Is this cool? -

The site looks good, and it does give the image of a portal site. You might want to reconsider the hacking section, though, as I'm not sure we want to be just telling people how to do that.

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Brian Farkas
===============
Web Hosting - Design - Programming
http://www.infostardesign.com

Free webmaster tips, tricks, web host reviews, and more!
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===============

Great looking site! Two items:

1) I am with Brian. I think I would get rid of the hacking section if I were you
2) I am not sure if it is just my browser and or screen by the "Other Extreme Sports" link goes right up against your box to the right with the quiz, daily horoscopes, etc. Might want to look into that.

Other than those two items, I think the site is very well done!

------------------
Chad Simper
Dynamic Internet Solutions
[ www.dids.com ]
E-Mail [ [email protected] ]
ICQ [31723855 ]

About the hacking section: I'd like to hear some other opinios about that, because the content does not really show anybody how to hack. The site it links to rather tell about what some people did but not what exactly they did. But if you guys still think its inapropriate, I'll remove it.

The other thing with the "Other Extreme Sports" link. It only happens in IE. I noticed it before and decided ot to do anything about it. I guess the simplest solution would be to rename it to just "Extreme Sports" which would safe some space.

Does anybody here have experience in how much difference in click thru rate it would make if I'd put the banner above the main content table so it could be displayed before the page is fully loaded? Right now its kinda integrated into the layout and I think people might overlook it.

I really appreciate your input and I hope for some more

Later,

Malte, Germany

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http://goKewl.com

Hi Malte,
It's a nice bright site and I think teens will find it attractive. How about adding a few more bright colors or kewl graphics? Another thought would be to add script so the user can customize the colors, I've seen that script somewhere.
I'm not sure if you need the word "Portal" in the name, just isn't a kewl word in my opinion.
About the hacking, maybe a section on Game cheats instead? That's what my son Jon(14)looks up on the internet and I think they are "legal" and still kewl .
I would (personally) keep it clean/legal, chances are you will attract more younger teens (older teens want to use the grown-up sites). I noticed an online gaming banner, it linked me to an e-mail service. If, in the future it links to a real casino, I would rethink that one too -(Had to get put my two-cents in as a mom, sorry . Watch the keywords, some parents use censoring software (net nanny etc....).
I just had my son Jon take a quick look, he went straight for the term papers section .
Some of the portals I've seen have current news, sports scores, movie info etc.... May not be as "kewl" but still useful.

take care,

------------------
Carolyn Jones

The Game Cheat section is a good idea. I will probably do that and replace the hacking section to make he number of categories even (because of the layout).

I found it really interesting to hear the opinion of a "mom," and its cool that you had your kid check it out. I am still in high school and put it as a starting screen on my school's computers. That gives me about 200 perfectly targeted visitors a day, and I found that a lot of the people comming actually do use it. Most click on the celebrities section and they are probably all disappointed that there are no nude pics.

You suggested I should put on some other "kewl" colors and images. I was thinking about that, too but I didnt really find a place where I can find good copyright free images. If anybody knows a place, please post it here.

I was planning to have news feeds on my site and I was even willing to pay for them @ isyndicate.com but there is nothing that would fit my site. I could have some entertainment stuff but what I really want are the articles about snowboarding and skating competitions. Agai, if anybody knows where I could find that, please post it here.

Finally, I made an alternative design.
The old one is still @ htp://goKewl.com
and I made a new one which is @
[url]http://goKewl.com/index_shtml.shtml[url/]
Please tell me which one is better. The new one might not be as pretty but the advantage is that the banner is displayed before the remaining 17k of nested tables is loaded.

Thanks for all the comments,

Malte

I really like the site. And I am not fond of portals. That says a lot.

Two things that struck me. I thought that the alternating colors on just one link was distracting. The change in color should be used to take the browser to a link that you want them to find. Is there a reason to take them to the celebrity page?

Second, on that note. Are you forgeting that girls like celebrities too? My daughter went looking for the new Star Wars kid and couldn't find him. (Although dad was happy about it. No need for her to get involved with boys yet)

On your jokes page you might think about target_top for the links. I don't know if you want some of the stuff that you can't control being credited to your site. I sure wouldn't want to lose control over content.

I deleted some personal comments. I am trying not to let my personal convictions be expressed unless asked for.

[This message has been edited by Jim (edited May 05, 1999).]

I'll think about the male celebrities. The thing is that its gonna be a lot harder to find sites about that.

I'd be interested what other people think about the framing. Indeed, its dangerous that ones site might be associated with bad content, but I decided not to use target=_top because that way a user can easily come back to my site and give me more hits.

Im usually be pissed if a site frames a link but I figured most users wouldnt see any cruel intentions in that.

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Malte Ubl
http://goKewl.com
Germany

Hi again Malte!

Here is a link to some free "tickers" I have a better link somewhere but can't find it right now. There may be a news channel that works for your site --
http://www.123webmaster.com/Free_Services/Free_Content/Media/

other free content,games, jokes etc... here:
http://www.123webmaster.com/Free_Services/Free_Content

Kyle O. just posted a new clip art site:
www.clipartsite.com
you will find links to an endless supply of free art here .

I liked the first design best.
Keep up the great work!!!
take care,

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Carolyn Jones

just found that other link
http://www.woodoggy.com/

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Carolyn Jones

Just a comment on the non-color black "I wrote a paper on the psychological effects of color once"
Black is not a color but the "absence of color" (white is a combination of all colors and black is the opposite of that)and a perfect true black will not reflect any light (ie. black holes or R-0, G-0, B-0)

colors have a very dramatic effect on people, the light waves can actually penetrate the skin (can't site my sources right now sorry, but will dig them up if anyone really wants them)and cause physical/emotional changes

Since Black isn't a color (no wavelenght)the effects are all psychological -- Black gets a bad rap, People associate black with: Death, Evil, et......

some black trivia for you:
Black things appear smaller "must be why so many people wear black

Black things appear colder

More people jump off of black bridges then any other color bridge.

