Critique my website please.

[waloshin]

http://waloshin.com

What do you like, don't like etc.

[flaneurism]

It seems very busy to me. I'd say choose a more minimal design. Really think about what you want where and why... and make sure it gives off good feng shui... :)

[Dangertux]

I'd say lose the ads personally I hate blogs with ads most of the time

[Mmmbopdowedop]

I'd say to just lose the left side stuff all together to seperate your posts out more, because at the moment, it looks all shoved together and a mess, I think you need more viewing area on your actual `blogs`. :)

[rudihawk]

It's ok. There are just huge banners and adverts which completely put me off.

[forrestcupp]

My biggest complaint is that it's pretty high contrast, and hard on the eyes. Either lighten up the background, slightly darken the foreground, or a little of both.


I'd say lose the ads personally I hate blogs with ads most of the time

That's probably not an option if he needs free blog hosting and isn't able to pay for a premium site.

[dagroves]

Not to bad but it is a little crowded, I would work on a new theme that gives your blog room to breathe!

[satanselbow]

The "sticky" post is date 9th Dec 2011 so i'm thinking this blog is not being maintained already - I had to scroll before finding recent content. The "take my survey" invite reeks of email harvesting and might be better implemented as a side banner rather than a whole blog entry ;)


The slideshow at the top merges in with the adverts surrounding it and I missed it completely at first.

The fb/g+/tw could all be merged into one box about half the size of the current fb box ;)

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

The first thing that I noticed was the size of the fonts used were larger than what most of the sites I visit tend to use. It actually gave me a poor impression of the website. Try using <H1> or <H2> rather than <H3> tags for example. That font size could be contributing to the impression that it is to busy or crowded.

[waloshin]

My biggest complaint is that it's pretty high contrast, and hard on the eyes. Either lighten up the background, slightly darken the foreground, or a little of both.



That's probably not an option if he needs free blog hosting and isn't able to pay for a premium site.

I am on my own hosting, though i do like to help earn money to pay for the cost of hosting.

Thanks to everybody elae for the opinions.

[Dangertux]

My biggest complaint is that it's pretty high contrast, and hard on the eyes. Either lighten up the background, slightly darken the foreground, or a little of both.



That's probably not an option if he needs free blog hosting and isn't able to pay for a premium site.

Wordpress usually doesn't force ads though they sometimes will rotate them in there if they're hurting for cash.

[robsoles]

I agree with the basic run of critique you have so far from those guys.

Further to what I've seen others say in this thread so far I could currently add that posts which are entirely question and no answers do not usually appear in professional blogs.

When I clicked the contact button I was a bit amused to see a "Monthly Budget" textbox on the form but I should mention that if you paid for my advice about your website I would advise that asking such a question on a contact form provided with no indication of what service the visitor could possibly have a budget for will come across with a negative hue for most internet savvy users.

Example: If your company provides electricity and this is the corporate part of your website then the question "Monthly Budget" on a contact form isn't suspicious at all but the presentation I get here is that its only purpose can be the beginning of scams to get it off me.

I would make it real clear how providing their monthly budget figure to you could possibly benefit them so wonderfully or I would ditch that question in a heartbeat.


I copied and pasted the message I posted in that 'contactme.com' contact box here now to continue a little:

I gave waloshin@<<my-domain>> as my email address after whitelisting it to my main inbox for now. I expect the people at 'contactme.com' have harvested that email address and that activity is why I always give different (looking) organisations unique addresses for me to kill later...

Save me the trouble of reading their faqs and things: Do they provide the contact form as is and you don't get control over the fields on the form? If the answer to this question is yes then, with nothing more to go by and not really affording them any defense to my accusation, I smell an email address harvesting scam-house in the background and boy oh boy are they bold.

***I can easily be wrong, please note that I am using the word 'if' above.


Sorry, did I miss the big shiny section it turns out to be a financial advice website or something?

[deonis]

I do not see any sense in it, why do you need a website ? What's it all about? Sorry.

[Dangertux]

I agree with the basic run of critique you have so far from those guys.

Further to what I've seen others say in this thread so far I could currently add that posts which are entirely question and no answers do not usually appear in professional blogs.

When I clicked the contact button I was a bit amused to see a "Monthly Budget" textbox on the form but I should mention that if you paid for my advice about your website I would advise that asking such a question on a contact form provided with no indication of what service the visitor could possibly have a budget for will come across with a negative hue for most internet savvy users.

