The Atomic Den

Well, I think you would get a lot more people signing up if it looked decent! I was trying to scoll up to the top and there is no top/header. It looks bad, it is so boring. You need to add more graphics and color.

Well...it's really plain, needs more colour, pictures, and it doesn't draw the visitors.

Hey, thanks for reviewing some other sites first!

It must be so frustrating for youto see this happening to your site. I know how it is to put your soul into something and be disappointed by the outcome.

What you might want to do is work with a designer to get this up to snuff on the front end. You may be able to trade your programming skills for design serices in our Market Place forum.

Here's an article that might help you out:

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/great-homepages-really-suck

It's about designing a home page that draws people in. When I look at this, it's hard for me to tell right away what's available on the site and how it can help me. It may be a good idea to put some of your listings on the front page. That will suck people in and get them deeper into the site.

Thanks to everyone who responded, and I appreciate the honesty. I've made a lot of changes, and it looks better. It still needs work though, and I still have the problem of no visitors participating in the community. So two questions:

The Atomic Den

1: What can I do to make it look better? Over time it seems to have developed an early 60's look to it. I'm not really set on that, that's just how it turned out. It still looks boring to me but I have such a horrible eye for aesthetics.

2: A decent amount (for a new website that is) of people are creating accounts, 10 a day usually. Even though that number is low the real problem is that once people create accounts they don't do anything. They don't create profiles, don't use any of the functions. Is this just something I'm going to have to deal with for a new online community or are there somethings I can do to at least mildly increase the chance someone gets involved?

If you don't feel like creating an account but want to see what it looks like for a member here is a test user I created: userid: ironmonkee password: ironmonkee

I feel as though there isn't much thought put into the site design and thus, that immediately provokes me to click on the X button to close the site. For websites, it's really hard not to judge it by its cover. This is the main problem plaguing The Atomic Den. A better color scheme that utilizes graphics will attract viewers eyes and furthermore, give the place a sense of tidyness because as it stands, the page couldn't have taken more than 10 minutes for the average webmaster to create. I think at that point, it would be more presentable to attract more users. Best of luck!

I like the clear, simple design.
There's a lot of empty space at the bottom which puts a scroll bar on my page for nothing.

THe site's OK, but very dull. Try adding more colour & more effects. Perhaps a rollover effect for the buttons at the top! They look very static at the moment!

Alright, I added color to the header, a border around the various boxes, and I fixed the pre-loading on the roll over effect for the buttons. It's looking a lot better, still room for improvement though. But my main question is, how do I encourage people to participate? People are going through the trouble of creating accounts but then they don't do anything.

As said by a few other members, i really think that adding more art/graphics would bring out the design a little more. You should have something to attract your veiwers.

Jeez another site I've completely missed... how does this keep happening?

The joys of getting participating members... ohhh I can sympathize!
I'm afraid I'm going to have to say a word you might not want to hear... patience...

The only way to really get (and keep) loyal participants is to offer good content, be enthusiastic, and have lots and lots of patience. Rome and great websites weren't built overnight.

One thing I noticed is when I click on one of the links I get the "List Blogs In The (whatever) Subcategory" and nothing else. Perhaps you should weed down your list. Start with a more generalized catagory then expand into more specific categories once you get more participants. At first glance it looks like you don't have anything at all on your site and that doesn't encourage me to participate. Besides... I might want to talk about art today and my overweight neighbor who likes to mow the grass with his shirt off (shudder) tomorrow.

On another note: I love your cartoons "What's so great about the Atomic Den?". I think I'd like them even more if they were arranged as a front page design though instead of being stuck on the side in a frame. Just my personal opinion.

Best of luck with this!
Try to keep the catagories simple to begin with and allow for growing room later and see if that helps.

Wow! Your site has really come on!
I really like:
a.) The better design
b.) The personal homepage (pS how do you do that with just HTML?)
c.) The whole community thing
d.) The login box that pops up
What I don't quite care for:
a.) the cartoons having different background to the site
b.) That thing on the front page being stuck in an I frame
c.) When you log in 'Features' has a black background

Thank you everyone for your help. I just implemented most of the advice.

heebiejeebieclu: The website is actually php powered, backed with a mysql database. I just hide the filename extensions to make it look like ordinary html. Then I use javascript/css/html on the front end.

Well, I can say at least I like the looks of the front page more now.
I think you could make your boxes a bit smaller, but there's something fun for me to look at now... I like that.

The only other suggestions I could make is to tighten up your blog catagories (but I've already said that) and to make your logo at the top link to the home page so visitors don't have to use the back button.

Much improvement from your first... great job!

Its much much better now!!!!! I like it

Speak of the devil, there was 1 blog posting and 2 personal ads posted today. As pathetic as those numbers are, they beat the entire last month. :J)

I really liek your idea, I would just suggest that you try your best to draw your own B&W cartoon graphics instead of using someone elses. I assume it was all freeware clipart and such. The idea is very nice though. I would make the boxes appear as "dialogue clouds" ( like in comics ). Make them in Flash so that they "hover". That would be pretty neat effect

Well done audabit! I would say that if your site were a house, you have doubled its market value!