From The Bee's Web team:
If you haven't already heard, we've been working hard on an online entertainment site that expands on The Bee's weekly 7 section. Here's a look at a rough draft of a proposed home page. Give it a once-over. Tell us what you think.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE WHOLE PAGE.
Some of the home page features:
-- At the top are our featured stories. Below that are smaller images that link to multimedia such as videos, pictures or audio clips.
-- To the right is the calendar. It includes the must-do events of the day and button links to tomorrow's and upcoming events.
-- "Party Pictures" are images submitted by you, the reader. We want pictures from concerts, festivals, parades, etc., so everyone can see them.
-- "Top picks" are entertainment selections from Bee staff.
-- In the lower right are items such as a Twitter feed for people in the Valley, a taste of the latest posts from the Beehive, a list of recent reader comments on stories, reader recommendations and entertainment news from around the country.
-- At the bottom are timely lists from Bee staff - the best tacos or tri-tip sandwiches, how to watch movies cheaply, etc.
(By the way, the Beehive isn't going anywhere. The entertainment site won't replace our merry band of bloggers, but their fingerprints will be all over this new toy.)
So, that's the home page. But there's more. The site will have sections for music, arts, movies and television, and food (for starters; what else should we feature?).
Each section will likely include database information of venues and event listings. The movie section, for instance, will have a guide to films playing in local theaters as well as with recent DVD releases. Other sections will list things such as music venues, local bands and Art Hop events.
We'll continue to drop progress reports and sample screen shots as we get closer to the launch date.
So ... feedback, please. Or better yet, tell us what you think face-to-face at the Tweetup tonight. We will be there with a couple laptops so you can see it for yourself. This is as much your site as it is ours, so we need to know what clicks and what's missing. Don't hold back. Tell us what you need to know to enjoy Fresno.
It might be a good place to also have some video game news, reviews, and the like.
It might also be a good place to find video (Youtube and the like that have 'Fresno' in their tags)
As for the actual look of the site, it looks nice. Also looks easy to navigate.
Good point, Mr. Brown. Surprised that video game reviews haven't become more of a regular thing in the Bee (besides the AP review stuff, of course)
Me and another dude did video game reviews for like a year and half ... sadly, nobody seemed to care.
Was that before or after the Beehive? Don't remember local reviews in the paper...
Design wise, I'd question the size of the flag. The Rascal Flats seems to overpower it to the point of it looking like an ad up there. Teasers above the flag never worked for me online and seem to be a remnant of print that some decide to still employ for some reason. Also, the ads might be a tad bit too big and seem to run too inline with the design of the rest of the site, which might confuse as to what is a story and what is an ad.
It was pre-Beehive, around the time I started writing my Friday column, so mid-2004.
Thanks for the suggestions and feedback on the design. Just to clear things up: The ad sizes and placements are a requirement from our parent company (usually) we have little flexibility. But We'll try to work with our web-ad team on finding some middle ground.
As for the flag: We'll be rotating both the flag and the background-colors (on the homepage only ) depending on what big story we're promoting that week. Could be Rascal Flatts playing at the Save Mart Center, could be something cool happening in town, such as the "TGFT" at Chukchansi Park. The whole point is to keep the site looking fresh on weekly bases while promoting the current "big event" happening in town and the rest of the Valley. That said I'll make sure we'll keep the design looking clean and tasteful each week.
Nothing is set in stone just yet and everyone's suggestions and feedback we'll help us get there a-lot faster.
Thanks Guys!
Not bad. Fairly clean though feels a little overrun with hard cornered boxes. If that top picture of MJ is one of those scrolling features like that on mlb.com or nypost.com, I don't like it. If it's supported on the back with flash, that's bad for the mobile users. Speaking of mobile, if the backend if adaptable to a mobile version, extra points for you.
not a fan of the entire color scheme. first reaction: a frown to my face. sorry, but its true.
navigation is unclear and hard to find.
i like how it works for the first two rows of content: titles and bold images. below that as you head into "sections," too much scrolling, not much incentive to click thru.
$0.02
I think it rocks. Very clean. The only thing that's a bit distracting is the light gray background in the large center column. I'd darken that a bit so it doesn't overpower the content.