Example: If your company provides electricity and this is the corporate part of your website then the question "Monthly Budget" on a contact form isn't suspicious at all but the presentation I get here is that its only purpose can be the beginning of scams to get it off me.

I would make it real clear how providing their monthly budget figure to you could possibly benefit them so wonderfully or I would ditch that question in a heartbeat.


I copied and pasted the message I posted in that 'contactme.com' contact box here now to continue a little:

I gave waloshin@<<my-domain>> as my email address after whitelisting it to my main inbox for now. I expect the people at 'contactme.com' have harvested that email address and that activity is why I always give different (looking) organisations unique addresses for me to kill later...

Save me the trouble of reading their faqs and things: Do they provide the contact form as is and you don't get control over the fields on the form? If the answer to this question is yes then, with nothing more to go by and not really affording them any defense to my accusation, I smell an email address harvesting scam-house in the background and boy oh boy are they bold.

***I can easily be wrong, please note that I am using the word 'if' above.


Sorry, did I miss the big shiny section it turns out to be a financial advice website or something?

This drew my attention too until I realized what it is, it's just laziness. If you look at the "Advertise Here" page. You will see it's the same form, so basically it's just reused code. It makes sense if you take it in context of advertising, the budget question would presumably be how much can you spend on advertising here. Which makes more sense. However, the obvious answer is to make a proper contact me form.

Hope this helps.

[CharlesA]

This drew my attention too until I realized what it is, it's just laziness. If you look at the "Advertise Here" page. You will see it's the same form, so basically it's just reused code. It makes sense if you take it in context of advertising, the budget question would presumably be how much can you spend on advertising here. Which makes more sense. However, the obvious answer is to make a proper contact me form.

Hope this helps.
+1. I ended up using a "canned" contact form on my site, but it is quite customizable. You can find it here: http://green-beast.com/

I dislike ads, and as such, I don't have any on my site. The hosting costs are minimal for me tho. I think it worked out to like 2 dollars a month on the plan I have.

[robsoles]

This drew my attention too until I realized what it is, it's just laziness. If you look at the "Advertise Here" page. You will see it's the same form, so basically it's just reused code. It makes sense if you take it in context of advertising, the budget question would presumably be how much can you spend on advertising here. Which makes more sense. However, the obvious answer is to make a proper contact me form.

Hope this helps.Hey Dangertux, the "contact form" I posted to on waloshin's site was something like ajax, it read from and posted to the folks at contactme.com and not waloshin.com - it is the form which opens when you click the floating contact 'button' on the left edge of the page.

Recycled code sometimes indicates cunning reuse and not just sheer laziness.

[waloshin]

I took a lot of the suggestions.

What do you think now?

http://waloshin.com/

[Dangertux]

Hey Dangertux, the "contact form" I posted to on waloshin's site was something like ajax, it read from and posted to the folks at contactme.com and not waloshin.com - it is the form which opens when you click the floating contact 'button' on the left edge of the page.

Recycled code sometimes indicates cunning reuse and not just sheer laziness.

Possibly, though the slideout is just part of the theme. The same form can be found at the bottom of this page.

http://waloshin.com/looking-for-guest-bloggers/

[robsoles]

Fair enough Dangertux, I never went through the bottom menu so I didn't get any flavor of what I might be saying I had any particular budget for.


+1. I ended up using a "canned" contact form on my site, but it is quite customizable. You can find it here: http://green-beast.com/

+1 to the point of finding the specific detail & download page: http://green-beast.com/gbcf-v3/


I dislike ads, and as such, I don't have any on my site. The hosting costs are minimal for me tho. I think it worked out to like 2 dollars a month on the plan I have.+1 to the point of nearly linking my three ad-free burdens :)

[whatthefunk]

It looks better than it did before, but I dont see any reason for the webpage. There is really no draw....why would one bookmark it and come back?

[sanscents]

The images seem to be to large for the size of the text, and the text is on a darkened background. I find it a bit hard to read.:)

[Dangertux]

Also something to note, it says you have over 100 posts, however I can only seem to find a few of them. If these posts still exist they are rather hard to get to. So if I did like what you were writing about it would be frustrating for me to read more of it.

Hope that helps.

[BrokenKingpin]

The ads put me off as well. I can handle small ads, but some of these take up my entire netbook screen.

