Please give me your opinions on my website (Full Version)

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Will284 -> Please give me your opinions on my website (12/11/2007 1:03:52)

I am trying to build a site that has good content and a simple look. I am just not sure if the site is going to appeal to others as much as it appeals to me. Please give your opinion of the look, the idea and the domain name.

Thank you very much in advance for your help.
Will

my site is HelpfulTopics.com



d a v e -> RE: Please give me your opinions on my website (12/11/2007 1:56:03)

your logo is a little bit pale and the edges aren't antialiased properly (they're a bit rough!), the drop shadow looks a bit strange being above rather than below, and it's a bit heavy - so you could reduce it a little

otherwise it looks functional enough but i couldn't get any results for about 10 words: like twins, web, help, ....



Tailslide -> RE: Please give me your opinions on my website (12/11/2007 8:20:32)

Hi

I think it's a good idea - but the application could do with tweaking.

For some reason many of the articles seem to be right-aligned which looks a bit odd. The recipes are centred which is a bad idea - centred text is hard to read - always have chunks of text left aligned.

The mobile version will be a problem - you've got a massive image on there. Personally I prefer to use CSS layouts for my sites and then just have a mobile stylesheet which will simplify layouts and remove images. If I have a logo for a mobile stylesheet then I keep it to under 150px wide. I wouldn't have a separate version of the site for mobiles - it will mean that you have two separate sites to maintain which will become a real pain if it proves sucessful.

I think you need to consider who the audience is and where they'll come from. If it's a Canadian-aimed site then I think you need to specify that so that people from elsewhere don't possibly take advice that doesn't apply to you. Or if you want to make it international then maybe you need to include some way of indicating where the information might apply - maybe just a small flag.

Also (and you might already have this!) make sure you have a disclaimer saying that people follow advice on the site at their own risk (you don't want to get sued!).

I think that you need to consider what will happen if the site is a big sucess - how will you manage to maintain it?

I know I tend to recommend this for everything (and it's not the solution to all problems) but WordPress might be worth looking at. You can specify categories for posts within WordPress and you can organise posts by category - it would certainly be a much easier and lighter-weight way of maintaining what could become a very big site (plus there are a ton of themes and it's easy to include ads and other nice widgets).



Will284 -> RE: Please give me your opinions on my website (12/11/2007 18:27:58)

Thank you for the adivce. I have never used google search on my local site. I am not sure how long it will take to index each topic. I hope the search tool is going to work. I am going to revisit the design of the logo either tonight or tomorrow. Will update this thread when I get it. Thanks again, William



Will284 -> RE: Please give me your opinions on my website (12/11/2007 18:33:49)

Great feedback!!! I am hoping for the site to be a big success so I need to be planning on having the proper software. I would like to have this set up with a db for people to be able to do live postings. I am having to post each article right now and that would be crazy when it gets big.

I have never heard of word press. I am going to look into that software soon to see if it is in my budget. Also, I do need to get my disclaimer up on the site. This should be top priority. Thank you so much for mentioning this.

Thanks for the help.
Will



Tailslide -> RE: Please give me your opinions on my website (12/12/2007 2:54:16)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Will284
I have never heard of word press. I am going to look into that software soon to see if it is in my budget.


It's free!

It's designed as blogging software and you could use it as such - just have articles instead of blog items and look into how you display the different categories of article (display by category rather than the usual display by date).

It looks an unlikely solution at first glance - but there's quite a lot of flexibility in how you can display stuff plus there's an enormous user-base and an enormous amount of plugins which you can add to your site to enhance the site.

As it's free, it might be worth playing with for a few days. If you hate it or can't get on with it at least you'll have looked at it.

One advantage of WP is that a lot of the themes are CSS layouts which means that in future you'd be able to use a PDA stylesheet (as mentioned in my earlier post) for people on mobiles without having to produce a complete second version of the site.

There are other CMSs (content management systems) out there such as Joomla! which also might be worth looking at (and also free). I tend to like WordPress because I think it produces nice code and because there are a lot of pretty themes. Joomla! sites often look like Joomla! sites a mile away - plus the code isn't quite as nice.

But either way I think you need to look at a CMS or WP as you'll drive yourself mad otherwise.



dbguide -> RE: Please give me your opinions on my website (12/14/2007 2:50:02)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Will284

I am trying to build a site that has good content and a simple look. I am just not sure if the site is going to appeal to others as much as it appeals to me. Please give your opinion of the look, the idea and the domain name.

Thank you very much in advance for your help.
Will

my site is HelpfulTopics.com


Its clean, easy to read, easy on the eyes, color scheme is good

but...

what does it really do for me?

plus some nitpick on layout:
1) the disclaimer is huge and highlighted!! makes me frightened ... imho use a link and put the disclaimer in another page.
2) unfortunately I hate google, and google ads, so umm everything is google on your site and makes it feel unoriginal ... is there anyway you can rid yourself of the google logo (hehehe)
3) umm everyone is going to kill me for saying this but ... don't bring it to the users knowledge so openly that "Please visit our advertisers to help us continue providing
this website at no charge. Advertisers links appear throughout the site." I find this reduces click throughs

now for my disclaimer: I am not sure if this site is finished or what it is used for so please take my opinions with a bucket of salt




Will284 -> RE: Please give me your opinions on my website (12/19/2007 22:43:59)

Dave, I have installed wordpress and it works well. It looks like I will have to install seperate for each cat to get rss to only feed one cat. Please take a look at the new set up and let me know what you think.



yang0112 -> RE: Please give me your opinions on my website (4/7/2008 12:18:09)

Hi there,

I like your design, but still feel there are some places needs to be improved:
1)could you change your logo make it simple and short.
2)where is the privacy policy for your site?
3)could you put the "Top Search" aligned with the search text box.
4)could you narrow down the header part of the main page.

szy



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