Teen site research - Conclusion!

I have concluded from this research that all sites have common elements and they are usually elements that a site cannot work without. They are for convenience and to improve the layout. There should be bright and attractive colours in my site, with a possible drop down box for the navigation tabs, to make it all look hi-tech. I won't include too many tabs in the navigation bar, so I may stick to around seven or eight of them, as that is the sufficient amount.

I will split my home page up into sections and each section will be a summary of the different tabs in the navigation bar. For example, on the home page, there will be a small box labelled 'news' and it will show the top 2-3 stories, with links to the full articles. By clicking on the 'News' tab, the user will be taken to the full page with all of the stories, not just the top few. I may make some working links for the top 2-3 stories, just to expand on the site a little.

The other sections of the home page will show things like what's showing in the channel, downloads such as mp3's and wallpapers, videos and maybe an image gallery. I am considering not including the images. Either that, or I will not link a page to the image tab and just have it there for show. I don't think images are relevant and any images I use would violate copyright law, since I can't exactly take pictures of my friends and I, and include them.

I may take some information on the current music chart at the time from a site like MTV, in order to get accurate results for the finished site. I will also include different genre charts on the Music page for the people who don't like the charts and think that it's all corrupted by R'n'B... *sigh*

So there will be some Rock, Metal, Country, Rap, Hip Hop, R'n'B and other music genres to attract a wide range of users to the site...

I'm thinking of names for the site and right now I'm liking the name "Ben FM". Yes, it's ridiculous; yes, it's stupid... But I think it has a ring to it and I like it. Other names I have been considering are "Epic Radio", "Awesome Radio" and "The Ben Channel". I am thinking of mixing the names to either get "Epic FM" or "The Awesome Channel."

Weebl's Stuff

Weebl's Stuff is another teen site, but it consists of animations and games. Its purpose is comedy and some of the rude and crude animations are entertaining. Weebl's Stuff is well-known for its famous Badgers, Magical Trevor, Amazing Horse, Cat Face and the silly short sketches by Weebl & Bob. Weebl mostly makes songs out of current events and the media, sometimes using celebrities, and his site has built up as he has gained success.

The picture to the left shows the navigation which is a colourful bar of tabs with drop down bars showing sub-pages. There is no magazine for the site. The font is simple, but clear and effective, and the colour scheme is also basic. It is easy to navigate and everything is laid out well with a useful search bar at the top. On the right is some merchandise being advertised. This would be handy for my site, even though no merchandise will be made.


On the right is the bottom of the page with some shortcut links to some of the new and popular stuff on the site, and the copyright information.






This is an example of the pages for the videos. I have used the Amazing Horse video as an example. Below the video is some related merchandise. There is also a video navigation to cycle to the next, previous and latest videos. A synopsis of the video is included and there is a link to the iTunes download of the song.

Next post is the conclusion.

BBC3

BBC3 (www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree) is a division of the BBC channels, along with BBC1, BBC2, BBC4, BBC HD, CBeebies, CBBC, BBC News and BBC Parliament.


To the left, you can see once again that the site has a slideshow of new pages to catch visitors' eyes. The navigation tabs are clear and bold, which is a good feature. Again, the top of the page consists of the main elements of the site which can be expanded, with the listings and news.




On the right, you see the bottom of the home page, which has a colourful background connecting all of the small boxes down the page to a hotel via pipes. This is to do with a promotion for a show that was on at the time I visited the site. Below the hotel is a list of the BBC sites and some external links, like there were on MTV.


For the last site, I will focus on the previously mentioned Weebl's Stuff (www.weebls-stuff.com), which is a site for older teens and again, possibly adults. It consists of animations and short comedy sketches all animated by "Weebl", who is famous for his Badger, Badger, Badger animation: http://www.weebls-stuff.com/songs/badgers/ and Amazing Horse: http://www.weebls-stuff.com/songs/Amazing+Horse/

Be warned: there's some content inappropriate for younger teens.

Anyway, see the next post.

E4

E4 is another teen/young adult channel which hosts a variety of dramas, sitcoms, and occasionally, sci-fi. Among its shows are Smallville, The Cleveland Show, Balls of Steel, Ugly Betty and One Tree Hill; each of them are different types of shows, but all popular with its target older teenage audience. www.e4.com

Again, there is no official magazine for the site/channel. E4 is one of many sites related to Channel 4, along with 4music, Film4, More4, 4oD and Channel 4 itself.

Now for some more screenshots...