[enterdavertex]

i'd say that your website look quite pro for an normal user ! Seem good for something like youre doing ... I'm currently doing some class about Html and ASP right now and frankly this is some good thing ^^

[waloshin]

Also something to note, it says you have over 100 posts, however I can only seem to find a few of them. If these posts still exist they are rather hard to get to. So if I did like what you were writing about it would be frustrating for me to read more of it.

Hope that helps.

So i need a categories section?

[robsoles]

So i need a categories section?if you have differing categories of posts then your navigation system should reflect that.

I think you should ask "So I need better navigation?"

My answer to same: couldn't hurt...

[waloshin]

I do not see any sense in it, why do you need a website ? What's it all about? Sorry.

My website for my personal enjoyment; the website is about what ever interests me.


if you have differing categories of posts then your navigation system should reflect that.

I think you should ask "So I need better navigation?"

My answer to same: couldn't hurt...

Any suggestions on how to get better navigation?

[sandyd]

Try making it a bit lighter.
The main page is 1 MB.

Try adding a lightbox for your images.

as for the organization, add a dropdown "categories" menu that lists all the different categories. Try and add it on the sidebar if you can't.

P.S. For those that might be curious, he/she is hosting at bluehost.
Just a warning, "unlimited" hosts usually have problems because of abuse. Simply, it is because the "unlimitedness" attracts a lot of abusers.

Mainly, the abusers cause speed problems. You can take a look at http://openubuntu.com/index.php/topic,273.0.html as an example.

[CharlesA]

P.S. For those that might be curious, he/she is hosting at bluehost.
Just a warning, "unlimited" hosts usually have problems because of abuse. Simply, it is because the "unlimitedness" attracts a lot of abusers.

Mainly, the abusers cause speed problems. You can take a look at http://openubuntu.com/index.php/topic,273.0.html as an example.

That's a huge front page. I think mine is not even 5% of that, but mine is almost all text.

I use shared hosted on an "unlimited" plan, and my site can be slow at times, but it hasn't happened that often, thankfully. It hasn't happened often enough for me to submit a support ticket, even tho I should.

[waloshin]

That's a huge front page. I think mine is not even 5% of that, but mine is almost all text.

I use shared hosted on an "unlimited" plan, and my site can be slow at times, but it hasn't happened that often, thankfully. It hasn't happened often enough for me to submit a support ticket, even tho I should.


I run my images through yahoo smush it , I also run caching, and fast cgi and zlib compression. So i dont know why the front page is 1 mb.

http://i41.tinypic.com/2gw83lj.png

[sandyd]

I run my images through yahoo smush it , I also run caching, and fast cgi and zlib compression. So i dont know why the front page is 1 mb.

http://i41.tinypic.com/2gw83lj.png
http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/fDHQRN3zF/http://waloshin.com (http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#%21/fDHQRN3zF/http://waloshin.com)

The rest of the stuff is on the external scripts and stuff.
Their external, but the users still have download them.

[CharlesA]

I run my images through yahoo smush it , I also run caching, and fast cgi and zlib compression. So i dont know why the front page is 1 mb.

http://i41.tinypic.com/2gw83lj.png

How does that work exactly?

@sandyd: Thanks for the link to that site, quite handy. :)

[sandyd]

How does that work exactly?

@sandyd: Thanks for the link to that site, quite handy. :)
Your welcome.

It works by gzipping the content. The browser on the other side un-gzips it.

[CharlesA]

That's pretty cool. I might look into it, but I doubt it'll have much impact since 99% of my site is text.

[waloshin]

That's pretty cool. I might look into it, but I doubt it'll have much impact since 99% of my site is text.

Everything helps.

[sandyd]

Everything helps.
gzipping has an overhead.
At a point, its faster not to gzip, then to gzip.

[CharlesA]

gzipping has an overhead.
At a point, its faster not to gzip, then to gzip.
Yep, I ran one of my footer images thru it and got a whole 34 byte savings (which was 2% of the total image size). I might have to look into it if/when I decide to do screenshots.

[waloshin]

if you have differing categories of posts then your navigation system should reflect that.

I think you should ask "So I need better navigation?"

My answer to same: couldn't hurt...

Does this resolve that issue?

http://i41.tinypic.com/33xge9l.png

Or this better:

http://i41.tinypic.com/1r3qtv.png

[waloshin]

Nobody?

