This issue's headlines:

Website Spotlight - Becky's Wildlife and Fantasy Art
Desert Realm News - New Features and Website changes
Web Design Tip of the Month: Give your text and reader's eyes room to breath.
Newsletter Info

Becky's Wildlife and Fantasy Art
http://www.wildlife-fantasy.com

Beautiful artwork of fantasy and nature is the heart of this well designed website. The work behind the scenes is equally impressive. Almost anywhere you turn, if you're looking for fantasy or wildlife art, you will find a link to this website. Google has over 200 links pointing here, and I'm sure there is many more that they haven't found.

Becky manages a link and banner exchange program, 4 different webrings, a sponsored links program (pay-per-click), and an affiliate program (where you can earn money if you refer people that purchase her paintings).

Other things of interest are screensavers, hotbar skins (to customize the look of Internet Explorer), internet postcards, a forum, and a book store.

Completely New Design

The Desert Realm launched a completely new design to better portray a fantasy and scifi feel. The design features a surreal castle and Rembrandt's painting of a Monk. Rhombuses and parallelograms (tipping over squares and rectangles) are used to convey action as well as give it a futuristic look. The font was changed to make it easier to read, as well as make it easier to update the navigation section of the website. The overall design is set up so most people look at the castle first, then over to the monk, and back to the navigation. The content area used to have a black background with white text. This made it hard to read, so I've changed the colors, font size, and line height to make it easier on the eyes.

Featured Links

Complementing the search engine is the Featured Website section. Each website in this section has been personally viewed and ranked based on design, navigation, content, and popularity. Depending on the score received, the website is placed into one of four categories: Dragon, Sage, Elf, and Orc. While most websites will fall under the elf and orc categories, websites can be reevaluated after a month, and if improvements have been made, they could move into a higher level.

Forum

Utilizing Invision Power Board technology, The Desert Realm is now equipped with a fully functional forum / message board system. The system has been used and tested over the past 3 months for security and stability. It meets all of the needs for the main website and provides a means for users to communicate about general topics such as science fiction, fantasy, and games. It also provides a way to talk specifically about Desert Realm projects such as the search engine and The Desert Realm Generals, an online strategy game currently under development.

Originally, The Desert Realm's main feature was a club based role playing game. The spirit of that club is being revived in the forums. To participate, sign up for the forums and navigate to: Desert Realm ->Fantasy and Science Fiction ->Desert Realm Fantasy Setting ->Roleplaying (in character).

Sitting at the doctor's office, I know I only have a few minutes to look through the magazine that has caught my eye. I start by looking at the main headlines on the front page, turn the page over to the table of contents, and look for an interesting article.

Once I've found a good article, I start skimming its headlines looking for something that might be worth reading. Perhaps I find one, perhaps not. If a headline looks interesting, I'll read a paragraph or two. Time is of the essence because the nurse is going to call my name at any second. If it hasn't kept my attention this far, I'll start skimming again and either find something worthwhile or move onto another article.

This is the same with the web. There are billions of pages out there and no chance that one person will read it all. Everybody is in a hurry to find what they need and move on. Sometimes you'll get people who will linger and explore your website thoroughly. This is pretty rare, so you need to do everything you can to get people to read what you have to say.

Magazines have been dealing with this issue for far longer than the internet has been around, and many of the techniques apply.

A good approach is to set up your text into distinct headlines with small amounts of content for each. By changing the text's size, weight (bold), or color, you give visual weight to these headlines which allows a person to easily skim through your pages. They become good candidates for links within the same or other pages.

For the content sections, padding white space around your text makes it much easier to read. When text is all scrunched together, it can cause a person to strain their eyes to follow the words on your page. Adding a few pixels of white space allows a person to read without straining and they will read much more than otherwise.

I use block quotes on my pages to add white space around the entire section, and I use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to increase the amount of space allocated to each line. Tables can be used, but block quotes are easier to deal with.

This example was taken from my style sheet page:

blockquote {
font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 13px;
color: black;
line-height:19px;
}

Notice I give it several font options. Fonts are very important to readability as well. Typically on the web, sans-serif type fonts are easier to read. A serif is a decorative tick in certain fonts like Times-Roman. Sans-serif means these are not present. A browser will look at each font option until it finds one that the computer has. Arial and Helvetica are the same thing except Arial is on windows and Helvetica is on Linux.

The color of text and the background is critical also. There are many scifi and fantasy websites that use black backgrounds and white text. This is called reverse copy. It is an artistic way to present information, however, it will lead to your visitors having to strain their eyes to see and they will not stay around as long. If you're not a master of color and all of its intricacies, black text on a light background is the best option for readability. The worst thing you can do is put text on top of a patterned background especially if the colors are close to each other. This is a common mistake made by new website designers.

The Desert Realm Newsletter is a monthly publication that profiles at least one science fiction and/or fantasy website, provides information about new changes and features to the Desert Realm website, and offers tips regarding good web design and search engine placement.

To have your website profiled in the next newsletter, you first need to apply to become a featured link. Only sites that are ranked Dragon or Sage will be profiled in a newsletter. You are welcome to ask me to profile your website; however, I ultimately choose which website will make the news.

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All Newsletters will be posted on the main website as well as in the forums. Feel free to use the forums to discuss the topics covered here. Many other discussions and roleplaying opportunities are also taking place in the forums.

The Desert Realm Fantasy and Scifi Home Page
http://www.desertrealm.com

Add your website to the search engine and featured link section:
http://www.desertrealm.com/content.php?contentId=68

The Desert Realm Forum (discuss this newsletter or many other topics)
http://www.desertrealm.com/forum/

Contact Me
http://www.desertrealm.com/content.php?contentId=49

To Subscribe or Unsubscribe to this newsletter:
http://www.desertrealm.com/news.php

Thanks,
Brian Broderick
Creator of The Desert Realm