To the left is the top section of the e4 homepage. Like the MTV site, it has its navigation bar going straight across the top, with the logo far left. You will also notice that the background is an image of a blackboard with names of shows and times written on there in chalk. This is a very clever idea, as it shows the site is unique and may attract people to visit it more. You will also notice one of the sections near the top is the games section, which is odd because most sites do not show their games straight away, except for online game sites.

There is a box at the top showing the new shows with some clips to demonstrate the type of show it is. Next to the games is the top videos and there are ways to watch some shows on the site. There is also a small box showing what is airing on the channel now. By clicking the TV listings, you will see the page displayed below.

A list of all the shows for the coming week is shown with a brief synopsis for each show, including information on the subtitle options available for the hard of hearing.



To the left is one of many extras on the site. It is a short animation by Weebl, a famous animator from www.weebls-stuff.com, about the internet with a short section about e4.





In terms of the actual E4 website, I liked the blackboard background promoting the shows. I didn't like the general feel of the site. Maybe it was to do with the colour scheme, which sort of hints at a much-needed future post abut the colour scheme for my site. It was difficult to navigate after a certain point and I found I had to keep going back to previous pages to go somewhere else. Anyway, that's everything that's new about the e4 site. On to BBC3!

MTV

Looking at the MTV site at www.mtv.co.uk, you can guess the audience, seeing as it talks about famous teens and teen-related things. It can also be for young adults who enjoy the charts and mainstream hip-hop and r'n'b.

It is a music-based channel, as are many other teen channels, but it focuses only on the charts. MTV also airs a variety of music-related TV shows starring artists, with some comedy shows they produce, such as Jackass (which isn't music-related at all).

From this, you can see that it's wise to host shows not just about one subject in order to attract a wider audience.

There is no information on a magazine anywhere on the site, but there probably is an official magazine to accompany the channel.

The screenshots relate to the next part about the layout and construction of the site itself...

The navigation labels are clear to read as you can see below, and hovering the mouse over them expands a drop-down box full of the sub-llinks to the related pages.



The following are pictures of the layout of the home page for mtv.co.uk:





As you can see to the left, the top of the page consists of small glimpses of the pages listed in the navigation bar. It shows the top 3 topics for each section and has accompanying thumbnails.



In the next picture, you can see that on the right side is a list of the top songs in the chart, with its own scroll bar. This is good for space-saving, so I may take this idea on-board when considering my site.



To the right is the downloads section where it shows thirteen of the most popular downloads to interest visitors and fans of these shows. If downloads can be available for my page, I may include them just for show. There's also an advert on the right of the page which cannot be displayed due to the surf control put in place, but I think ads are necessary, so I may make a few up to put on my site, because I don't think I will be able to display legitimate ads.


The next picture is of the very bottom of the page, consisting of a search box, a list of popular searches, a brief site map and some external links for visitors to expand the sites they visit. This is a common feature of almost every site out there, as it's helpful and it saves the user navigating all the way back to the top of the page in order to select a new page to view. There is a clear division of the links and the search information which is interesting.

Altogether, this site displays a lot of techniques to consider when going about making your own. I will look back on these images at a later date to get my final features for my site.

Now onto E4... (See next next post)

Research into other teen sites

We were asked to look at several existing official TV sites and see what style they use and what's popular for that genre, in order to get ideas to include in my site. In the following few posts will be information about channels like MTV, Scuzz and E4. I will include information on the interesting aspects of the site and there will be labelled screencaps of the sites.

In the sites I will be looking at, I shall analyse every element and take into consideration the codes and conventions. It is too early to know for sure what parts of a website need looking at, but I will cover tis issue in a later post.

New Teen Channel

We were given the brief for our coursework and today we mind-mapped other TV channels and shows to get an idea of what to include on my channel. We came up with channels such as Dave, E4, BBC and Nickelodeon, which all host a variety of teen shows on a regular basis. Other channels such as Cartoon Network, Comedy Central.

Dave hosts comedy shows such as Mock the Week, QI and Have I Got News For You. These are shows targeting adults and older teens.

E4 has shows like Smallville, Skins and The Inbetweeners. There are a range of drama and comedy shows.

BBC3 shows Family Guy and American Dad, popular comedy shows aimed at adults and older teens.

Nickelodeon is aimed at younger teens with shows such as Drake and Josh, iCarly, SpongeBob SquarePants and FairlyOdd Parents.

Cartoon Network has shows like Ed, Edd & Eddy and Dexter's Laboratory, Powerpuff Girls.

Comedy Central airs South Park and [adult swim], more comedy shows which are aimed at older teens and adults.

From this information, I can gather that comedy and drama are popular teen genres, so I may consider this for future tasks. That's all I have for now. Stay tuned.