New Auckland Craft Beer Website

[Mark Jackman]

Hi Guys and Gals,

Just letting you all know about my new website focusing on the Auckland craft beer scene.  I know Auckland is a ways behind the rest of the country in terms of craft beer so I am just trying to do my (very small) bit to help spread the word. For all of those of you that don't know me I am a member of this forum and have posted from time to time and spend a fair bit of time lurking.

I am not looking to make a profit from the site but purely to help spread the word of good beer and meet some interesting people along the way.  For those of you who are interested you can visit the links below.

Website: www.BeerGeek.co.nz

Facebook

Twitter

Please let me know any suggestions or opinions you have.

Cheers,
Mark

[Smiffy]

First thought is that to be useful, it needs to be up to date, and the reader needs to know it is. I liked it when web pages used to often have a "last updated" date, so you could see if it was 5 years out of date.

Second thought is that the same information should be on the SOBA website, and perhaps you could collaborate with the SOBA web person, and share the work and the pages.

Smiffy

[Mark Jackman]

That's a good point about the "last updated" aspect, I intend to update as frequently as possible but eventually things such as overviews of brewpubs and the like may become dated, it is also a good thing to actually demonstrate how up to date any info I have posted is.

If there is any interest from SOBA with regard to posting some of my pages on their website I would be more than happy to allow them to, if they thought it would help them to educate beer drinkers.

[Greig McGill]

As ex-secretary, I'd encourage you to email [e-mail] with these thoughts. ;)

[Mark Jackman]

Hey Greig, I emailed Geoff a few days ago but have not heard anything back yet.  I'm sure he has a lot on at the minute with the SOBA NHC and everything else he is involved with. If anything comes up where you think my site could be useful please let me know.

[Greig McGill]

Hey Mark. The usual process with stuff like that was it got put on the agenda for the next committee meeting. I used to reply to acknowledge receipt, but as you noted, Geoff has been pretty busy this weekend! ;) I'm sure he'll get back to you in time.

[Mark Jackman]

Just letting you know I had passed it on to him, if nothing comes of it I'm not going to be upset. If there's a way I can help out with getting better beer in pubs and bars around Auckland then that would be awesome :)

[Kelly Milligan]

Hey!

First of all mate this is a cool idea, but a couple of instant impressions from me:

- Does the site need to be ad supported? at least initially, the cost of basic hosting and a domain is tiny enough to wear - for the sake of craft beer of course ;) - having all the ad containers around the page is somewhat discouraging.

- The design really needs some work mate. I'm a Front-end developer & interaction designer by trade and there are some basic things you could do to improve over all legibility and user experience. Flick me a PM if you like, happy to discuss what changes I'd make.

Good on you for getting amongst it and putting together this site though, great idea and could become a great resource for us Auckland beer fans.

Cheers

[Mark Jackman]

Thanks for the feedback Kelly, I would love a few tips on tidying up the format of the website from a pro. I have had good feedback so far as most people take the website for what it is and understand that I am muddling my way through the web design side of things, but I have been thinking that I need to dedicate a good amount of time to sorting out the format and your advice should save me a lot of time. As you can see I can manage bits and pieces but writing code myself is generally a bit too much. 

I have cut the more annoyingly placed ads from the website but have left the left sidebar and Google text links down the bottom.  The costs for hosting are low but reaching the target audience of people who don't yet know they would appreciate good beer is going to be easier with a marketing budget, which will be 100% of any profit I am able to bring in through the site.  If you have any suggestions on how to do this more efficiently I would also appreciate your advice there.  With the wife expecting our first child any day I would rather not operate at much of a loss if possible and I am hoping that I will at least be able to introduce a few people onto craft beer.

[Barbara Joppa]

Hey Mark,

Good start on the web page. Most of what is out there now are blog based.

My first impression is: Please change the white on black! Hurts my eyes.

That's as far as I got since the pain of trying to read was just too much.

Good luck with it

Barb