iVillage Community Conference Website

www.iVillage.com

An example of a community conference website is iVillage.com. This site seems to be primarily for women and it offers a great number of resources on many different topics. For some reason, the logo for iVillage reminds me of Chick-fil-A.

Other than that, iVillage's website reminds me of a women's magazine: clean, organized, and easy to read and use, with a bit of personality and flair. By signing in, you have access to message boards, newsletters and community toolbars. Prompting you to sign in or join now is an excited looking woman at the top left of the page. The iVillage logo is in the center and a large search bar is on the right. My thoughts about the large search bar: either they want to emphasize that you can search the website and it's convenient and quick or they just slapped it on there and didn't think about it and it's a bit dominant. To end the header is a navigation bar featuring links to the main categories of: "Pregnancy & Parenting," "Beauty & Style," "Home & Garden," "Entertainment," "Go Green," "Food," "Health & Diet," and a drop down menu of "More iVillage." The "More iVillage" menu features things such as "Love," "Wedding," "Newsletters," "Free Stuff," "Coupons," "Astrology," "Momtourage," "NeverSayDiet," "iVillage UK," and "GardenWeb." As you can see, this is an extensive website made for people to communicate and learn about various and diverse subjects.

Much like a news mosaic site, iVillage features a section beneath the header with "Today's Big Story" and "Six More Not to Miss," articles related to the main story. Right beneath the blurb on the big story is a question and a place to vote. The next section down on iVillage's home page (on the left) is called "Daily Clicks" and it's supposedly what is most popular on the website. Featured are various items such as a video, a link to purchase something online, several popular articles, and a section of "today's free advice." To the right of the "Daily Clicks" section is a section called "What's New With You" that features community photos and several different discussions on different topics (with links and comments). At the bottom of iVillage's home page is a list of "iVillage Shortcuts" that includes links to "iVillage Makeovers," "Pregnancy Calendar," "Message Boards," "Small Business Stories," and "Baby Name Finder." I'm not really sure why they picked some of those in particular. I would've assumed that they would repeat the main links from the top to be featured in their shortcuts section. Beneath that are links to several different topics on iVillage that are featured in a column list format. Next to that list is a list of links under the category of "NBC Universal." It features things such as NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, NBC New York, Universal Studios, Access Hollywood, Bravo, Oxygen, USA Network and SyFy. Finally, at the bottom of the page are links to websites that are part of the iVillage network.

Clicking on one of the main links at the top, such as "Food," brings you to a page similar to the home page. The top section is a refreshing taste of consistency because it is exactly the same as it was on the home page with the sign in area and the links and ferocious search bar. There are links for the food section on the left. Today there are four featured articles that automatically play on a loop, though you can pause them or go back to one you wanted to see. There is a different blurb and a fixed set of links with each featured article. There are food videos and message boards and even a section for live message board conversations. The ad space on the right features ads mostly relating to food and even contains some of the websites or companies iVillage networks with. In the food section, there is an iVillage shopping link with food and kitchen related products featured. Near the bottom of the page are links to things "you might also like" as well as "seasonal spotlight" articles. After sponsored links and another ad, you see the same links at the bottom as were on the home page, minus the short cuts.

All-in-all, I think the iVillage website is a useful community conference website because it is clean and organized, yet manages to hold a lot of information on many different topics that are important to average people. It has a user-friendly layout, much like reading a magazine, but without the often pesky and difficult-to-interpret table of contents.

BHL's Bad Website Design

www.behavioralhealthlink.com/

The BHL (Behavioral Health Link) website may not look like a horrendous website from the home page, but it doesn't look fantastic. The blue in the logo clashes with the blue line and link banner, but it's not the end of the world. The links at the bottom are a typical blue underline that turns purple when clicked. Again, that's not the end of the world, but it's not the best. The feature picture on the home page is one of a telephone operator looking at a computer screen. You can guess from context clues that she is helping someone. However, if you look at the overall home page: the picture, the headline, the links, you've almost got to think, "Okay, if I have a crisis, I should go to them, but how will they help me?"

