Travis — Sun, 09 Apr 2000 14:43:00 +0000

Too many ads and thats about it.

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Travis
Eboarding.net

brigarkee — Sun, 09 Apr 2000 04:39:00 +0000

I realize that my page does look cluttered.
There are alot of free sites out there. My site has to be attractive enough for someone to remember....I work in the electric sign industry in sales, and I know for a fact that people tend to go towards the look of something, over alot of other things. I don't think my site is hard to navigate through...I've put the most important things about my site near the top, and just out of curiousity is the rainbow color thing just a personal issue of dislike? Or is this a no-no in the design end? I honestly don't know, this is why I'm asking. I have a black background, which I know that alot of people, or webmasters that is, pooh-pooh, but doesn't it stand to reason that a free site should take on a more free-fun look?
We can't all just jump in the field and start taking the kind of hits to our pages like the freestuffcenter does, they have a great site, but they built their community, and now it's time for me to try to attract some people my way. I've spent quite a bit of money on logo, search engine, and a couple of other scripts for my site, and at some point something has to pay off. This is why I do have other links on my home page...higher paying click through ads that do get alot of hits, this is why I have left them. I did want some suggestions for my website, and that I do appreciate from all of you, but I feel that I'm getting more personal opinions than contructive criticism, for instance take out my top 10...that has brought me tons of hits from the search engines, maybe because there is alot less on these pages than the home page, but until I can figure out how to bring down the size of my home page without losing out on clickthrus, it'll have to do....I have been taking over 1000 hits to my page a day, and I feel for the short time my site has been up, that's not so bad.
I do appreciate the comments, but I think I've heard more positive things from the people actually visiting my site, talking to me on my human chat, than I've heard from alot of webmasters....And I guess in the long run, that's what truly matters is that the people coming into my site are enjoying themselves, for FREE!
Thank you all.

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freeBcity -Your Search Engine Home of Freebies!

Megan — Tue, 04 Apr 2000 14:20:00 +0000

The logo and navbars look nice. Now you have to change everything else to fit in with that. the grey background for the content area totally does not match for example. Lose all of the clutter. That includes:

the rainbow coloured text down the left side under the navbar
any ads that aren't brining you a lot of hits
change the colours to blend in with your logo - more colours just make it look more cluttered. clutter = confusion = bad.

I also don't like how the left side "top 10" menu disappears after the first page. That's weird. Actually, I would lose the "top 10" thing and just put your main categories on that navbar, and put it on every page.

If you have to have all that junk on there, make sure it's below the fold, and organize it better. Get rid of the rainbow text and keep it purple or blue to go with your logo. Maybe create a checkerboard type table to organize all those little bits.

Suzanne — Sun, 02 Apr 2000 22:38:00 +0000

Ah, my apologies!

Mind you, she's still a hefty page!

Suzanne

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Zero Cattle
Suzanne
Tables DeMystified

brigarkee — Sun, 02 Apr 2000 22:14:00 +0000

No, you aren't reading my reply correctly. I said, The changes I made to my page took off 30K, scroll up and read from my first post. I know my page has more than 30K, I know HTML....and how to read the amount of space taken up by graphics. But before all of the changes I made I had 127K on the page....NOW, minus 30K.
But thank you anyway.

Suzanne — Sun, 02 Apr 2000 20:23:00 +0000

Um, the .html is 33.2K alone.

Your top image weighs in at 20.5K...

That, without the other images on the page, the navigation, et cetra, is 53.7K, which is nowhere near 30K.

http://beta.netmechanic2.com/summary.cgi?f=92161617-10564&s=NetMechanic&fv=4

Check it out for yourself. Bad links, errors in the HTML, bad load time, et cetera.

You have 97K of images on that page alone.

Suzanne

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Zero Cattle
Suzanne
Tables DeMystified

[This message has been edited by Suzanne (edited 02 April 2000).]

brigarkee — Sun, 02 Apr 2000 20:09:00 +0000

Oh no, it's by far 30K, I just reduced it that far by fixing that problem. I agree with the human click, I've just been keeping it on there fr now because my server stats program is a mess and it won't tell me where people are being referred from like it does with the human click. But as soon as I figure out how to install this cgi server stats program, human click is history. Kind of annoying to myself as well. The bottom exchange ad is outta there, the top one makes me money-$.15 per click thru, plus it's a 1:1...best one I've found yet. There is so much I need to do on my site. I'm just going to have take it one step at a time. You guys are great with the advice.
Thanks so much,
Colleen

Suzanne — Sun, 02 Apr 2000 18:12:00 +0000

fyi..

page size = all images + all programming + all HTML code

External scripting and programming affect it as well.

hth,

Suzanne

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Zero Cattle
Suzanne
Tables DeMystified

Justin S — Sun, 02 Apr 2000 15:23:00 +0000

No, I don't think the site is 30k in size. I put it through WebSiteGarage and it said it took 45 seconds to load on a 56k modem. It also said that the page is 145k. When I loaded it, I waited around 1-2 minutes. Not good.

I agree that your site is one of the better looking free sites, but most people won't notice that if you don't get the loading time under 10-15 seconds at most. And if people don't see the page, they don't get to see the banners, which means no money for you.

This is what I would do with the ads. Get rid of those banner exchanges, unless they are bringing in massive hits. Put one paying banner on the top of the site, and one at the bottom. Then maybe keep 2-3 small banner ads, and get rid of all the text around them. Put them in a row down the left menu.

I don't think you need human click either.

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brigarkee — Sun, 02 Apr 2000 06:19:00 +0000

Thanks for the response Justin.
I just found out that my load time was due to a ton of empty redundant tags that dreamweaver was leaving on my page after something was deleted. Taking those out reduced my page by 30K....It was a great day after finding that out. Also I took out the italicized link on the left towards the bottom, that was pretty big and gaudy looking. As far as the graphics for my buttons, I've been complimented so much on those, because they match the logos color scheme so well. There are things that I know I should do, but the only reason those ads are on my front page is because they are making me money:-). I don't think I'll ever have the most professional site out there, being a free site, I don't think I want to be. There are millions of free sites out there now, to be noticed you have to have a nice package. And easy navigation, etc. as well. You have been very helpful with everything. I do appreciate it, I actually have been working occasionally on other ideas for my top 10 links, just haven't found anything yet that compares in my mind to what I have right now.
Thank You so much Justin.
Colleen

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freeBcity -Your Search Engine Home of Freebies!