Please review The Floor Pro Community

[eJM]

I have just recently redesigned the website with a new skin, graphics and near complete integration with vBadvanced CMPS. I hope that I have implemented heading tags well and made the site easy for people and spiders to navigate and find great content.

Even after 2½ years, the site is too light on content, but flooring professionals don't always make good writers. I do have several more articles that will be added in the next couple of weeks though.

The Floor Pro Community - sharing information & resources at TheFloorPro.com

That's the home page. I think the navigation on the sidebar will get you everywhere else you want to go. Thank you for any constructive criticism and guidance you may want to offer.

Best R'gards,

Jim McClain

[briansol]

Hello,
I'm done with Jim (eJM) and any information i ever gave him.

sorry if this effects you if you had the same question. This man is no longer worth my space on these forums.

Thank him for this dis-service.

[Joe Ward]

Your logo seems a bit pixelated. I take it you tried keeping the file size very small and sacrificed some image quality.

I really do not like your homepage title. How much traffic do you get for "Floor Pro Community", "floor sharing" or "floor resources", etc.

What about something like "The Floor Pro: Expert "How To" Tips on Hardwood, Ceramic, Stone, Vinyl, Laminate & Carpet Flooring Options"

Or "The Floor Pro: Expert "How To" Select & Install Advice for all Flooring Options"

Whatever you choose, I would prefer to get some better keywords in there. I almost always suggest removing the domain name from a page title.

I would like to see you get rid of the recent threads and the presidential poll on your homepage.

I don't like that you use your site title on every sub-forum page & thread page. This is non-optimal for long tail traffic.

I would get rid of some links in your site nav including: TOS, Privacy, Register, FAQ, Member List, and Google Map.

I do not like the top of your template how you have the title right aligned and the Google ad stuck above it. It just does not appear right to me. I would rather you left align that title and get rid of the Google ad. Pull the content up closer to the top, or get some kind of header image that might include representative photos of the different types of flooring you cover, etc. You can always place the Google ads directly under this section.

[eJM]

I think this new design is way better than the old one. much easier to read. cleaner.

Thank you for that. I worked hard on it for a long time.

I think you're still missing out on some headings though.

<td class="alt1"><font face="Tahoma"><font size="5"><font color="DarkGreen"><b><i>How-To for Pros &amp; Do-It-Yourselfers</i></b></font></font></font><br>

a heading would be perfect for this section title instead of font tag-soup

You're right. I hadn't checked those articles for quite a while. It was the same in quite a few and I fixed them all. And they validate.

i think you also may have a case of 'div-itous'
take for example:

 <div style="text-align:right;">
      <!-- Page Title -->
      <h1>
      
      
      Patching Vinyl Floors - Preparations
      
      
      </h1>
      <!-- /Page Title -->
      </div>

from this page: Patching Vinyl Floors - Preparations atTheFloorPro.com


You don't need a wrapping div at all here. The h1 is a block level element, and can take on the alignment settings just like a div can. It's extra markup to maintain for no good reason.

Right again. I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that. Simple fix in the header template.

Your logo seems a bit pixelated. I take it you tried keeping the file size very small and sacrificed some image quality.

Yeah, that's it. Actually, I just ain't that good with the dang anti-aliasing thing. I'm not happy with the jaggies at all. I use Fireworks, so if you have a link to something that addresses that, I'd appreciate it. I am anti-PhotoShop though, so don't bother recommending anything about that - I can't afford it, won't steal it like so many people do and think it's over-rated for graphics anyway.

I want to address all the other items you pointed out too, but that damn Brian had me working for a couple hours and I forgot to eat and take my meds. So... See you in a little while. Thank you for all the great ideas and helping make my site better.

[briansol]

Hello,
I'm done with Jim (eJM) and any information i ever gave him.

sorry if this effects you if you had the same question. This man is no longer worth my space on these forums.

Thank him for this dis-service.

[eJM]

I really do not like your homepage title. How much traffic do you get for "Floor Pro Community", "floor sharing" or "floor resources", etc.

What about something like "The Floor Pro: Expert "How To" Tips on Hardwood, Ceramic, Stone, Vinyl, Laminate & Carpet Flooring Options"

Or "The Floor Pro: Expert "How To" Select & Install Advice for all Flooring Options"

Whatever you choose, I would prefer to get some better keywords in there. I almost always suggest removing the domain name from a page title.

I changed many of the titles throughout the site because of this advice. I will have to come up with something better for the home page. I have seen that advice about removing the domain name from the title. Mine doesn't appear on all the pages, but some I felt were good use of keywords, since my domain name has a couple of keywords in it. I will spend some time changing the page captions as well.

I would like to see you get rid of the recent threads and the presidential poll on your homepage.

Another "feature" I haven't checked on for quite some time. Both of these are features my members like. Fortunately, CMPS modules can follow forum permissions and I can select the threads and polls that are displayed. The polls prob'ly have very little relevant content, so I made it invisible to guests/spiders.

The recent threads module has several options I didn't take advantage of - removing the newest post link and graphic, the poster's name and link, etc. - so I selected only the most content relevant forums to pull from and it shows only 5 of the most recent post excerpts and a link to the forum they are in. This is also forum permissions managed, so if you can't get into the private forums, you won't see the posts from there.

That should satisfy my members and be better for spider crawling.

I don't like that you use your site title on every sub-forum page & thread page. This is non-optimal for long tail traffic.

I did make some changes because of this advice, but there are some pages that I think the site title, "The Floor Pro Community", is relevant and half the words are keywords. No?

I would get rid of some links in your site nav including: TOS, Privacy, Register, FAQ, Member List, and Google Map.

I do have links in the footer to ToS and Privacy, so I removed those. I don't understand your advice to remove the Register link at all. You do realize that the navigation sidebar is taking the place of the standard navbar? I have gotten too many emails from people using my old theme telling me they didn't know where to go to register. Seems counter-productive to remove that. I did rename it and renamed the FAQ link too. The GoogleMap is also an important feature and only flooring professionals can have markers. I renamed it too, so that it is more relevant. Since we get a lot of traffic from visitors looking for pros, I think the member list link is a good one. Are those changes acceptable and reasonable?

I do not like the top of your template how you have the title right aligned and the Google ad stuck above it. It just does not appear right to me. I would rather you left align that title and get rid of the Google ad. Pull the content up closer to the top, or get some kind of header image that might include representative photos of the different types of flooring you cover, etc. You can always place the Google ads directly under this section.

I didn't like that ad up there either, but it did increase my revenue while it was there. I would prefer to have some kind of flash based slide show of pictures from member albums or attachments, or maybe just a folder of selected images that I think would look nice. I can't seem to find a product like that - there are dozens of crappy looking flash banners populating the top of Google searches.

I have the page caption right-aligned for balance. It might look better left-aligned once I have some kind of rotating image in the upper-right corner. I can't move the content up unless I shorten the logo. I made it that l high to allow room for an ad or image banner and the <h1> page captions, which at times take 2 lines, depending on thread title and browser viewport.

For the logo, try using a png instead of a jpg. It's more gif-like, but doesn't have the huge filesizes assosicated with it on multi-colored pictures.

I'll find some time to redo that and make it cleaner and crisper. Thanks.

Thanks to both of you for helping me make my site better. I hope the changes I made will improve the crawlability and traffic - and the income too. Please do continue with any advice or feedback you think would be good.

Best R'gards,

Jim McClain

[eJM]

Still hoping to make this as good as it can be. Any further comments or suggestions would be apprecated.

Thanks,

Jim