Friday, September 30, 2005
This Week's Site of the Week: City Hippy
You might know that every week over on my business web site I feature a new Site of the Week. These are just sites I run across that I think are worth sharing, and sometimes, yes, they are shameless plugs for new client sites or my own new blogs.
This week rather than a client site I feature a site I found while getting to know a new client, City Hippy. City Hippy finds all the cool progressive and green resources and stories out there, so you don't have to. They provide links to articles, cool sites, and also ways for people to post what they're looking for (in the way of green and/or fair products) and what they've found. They even provide a list of the goals they seek achieve to move towards a greener, fairer life, and links to sites that can help anyone achieve each goal.
What's fascinating, putting my business hat on, is how they've taken a basic blogger.com implementation of their site and really worked with it to make a site that seems interactive and customized, even though it is clearly a basic Blogger template. I could take a few lessons from them on this and a couple of my other older Blogger-based blogs.
Recently one of my good blogging friends, the Marketing Diva herself, took me a little bit to task for the basic implementation on my 42nd St. Moon theatre blog. Content: 10; Looks: 3. (Little Chorus Line reference for those of you keeping track.)
While I agree, part of me somehow has this non-marketing, but old-school bloggy attitude that the content is more important, that a non-profit org. has better things to spend money on than fancifying their blog, and most ego-centric of all...that if I don't really notice whether people are using standard templates or not, nobody else in the whole wide world will either. Kinda crazy. And obviously I went to great lengths to make the hip&zen blog look like its home site. So perhaps I'm just resisting working with Blogger's clunky-ness to update my older blogs.
But back to City Hippy and my point, because I did have one: they clearly are using a standard Blogger template; they've customized it in little ways, but basically it looks exactly like other blogs out there...but the content is so valuable, their purpose so clear, their delivery on their mission so impassioned...I ask you: does the template matter in this case?
I obviously don't think so, hence they are my Site of the Week.
Toby? Anyone? What do you think?
This week rather than a client site I feature a site I found while getting to know a new client, City Hippy. City Hippy finds all the cool progressive and green resources and stories out there, so you don't have to. They provide links to articles, cool sites, and also ways for people to post what they're looking for (in the way of green and/or fair products) and what they've found. They even provide a list of the goals they seek achieve to move towards a greener, fairer life, and links to sites that can help anyone achieve each goal.
What's fascinating, putting my business hat on, is how they've taken a basic blogger.com implementation of their site and really worked with it to make a site that seems interactive and customized, even though it is clearly a basic Blogger template. I could take a few lessons from them on this and a couple of my other older Blogger-based blogs.
Recently one of my good blogging friends, the Marketing Diva herself, took me a little bit to task for the basic implementation on my 42nd St. Moon theatre blog. Content: 10; Looks: 3. (Little Chorus Line reference for those of you keeping track.)
While I agree, part of me somehow has this non-marketing, but old-school bloggy attitude that the content is more important, that a non-profit org. has better things to spend money on than fancifying their blog, and most ego-centric of all...that if I don't really notice whether people are using standard templates or not, nobody else in the whole wide world will either. Kinda crazy. And obviously I went to great lengths to make the hip&zen blog look like its home site. So perhaps I'm just resisting working with Blogger's clunky-ness to update my older blogs.
But back to City Hippy and my point, because I did have one: they clearly are using a standard Blogger template; they've customized it in little ways, but basically it looks exactly like other blogs out there...but the content is so valuable, their purpose so clear, their delivery on their mission so impassioned...I ask you: does the template matter in this case?
I obviously don't think so, hence they are my Site of the Week.
Toby? Anyone? What do you think?
// posted by ElisaC @ 9:34 AM 
Comments:
<< Home
Yes, the template matters, but I may be in the minority here. I keep giving City Hippy unsolicited feedback on how to improve his layout ;)
Of course, layout's nothing without content. But content's sexier with a sexier layout --
Of course, layout's nothing without content. But content's sexier with a sexier layout --
I hear they have improvements in the works...maybe your unsolicited advice is being listened too more than you think!
Post a Comment
<< Home
