yawa-ti-de:

I have chrome but don't c what uv attached.  Wat OS r u using and wat screen resolution?

I used Ubuntu linux with Google Chrome 64bit and Firefox 8.0 at the time of checking the site, which both of them return the same thing. My screen resolution is 1600x 1200 px. I quickly switched to Windows 7 professional to ascertain the different and it's still the same. I don't think the problem is with the OS or the screen resolution but with the layouts and there are evidences that other things in the body didn't seem to be out of place.

I'm trying to click on any of the submenus on the 'About Nigeria' menu, but I can't. I think the submenus arent working perfectly.

.NET

Hmm, I can't see it unfortunately.  Perhaps if others can (more than 10% of viewing audience), it might be something taken into consideration if we were to go full time with this.

Thanks for your observations.

@.NET:
It's a prototype. Not all the pages are working. Our aim was moreso trying to show what a better option we have, from an information architecture standpoint, as opposed to making sure every single page works.

@Yawatide, nice and Commendable effort. Welldone.

@nevosys, thats a great prototype. I think you should get that job, unless there are better designs they are looking at.

Good coding, but it aesthetically lacking. Inasmuch as many Nigerians don't place a high value on aesthetics, I think a good graphic artist needs to work on that site. Overall, good job.

yawa-ti-de:

Hmm, I can't see it unfortunately.  Perhaps if others can (more than 10% of viewing audience), it might be something taken into consideration if we were to go full time with this.

Thanks for your observations.

Perhaps you have to clear your history and cache, that might be the reason behind you not seeing it. The previous works still reside in your computer and replacing present changes - I guess!

Actually no need for clearing cache. I have used chrome this year no more than 10 times and havent used it in the last 2 months at least. Firefox, I might understand but not chrome, at least for me. All the same, again, the feedback is appreciated.

yawa-ti-de:

@nevosys:
Though I prefer your green version, both are equally good. If you are still in the running for the job, I hope you get it

@muskeeto:
If you read all my posts from #1, you will see that I do accept criticism, both constructive and destructive. The 3 things I will NOT accept, no matter what are: Arm chair generals, distractions and monday morning quaterbacking. . . and yes, there is a difference b/w criticisms and the latter 3 things I just mentioned

An improved design for our country's official website is bigger than any one of us. Together with nevosys, we have hopefully kicked off a trend that we hope results in thinking out of the box and future success.

I love what I saw.

beautiful

guys clap 4 ya self, u have done Nigeria and indeed Nigerians proud. Like u stated in ur OP, its not about the number of people that participated but the number of committed hands your got as volunteers. Concerning the website i noticed some issues( though u said it is still under construction).

the sub section that has stories about Zenith bank, the language is not written in english.
Also i dont support your trail of the blue background. it doesnt represent the Naija hustle.
How about your take away the white man in the video reel section and replace with a viable African Icon. the white man brings to fore our reliance on the oyinbos and more so it brings memory of colonialism
in the flashing pictures on the opening page, please add more of the diversity of Nigeria viz the moslem mosque, benin nok art, osun oranmiyan, zuma rock, Nigeria icons, crude oil drills, natural resources, Naija students, Naija sports etc.
Make it mandatory for everyone thats taking credit to put their real Naija name. they might get called up to be thanked for putting Naija out of website misery

i hope i made constructive observations

All in All, Una well done like my mama dey talk. thanx so much

knoxranger, your comments are well noted and appreciated.

Per the pictures, trust me, and I guess I don't know how to work google, I searched a lot to be able to come up with what you saw. In the event that this project was for real, I would definitely take time out to go to as many tourist attractions in the country as possible with my SLR camera and take pictures

Here's my 10 kobo for what it's worth and as you can tell, 10 kobo cannot buy much.

Nice attempt but could be better. The top menu and most things on the site need to be trimmed to make it somewhat more compact. Things are also not symmetrical as seen on Chrome. The banner extends greater than the top menu, the top menu extends greater than the contents. The site also looks a little too plain and looks more like a default template. Mukeeto posted a link to a good site and nevosys' site also looked good.

Would I hire someone that shows me that current site as a showcase of his/her work? No. Most of the elements are there and spending more time to make it better would convey a better sense of professionalism/know-how.

