The internet is an amazing creation and more recently people are embarrassing it as an amazing lifestyle. However while the majority of the users crave themselves by posting the latest dump they have taken on Facebook or Twitter, there are elements of the internet designed for creativity and imagination. With those creative and imaginative areas of the internet, anyone can create anything they want, from music to books, to games to even websites, if its entertainment and online chances are it’s created by a simple user, either with amazing tools or hours of work- the internet can cater for it all.
You might be aware of my MySpace Editorial from earlier this month which I was disappointed in the company as it slowly died instead of renovating itself it had become stagnant. I wanted it to become a creative outlet for a variety of things, an Amazon CreateSpace merged with Facebook and other social networks. A panicle of the internet for creative and imaginative social interaction- instead it cloned what others in the field have already done, became confused on what its direction was and exploded in a cloud of dust.
While that is a bit elaborate and crazy, there are many websites around the internet these days which cater for the propergander of you. Your imagination is free to go wild on these sites, you can post your artwork, upload videos, create lyrics, create music, create video games, create books- create anything you really want. At the end of the day if you wanted to engage yourself in any of those activates be it for personal gain or monetary gain, the internet supplies you with the tools.
If you read various whispers around the internet in the past week it might have come to your attention that I was been a good samaritan and helped out a friend with their website. In the end it became a simplistic website with the goal of been easy for the viewers to navigate, as well as for my friend to further edit and modify. Today I’m going to go over the process I took to develop the latest design for his website.
We had been talking for a while that I just plan did not like the layout which he had been using for quite some time now. The layout was a paid layout he acquired back when he first started his website only late last year. I felt as if the layout was a bit too bulky and confusing for many of his viewers, especially when he targeted people who wanted simple tech support options as well as gamers who want to play on the Minecraft Server.
Well after talking about it for quite some time I had decided some action should be taken, it was around the time he was also thinking of enhancing the Minecraft Server options by getting a dedicated VPN server for it. So I decided “look I’ll make you a website for the launch of the server to the public”. So with that decided I wanted to know the basic things about his website, I made a list of what his site does at the end of the day (like the core elements of content) as well as gaging a target audience from his flip flop from Minecraft Gamers to Tech Support Clients. I came up with a direction at first which would be acceptable for both those things, using a range of colours and other elements he had already picked out and was decided on.
The website wasn’t built within a day, I spaced out my work on it through various crazy “road trips” my local friends wanted to embark on. So by the time the week was nearly out (the original deadline) it hadn’t really taken shape as much as I wanted.
The websites content area was still a frame (originally was planned to also house a sidebar within it), however I decided the original plans for that section didn’t quite work out as well as planned and cleaned up the frame to make an elegant content area. The footer was always quite simple, and the direction was never going to change there- I hate looking at websites, especially modern technology websites who have footers which have so much white space, or even worse so much content there.
The major obstacle I guess would have been the banner. I had an original plan that the CSS navigation would just be images from within the banner. Like I was going to develop a full based Photoshop sort of navigation and banner. Which ended up coming a little short of my plans, (after I realised my Photoshop skills had drastically gone to the gutter) so I curved it into a simple plan banner with a style which can be easily modified by the client.
At the end of the day however, it looked good- everyone was happy and while only a few things have been changed since I “finalized them”, many have been things I had over looked, or things which I had forgotten to implement.
You can always view a sample of this layout online here at Trinest.com by clicking here.
This article was written by Allie Coyne for ITJourno.com as part of their blog watch feature which takes a look at some of the lesser known Australian tech sites and media outlets. It was originally published on their website on Wednesday 13th July 2011 at 8:00am.
Trent Petronaitis is going it alone. After an unsuccessful foray into fansites with several partners, Petronaitis decided in 2007 to venture off alone, combining his Nintendo and CiNG- focused sites to launch a solo-run general gaming blog.
Starting life as two separate entities; AnotherCodeLabs, a Nintendo fan site; and AussieDS, focused on the Japanese games developer CiNG, Trinest came to life following a drop in both sites’ popularity, and a push by Petronaitis to give his web offering a clear direction.
