Observations/Suggestions for future development

Drunkenblade of Kay

Let me begin by stating that I like the site, I like where we are going as a community, and I am generally satisfied with the state of affairs.

However, I feel we can make BookTalk better, much better in fact, and I would like to do my part, in the spirit of the greater good, to contribute toward that end.

The Logo:

The logo is good. It is simple and elegant. However, it has no context and seems out of place. I think integrating the logo into a universal interface, or site design would resolve this.

The difficulty here is that a universal site design does not exist and involves no small amount of work.

The Color Scheme:

The current use of red, yellow, and black hurt my eyes. Furthermore, the black background conveys a lack of structure to the site--tables, logos, and content seem disjointed and unrelated. As a web programmer, I know it can be very difficult to employ black in a way that exudes professionality. Now, I realize that this issue might be just be my subjective tastes and not representative of the community, but I thought I'd say something in case there are other who might agree but were not sure how, or didn't want to bring up the issue.

I would recommend a lighter background, and a softer color scheme which employs colors that aren't so contrasting. (i.e. dark grey/light grey on white/light blue with minimal touches of red or yellow (not both) for emphasis.)

Layer based heirarchy of content:

Currently, we have the typical pancake stack of content. We have the logo and description, then the books we are reading, then finally forum categories. This also, in my opinion contributes to the disjointed feel I sometimes get. Most of us focus on the forums, but we have to scroll down a couple times to get to the content, every time we changes pages. This relates back to the universal site design issue. In order to deconstruct the pancake layout, we need to build a content structure of sorts, which could include for example, a navigation/quicklink menu. We could definitely shrink those book cover images and place them in an easily accessible, but not focal area of the page.

Now, I'm not certain how much flexibility you have with layout and design on an EZBoard, but I doubt these kinds of changes fall within their limitations. It might be better to move everything but the forums to a main page, and link to the MB from there.

A good example

I did some searching on google to try and find a good example of what I'm talking about. The page isn't perfect, but it does embody alot of the ideas I've mentioned.

www.andrewsullivan.com/book_club.php

One thing of interest was the kickback plan he's arranged with Amazon.com. Apparently his site gets a 15% kickback on all books purchased through his site. Since most of us are buying the books anyway, that is just money wasted. We should definitely look into this plan.

associates.amazon.com/exe...71-1213642

Edited by: Drunkenblade of Kay at: 10/23/02 4:55:41 pm

ZachSylvanus

Tim: This is a staging point. Chris has procured the rights to www.booktalk.org, and is looking into server space, and a large-scale webpage for our organization. The boards will always be a part of the system, but for now they are the sole element. Soon, hopefully, we will have incorporated a larger gateway website similar to those you linked to, and include the boards amongst that page.

For now, while we're still a work in progress, what you see is what we're temporarily using.

Chris OConnor

Tim:

I really appreciate you taking the time to post such a detailed message about how you envision BookTalk and our future. I'll respond to several of the points. First of all, Zach hits the nail on the head when he says that right now we are limited to what you see. There are probably many ways to improve the current EZBoard, and I spend vast amounts of time on the site each day/week exploring these ideas. The bottom line is we are very limited since we are using the EZBoard as our main site. They don't allow the flexibility to do the things you suggest.

As Zach mentioned I have purchased the Domain BookTalk.org for the next year. The goal will be to eventually have a very professional and impressive site hosted at that URL, but for the time being we are going to have to stick with the EZBoard as not just our message board system, but as our main site too. Just know that all of your points are very appreciated and I am amazed at how similar your vision is to mine. It makes me feel good that possibly I have some great ideas that will be universally appealing. As the site is developed at BookTalk.org I would really appreciate your continued involvement in helping shape that site as you obviously have an eye for these things.

The problem is that I lack the web site development skill necessary to create the site I think we all would want, so I will have to pay a 3rd party to do it for us. This is a cost of hundreds of dollars, but when we have a few hundred members I think we will be able to afford it. I have placed a "Donate" button on the bottom of the page and I'm hoping that in the future we will have enough total members that a small percentage will feel compelled to donate a few bucks towards the new site development costs. And I just might fork over the cash myself as my personal financial situation improves over time. BookTalk is important to me, and it would be worth the costs.

