, and high on the ‘feelgood’ factor, which is just as important as good design and all the rest.

I can’t think of anything I’d do differently. I suppose if I were really nitpicking, I’d say that the Home page is a little busy and my eye gets drawn all over the place. I found a couple of typos; one where it says “There’s a separate machine room room for our computers which means this room is perfectly quite and enables me to track acoustic guitar and vocals” you have two ‘rooms’ in there, and you’ve put ‘quite’ instead of ‘quiet’. And the other: “There’s also a small kitchen net with a mini fridge”. Should that say ‘kitchenette’? The only other thing is that in your changing banner you have “100’s of happy clients’, and there shouldn’t be an apostrophe in “100s”. Nice banner pictures, by the way, gives a really good feel to it.

In general: lovely job!

Dave-
You have done a good job with the site, but I have a couple of comments for you.  I suggest that you give the home page a nicer flow by creating a little breathing room between the accordion headings and their content.  Add a little padding to push the content over a bit to the right.  There’s plenty of room.  I think lining up the top of the photos with Watch Us Work would also tidy up the home page.
Also, on all of the music sites I visit, the genre is always spelled Indie Music and not Indy.  You might want to double check that, as you have some rather prominent uses of the term. 
Other than that, no quibbles.
-Ron

DDouble PPost . . .

in common with other RW site I see, many people seem intent on increasing the default font size for content text in their theme of choice. I think you’ve done so here too. In my opinion, this trigger-happiness with styled text can ruin the carefully crafted design that the developer has created. I’m sorry to say I don’t like the buttons and images you chosen on the homepage, and so I didn’t look any further into the site. And the modification of the links in the main nav, plus addition of links to the footer, cheapens it further.

Thanks for being kind of enough to offer some great insights and constructive criticism! Much appreciated and I’m making the changes and am republishing as I type.

To the font comment, sorry to offend. I tried the default size and it just doesn’t fill up the areas appropriately. Plus, much of my demographic uses reading glasses and has a hard time seeing! Not sure what is odd about putting links in a footer either as I seem to see that a lot but maybe that’s “unprofessional and offensive”? But, thanks for taking the time to comment. What sites have you designed so I can check them out?

Please keep the comments coming as I take it all in and am eager and open to learning. Thanks!