Side Project

[Ninjakreborn]

hmm..  I have my main website.

I created a site on the side, something for fun.  However it's not getting traffic, and all it get's are bots doing tons of submissions (which I fixed).

What can I do to this website to make it better, more attractive.  To really make people want to sit down and submit content?

www.very-embarrassing-moments.com

 

I created it and just left it for a few months.  Declined bot submissions as they can in but it's been like 4 months and not really 1 submission?

 

[moberemk]

Well, it isn't very pretty, that's for sure. The gradients on the left are hideously hard to read, and I don't really like the colors. The lack of content is the biggest problem-without content, and a steady stream of it, there's no chance of anyone coming back to the site. Besides, if I'm looking for embarrassing moments, I'll just go to YouTube.

[timmy2]

THE COLORS ARE TERRIBLE

[Ninjakreborn]

Hmm, over the weekend I will rework all the coloring, redo all the graphics, and rewrite/enhance all the content then post back here for more feedback.  Thank you for all the advice so far.

[AXiSS]

Times New Roman! The downfall of website pages!

 

Give it some color. Brown is horrid. Look into some grays and a bright color for a color scheme. Research web 2.0 design.

 

And lastly, long URL's stink.

[cmgmyr]

well as everyone said before the colors are bad. I don't want to stay on a page very long if it looks like someone took a dump on my screen.

 

You also need content. No one wants to go to a site and be the first to post things. Make a few dumby accounts for yourself and go around the internet and find content for your site and submit it with those accounts (so it looks like more then just you (the admin) is posting things). Once you have good content then the people will come back.

[TheFilmGod]

Well you know, you call it a "side project" so its like a side webpage to me! - Something I wouldn't check out often...  :-\

 

I'm not going to repeat what others have said, but I do want to say something about the font.

 

Its OKAY to use times new roman, but you need to know when to use it and not to use it. Its not okay to use it for navigation or for the header. Use some crazy never before used font for the header. - Since its a picture and the user doesn't have to have it. Use verdana font family for the navigation. And if you insist, use Times New Roman for long texts. - It is only recommend for long long text.

 

Here's why: Times New Roman has those extra details on the characters. This makes it easier for people to read long text with these. That's what I have read in professional books. While shorter text shouldn't have it since it takes up too much room and looks tooooo detailed!

 

I hoped that explained something. Again, you can use it, but only

[perezf]

I reviewed the site, and felt that the colors were to dark, you need to make this website more inviting

 

Quick Note:

I ended up at your main site and browsed through your pages, i checked the validation and your site is not XHTML and CSS valid

 

please check and fix

http://www.freelancebusinessman.com/portfolio.php

[Ninjakreborn]

@ moberemk & timmy2 - thank you for the advice.

@ cmgmyr & TheFilmGod - thank you for the in-depth feed back and explanation into times new romans.  All advice seemed sound so I will follow it all, thanks again.

 

@ perezf - thank you for feedback on my site, and thank you for pointing out validation errors, I will fix those today thanks for noticing.

[php_tom]

I've had some experience with  getting traffic for sites. My suggestions:

 

1) Promote your site. People won't go to it if they don't hear about it. I mean: post about it in forums, blogs, other websites that you administrate, etc. Search engines (esp. google) like your site better if lots of other sites link to it.

 

2) As others mentioned above, improve your layout, color scheme, and content. Consider having an 'embarassing photo' upload section, then if you get enough submissions, put a randomly chosen photo on the home page. This might pique visitors' curiosity. Then I'd go with a subdued lighter color scheme, like light gray BG with darker gray borders, or maybe navy blue borders. Definitely change the font to something like Arial, and make the letters smaller (no bigger than 12px).

 

3) Add some moving content to your site (not too much, so people don't get a headache). I'm thinking a JavaScript news scroller, or a nice animated GIF, etc.

 

4) To make less work for yourself, have a PHP script that automatically checks submissions, instead of you having to manually (I'm assuming that's what you do now, be cause it says: 'It will be reviewed and accepted/declined, or edited/accepted within a 24-48 hour time period'). If you're worried about automated/profane submissions, use an image verification and/or bad words filter.

 

5) Search engines will like your site better if you give them lots of info in the meta tags and other aspects of the site. For meta KEYWORDS and DESCRIPTION, try to imagine typical phrases that people might google. But also include other meta info. Typically I include all of the following tags:

 

<META NAME='keywords' CONTENT='OrganizationName,SomeVariations,SomeOtherKeywords,WhatYouDo'> // Don't put more than maybe 25 keywords, and (IMPORTANT) don't put spaces after the commas!

<META NAME='description' CONTENT='Your_Organization -- Short_Explanation_Of_What_You_Do'> // not much longer than this, actually.

<META NAME="author" CONTENT="Your_Organization">

<META NAME="copyright" CONTENT="Copyright © Current_Year Your_Organization">

<META NAME="title" CONTENT="Same_As_Your_Website_Title">

<META NAME="rating" CONTENT="general">

<META NAME="distribution" CONTENT="global">

<META NAME="resource-type" CONTENT="document">

<META NAME="last-modified" CONTENT="Todays_Date"> -- Do this with a PHP script

<META NAME="robots" content="index,follow">

<META NAME="revisit-after" content="10_days">

 

Don't have too many keywords or too long a title, just enough to succinctly get the point across. Finally always put ALT for your images (if you have any).

 

If you want to further search-engine-optimize your site, add a robots.txt file on the server (google how to do this) for search engine bots.

 

If you make the 'last-modified' a recent date (like today), search engines will come back to your site more often.