Please rip into The Pisstakers site
I have been writing reviews of other sites and wondered if anyone would care to tell us what they think of our effort so far. Much appreciated. The Pisstakers
I have been writing reviews of other sites and wondered if anyone would care to tell us what they think of our effort so far. Much appreciated. The Pisstakers
ccsthefuture (not verified) posted this at 11:27 — 11th September 2006.
They have: 5,633 posts
Joined: Jan 1970
Like the colours, and layout. Simple but I think it looks great. Don't like the length of the home page though, maybe you could just give a preview of each article, and then people click a link to read more. Nice and semms quite unique (ive not seen anything like it), overall good job!
pisstaker posted this at 11:52 — 11th September 2006.
They have: 63 posts
Joined: Sep 2006
thanks for the observations. I hear what you are saying about the homepage, I am trying to strike a balance between too much text, something self contained and interesting, and a short extract which may not appeal enough to get people to read on.
We are going to rejig a couple of things, or rather our CSS guy is going to, so watch this space. And how cool is it to be called unique on an internet of hundereds of billions of pages!
z4z3 posted this at 21:56 — 13th September 2006.
They have: 3 posts
Joined: Sep 2006
The site is neat and nice. I like the layout and colors, and the pics are funny.
pisstaker posted this at 09:40 — 14th September 2006.
They have: 63 posts
Joined: Sep 2006
Lets hope we dont blow it for you then when we introduce a new color scheme.! Thanks for taking the time too look at it though.
mandyjb posted this at 01:13 — 15th September 2006.
She has: 164 posts
Joined: Aug 2006
Like the layout, the pages that are too long, put an anchor link to an arrow at the bottom. Very informative and organised. Well done.
ablaye posted this at 01:37 — 15th September 2006.
They have: 140 posts
Joined: Apr 2006
Nice website. I like your site layout and design. You might think about adding more colors to the center column to make the site look more alive.
pisstaker posted this at 09:18 — 15th September 2006.
They have: 63 posts
Joined: Sep 2006
Thanks for the remarks. We are looking to put either a darker backround around the whole page or a colour for the background text, something, like you say, to give a bit more oomph to the centre column
Mandyjb - I have started to put the odd anchor in. I am going to see if we cant do something at a deeper level to make access to the full articles a little snappier.
cheers
JeevesBond posted this at 16:24 — 15th September 2006.
He has: 3,956 posts
Joined: Jun 2002
Mate, I can't see enough piss-taking in there! This isn't that funny and some items just make no sense! Like the Spaniards ones, is there some point to them I'm missing? Positively the one about Madrid made me laugh, as did:
What made me really laugh is that my mind automatically put the words in the right order the first couple of times I read it. Made me laugh even more when I finally worked it out.
On Opera under Linux the header font looks ghastly, does it look that jagged under Windows? You might want to consider image replacement (read the definition then implement it).
You also need to reduce the amount of content on your front page, am feeling overwhelmed by all that text! What are those bowler hats doing under the "Business" section? Looks like some links, but aren't. The "Business" section title also has blue bleeding through it from the background, let me know if you need a screenshot. The navigation could be clearer, it's a bit confusing, possibly why you've needed to lump everything onto the main page. It seems you're trying to do too much at once, concentrate on doing one thing and do it well: if that's taking the piss, then concentrate on that. Make your site focused on that and none of the random stuff around it, e.g. relationship issues is not a main menu item, it's the subject of an article etc.
The design is good in itself, but I am not sure of it's appropriatness for the subject content. Unless it's attempting to be satirical in itself? I feel the same about the character, something more Viz would be appropriate (not that you should steal their artwork of course, just inspiration). What does the fat kid mean? Who is he? He needs to represent or mean something, or he just looks out of place (no really, am not taking the piss
)
Overall this site has great potential, just some things to turn from good into great!
a Padded Cell our articles site!
pisstaker posted this at 18:57 — 15th September 2006.
They have: 63 posts
Joined: Sep 2006
Apparently, yes! We do acknowledge that our humor isnt for everyone, some of our points are probably a bit too subtle, if for instance, as in the case you mention, you havent lived in Spain. But Americans who have been there would probably smile about the Spanish lack of respect for personal space etc. Sometimes mocking isnt rip roarious, just niggly.
Yes, nothing quite as funny as real life! As you admit yourself, its not all hysterical, but some of it aint bad. 28% of people visiting the site are bookmarking it so we are appealing to a few likeminded souls. We have come a long way in a few weeks and still obviously have a long way to go. Hence, thanks for the interest and criticisms.
OK, thanks for that. We will look at the image idea for the text heading when we introduce the new logo font. Hopefully that will satisfy the 0.4% of Linux users visiting the site.
Point taken, it is a recurring criticism from ourselves included.
The hats are temporary, and will be replaced as we go through. I can see the business text fault, another one for the list.
Do you mean the amount of text of articles? The archiving is the reason for so many articles on the front page. We have just started to build a dedicated page for weekly articles.
Yes it is a bit short on material but its the second most visited page! It is going to be developed as a podcast feature and the pisstaking will be pretty major.
