Looks really choppy and with a very common magazine template feel to me (reminds me a lot of any professional news template that you see out there) -- lots of weird white space at the bottom too shows just how box and template driven things are since its thrown off down there
Any noob can buy a template like this off the shelf -- not hating but not impressed either -- i dont see anything that anyone with a little bit of cash to get some nice stock photography couldnt do here (in 'essence' for lack of a better word...this is all to it for this site -- lots of pretty pics of brown/black skin to make you feel all warm and like you're at home)
Essence like BET are cash cows in that advertisers in many cases will think about them first for many campaigns so theyll make money -- I think anyone can pull a site off like this...nothing super special about it
JayReds
· 1 year ago
I’m still trying to figure out why media sites and alike always fill obligated to display so much content to a visitor. They should instead make an attempt to navigate visitors through new and engaging areas and content within the site. This strategy becomes extremely difficult when visitors are overwhelmed with material. Overall, I give the new design a weak 8 out of 10. I just don’t know where my eyes should go.
Not A Fan
· 1 year ago
I was really looking forward to seeing this - and I am disappointed. It's overwhelming with ads and very busy. It's in beta - so maybe it will get better. And why oh why would they use Ning - can't Time Warner spring for a customized platform.
ugh!
Sylvia Hubbard
· 1 year ago
it moved rather slow but i am happy about the ning feature. i'm a fan of the community not just because i have my own organization there (motown writers network) but because they connect all my "friends" throughout my whole community.
so this is a benefit to me.
although i do ask, with all the money warner has you would think they'd invest in doing it on their own.
Fredric Mitchell
· 1 year ago
Unfortunately, they had some really positive press that I wanted to blog about over at my site, and I guess with the redesign, they have a lot of dead links.
Boo.
htaccess file!?!? database redirects!?!? come on people!
Gem2001
· 1 year ago
I am not impressed. I almost thought that it looked like they were using soapblox. I told one of the editors I knew over there to call me if they needed some different perspective. The old site wasn't Web2.0, but it was astetically pleasing. this new sight does not take advantage of ESSENCE's ability to crank out some amazin visuals. They didn't take their strengths and move the over to Web2.0 they are giving their strengths away.
They got hosed. I could have done the site for a fifth of the price and I know nothing about PHP or CSS. this is clearly a template.
All Comments
Any noob can buy a template like this off the shelf -- not hating but not impressed either -- i dont see anything that anyone with a little bit of cash to get some nice stock photography couldnt do here (in 'essence' for lack of a better word...this is all to it for this site -- lots of pretty pics of brown/black skin to make you feel all warm and like you're at home)
Essence like BET are cash cows in that advertisers in many cases will think about them first for many campaigns so theyll make money -- I think anyone can pull a site off like this...nothing super special about it
ugh!
so this is a benefit to me.
although i do ask, with all the money warner has you would think they'd invest in doing it on their own.
Boo.
htaccess file!?!? database redirects!?!? come on people!
They got hosed. I could have done the site for a fifth of the price and I know nothing about PHP or CSS. this is clearly a template.