Critique my site

Hey guys, new member here.

Having just started out in this field about 3 weeks ago, with my own .com, and having been on other forums dedicated to one improving one specific area of my life, I know that what I DON'T know about web sites is still a lot.

That being said, I've learned a lot from designing my own front page and signing up for my website. It's been really challenging and is starting to pay rewards.

So, go ahead. Dig into me. Where can I improve (besides the obvious - like some of my pages not existing yet) and what am I doing well?

http://www.bipolarnation.com

The main meat of the page is the message boards.

Thanks in advance,

Dan Kenitz

EDIT: Stats of my site: about 250-500 visits per day and on good days I make 1 or 2 dollars on adsense.

 

Support Bipolarnation.com: Google from here! is this allowed ... i think you shoul remove that


Otherwise the site is good very readable, i like whitespace

 

Appreciated.

Would it be allowable if I put that somewhere else on the page?

 

I dont know let someone else more experienced tell you more but i think encouraging people to search through google to support your site is against the big TOS .... or i may be wrong. well sure i would not do that ....

it is your call

 

Very quickly, I would recommend compressing your images, in particular your top banner, which really takes a while to load at well over 200KB. Plus, you use thumbs on the site, but your thumbs are way too big. Thumbs shouldn't be larger than 5KB, otherwise, well, you can't call them thumbs. The same for your graphic menu. Each section is about 25KB. Way too much. Plues, add it all up, and your menu takes around 500KB just to load fully. Basically, on a 56K modem, you're looking at anywhere from a 3 to 4 minute wait for your entire site to load. Way too long for such a simple design. Remember that speed is very, very important on the web.

Lastly, get rid of the "Support our Sponsors" text you have over your Adsense sky. That's begging to get you banned. You can use "Sponsors", or "Ads", or "Advertisements", but you can't tell people to "sponsor" you. I would remove that promply -- fast.

Other suggestion I would have is to put an Adlinks leaderboard at the top, below your four news logos. Make the border/background white to blend them in, and then do likewise with the skyscraper if you want to keep it. I would recommend getting rid of it and putting 468 banners under each article on the front page instead, and a 336 large rectangle box underneath the articles in the article pages.

Hope that helps.

 

NO!!!! Never, ever put anything on your site that can be misconstrued as "hinting" at visitors to click your ads. This includes text of any kind above or anywhere on your site hinting that visitors should "help you out" or "support you" by clicking on the ads/visiting sponsors.

Do not incur the wrath of the Google Gods!

 

Awesome feedback. I'm emailing it to myself. Consider all of them done. Could you tell me more about Adlinks? I'm unfamiliar with it.

Also, when I switch to ".gif" files on the site, the problem is that the quality of the pics themselves. I only have Paint at my disposal right now. How can I fix that?

 

LOL I was completely in the dark before. I'll do this ASAP.

 

Ooh, big issue: I'm on campus right now, and my upload software is on my computer back home. Can I upload a new index page to the site (making the changes i want to) without downloading anything?

 

Photoshop allows you to compress files without losing very much quality. If you don't have access to Photoshop, there are sites on the web that does this for you for free.

Here's one. I haven't tried it, but found it through Google. http://www.chami.com/jc/

Adlinks are like the leaderboard banners, except instead of full ads, they only show single-word (sometimes two-word) links. It takes the visitor to another page (a landing page) where they have more options to choose from. When they click on one of those options, it takes the visitor to the advertiser's page. Basically it takes two clicks to earn from Adlinks, but don't let that fool you -- it's been proven over and over that Adlinks at the top, underneath logos, is easily the primo money earner. You can choose it in your Google Adsense CP when you create new ads.

 

That depends on your host. Most hosts have a control panel for you to use, and an online FTP program inside it that you can use online. If you have the index file with you, you can make the changes and upload them right away. Or if you don't have the original files with you, just copy the source of the index, save them to your harddrive, change it, and then upload that. Same thing.

 

Thanks, that's what I need. Do you think I should keep the ads on the right, and put the Adlinks up top, over the three columns?

 

Save as a .png file, paint will allow you to do that.

 

Right. I use GoDaddy.com, so I'll check if they do. I'm pretty sure they don't.

EDIT: But I'm retarded, so one never knows.

 

Ah, no worries, then. Godaddy has an embedded FTP java program. Go to your host account, Hosting Manager, and it's your FTP Client.

 

Ah here it is. Having built the site from scratch, I'm getting used to HTML, so the changes shouldn't be hard. Thanks a million. This site rocks. You guys rock. We all rock.

 

We all gotta learn somewhere. Good luck!

 

One issue: it's a java applet, and this computer (I'm on a campus computer lab computer) doesn't seem to be using it.

 

Okay, I figured it out. Site has been updated, minus the "support us!" words. Phew, close one!

 

that google box is looking better now