jayeff

Basic site design layout/navigation/organisation - call it what you like - doesn't get near enough attention. Many member areas, webmaster areas too, come to that, are a nightmare and costing those sponsors a great deal of money.

Much of that is generated by the way we work, often farming out the site design (which might not even include the member area), as an early step in creating a site, instead of as the last step. Thus the member area is inevitably influenced by the top-end design, when we should be designing from the smallest content element up, arriving at the top of the site last.

When you work that way around, not only is ease of use more likely to become a reality, but with the bones of the site available to the designer, one who really knows his/her job should be able to provide a much more relevant front end.

I used to review quite a few different things. I especially took flack from car enthusiasts who also read articles I wrote in a motorsport magazine and therefore expected me to slam econo-boxes, even when I was writing them up in a daily newspaper. The point is that good reviews are always written from the perspective of the most likely customer for whatever is being reviewed, unless you have a personality thing going on and then the primary appeal is your style (and the often abrasive comments), rather than the actual contents of your reviews.

Personal taste must be a strong element, but in the context of Paul's threads on this topic, I think most of us could filter the absolutely good and bad, and only quibble about which of the good was the best. In fact Paul's content is a good example, because since it has provided him with a good living for several years, not entirely due to his ummm... aggressive (?) marketing, there is obviously a sizeable audience out there for it. Yet for my taste most of his models and sets are very ordinary and his style of photography just doesn't work for me the way, say, whoever photographs a lot of the Medium Pimpin sets does.