The only link you see that might help you is the one that says "Products & Services" at the top. You click. It gives a plain, not minimalistic, but downright plain page with some bolded headlines and brief descriptions, almost like a restaurant menu. The only link on the main page is one for a Pamela Schuble. It's a contact link and it automatically opens an email. On the right panel of this page, there are links to other "innovative programs." You might see "FEMA Crisis Counseling Program" and recognize it, so you click. This takes you to a page with a short two sentence blurb about FEMA and two unidentified, poorly overlapped photos. So you decide you're not learning anything really useful here and you look around for a link back to the home page to try another direction. However, there doesn't seem to be one.

That's right, you must rely on you your history or back arrow to return back through all the links you've clicked on to get to the home page and the original links. Also, if you haven't noticed, the only thing that is consistent about the pages is that thin blue line at the top with a tiny bit of awkward white space above it. In addition, the gray box at the right side with more "useful" links has appeared on most pages. One thing I find curious is that there is only copyright information and the title of the website on the home page and nowhere else.

After going back to the home page, you decide that perhaps the Contact link will be more helpful. The page features an unattractive, spreadsheet-like table with contact information. In fact, the classiest thing on this page is the little envelope icon next to the email links. Even the picture on the right which seems to be a delievery person handing a clipboard to another person, barely makes your radar. There is, however, no tidy bar of links to show you where else to explore. What to do? If you scan through the paragraphs below, you will see that you recognize some of the words as being main links on the home page. beahvioralhealthlink.com should take you back to the home page, right? Wrong. It takes you to a home page look-alike, without any links. Out of desperation, you click on the picture. That takes you to the "News & Resources" page, which for the first time lists the main links on the right hand side. However, that is still the only redeeming quality of the page, although the YouTube video counts for something. For presumably the most exciting page of the site, the layout is extremely bland and uninteresting. Just looking at the page hardly makes the viewer want to scroll through it. Bold type serves as the section headings and the blurbs are the same size and font only not bold.

All in all, the BHL website is in need of a major re-design that will showcase that it is the perfect place to go in a time of need. To do this, it needs a friendly layout that will comfort its viewers as well as easily navigable pages and links to help the viewers find what they need quickly and efficiently without worry or unneeded time and stress.

***Follow-up: After I wrote this, as I was putting the links in, I went back and discovered the website had the same links on each page at the top. I accessed the site from Google. I clicked on the first result and got this: the version with links (keep in mind I've been using the site with the problems for about an hour and a half now). I went back to Google, and clicked the link underneath the link for the main website. This happened to be listed as a home page, and I got this, which is worse than the result I got when I researched this site for this article. In conclusion, I'm not really sure what caused me to find multiple versions of this site under the same web address, but it has more problems than just that and is still in need of a re-design.

MSNBC News Website

www.msnbc.msn.com/

MSNBC is a comprehensive news network that covers U.S. and world news as well as weather, business, health, entertainment, sports, politics, travel, science, technology, and local news. The MSNBC website is able to provide access to information in all of these categories in an organized manner through a well-thought-out layout. Top stories are the first thing the viewer sees and a video clip is featured predominantly with a quick headline and links to other top stories. Scrolling down the home page, the viewer finds a list of more top stories and a tab for "my news" which gives the viewer stocks and weather as a default. However, the viewer can easily change the categories for himself. Following that, there are more videos and slideshows of the featured top stories. After top stories, there are several divisions of "top headlines" based on the nature of the news (i.e. Local News and Weather, U.S. and World, Politics, Business, etc.), all accompanied with various multimedia options. There are also very few distracting ads or sponsors on MSNBC's website.

For the amount of information MSNBC boasts to cover, they seem to do an exemplary job of keeping the site minimalistic in design and layout and easily navigable. Even though the home page is fairly lengthy, the links to get to other kinds of news are strategically located in lists or menus at the top, along the left hand side, and at the bottom, as well as in headline links down the main frame of the page. New and updated stories are clearly marked right before the headline or blurb. Having never used MSNBC's website before, I found it easy to customize my local news and always keep track of where I was within the site.

Test Blog

Well, this is it: my first blog.