recantha.co.uk

 

Most of the links to other 'tabs' in the main area take you to password-protected download screens (that I couldnt access, obviously). Again, with the copyright issues. Just because there is a password on the screen doesn't mean that you can allow downloads of copyright material like logos, scripts and sheet music. Advertising it on your site is just plain idiotic.

Pretty much every company or society website has an About Us page. The Marianettes do. Fantastic. Except that it is password-protected. Which means that there is no personal connection to the site visitors and makes the society completely faceless. Brilliant.

It's not often that you come across a site which is so much of a turn-off as to make you not want to even go and see one of their productions. This is one of those times, however!

 

Some sites have plenty of content, but no style. The Lytton Players website is one of these and tops it all off by using outdated technology (frames... shudder) and keeping the design the same since 1998!

The year is advertised at the bottom of the homepage along with this wonderful little line of copyright text:

SLP Website content © John P Dunleavy & Others* 1998-2011 The contents of this site may not be reproduced in whole or in part without consent * Not necessarily explicitly named

On no account should a website be copyrighted to the webmaster. It is not the webmaster's property any more than an article written by a newspaper journalist could be considered copyright TO that person. It belongs to the newspaper, or in this case, the theatrical society.

Now, to come back to the homepage... It used to be that the site homepage didn't advertise the current productions, which was a major waste of marketing space. Now it does, except that the current production posters are absorbed into an animated GIF which goes by so quickly that it's impossible to read the anyway-illegible text.

Adding to the despair is the use of a non-functioning page hit counter at the bottom... Which means the page takes ages to fully load and, frankly, hit counters went out with the dinosaurs.

Lovingly rendered in Verdana (which is okay, I suppose, but not at that tiny tiny size) but with a page which has a body style of Times New Roman, I suppose it's not that bad. Except the company logo is in a serif font which makes the whole enterprise look disorganised.

Plus, they're using a very lurid blue for both the menu and the links... which is the default blue that everyone uses.

The choice of a left-side menu is pretty standard (except it's in a frame... which is so old that I felt like mentioning it twice) and the links are well-chosen. They are grouped nicely together... except... I don't know... there's something about the navigation that makes it seem very... unimportant.

Let's be clear here... having a Whats New page on a website says two things:

1. We've had this since the site was launched and we're not going to change now. (What's New, along with Under Construction belong to the 1990s)

2. Our site doesn't get updated much so we want to make sure that people know when it is. (Which is a bad admission, and in this case a little silly as the site does get updated quite regularly.)

What is very strange is that despite the Whats New page doing it's job quite well, they have a News page which was last updated in 2009 (two years ago).

Suggestion: keep the news page up to date with the latest updates and do away with the What's New (but probably uninteresting) page.

Good use of photography, except the shots tend to be sparse and not necessarily in useful places. For example, there are some on the not-maintained news page which are good, but not on the production pages where you would expect them.

It's great to have pages for current and past productions. It's standard, but a nice thing to have for people to get a feel of whether the society is worth joining. Except, the show pages use a mixture of Verdana (which we'll accept as the house style) and... Britannic Bold. Now, I like BB as much as the next designer, I've used it on posters, but it has no business being used on a web page, and certainly not up against Verdana.

The production pages are also, on the whole, not updated once they have been created. Listing cast members, adding show photos, adding reviews... all of this content would persuade people to browse about the site. But none of that is present.

I know a little of the history of the Social networking with this society. It is blatantly obvious by the addition of the Facebook link on the homepage that it has been added as an afterthought. It's at the bottom of the page and not pushed to be used.

The use of an externally-hosted 'guestbook' is yet another 'feature' that should have been dropped in the first decade of this century - it's just old hat!

It's not all bad news on this site. The info about membership, hire of their premises and the efforts to build a new theatre are well put-together and well-written. The whole effect is spoilt somewhat by the link to their second site... their Patrons site.

For some reason, someone thought it would be a great idea to create a seperate website for the Patrons or 'Friends' of the society. This IS a good idea, but it is so badly executed that one would have thought that it would be better for it NOT to exist. The site is typeset in Arial, so any continuity from the main site is out the window. No title tag has been set for the frames-based site so we have the fantastic site title of 'Framset document' (note the spelling mistake).

We have a handshake graphic at the top of the homepage which has been squashed vertically so it looks terrible, along with being such a standard idea for a graphic that you just ignore it.

Again, a page hit counter... with all of 412 hits on it. Note to the wise: don't show a hit counter that shows how little traffic you get!

They have a horrible animated graphic link to their web shop (which has nothing to do with Patrons, per se, so why put it on the homepage?)

The left hand navigation has a better society logo (except it's fuzzy, and, God help us it looks squashed horizontally) and the navigation is rendered in Times New Roman... which is our fourth font at least. The header styles on the other pages have no uniform look - bold switches on and off like an OCD operator with a light switch.

Oh, and for God's sake... if you're going to provide an email link, DO NOT label it 'contact the Friends team' without saying that it is just an email link - you have a contact form on the main site, why not on this site?

Then, on every page, prominently in the navigation, is a login form. It doesn't say who it is for or how to register (yes, yes, I know it's for the Friends, or possibly to edit the site, but really... why on every page?)

The site needs updating and re-designing. The content isn't updated often enough and well enough that there is obviously no way for the committee/management to update it. Either that or no-one wants to update it, which is probably worse. Graphics and typefaces are all a bit off, as is the navigation. The biggest flaw, though, is that Friends site. It is terrible. There is not enough content to merit a seperate site and what is there looks terrible, reads badly, and doesn't do anything to promote the idea of Patronage. Major missed opportunities abound, but it is nowhere near as bad as the Marianettes!

 

More sites coming soon!