A Fine Wine
Should Dance On Your Palate
Not Flatten You At First Sip

Steve

Sex Story

Backgrounds by definition should be just that - in the background. A background should never thrust itself into the consciousness of the surfer but linger in the nether regions of his experience. Like the subtle nuances of spice and beetroot that dance on the palate after a sip of a fine Australian Verdeloh, the background should be there but not noticeable.

Well I'm either learning to write copy for wine advertisements or I'm looking for a subtle way of saying that the background of this site just plain hurt my eyes.

You can find the site here:

Now in an effort to surprise our esteemed editor I am trying to get this review to him well before the deadline, instead of well after the deadline as is usually the case. So I'm looking at the site late at night, my eyes are tired and I really should be in bed and that, I would suggest, is the state that many surfers are in when they are surfing porn.

If that really is the case then backgrounds like this are not going to encourage the surfer to stick around and see the advertising. Now I know that some people on VNWR have used some fairly unusual backgrounds. There is the legendary tomato background from Voltar and I have used a tread-plate background courtesy of Voltar on a gay working-man's site.

However, in those examples the text and advertising appeared sitting on a solid black background that had been super-imposed on the more eye-catching background image. This site does not do that and so, to me, the text and the advertising all tend to fade into the background and become too hard to read. I can certainly see them but actually taking the time to focus on them and read them becomes a bit of a chore and if I don't want to read them then the surfer probably won't either.

There is also the matter of the paragraph at the foot of the page stuffed with key words and in font size 1. I'm all for using keywords in text on the page but font size 1 at the foot of the page? Hmmmmm.

Well I wrote all that before I looked at the main page and everything I said above, about putting the text on a plain background that is overlays the background image, was done by the webmaster on the main page.

That means that the sponsor ads all stand out much more clearly and get into the surfers face as he searches for the gallery links.

The webmaster has included a link on the main page to a hub and personally I think that is a waste of a sponsor link. Links that will take a surfer away from the site should not total more than three on any page. Including a link like that on the index page is quite ok but putting it on the main page too is just a waste in my opinion.

It's far better to use all three links on that page for sponsor links rather than leading the surfer off to a hub.

The gallery pages are also good examples of how to combine very visible advertising with a vibrant background. The ads on these pages stand out and the thumbs would settle back into the background if they weren't framed in frilly little thingummybobs that really aren't necessary.

By all means make your advertising stand out but there is no need to do the same with the thumbs. The thumbs and corresponding big pics are just bait, the real purpose of a free site is the advertising.

The big images are a little on the large size. The minimum to get accepted at most link lists these days is 500 and there is no need to give away one pixel more than you have to.

The webmaster has also used a back link on the first gallery page. Now that is something that is not often seen on VNWR but it does serve a very useful purpose and it is something that you should think of using if your main page is a bit long and requires some scrolling.

If the surfer uses the back button on the browser to go from the gallery back to the main page he finds himself back at the main page, nicely positioned on the screen so that the link he clicked is about centred. That means that the next gallery link is probably on the screen as well while some of the advertising has disappeared off the top of the screen.

Using a back link does something quite different. It drops the surfer back at the top of the page and that means that he has to scroll down past all your advertising to get to the next gallery link.

The second gallery page of this site will quite likely get the site rejected by many link lists. There are four distinct links on that page that will take the surfer off the site. Three go to sponsors and one goes to the webmaster's hub.

Remember what I said about the three links? It is quite ok to have a link to your hub at the bottom of the second gallery page and many people do it to make their traffic work harder but if you want to have one of those links then it comes at the cost of one of the sponsor links.

The last three pages of this site are really set out quite well but they are definitely let down by the index page. If I were a surfer and arrived at that index page I would be hitting the browser back button fairly quickly simply because I would expect the rest of the site to look like that front page.

Steve

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