Derision from Heroes and some good advice

Would that be my site or the lime green you put around everything?

Oh dear.

It looks like my post on 'Decisionsforheroes' a few months back didn't go down too well, judging by all of the Tweets out there and indeed how so many people have little else to do. As could be expected in Ireland, it got personal pretty quickly. I am a great believer in free speech, and critiques. Attacking people, on the other hand, is immature.

There seemed to be a lot of bitching going on about my site after that post, but all I can say is "thank you" for the increase in traffic to my site. Any time, lads. Of course it might have been more constructive to ask me what my views were, and rubbish them if the idea was brilliant and I was missing something. Nope. Instead comments directed at myself.

According to 'Bohoe' I was sore 'looser'. Now Bohoe, I didn't 'loose' anything. Best of luck with your English studies though. It quickly became apparent to me that most of the Judges in the competition I mentioned knew each other, and in some cases the winning entrant. If I wanted to be personal about things, I could have mentioned that in my original post.

The best advice of all came from Alan O'Rourke. Like all the other friends of the winning entrant, who had a little groupie hug over me, he suggested that my website was terrible. He then seemed surprised when I emailed him to ask what he didn't like. He eventually concluded that he didn't know.

As a great believer in one good turn deserving another, I'll critique his site in return. It's actually very good, bar the most important page of all - the homepage. I've added a few notes about the basics of design:


Admittedly my own site needs some polishing, but to be honest most of those who derided it either a) don't have a website, or b) have a website that looks dynamic and innovative in a highly generic way, or as above missed the basics. Regarding my own homepage, I've followed one rule, and that is that colours in the centre draw the eye in and not out:


Other than the silly personal remarks, I will concede that the overall look of my site needs improving. I don't however, see the point in becoming a web programmer if people can not look at the site without shades. Swings and roundabouts, I'd say. Best to start off with the basics and get it right, even if it takes longer ( personally I'm in it for the long haul )

Oh no! Just as I was about to move on I notice this, from Conor O'Neill! :There was only one thing to do ( since he wouldn't reply to any of my emails ) and that was to go and check out his consumer ratings website and see if the content was more radical than the concept.

Conor O'Neill's site:

It's nice actually, albeit very reminiscent of Ebay and the mild colour banditry around the edges once more. The only thing is, the boxes are a bit big really, aren't they? Why the fear of white around the edges? This is like Ebay for the visually impaired!

Incidentally, apart from posting personal remarks and bad comments about my site which he can't / won't back up, our Conor was also one of the judges on the I.Q. Prize competition which got them all so upset in the first place. Apart from referring to some of the entrants as 'lunatics', further down the blog we find some more of Conor's wisdom:


Pardon me for pointing this out, but in any meaningful sense "Anyone can enter" (but) "... is vital" seem like a pretty obvious contradiction. Bearing this in mind, maybe he just thought that he saw errors on my site ;)

Basically, what I've discovered is a nasty clique who can't take criticism. The future looks bright? Hehe ... maybe in a very 'Irish' way. As for my own site, it got good reviews from someone who runs a Tech. site ranked at 4,000th. in the World, amongst others. That'll do me fine for the moment, but of course there's always work to do. Just to put that in perspective, Boards.ie is hovering around 5,000th. at the moment.

Oh, and the fact that BBC featured my designwork to expert praise is another thing. I could go on and on, but I've been there and done it in terms of design. Nothing to prove, you see. Regarding the personal campaign in a teacup spoon I'd suggest that if those who spend all day on twitter posting innane comments actually do some work, they might reach their goal of being the best in their respective fields. I won't hold my breath though.