thewooleymammoth

well, chances are the pale green would work with that orange. color wheel rarely lies, you just have to figure out ways to mix em. but when it comes down too it, the clients opinion matters most.

may sound kinda rough but its true, your tutorials dont explain that well. try breaking down what each line of your code does. maybe that will help.

What do you guys think of the changes ive made? I made the email changes. (changed email address & changed it so you can contact via page.) I also added a mousover on all of the services so you can see more pricing information for the individual items. (there is a back end where he can edit the info but for now they all say 'call for more info') He is getting a job next week for before and after pictures, so those are gonna have to be on the back burner for now.

it does have a professional kind of feel. but i think the banner being in shades of blue would feel more proffesional. or even mostly gray. dominating warm colors dont feel that professional, the feel kinda giving and homish. I would make that a lot of that orange background a light gray with orange highlights and change the name of the company to the orange color. But thats all my opinion on the orange color. That might be the exact feel he is gong for, professional yet kinda warm and easy. Another thing that i think might bring it out of the really homestyle feeling is some complementarity colors. try this thing out http://colorschemedesigner.com/ and click compliment. Too me its just too much overpower orange. also the banner graphic with the graphs feels a little unfinished. to the left of the bars is to blank, but thats just my opinion. I agree about the straight white text. Give it a hint of another color. EDIT: looks like you added some beige tone. looks good

THIS IS AN AWESOME IDEA. Some flaws (i think) when i search for a program. I typed in photoshop expecting the obvious answer (gimp). my answers were Adobe Photoshop alternatives: GIMP Adobe Photoshop CinePaint gimp did come up, but if i didnt know what was for linux and what was for windows. you might try the os in paranthesis or something to that effect, but i think the best way to do it would be to show the results like this. Adobe Photoshop alternatives Windows Alternatives: GIMP Adobe Photoshop CinePaint Linux Alternatives: GIMP OSX Alternatives: GIMP Adobe Photoshop CinePaint also you may consider links to the programs if they are for windows because there is no package manager for windows (one more thing linux has on windows). Im assuming this can be changed by the community? if so why not let the community have as many options as possible for making the program info very specific. Just specify that some things can be left blank. Nice work though, i can see this site having a lot of potential.

that looks alot sharper without the fence. but now there is a bit of a void there. tryin increasing the size of the W3php logo, or creating a w3php logo in photoshop for right there. other than that, that dark orange on dark blue is still terrible to read on the tuts pages. I really highly suggest changing that orange color to something more readable. Other than that, just keep adding/improving content and it might take off a little.

how that for licensed bonded and insured? ill work on that bit about bigger jobs a little later

Awesome suggestions guys. I totally agree about the email 100% ill change it asap. He is gonna be taking some before and after pictures at the next job, however there really havnt been any jobs. so those pictures are all we really have for now. Unfortunate but true. While Robert does have 26 years experience. Roberts Plumbing is only 8 or 9 years old. I suppose i could include Robert has been plumbing for over 26 years and started roberts plumbing over 9 years ago? maybe that still seems too individualistic? I am working on writing a few more pages, specifically targeted at garbage disposals, water pressure repairs, hot water heaters etc... things that are the most common. But i have 4 other sites im developing right now, and 2 of them have deadlines that will be coming up rather soon. Ill try and keep you guys updated about what works and what other solutions i may find (for future searchers of the boards) Thanks a bunch for the suggestions.

k, ill add the contact form in tomorrow. good call, i was gonna a while ago and never got to it. Thanks for the reminder.

i dont have it on ppd its on ppc, but the budget is 15 per day. its on manual mode, and the highest keyword we have is 5.50 for the word plumber (which only has 1 click oddly enough) it is geo targeted to the la area. most words are .75 - 2.00 dollars. We are getting clicks too, were not unhappy with that. the problem is that lack of calling after the clicks. Ive asked a couple non-web design average kinda people what they thought of the site and would they call if they were looking for a plumber and came across this site and they all said they loved the simplicity and would definitely call. so idk what the deal is. 8 - 12 visits per day (of people supposedly looking for a plumber) and no calls? i almost feel scammed. anything you guys would like to see on the site to encourage you to call? or anything that would make you not want to call?

