Hey everyone, I'm not really satisfied with how my website looks currently. It is very unique, but lacks that general look. I'm thinking about completely redesigning the entire website, and dedicating more time to working on it more regularly. Might as well make it a domain also. Please, I need suggestions, and comments! Should I incorporate more advanced coding for an overall more professional setup? RWenger, could you assist me in making a new forum just as you have for Technofyed? Zombiewolve, your website is packed full of information, and links. Could you help me with finding resources for my website? What's the best way to get my website as a domain noticed?
Make a domain short, to the point, memorable, and unique. Short: you want people to be able to type it fairly quickly; To the point: you want it to be something related to the topic your site addresses; Memorable: If people can remember the name, people will come back; and Unique: you don't want people to be confused.
I would advise you to host it away from a free host. I would look into 1&1 and GoDaddy for your hosting. I have heard that 1&1 is fairly cheap and reliable.
About your design: You could experiment, but I think white works best.
I think if you would put more content on the site (and do what you were talking about), it could become quite popular. As of now, you only have two complete pages of information on your forum. I couldn't help you set up a forum like this unless you have your own hosting.
I like it much better than the old one. I like the use of .innerHTML for the updating time. Did you do that JS?
Why don't you create a header? I mean, like a block where the logo kind of blends with the rest of the design. Right now, it's just kind of there, sitting in space. Then you could wrap all of your site's content in a 80% or so width div and have a white background on it with some other background on the body css?
No, I found the code online. However, I was able to successfully edit the script, and change it to exactly what I wanted. Still don't know much javascript, but it doesn't seem too complicated. Hopefully I'll learn more about how the language is setup here soon. Also, did you see the google search bar at the bottom? I thought that turned out really good... Remember how my site was broken up into different div boxes? The outside box is still there but doesn't have a border. Could use it to surround all the content in a slightly different color. Like a really light gray?
Oh ok. I'm not exceptionally good at JavaScript either, but I know the .innerHTML attribute from doing AJAX with different things.
Just tried the search bar, looks good.
Why don't you have results from your site pop up though? I searched 'CFL', and nothing from your site. In my opinion, although it's cool, it would just be a way for visitors to leave your site.
And I like what you did with the gray. You got my suggestions via GTALK (and already did them), but I'll post them here again for anyone redesigning their own sites. I think you need a border around the content div to make it stand out a little bit from the background, and the background could be a different color, maybe a dark gray. Also, try doing something with the logo.
For some reason the google search bar isn't setting my sites as the priority. I've added several including this forums. Will have to look into it, and see what's going on.
Some things you need to do.. Are build up bot traffic, which means using some sort of method to get free traffic. And I haven't really mentioned this before, but Twitter is one of the best ways.
When you tweet something with an url, it is then posted by many bots on other twitter sites, that take all posts from twitter. Giving you a free backlink on there site, there are many sites that do this. Also tons of bots and people follow it. I made 3 tweets today which brought 40 hits to the site at one time.. It took me 3 tweets, and it was posted accross many twitter fan sites.
When they get to the site, you need to have good professional content as while!
I use twitter myself for that purpose, good idea bozonessinc.
Nice snowflake effect there.
Where are your screenshots?
While,
Just look at the bottom of the page.. And see the users on something like 10 hours ago.. That would be me making my three tweets.
I don't run the forum.. The snowflake effect is cool.. But, it somewhat slows his site down..
I am a super-mod there.. and man does that place get spammed!
It is important that you keep your site fresh and appears to maintain world class standards of design, navigation and functionality. You must be on a regular schedule to complete the reform of the site from time to time visitors experience new and exciting.
gt,
theres nothign WRONG with your site.
it just a little silly that when you click on forums it redirects you to an entirely different site.
ditch the free hosting and get one good short domain, and put the forum like this or something: yourdomain.com/forums