Then the new site will cost at least $150/year to host. If we have a great deal of traffic the cost will increase some and couuld be as much as $225 - 275/year. Add the development cost to the hosting fee and we have a total expense of over $500 to get a new site up and running.

I'm exploring ways to make the new site profitable, or at least break-even and pay for itself. Imagine having 500 - 800 active members. Traffic would be intense. The site would have thousands and thousands of hits each day. At this point, we could easily sell banner space (not pop-up ads) to relevant sites. This revenue could supplement our donations, should there be any.

As you see at the top of the current board there is a link to another site when you click on More.... This takes you to my personal web space that RoadRunner provides to every cable access subscriber. The space is only 5 megs and it doesn't permit many of the features that we need, such as forms capabilities, databases, etc... Besides, look at the URL for that site! home.tampabay.rr.com/booktalk/ Talk about a mouthful! No, we need to use BookTalk.org for our site address, not these unprofessional lenghty free site addresses.

The Logo

I agree with everything you said!

Layer based heirarchy of content:

Once again I couldn't agree more. I envision using frames where the left frame is the stack of links to the various pages within the site, including to the EZBoard. The links will probably be something like...

Home
FAQ
Books
Members
Join
Chat
Forums
Contact
Links

Home - This will be our home page. It will contain a "News" section updated regularly, a dynamic calendar, a "Quote of the Day," and small thumbnail of the current "Book of the Month."

FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions page.

Books - Links to a chronological listing of all of our past book selections, with links from within each book section to the corresponding forum on our EZBoard. There will also be space alloted to member critiques of each book directly below each book thumbnail and description. Clickk on the thumbnail to launch a larger picture of the book cover.

Members - A Member profile database. Each member can have their own picture in their profile, and a certain size profile to talk about who they are. To the right of each member image will be a series of fields for Name, Age, Sex, City, State, Favorite Author, etc... There will be a link within each members profile leading to their thread in the "Introduce Yourself" forum. "Back to the Top" buttons will be placed between every profile on the "Members" page, along with the "FAQ" page and "Books" page.

There will be a button at the top called "Submit your Profile," and members can click on this, fill out a form and send me their profile.

Join - Information on how a prospective member can join. There will be a link from this page to the "Members" page so they can see ideas on how to structure their own profile. From the "Members" page they can submit their profile.

Chat - A link directly to our chat room with helpful information, if necessary, on how to use the chat room effectively.

Forums - Links over to our EZBoard message boards.

Contact - BookTalk contact information plus a feedback form.

Links - A well-designed page of links categorized according to subjects.

Ok, one must have their priorities, and I need to go watch the Sopranos now!

Tim, thank you for the detailed message. I hope we can continue to discuss these ideas so that by the time we are ready to have the real site designed we will know exactly what we want. I really could use your help.

Chris

"I cannot help but notice that there is no problem between us that cannot be solved by your departure."

Edited by: Chris OConnor at: 10/23/02 10:12:00 pm

Drunkenblade of Kay

Chris and Zach,

Thank you both for the feedback. I am confident that BookTalk.org is in competent hands. I will be glad to help in any way I can.

Regarding profitablity and donations

I posted a link to Amazon.com's associates program. Basically, they offer up to 15% return on referred sales. The program is free and easy to implement. You simply put a link to amazon.com on your page, and any sales generated through that link can return up to 15%. This is ideal for a book club like book talk where members are encouraged to purchase books on a regular basis. I mean, if we are going to spend the money on the books anyway, why not get some of it back?

Lets say we grow to the point where we our membership is purchasing an average of 50 books per discussion at a moderate cost of $15.00/book. This translates into $750.00 spent on books every two months. If these sales were conducted through Amazon's associates program, up to $112.50 is returned to the site every two months or $675.00 annually.

Here is the link again. I'd like to hear what you all think.

associates.amazon.com/exe...71-1213642

Chris OConnor

D -->

runkenblade

I'll be adding this feature soon. Thank you very much for the suggestion. Great idea!

Chris

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." -- Albert Einstein

"If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being." - Jerry Falwell

"I don't see any god up here." - Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (the first man in space), speaking from orbit, 1961.


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