Some of you may remember this site froma while ago, http://www.robertsplumbing.net He decided to try google adwords last week. He has been getting between 8-12 clicks a day, but he has only gotten one call off of the website. Does anyone know why or what we can do to make it more appealing? adwords is costing around 15 bucks a day so he wants to see some business in return.

the blog color changing thing makes my head hurt, but maybe thats just me

alright but i do have to have a little input and let him know: The stats are very often flawed and bloated. Alot of those hits are probably search engines, alot of the other ones are from here. I wouldn't judge all that much by the site statistics. if you want a better way to know how many people are actually visiting your site, use an ajax counter that logs the ip. then search engines dont trigger it. and you can change your log to show how many unique ips there are and how many pages each one visted. Perhaps even allow comments on your tutorials so you can see what kind of reaction people are having to them. Also, while the stats may make you feel warm and fuzzy inside, (i love looking at how high my stats are) most users and other people are going to be annoyed by your telling them. once you get the counter right, You could even write a tutorial about how to create an advanced counter that weeds out search engines and bots. Last one: the orange link ontop of the dark blue has got to go. I can barely read the titles of the tutorials. (already mentioned i beleive) along with the code background. (already mentioned as well.

Look how many people register and vote on things like yahoo answers. Besides you wouldnt even necissarily need to register to vote, perhaps onlly register to answer and ask... I think the idea is that you would draw away the people who like to answer questions from other sites like stackoverfllow, yahoo answers, maybe even phpfreaks, by paying the person who answers. While its true alot of people do like things for free. Alot of people like to get paid for thier work. so alot of question answerers might be really attracted. Unlike experts exchange you should the general public to view questions and answers as well. Also as i previously mentioned: Its true, php users like free stuff, programmers and artists in general like free stuff... but people who have questions about things like: should i put this performance part in my Lamborghini? generally want to pay for answers. they feel more secure if they've paid for it. Which i why i would highly reccomend not limiting it to php.

continuation: wether the person asking the question chooses who gets paid or not they still get both answers so they are satisfied. Person a cant complain much when hundreds of people out vote him and person b is happy because he got paid for his correct answer. every when is relativly happy and no 1 person is to blame for anyone losing money. IMO this is the only way it would work. but if you guys get it going be sure to post it on here so we can see how it turns out! I think its a pretty good idea and there could be a huge market for it. 25 cents can add up pretty quickly as well. especially if people can add more to the pot if the question goes un answered.

yea, i think that allowing the customer to have the end all decision is going to discourage people who answer. I think that if they got outvoted by a community then they are likely to accept that thier answer was inferior. Giving one person that power (even if its the person who pays) is likely to start fueds between members who feel they are being screwed out of money. they could feel that their answer was better and they may often be right. The person asking the question is probably not the person who would know what the best answer was. they probably dont even know if either answer is correct. example: how do i connect to my database? person a clearly explains how to do this, but in a terribly inefficient and insecure way. person b gives a much more efficient and secure way but its harder. the question asker may give the credit to person a only to realize later that person b was actually correct. if a community were voting they would most likely go with person b. then the question asker can also have more confidence in the answer. you should also allow comments on each answer. so the question asker can get other peoples inputs on the answers.

also, i wouldnt limit it too just php, make it open, help on anything. you could also pay people based on how many members view the page. if you can find advertising thats ppv

i dont have time to read whats already been discussed, sorry if these ideas have bbeen suggested, but here is one way i see it working. give the thread a time limit. and registered users vote on acceptable answers and the best answer. best answer after say a week get the cash. That would encourage some really insiteful answers. you could also allow people to chip in some of thier own points to make the answer reward bigger so the more people want to know the answer the more it attracts better programmers. However i dont think this will work out too well because people running php tend to like free. so they come to places like here. You could have like a pay per tutorial or something to that effect. where people chip in and the first person to create and acceptable (as voted on by users) gets the pot.

true true, i tend not to post if i dont see anything i would change as well.

Are you still upset because of my comments on your website? I thought you were passed that? not at all, quite the opposite actually. Your harshness pushed me to become a much better designer, thank you. I was merely trying to let him know that you are a pretty rough critiquer, and just because you dont like it doesnt mean its terrible. its pretty rare that you like things, which (imo) helps people on the board alot, but can also discourage alot of people.

hahaha now that you mention it, that is the classic "call us now" picture. good call. Although i feel like so many people do that for a reason, probably because it works. I dont want to call some ugly chick

not using it wouldnt be a ripoff at all, i think the problem ignace is having is that there are statistics about things but there is no real way to test it or see it in action right now. so it looks suspicious to him. and dont worry he is pretty rough on everybody.

if you sell your product somewhere ellse where it has reviews or just a site that does reviews and link to that, it might help. I would also put some examples on the front page of what the software does, without me trying to type in something ex: Buy My Crap! - > Our crap is 100% american made! (i dont really know what your thing would output) I like the video, just dont like that it auto plays

not a fan of the green/black buttons, the shiney effect makes them hard to read, nice site though.

i gotta vote top right as well.