Hey guys. I’ve only told around a dozen people about the site so far (as far as I know).
The reason for that is that I’m still fiddling with the actual website layout, as well as trying to build an archive of strips so people won’t get turned off by a mostly empty site. The schedule for the big marketing push is the beginning of April. In the meantime, please keep this site to our little group. Once April comes, please PLEASE help spread the word =)
With that in mind, please let me know if you see anything about the site that’s an issue or if you have any recommendations. For a guy who knows absolutely nothing about computers, programming or CMS/CSS, I think I’ve done a decent job that’s got most of the basics that I want =)
A few site issues I’m thinking about:
- Too many ads? I don’t want to overwhelm readers with too many ads, but they’re a necessary evil in webcomics. I like the D&D focused Amazon ads because I think it adds the proper vibe for a gaming site, but am concerned that the slide show is too much. So far, I’ve managed to keep all the ads in the blog section, but I’m considering a new header with a banner ad. Too much?
- Background too dark? I like the Taupe color for the background, but I’m concerned that people might think it’s too dark. Should I lighten it to a cream or biege color instead?
- Blogging too much? Not enough? Wrong subjects? What’s the appropriate rate of blogging for a webcomic? Opinions seem to vary, but the general consensus seems to be more =better.
- Are you aware that there’s hovertext on all the comics? It’s a fact that my art is still in the beginning stages. I can’t really do much about that except practice more and learn. However I’ve been using the comic description and hovertext to add extra layers of funny as much as possible in order to compensate. Do I need to actually tell people about this and make it obvious? My concern is for first time readers not knowing about them and leaving before discovering them if they don’t think the drawing is good enough.
- RSS options. Right now the RSS is set to capture all comic posts and all blog posts. There’s an option for comics only, blog only, comments, and RPG blog only. I’m reluctant about making these easy to get to because building a community pretty much requires that I do my best to have everyone come to the site and participate in conversations. I’m leaning towards putting this info in a subcategory of the Community menu panel, at least until I have a forum. Opinions?
- D&D content. I’ve got tons of gaming material that’s just waiting to be PDF’d and uploaded. I’m torn between including these to the site or saving them for submission as freelance writing work to various magazines. Right now I’m leaning towards including a few of these here for free, some as PDFs for sale, and some as PDFs available behind a subscription wall.
Oh, and I realize that the strip yesterday came on late last night. I have a 4 week buffer of strips already done, but for some reason I decided to add 5 new strips in the middle of it at the last minute. So yesterday’s strip was written and drawn after I got back home yesterday. Today’s strip will also likely go up later tonight. Next week’s strip (and the ones after that) should be up first thing in the morning as normal.
I think the hovertext is cool/funny, and you should keep it. It adds a slightly unexpected little touch. One minor problem is that it only displays on the screen for a few seconds, so you need to read quickly.
By the way, you should turn off the hovertext in the pulldown menus, since it tends to obscure items below it, and is only repeating what you’re pointing to anyway.
The background tan color is fine, but the black graphics bleeds into the black text you’ve got over it.
Re: Hovertext – Hmm…I wonder where the control for hovertext duration is? Or how to take them out of the pulldown menus? Googling for tutorials now…
Re: Background/Color – Can’t decide if I should make the background drawings lighter colored or change the text of the side columns to white…probably the background.