And please tell me it won't have popup ads and that annoying giant page curl ad like the main Fresno-Bee site has!
D
Totally agree. Those page curl ads are the worst.
...ditto.
So long as it's not one pop-up after another (and page curls)... no problem.
Strangely, it reminds me of a Myspace page.
My only concern is it seems that 'Weekly 7' is exactly what the @FresnoBeeHive is more or less. My only concern isn't that the BeeHive will disappear but that info will get spreadout to the point people get frustrated because for news, you visit fresnobee.com, for crazy random editor postings, you visit their blog, for Mike Oz you end up on the Beehive, and then when Heather forgets her cup of coffee, she's on the Weekly 7 or something.
Perhaps they'll complement each other well and the Bee seems to manage their web properties pretty well but I would hate to see either one get 'washed out' due to people just not being able to keep up.
As to the DESIGN itself -- looks solid and nice. I wish your fresnobee.com front page looked a bit more polished like some of your other web properties.
My two cents on that:
I think what we're going for with the new site, content-wise, is mostly better packaging. What I write for The Bee and for 7 isn't going to change. Some of it crosses over here to The Beehive, some of it doesn't. But the idea is to give the site that houses all of our entertainment content a little extra pizazz.
Keep in mind, this is what we're replacing:
http://www.fresnobee.com/entertainment/
"and then when Heather forgets her cup of coffee, she's on the Weekly 7 or something."
What?
How is this different from Fresno Famous? Seems like a rebranding of Famous...
This is the content produced by The Bee's entertainment writers. The stuff we do for the newspaper, when we're not doing The Beehive. Basically, what you see in 7 each week, in the Life sections every day and in Spotlight on Sundays.
For those of us who don't...ahem...read or receive 7, this really could be perceived as unnecessary duplication. Why not combine some of those activities with, say, Fresno Famous - isn't that a catalog of cool happenings in town?
That said, it's got a nice vibe to it.
I suppose you could say putting every story from the print product online is "unnecessary duplication," but I don't think it is. I think some people will read it online, some will read it in print.
As for combining with Famous -- that's two different branches of the company that don't tangle together too much. That's sorta like saying the Falcons (R.I.P.) and the Grizzlies should be one team since they are/were both owned by the same people.
I suppose you could, and you could compare apples to the Fulton Mall while you're at it.
If I'm understanding the situation right, though, you're creating a new site for content that mirrors a print publication that many will (judging by comments here) confuse with online existing Bee properties. What does the reader care if different departments in the bureaucracy don't talk to each other?
And I'd argue that it's really more like entity that owns the two sports teams posting scheduling info about both in a place that sports fans can find it.
Eh, but what do I know? I'm one of the 12 people that find it worthwhile to invest in downtown, after all.
So... redesigning and enhancing Downtown and the Tower District is okay, but redesigning and enhancing an existing page on Fresno Bee.com is cause for dismay and alarm. Got it.
Yep. I'm *so* dismayed and alarmed. Damn this dismay and alarm.
Awww. Don't worry, James. You'll work through it eventually. Remember: we're here for you.
Had to go back to the downtown post for proper reference:
"Here's a crazy idea: Maybe the average Joe doesn't give a s*** about downtown for a valid reason, and this is evolution working right before our very eyes..."
If you're really going to compare the activity of a news outlet to that of a community center, it's important to maintain balance. I'm sure you can see where I'm going. Dismay and alarm.
I don't think you're understanding the situation correctly. Perhaps that's the problem.
We currently have this:
http://www.fresnobee.com/entertainment/
We're going to turn it into this.
We're not so much creating something new, we're just giving a new look to what we already have. Yes, we want it to stand on its own a little bit -- so we're giving its own name, but we already do that in print with the Friday entertainment section we call 7.
When we launched 7 in print, we weren't able to launch a comparable Web component, so now we're doing that.
I didn't misunderstand something initially - thanks for the clarification. That said, my points about integration/interaction remain as-stated.
this is the freakin' coolest thing ever, we have needed this for a long time.
This is going to put Fresno on the map...
LOL is overused, but Travis did authentically make me laugh out loud.