New website: Lateguide.com...advice and critics more than welcome

Posted by Tafa on March 13, 2010 at 10:34pm

Hi all,

This is my first drupal website (www.lateguide.com). The objective is to help people meet locals when travelling abroad. Any comments, harsh critics and any other feedback are more than welcome. Thanks,
T

PS: I used a few modules so feel free to ask me if you want a complete list of those I tried.

Comments

looks pretty cool but I got a

Posted by Dan Silver on March 13, 2010 at 10:38pm

looks pretty cool but I got a error:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function t() in /home/lateguid/public_html/modules/devel/performance/performance.module on line 167

Quick impression

Posted by Michelle on March 13, 2010 at 10:40pm

There doesn't seem to be anything you can see or do without making an account. Without any sort of explanation or teasers, you're not giving people a reason to want to join.

The photos on the front page take you to flickr which means that the only action people can take on your site outside of creating an account is to leave it via one of the many photo links.

Michelle

-----
_{Shell Multimedia - My sporadically updated mostly Drupal blog.}

Quick question

Posted by Tafa on March 15, 2010 at 11:45pm

Hello Michelle,

Thanks again for your advices. I took the site off-line to think about the feedback I received. I also went on your website and I like it. Not being from the Coulee Region, I didn't sign up. But I have a question in relation to the sections displayed on the frontpage/homepage. I wasn't sure if I could ask you but after spending some time trying to figure how you did it, I decided I would ask you instead just in case. Essentially, I wanted how you managed to theme the Welcome/Connect/ Explore sections on the homepage. To me, it looks like blocks themed individually but maybe there is a module that does it differently or maybe it's done through mini-panels. If that's the case, then how did you manage to theme the panels?
Let me know if possible.
Best wishes,
T

Visit our Startups group on Drupal

CRO Front page

Posted by Michelle on March 15, 2010 at 11:54pm

It's actually really simple, now. I had a more complex front page before it got wiped out in the upgrade and haven't had time to redo it. The mission blocks are just a custom ctools content type and all the theming is in CSS. The whole page is done in Page Manager / Panels.

Michelle

-----
_{Shell Multimedia - My sporadically updated mostly Drupal blog.}

Good to know

Posted by Tafa on March 16, 2010 at 6:18pm

Hi Michelle,

Thank you very much for your help. I wasn't sure whether I should ask and to be fair, I am glad I did. For I would not have had a clue as to how to do it this way.
Thanks again,
T

Visit our Startups group on Drupal

No problem

Posted by Michelle on March 16, 2010 at 6:49pm

Among other benefits, Page Manager / Panels makes laying out a page very easy for people like me who struggle with CSS layouts.

Michelle

-----
_{Shell Multimedia - My sporadically updated mostly Drupal blog.}

Thank you so much for the feedback

Posted by Tafa on March 13, 2010 at 10:57pm

I wasn't expecting such a swift response.
@ Dan: Can you tell me where the error occurs? Is it when registering or just landing on the page? Thanks again for your help! ;-)
@ Michelle: Thanks for the tip. I am pretty clueless as how to entice people to sign up or join. I used the flickr to get some random photos to appear. Other than that, I wasn't sure of how to initiate action right from the start. Perhaps I should make the overall objective a little bit clearer, i.e. have a slogan with big fonts. Would that look better? Let me know.
Thanks for this anyway, I spent some time on the profile but little on the rest so more comments are more than welcome here... ;-)
T

Visit our Startups group on Drupal

.

Posted by Michelle on March 13, 2010 at 11:07pm

The more you can show without making people sign up, the better. People tend to resist signing up on sites unless they can clearly see what's in it for them. So I suggest making a lot of your site visible and only hide what is absolutely necessary.

You also want to be very careful about having links on the front page that take you away from the site. You want to draw people into the site, not send them away. Even ads need to be thought about carefully whether they bring in enough money to warrant sending users away when they've just gotten there.

Michelle

-----
_{Shell Multimedia - My sporadically updated mostly Drupal blog.}

sure, it was at the bottom of

Posted by Dan Silver on March 13, 2010 at 11:12pm

sure,
it was at the bottom of this page:
http://content.screencast.com/users/dansli/folders/Jing/media/79f5ca92-f...