My apologies if I offend the developers/testers.

Wallie,

No offense taken, at least from me. It is your opinion and it is definitely worth more than 10 kobo (does kobo actually, physically still exist?)

Thanks.

Gud for a start

TO THOSE SAYING

"IT COULD BE BETTER"

WHERE THE F.UCK WHERE YOU WHEN THIS GUY STARTED THIS VOLUNTARY PROJECT,

SOMEBODY SACRIFICED TIME AND ENERGY TO MAKE A BETTER NIGERIA AND ALL YOU DO IS BASH?

shame on you

vladimiros:

TO THOSE SAYING

"IT COULD BE BETTER"

WHERE THE bleed WHERE YOU WHEN THIS GUY STARTED THIS VOLUNTARY PROJECT,

SOMEBODY SACRIFICED TIME AND ENERGY TO MAKE A BETTER NIGERIA AND ALL YOU DO IS BASH?

shame on you  

I said “it could be better” not because I want to bash or derive anything from bashing but because the site needed more work.

Can I do better? No. I don’t code anymore and even when I did, it had nothing to do with web technologies.

Volunteering is a very noble thing to do and it is commendable. The site is meant to showcase and show Nigeria in a better light. Constructive criticism is very good way for re-evaluating one’s work. It gives you the ability to see what people think about what you’ve done and more importantly, a way to improve on it for free.

One way or another, your work will be criticized or praised by people, market forces or your boss.

vladimiros,

Haba! Even I have said it could have been better.  Having said that, i appreciate your candor  

We had 4 (volunteer. . . stress the "volunteer" part please) designers on the team.  Creativity isn't something that just hits you in the head. You not only have to visualize it but spend the time to put your vision into action.  All 4 submitted designs and the 40 of us voted on it.  I am sure that if we felt that none of the 4 were up to par, we would have solicited for some more designer volunteers (again, stress the "volunteer" part).

Having been through more gruesome reviews, spanning 18 years of professional development, featuring people not on a forum but people sitting right in front of you, that makes you want to go right to them and rip their heads off, I can say that what may be perceived on here as bad is not even up to 2 out of 100 on my "get yawatide angry meter".  I have heard and seen worse.  So, please proceed with the reviews/comments.

I will still stand by what I said originally: This is a prototype, which means that it is showing more of a proof of concept than anything else.  The actual product can, and would be much better. If you have actually taken part in a software development cycle, you will know that 9 times out of 10, a prototype is something that is put in place for the purpose of proving a concept and is usually scrapped in favor of a more robust solution.

Mas interesting.

We welcome all constructive criticisms. like we made clear. its a prototype a work in progress. Everyone has been complaining about the official website for years. We did something. we acted. We proved that Nigerians can be selfless, patriotic and can work togeda irrespective of political and religious affliliations.

Please follow us on twitter http://www.twitter.com/nigeria40 our hashtag is #nigeria40

Please like us on facebook http;//www.facebook.com/nigeria40


Thanks.

remoranger:
Please add distance to that list of "irrespectives": I am in the US and another is in the UK. The rest, if I am not mistaken are in Nigeria. That means differences in attitude, processes and time zones, among others. It took one helluva coordinating to pull this project off, if you ask me and I am still amazed at our flexibility and devotion and dedication, despite the odds

yawa-ti-de:

remoranger:
Please add distance to that list of "irrespectives": I am in the US and another is in the UK. The rest, if I am not mistaken are in Nigeria. That means differences in attitude, processes and time zones, among others. It took one helluva coordinating to pull this project off, if you ask me and I am still amazed at our flexibility and devotion and dedication, despite the odds

That na correct program management skills! Kudos to you all!

@yawa-ti-de

It works as you guys said with the 'contact nav' in place on internet explorer 9.

I still believe any serious web project shd not be done using platforms like joomla, drupal and all that.
Most of these so called web sites were done by these content mgt platforms!

Any serious project has to be "hand-coded". You have to undertand all parameters, functions and built with security in mind.
Most of these platforms used are subceptible to hacks and cracks, especially if they are not continually updated with current versions.

htmlentities, hashed_passwords, mysql_real_escape-string, and lots of others security concious handcoding features must be put in place.