“I was always changing things, basically doing the wrong thing,” he said. “So I decided I would do something I wanted to do instead of trying to run fansites.”
“It has branched out into a more personal site, where I’m writing about what I want to, rather than what people think I should write about,” he added. “I believe people will be looking for a more personal opinion rather than a commercial opinion.”
Focusing on video games analysis, Petronaitis is keen to stay away from news and reviews, preferring to dissect and analyse how games work, how they appeal to the market, and how they fit within a franchise.
“I used to do game reviews but lately I’m just doing editorial pieces,” he said. “I’d rather write one good review every so often on another site, than have lots of average reviews on my site.”
Despite this unwillingness to post written reviews, Petronaitis has recently launched headfirst into a video review endeavour, posting his first YouTube video and play-through review of Minecraft.
“They’re sort of reviews, but at the same time not really reviews,” he said. “At the moment I’m just putting up raw footage, about half an hour in length, but eventually I’ll edit them down.”
“I record the game screen; most are PC games, so I record them with screen capture software,” he added. “Once I start doing the videos properly and taking my time, and writing up what I’m going to say, they’ll be much more successful than they already are, but I’ve already got a good amount of views from it.”
Although pleased with the YouTube viewer reaction to his first video, traffic isn’t a concern for the blogger.
“The website gets relatively good hits occasionally, and sometimes doesn’t,” he said. “It depends on the articles. I don’t really care about the hits anymore, I do it because I want to, not to please people.”
Having only recently gained control and ownership of the site’s domain name and hosting, Petronaitis’ care-free attitude extends to the site’s profitability. He says he has no future plans to make money from his efforts, and is more concerned with creating a first-person perspective website, as well as growing both his YouTube and editorial offering; branching out into unboxing and review video segments, as well as upping the regularity and ‘professionalism’ of his content.
“It’s not going to be successful in the traditional sense, it’s not going to have large hits, but I believe with what I do it will be successful for how the amount of time I put into it,” he said. “It will always be successful in that regard.”
I’ve wanted to write this piece for quite some time, especially with the resent reshuffle of the social world. The sellout of MySpace, and the creation of Google+ make this perfect timing, as well as other players such as LinkedIn becoming more dominant.
I always felt, MySpace had too little chance to become popular. While there was a time when it was considered a successful social network site, it was short lived when other sites such as Bebo and Facebook came around. The website was slow to adopt new features which became standard in the industry, as well was riddled with the appearance of a 90s Geocities site.
However in later years, especially recently MySpace has had many key owners and principle directions. All of which failed and didn’t respark the site as a key social networking site. However I feel that, especially the most current facelift to the site could have provided a bump to the social websites standing, if only it included the right social website standards and mixed them with a new experience. Or even an experience I fell the site has long since forgotten.
MySpace I feel was always quite prominent within the music industry. A creative industry which at the end of the day MySpace arguably could have had creative users, with the option of having quite crazy and elaborate social pages. Its name even congealed and quite important message which quite possibly could have been missed over the years as well, the site is MYspace, as in your own personal space you’re sharing to the world.
MySpace should have evolved over the years to match the social aspects, after all it is MySpace, a social pillar which shows “my” social interactions across the internet, “my” photos, videos and other uploads. The name should have even shovelled the company into a direction of enhancing that “my” aspect, allowing it to become a creative hub for users. Especially in the age of the internet, everyone can essentially create anything they want.
MySpace should have used this as their backbone of direction, instead of especially in the later years of trying to mimic what Facebook has become. They should have started to make their site a social page of their users with their creations. MySpace should have incorporated features of creative sites like Amazons Create Space, the various image and video uploading sites, as well as whatever that website is called which allows users to make song lyrics.
The point I’m trying to make is MySpace should have become a platform for users to show the world their creative side through sharing and organizing as well as been a generic social network like what Facebook has become. Also those circles from Google+ could have just been what MySpace needed to kick itself back into the game.