Thanks for spotting this

Posted by Tafa on March 13, 2010 at 11:17pm

I didn't see it at all. I just installed some firefox add-on which takes me to the second page of a website and I get some info skipped due to this. So, big thanks for this!! Now, I have to figure out a way to get rid of this! ;-)
Thanks again for your help. Had a look at your website and I like the idea, simple and very cool ;-)
T

Visit our Startups group on Drupal

thanks for looking at my

Posted by Dan Silver on March 13, 2010 at 11:29pm

thanks for looking at my site! Its a start, but I hope to write some add-on modules and perhaps post it to Drupal.org

Excellent stuff

Posted by Tafa on March 13, 2010 at 11:12pm

Michelle,

Thank you so much for this. I agree with what you said and I will re-think the landing page accordingly. Basically, I wanted to build a website where you can meet people and not just have travel blogs, even though this is also possible. So I guess what I'll do is detail the process a lot more to get people to sign up.
Back to the drawing board then ;-)
Thanks again
T.

Visit our Startups group on Drupal

On a page such as

Posted by silverwing on March 14, 2010 at 12:04am

On a page such as http://lateguide.com/howitworks anyone should be able to see it. Not to mentin http://lateguide.com/tos

I think you have a fun idea, it's just lacking a lot in the execution. :(

Also, I'm not sure I know what lateguide means - how the name relates to the actual site - or if it's supposed to.

~silverwing

________________________________
_{MisguidedThoughts}

Thanks for the feedback

Posted by Tafa on March 14, 2010 at 12:15am

I agree that there is a lot to do. My intent was to get an early feel from the drupal community to see where I should focus my efforts into. Given that this is my first drupal website, I spent some time trying to learn on top of making things work. Which is why I wanted to get your impressions.
The name lateguide is in fact related to the idea of meeting a local in the evening after you've spent time doing sightseeing stuff during the day. I stuck with the name because i thought it would convey the sense that you could meet people in the evening and go to places they go to rather than end up in some random bar/restaurant/event. Maybe I should stick to that first. Would that sound better? Let me know.
Thanks again for the amazing feedback.
T

Visit our Startups group on Drupal

we're here to help ;)

Posted by silverwing on March 14, 2010 at 2:19am

Some tips and advice:

I don't know your development set-up, but use a local webserver to test on - WAMP, XAMPP, MAMP.

Get a clear idea of what you want the site to look like (functionality) in two years. Knowing where you're going can help your decision making now.

Old Skool - write down/draw your site out - kind of a mind-map. (I think they still make paper :) )

Drupal-related - investigate acl module and the related access modules to help 'block' areas of the site to non-registered users.

Test the gallery modules, wysiwyg modules on your development setup.

Ask questions. (Specific ones are best.) In other threads of course.

As for the name, I can't say it catches my attention.

~silverwing

________________________________
_{MisguidedThoughts}

Brilliant advices and tips

Posted by Tafa on March 14, 2010 at 12:20pm

Silverwing,

Thanks for your advices and tips. It is crystal clear to me and that's I am after. I like the paper comment, old skool but true ;-).
If anything, all I wanted was to get an early feedback and so far it's been really good to get people to comment on the website.
Thanks again
T

Visit our Startups group on Drupal

.:

Posted by khanz on March 14, 2010 at 3:04am

Lots of access denied pages, I guess these weren't intentional...

/howitworks
/contact

------------
Volvo, Video, Velcro. (I came, I saw, I stuck around.)

Hi Khan

Posted by Tafa on March 14, 2010 at 12:21pm

Thanks for your feedback and no these weren't intentional... ;-)

Visit our Startups group on Drupal

the login/register links are

Posted by ocamp on March 14, 2010 at 12:49pm

the login/register links are still on home page when logged in.

there isnt a link path under settings on the profile drop down links

arg(1))); if (!$account->uid) { echo t('This user has no statuses yet.'); return; } $count = facebook_status_has_status(arg(1)); if (!$count) { global $user; if ($user->uid == $account->uid) { echo t('You have no statuses yet.'); } else { echo t('@name has no statuses yet.', array('@name' =>  check_plain($account->name))); } } ?> 

shows up on users profiles under streams.

users have permissions to edit views!!!! you really need to change that

Thanks for the feedback

Posted by Tafa on March 14, 2010 at 1:30pm

Hi Ocamp,

Thanks for spotting these bugs. Quick question? Is that when using Internet Explorer or Mozilla? I use Mozilla and this does not appear on my page. Perhaps it's due to the fact that my password and settings remember the page. In any case, thanks for this and do let me know.
I'm in the process of reviewing the permissions settings to be sure.
Is there anything else you think might need changes if you were to use this website?
Thanks
T.

Visit our Startups group on Drupal