Come along friends, today we're taking a short little side trip to
Hainted Holler. I'm sure you'll meet a few odd characters on this trip so please keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times.
Review Site: Hainted HollerFIRST IMPRESSION:Well, hmm. Honestly, there isn't a lot that comes to mind to describe my initial thoughts. It's a very simple site, featuring a black & white strip of the joke-of-the-day format. Aside from the strip, there isn't much here, where there could be quite a bit more.
*Load Speed: 8The site has very few graphics and loads quickly.
*Color Mix: 5The background is a flat turquoise-ish color and is accented by a light blue header that doesn't fill the header area, and an oddly empty light blue box in the right-hand column. Very basic. The header banner is a hanging sign welcoming visitors to Hainted Holler, and has apparently been beaten and tattered over the years and is now hanging by a bit of twisted wire on one end. The sign itself is pink with red lettering, but suffers from visual anomalies caused by a reduced quality JPG image. That's often caused by trying to keep image sizes small, but whatever program was used failed since the file size is still fairly large. The header should be redone with a minimum quality setting of 80 for JPG, or converted to a GIF for fast loading. The header is the first thing visitors see and should be of decent quality, while still quick loading.
LAYOUT:*Content vs Layout: 5The site is built using Wordpress / Comicpress, which is pretty obvious at a glance. The design is pretty close to the default layout for the program. I'd suggest the header either be made wider to fill the width of the comic, centered over the comic, or have additional items placed next to it in the empty space on the right (like a 250 pixel advert, vote buttons or the like).
The menu is just a black bar with three links: Home, About and Contact. More content would be good, or even just more links to something. If using very few menu items you could make them a bit larger and space them so they better fill the area given to them.
*Ease of use / Navigation: 7The site doesn't get much easier to navigate with as little as there is to navigate to. The buttons used for comic navigation are clearly defined and nicely laid out under the comic, but the style of the buttons doesn't match the comic itself. Maybe replace them with hand drawn buttons of a fitting style. There is an extra set of redundant navigation links at the top right corner of the blog post which should be removed.
Meta tags:
NONE! Other than identifying itself as Wordpress and Comicpress, that is. Tags are important, kiddies, try to be sure to include them.
*Clutter: 9There isn't much clutter at all. The site is clean, much like a new house before you've moved in...
*Ads & Placement: 2There are no ads. There is a small widget displaying a button for InterventionCon, but I doubt that qualifies as an ad. Further down the left side is a set of Vote-For-Me buttons, six of them. Six! Each "Vote" button is like a cry for attention, so the site would benefit by trimming that number to around two. A banner ad could easily work just below the comic navigation and still be shown above the fold, since it's a strip format. The odd blue box on the right could also be replaced by a tower ad to help bring a little revenue to the site.
TOP-DOWN IMPRESSION: 6I really don't want to make it seem like there is anything particularly wrong with Hainted Holler, but there needs to be something more. There just isn't a lot to comment on here. A little extra would be good, even if it's just something to highlight what's already there. Like the blog under the comic, it could really use something to set it apart from the rest of the page. Some color or other design elements would help break up the staticness of the page.
*Secondary Content: 5Again, very little here. There is a nice little blurb about the author, and a stack of links to other comics along the right side, but that's all. It all seems a bit too dry. Maybe you could add a page with info about the comic itself, or why you love doing it.
*Social Content: 6Comments are enabled for the comics, which is good. There is a box for FormSpring questions so I presume there is a Twitter account, though none is listed. You could do with more tools for social feedback. I know forums are tough to get started, but there are shared forums that might be happy to have you join them.
OVERALL IMPRESSION:Hainted Holler isn't a bad place to visit. It just feels a bit empty. The comic itself can be entertaining. I just think it needs more presentation, like a design that makes one feel as if they coming around a curve in the rutted dirt road that leads to Hainted Holler. I'd like to suggest a visit to
Open Designs. Have a look at some of the professional designs there, I think you just might find something to add some real spark to the site.
*Overall Rating: 6Basic entertainment, just needs a little more spice.