[a2j]

its wordpress, what's there to critique?

[waloshin]

its wordpress, what's there to critique?

Of course it is, but how does the layout and colours work with each other?

I have had complaints about text being too large, the background colour being too bright and , therefore making it hard to read. I want to help make my site easier to use.

[waloshin]

Is google docs - forms a better solution to the contact me.

http://waloshin.com/looking-for-guest-bloggers

[CharlesA]

Not really a fan of the whole "paying for ads" thing, but it still doesn't look quite right.

Too much white.

[waloshin]

Not really a fan of the whole "paying for ads" thing, but it still doesn't look quite right.

Too much white.

Too much white in the blog or too much white in the form?

[robsoles]

(I don't see the specific complaint about white myself - large unbroken spaces of single colors is more a way of describing whatever complaint I can make of color on your site.)


Is google docs - forms a better solution to the contact me.

http://waloshin.com/looking-for-guest-bloggers

Yes. Better still if you didn't have your visitors POST elsewhere but if you cannot find or script a solution that will POST to your own server then the WKS (Well Known Service) that is Google may as well be the one. It is tempting to offer to write one for you but I have enough on my plate so, soz.


By memory (sorry I didn't answer before) of previous navigation on your site, yep, this is improved. Noted that your articles are in last first order now as well, good work.


(Just guessing this next bit but...)
The "Platinum SEO" and "Techblissonline" links at the very bottom of your page(s, every single last page!) are being added by the "Platinum SEO" module and unless you really think that Techblissonline and Platinum SEO are more valuable than anything you will ever add to your own site I advise finding an alternative (Can you pay Rajesh to remove those links? Did he code a menu for you to disable them?), that doesn't enforce this kind of self-advertising on your site, to use instead.


"Naked wordpress" was a dog for SEO last I checked. If SEO is a concern and you want to blog (and use free stuff etc etc) then might I suggest you take a look at Joomla, already fairly bot friendly at its core and (I reckon) much more support for practically anything you could want a site to do.

[waloshin]

(I don't see the specific complaint about white myself - large unbroken spaces of single colors is more a way of describing whatever complaint I can make of color on your site.)



Yes. Better still if you didn't have your visitors POST elsewhere but if you cannot find or script a solution that will POST to your own server then the WKS (Well Known Service) that is Google may as well be the one. It is tempting to offer to write one for you but I have enough on my plate so, soz.


By memory (sorry I didn't answer before) of previous navigation on your site, yep, this is improved. Noted that your articles are in last first order now as well, good work.


(Just guessing this next bit but...)
The "Platinum SEO" and "Techblissonline" links at the very bottom of your page(s, every single last page!) are being added by the "Platinum SEO" module and unless you really think that Techblissonline and Platinum SEO are more valuable than anything you will ever add to your own site I advise finding an alternative (Can you pay Rajesh to remove those links? Did he code a menu for you to disable them?), that doesn't enforce this kind of self-advertising on your site, to use instead.


"Naked wordpress" was a dog for SEO last I checked. If SEO is a concern and you want to blog (and use free stuff etc etc) then might I suggest you take a look at Joomla, already fairly bot friendly at its core and (I reckon) much more support for practically anything you could want a site to do.

I didn't realize I had the Platnium Seo and technobliss linked on my site, so those are now removed. Yeah there was a menu to remove the links.

I have looked into Joomla a while ago ,but will take another look.

Thanks

[CharlesA]

Too much white in the blog or too much white in the form?

Too much white on the form. It sticks out.

[waloshin]

Does the new header help balance the colors?

Old:

http://i41.tinypic.com/33xge9l.png

New:

http://i40.tinypic.com/2ef13yo.png

[CharlesA]

Are the words randomly generated? Looks like a hodpodge overall.

[waloshin]

Are the words randomly generated? Looks like a hodpodge overall.

Haha no if it was randomly genereated that would be awsome. These are mostly searches people use to find my blog..

[CharlesA]

Haha no if it was randomly genereated that would be awsome. These are mostly searches people use to find my blog..
Ah ok. I thought it was dynamically generated cuz that was what it looked like.

[waloshin]

Ah ok. I thought it was dynamically generated cuz that was what it looked like.

So in other words it looks worse?

[CharlesA]

Not sure tbh. It just reminded me of those "tag clouds" you see everywhere.