We have a full size logo to introduce, we reckon you will hopefully see the fat boy, as you call him, is quite a good pisstaking character. Who are Viz anyway? We arent rough northerners you know.
Thanks for the critique, and sorry we arent funny. But we are higher up the google listings than your mate´s site!
submitapic posted this at 16:54 — 26th September 2006.
She has: 17 posts
Joined: Sep 2006
I like your site alot, although it took a while to load.
The layout is very nice and it's user friendly, but you may want to limit the amount of articles you list on one page as I think this is what's causing it to load slowly. Also, who are you hosting with? Your server may not be equipped to handle all the graphics. Are you on a shared hosting plan or a dedicated server?
Outside of the slow load, it's overall a really cool site
**Shannon**
Great Web Hosting
http://www.submitapic.com
submitapic posted this at 16:55 — 26th September 2006.
She has: 17 posts
Joined: Sep 2006
Also, I just noticed your right side menu isn't working properly and you have script errors on your page.
Hope this helps you.
sepple posted this at 03:29 — 2nd October 2006.
They have: 1 posts
Joined: Jul 2004
I like the design but I think there is too much white space in the background
2mob.net posted this at 04:36 — 3rd October 2006.
They have: 12 posts
Joined: Sep 2006
Relationships Stuff menu item is overlapping "writers bios" item.
This alone made me leave your site.
http://2mob.net/ - Cheapest, local gas prices/stations on cell phone or PDA
http://2mob.net/phones/ - MIDP-2.0 mobile devices
abrewitt posted this at 09:03 — 6th October 2006.
They have: 6 posts
Joined: Oct 2006
I think the concept is interesting, but the design looks a polished look, well done on using the XHTML, but you colud go the extra distance and use Strict XHTML dOCTYPE!
STwebmaster posted this at 16:57 — 19th January 2007.
They have: 20 posts
Joined: Jul 2004
I didn't see it before you included excerpts, but it looks great to me now. Very "web2.0" design wise.
mawooshen posted this at 12:03 — 10th October 2006.
He has: 14 posts
Joined: Oct 2006
Just to add that I get problems with the fonts:
In Firefox the tagline: "Daily satire at its best" is all squashed together as is some of the bold text in the articles.
In Opera the text for all the articles is very jagged and difficult to read at the default size.
!! Why on earth would you want to click here?!!
benf posted this at 14:06 — 10th October 2006.
They have: 426 posts
Joined: Feb 2005
I like the idea, and it looks good but stop having your pages so you have to scroll really far down. I find it annoying!
pisstaker posted this at 14:40 — 16th October 2006.
They have: 63 posts
Joined: Sep 2006
Sorry to have been a piss-offer rather than the pisstaker!
We have been thinking about the usability criticisms that people here have kindly pointed out. The length of the homepage content has been an issue, and stands to get worse because not only are we intending to post more stories of our own on a daily basis, but we are actively seeking submissions from others too. (Win a pisstaker coaster for the best article of the week!)
To handle the "massive volume of material" anticipated in the near and distant future, we have streamlined the flow of posts from the homepage to their final resting place in the archives.
We are going to treat the homepage more like a genuine Daily Pisstaker page, where no posts will be more than 48 hours old. (As volume of material increases we will restrict the homepage to posts within the last 24 hours. And of it goes mad, just rip off the BBC website format and turn the postings over in real time!)
We have created 4 category pages in the side bar (Web/tech Weekly, International news weekly, Overheard weekly and Quirky Weekly) and we will transfer all 24/48 hour old posts from the homepage to the appropriate category. Then once a fortnight or as volume increases, once a week, we will dump all the "last week's" stories into the archives using the same organisation criteria.
For a moment, the left nav bar has grown a little bit, but I want a couple of those items like Contact, Site map and FAQ to be shifted around to the right sidebar either as a text link or to be incorporated into the dead hat icons. So still high visiblity but not cluttering up the joint.
We were up all night again so although we think it is an amazing piece of navigational tweaking, we cant really see too clearly if it will work for other users. Still too much scrolling going on? Totally confusing navigation now? Any further thoughts most welcome.
pisstaker posted this at 02:35 — 13th January 2007.
They have: 63 posts
Joined: Sep 2006
Hi
I have been revamping the site applying a few of the comments and observations from here and elsewhere to make a better site. What do you think? Is it a step forward, or are there still issues to address. Thanks
skint posted this at 21:41 — 16th January 2007.
They have: 23 posts
Joined: Jan 2007
I like it, it looks good. Quite an original idea I think
Wow posted this at 10:53 — 22nd January 2007.
They have: 3 posts
Joined: Jan 2007
I like the layout, seeing as it's simple but neat. I enjoyed the cartoon section, that is really funny, but some of the other sections like the video aren't as funny.
pisstaker posted this at 15:46 — 22nd January 2007.
They have: 63 posts
Joined: Sep 2006
1 out of 6 isn't bad!!! Interestingly, I do absolutely nothing to the cartoon section, it is all updated automatically by Revver. The rest of the blogs I do the donkey work. Maybe I should leave the funny stuff to others?
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