BAD WEB PAGES: Since I have been trying to get crew and technicians to my site, by any means I could, I went to a few directories and saw, some of the most annoying sites I have ever seen. Some of them were wonderful and some were very useful, I'm sure you people with the cool sites know who you are. Now look, my site isn't the best but it's not to complex either and since I don't really know HTML that well, I thought it was best that way.
Some of the badly done sites I saw had no e-mail addresses on any of the web pages. Now that is ok when you are talking about looking for work and just have your phone number posted, I understand that but some didn't even have a number to call, No e-mail, no number. If it did have E-mail and Phone info, I couldn't find it.
I know that some of you might have a tough time with this computer crap and really don't know how to get a half decent looking page on the web. For different levels of people, experienced in HTML and Web design, this might sound right on or off the mark but have to KISS it. That stands for Keep It Simple Stupid, which I am sure a lot of you know. Look, all you have to do is make sure the most important info is very easy to find... If you have bigger files or Flash or demos reels, make sure they are on another page, not your home page. Then you just have links to the other stuff you want to say or show, like flash, demo reels and the like. Just make it clean and with all the info needed. Make sure you don't have too wacky a font, don't have colors that don't match or colors that are hard to see.
The free web sever that I am on (Homestead), I think is the best and easiest I have found. Here at Homestead, they have their own web builder, clean and easy, it's just drag and drop stuff. And as you learn more, you can get more funky. But when you are starting out make sure there is not a lot of crap on your home page. Also, I am not a big fan of little animations on a start page. You know the ones that make you wait through a really bad flash creation and then you have to click it to get to the home page. It's boring and a waste of time... It would be different if I had DSL or a T1 line but I don't and a lot of other people don't. Plus, a lot of the animations and flash are done very poorly. So why settle for something big and crappy, when you can have something small and cool.
Now I know there are a lot of you who have very cool sites and I think that is great. However, even with the great ones, I feel some are not organized tight or at least not tight enough to make it easy to get around. Hell, I think my site suffers from that as well. However, this is not my business site, this is not where I am trying to get work (At least not overtly) or showing my wares. This is a site I built to connect the film community a bit. Nothing more. And yes, I would love great animations, cool pull down list, a site that looks like a work of art but I can't make that happen, so I don't try. I just do it as easy and simple as I can. Look at a cool tight web site and copy it if you have to.
Now, I am not leaving you out in the wind... Look, if you think my site looks cool and would like yours to look similar or as cool, please let me know and I will help you as much as I can. For those of you who know my site is crap next to yours, feel free to help me out when you can, I could use it.
Head Honcho