What is the meaning of this ooooo

The only pics on the homepage r GEJ and Obama AND THE ECUNUMENICAL CENTER (hope i got that spelling right?)

Abeg include the pics of the Central mosque ooo b4 these annoying muslim brothers start their wahala again o.

B4 u kno Boko will bomb d guys dat designed the site. Long hissssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss!

Please lets look for the mosque before them bomb the site O.

kanor:

I still believe any serious web project shd not be done using platforms like joomla, drupal and all that.
Most of these so called web sites were done by these content mgt platforms!

Any serious project has to be "hand-coded". You have to undertand all parameters, functions and built with security in mind.
Most of these platforms used are subceptible to hacks and cracks, especially if they are not continually updated with current versions.

htmlentities, hashed_passwords, mysql_real_escape-string, and lots of others security concious handcoding features must be put in place.

Did anyone tell you this project was developed using drupal? or an existing cms? It is a cms alright, but i doubt you know the name.

all4naija:
I will concern myself, based on stats, with IE 7 and 8 right now. Hopefully by the time IE9 is stable (as in, supporting ALL HTML5 issues), we would have implemented the actual project, which most likely won't use much of what you are currently seeing

Kudos to you all,

You guys have tried. But you may please read through a professional’s advice.

You will need to define the primary goal of this project which must be clearly readable from your design. As it is, I do not see it to function as an e-Governance Portal but an NGO website.

The home page is focus at what? You have to note that this is not a Goodluck  Jonathan’s website but the website of the Republic. We expect to see more highlights of what is happening in the economy, ministries, law and other governing bodies.

You should also be able to have access to the digital library from the home page. You also need to be able to bring the FG close to the people somehow. You must implement that interactivity; this will make the people to believe in the Republic.

If you want to have a good design you may have to look beyond using a template. You may have to craft the Nigerian Republic design from scratch. The graphics should fit into the unity of Nigeria showing our cultural heritage and values.

You may look at the website for the US White House http://www.whitehouse.gov/ although they have another website that serves as the e-Governance Portal, http://www.usa.gov/. You will notice that the graphic is specially designed to fit in and all content focuses on issues they really did not fit in obama’s picture.
So you may want to re-design this page in graphics, structure and content.
If you have further requests feel free to email me. sundayjohn@gmail.com

Thank you.

anyone can design a website to his/her taste, what a government really need is to pass on the message which the present website is not left out in this function, however,

@yawatide, nice design. Hope efforts are afoot to get this to the presidency's attention?

@chalarea

1) This isn't a template in the sense that we got some code from somewhere and plugged our content.  It is a template (just like google.com is a template) in the sense that one page drives the design for all other pages (in the same way that you are a template of other human beings).

2) As stated earlier.  Though we chose to go after the nigeria.gov.ng site, we were actually showing that what we are doing could work for the individual, an NGO, the government or a corporation.  We only chose to go after what is public property, with maximum exposure.  We could have chosen another site.

3) Since this is a volunteer project, we chose to reuse as much content as possible from the existing site, plus a few "lorem ipsicums".  On an actual project, where we would be paying someone, we would have an actual content developer who would interact with the client to determine what they want on their site and how they want it implemented.

4) Reference a prior post regarding photos

5) If you read the scope document I posted on the parent thread (reference post #1 of this thread for that url), you will see that I went to at least 5 different country websites, combining the good, bad and ugly from all of them.

@nakedall
Agreed.  We could smack on a design that even the UN votes to be #1 but if the citizenry see no use for the site, it becomes useless.  Again, this is where an information architect would come in handy.  If you look at the section before the green footer, you will notice that the middle column and the right column have items which we thought would immediately be of service to a website visitor and/or Nigerian citizen: online services and quick links.  The intention is to make that a global feature on the site.

Also, to the person who mentioned the white person in the video, I agree.  The video, if you click, has to do with Nigeria.  The screenshot however doesn't infer that.  It would definitely be corrected on a live version of the site.

@CashWithPc
Other than organic advertising/marketing (blogs, fora, etc), we have nowhere else to go. We are hoping that through these media, the necessary pplz attention will be raised. Having said that, if you or anyone has any contacts at any government level, do pass this along to them. We would surely appreciate it

Thanks