Critique my site please (I'm looking at YOU, Brian! ;) )

Link's in my sig. Login is guest/guest for normal member placements. Contributors see no ads.

I'm doing better lately, under $10 a day but up about 25% over the last 3 months and I get about ~100-200 from CJ depending on the month.

I honestly think the biggest down fall to your site is the theme.

It's hard to read.

the cyan left nav is practically blurry. the orange isn't great either.

the purple, blue and all the rest against the dark grey aren't great either.

I tried clicking on Screaming into the Abyss 3 times before i realized it wasn't a link. Having 'that' blue not be a link is a huge UI flaw. users are used to that color being a link. When it's not, they don't know wtf is going on.




All style aside:

Why are you in /forums/ ? other than vbadvanced(next topic) you don't seem to have anything else in root. All this does is push you /one/dir/deeper/ which holds less weight than /onedir/

vbadvanced... we all know how i feel about it.. lol The major thing i hate about it (other than adding nothing to the site IMO) is

Code:

http://www.sevenstring.org/index.php
http://www.sevenstring.org
http://www.sevenstring.org?askl=43243244
http://www.sevenstring.org/index.php?
http://www.sevenstring.org/index.php?xyz=123&abc=567

all go to the same page, and shouldn't. they should end up on / with a 301 or 404 from the bad stuff.


Ads:
black title on the adsense ad doesn't stand out. i wouldn't click it, because i would never quickly have a title catch my eye and entice me to visit the sponsor site to find out more about X product.

the ads at the bottom are a mess. no need for 213123 ads at once. rotate them showing one per page view.


Links:

home groups support us register
where's the FORUM link?



sevenstring guitars sevenstring registry
set up CRR's for those pages.
/sevenstring-guitars/ and /sevenstring-registry/ would be much nicer you can even CRR the subpages.



Here we go!

I'd suggest choosing a different Rewrite setting.
59559-7-string-yes-guitar-no-wink.html

Hypertext Style: Cool URIs don't change.

File name extension. This is a very common one. "cgi", even ".html" is something which will change. You may not be using HTML for that page in 20 years time, but you might want today's links to it to still be valid. The canonical way of making links to the W3C site doesn't use the extension.(how?)

don't change this unless you know the consequences of it.

basically, having an extension in this day and age is a thing of the past. It should be noted, that article was written in 1998.


hide this crap from guests:

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replace with
Currently Active Users: 67

Brian

replace with
Currently Active Users: 67

How would you do that on forum home?

Originally Posted by briansol

I honestly think the biggest down fall to your site is the theme.

It's hard to read.

the cyan left nav is practically blurry. the orange isn't great either.

I'm a sucker for those colors, but will take your advice and clean 'em up. I do love dark skins though.

I tried clicking on Screaming into the Abyss 3 times before i realized it wasn't a link. Having 'that' blue not be a link is a huge UI flaw. users are used to that color being a link. When it's not, they don't know wtf is going on.

My front page rotates all the interviews, and that one is (was) old as hell and the only one with that blue text in there. I'd been meaning to get it out of there for ages, I just procrastinated about it. It's gone now. The rotating interview block probably isn't the best for SEO but I'm not sure what else I can really do about it. I'd been thinking on making one post with snippets of the last 4 interviews or so, and will probably end up going that route.

Why are you in /forums/ ? other than vbadvanced(next topic) you don't seem to have anything else in root. All this does is push you /one/dir/deeper/ which holds less weight than /onedir/

Hm, ya know, I never thought of it that way. I'd just always set my sites up that way since way back when.

vbadvanced... we all know how i feel about it.. lol

Haha, yeah man trust me, I hate it too. I just don't have the time/skill to code up a custom front end really. I hate, hate, hate my portal. :(

The major thing i hate about it (other than adding nothing to the site IMO) is

Code:

http://www.sevenstring.org/index.php
http://www.sevenstring.org
http://www.sevenstring.org?askl=43243244
http://www.sevenstring.org/index.php?
http://www.sevenstring.org/index.php?xyz=123&abc=567

all go to the same page, and shouldn't. they should end up on / with a 301 or 404 from the bad stuff.

Hmm, where are those links? I'll have to take a peek for duplicates.

black title on the adsense ad doesn't stand out. i wouldn't click it, because i would never quickly have a title catch my eye and entice me to visit the sponsor site to find out more about X product.

Great point. Fixed.

the ads at the bottom are a mess. no need for 213123 ads at once. rotate them showing one per page view.

The banners? Those are rather expensive, so I sell the slots with the bonus being that they're always there. It's been like that for the last two years and while I'd love to rotate them, it's a bit late. I don't run an ad unit down there, anything below the halfway point never really did well for me. :(

I might do that anyway though, heh.

Links:

home groups support us register
where's the FORUM link?

Right next to the "newb" link that links to my profile. Fixed. Thanks man.

sevenstring guitars sevenstring registry
set up CRR's for those pages.
/sevenstring-guitars/ and /sevenstring-registry/ would be much nicer you can even CRR the subpages.

Fantastic idea, will definitely do that.

Here we go!

I'd suggest choosing a different Rewrite setting.
59559-7-string-yes-guitar-no-wink.html

Hypertext Style: Cool URIs don't change.

don't change this unless you know the consequences of it.

basically, having an extension in this day and age is a thing of the past. It should be noted, that article was written in 1998.

Will definitley read up on that as well.

hide this crap from guests:

replace with
Currently Active Users: 67

Will do.

Thank you very much dude, really appreciate you taking the time to be so thorough. Cheers!