I wouldn't worry so much about using black on your web site, some of the nicest sites I've seen use it, it's a great contrast to any color but looks best with color (my opinion only

take care,

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Carolyn Jones

Hey, I remember this stuff, if you spin a disc with all the colours on it it goes white as they all merge.
JP

------------------
The Webmaster Promotion and Resource Site
www.what-next.com
The NEXT step in Designing and Promoting your Website

I agree with Carolyn. Some very nice sites use say a black background with a contrasting bright colored text. Want to be careful though if you have an information site that a viewer conceivably might want to print. White text makes for a nice blank sheet of paper and yellow isn't much better.

------------------
Dan
[email protected]
ICQ # 373465

Hey,
I thought I would answer your SSI question! ... SSI is actually slower to be downloaded for the visitor the first time. After that however, it will make the page MUCH faster.

Heres how it works: All of those little SSI files must be looked at in order to create the page. The browser sends a simple request asking the server if the page has been modified since its last visit. On the first visit, it is new so the server says yes and the browser downloads the file. Now the exchange of this yes or no answer takes time. You do that five times and it takes even more time ... But if you only do that once for the large file, it takes less time. Now when they come back to your site, it sends another request to see if the page has been updated. The server says no and everything is basically loaded from cache. If the server says yes, only that SSI is downloaded thus still saving you time.

In all reality, your reasoning for using SSI is for making updates easier. If you update your site constantly, you are better off using SSI but if you don't update your site often, you shouldn't us SSI.

Make sense or is your head spinning around now?

------------------
Chad Simper
Dynamic Internet Solutions
[ www.dids.com ]
E-Mail [ [email protected] ]
ICQ [31723855 ]

SSI = Server Side Includes/Interface/Whatever

As far as I understood that the browser never gets to know that the page is not a simple html file, because the server parses the file upon the browser's request and replaces the SSI tags with the content of the file.
So, isnt there only one http request?
I guess that still should take some time and CPU usage but since its not my own server I dont really care.

I tried out a Java News ticker and I personally hate it. Not only that it leads the user away from my site, it increased my load time by 400%, at the least. So, I guess, I will skip that.

Later,

Malte

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Malte Ubl
http://goKewl.com
Germany

Wow, missed this thread.
- re CTR rate on design integrated banners, they are lower than if the banner is placed at the top of the page, but by a very small margin.
- why not include sports headlines?
->

quote:I deleted some personal comments. I am trying not to let my personal convictions be expressed unless asked for.

Assuming they will not offend anyone I would be interested in hearing them.
- I have had big arguments whith smaller engines featuring my site and then framing my site.
JP

------------------
The Webmaster Promotion and Resource Site
www.what-next.com
The NEXT step in Designing and Promoting your Website

I have to say about the framing that this only applies only to pages that are listed in the directory.
Recipocral links and advertising, of course, are not framed.

I think its justfiable because its nice from my site to link to a page, and because I dont get anything in return, I should at least be allowed to frame the site.

I guess one can only recommend that every webmaster makes sure to have target=_top in all the links on their site so that if somebody frames them, the frameset disappears as soon as a visitor clicks on one internal link. Another option would be a two line JavaScript.

Thanks for all the input. I still haven't decided whether to use the new design.

I now use 5 files for my homepage that I put together with SSI. That way I dont have 17k of HTML in one big file. It got kinda hard to look over all the stuff.

Does anybody hear know how the SSI affects the load time. I like the affect that the page arrives in steps. Netscape Netcenter uses that effect to emphasize their advertising.

One more question. Somebody told me the black header would have a bad phsychological effect. Any opinions?

Thanx for the input!

Malte

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Malte Ubl
goKewl.com
Germany

[This message has been edited by goKewl (edited May 06, 1999).]

You're right about SSI - since it's done on the server, the browser doesn't know it's happening. I think Chad is thinking of when you link a Javascript or external CSS page from the document, which is the browser's responsibility.

But with SSI, all the browser sees is one file containing the results, much like when a cgi is executed - it only sees the html output.

Now there is one disadvantage (although quite minor) - if you modify your include pages, for example, a header, when the browser requests index.shtml it gets back the last_modified date of index.shtml. So if it hasn't been modified, it uses the cached version. While browsers don't follow this rule as badly, a caching proxy (like AOL) will follow that rule and serve the cached version, thinking the file hasn't been modified

One way around this is to use a meta http-equiv (I don't recall the exact tag...) included in your header file, and just change that when you modify any of the includes. This will help some, but caching proxies usually ignore the meta tags, going only by what the server tells them (which sucks for dynamic content such as the UBB).

Anyway, the site looks good One thing though - if you want your visitors to return, but don't want to frame external links (I hate when sites do that to me) maybe a target=_blank would be best? Another thing you may want to do is have brief instructions on how to bookmark a page (not everyone knows how...), maybe with a link that just says "Bookmark this site" or "Make this your start page" linking to instructions for the more popular browsers

Just a thought...

------------------
Justin Nelson
www.HostFacts.com

I might actually put open in new browser window as default but Im not sure yet.

Right now my page says:
Bookmark this site now - Press CRTL + D
Is that not enough.

I will probably put the two JavaScripts on my site, that make the page the homepage by clicking a link.

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Malte Ubl
http://goKewl.com
Germany

Malte Ubl,
I did'nt know if you were still monitoring this discussion, but if you are, Excite has a news and information affiliate program. It doesn't pay any money, but you get free news and information similar to Isyndicate, but in my opinion, a little better. The URL is http://affiliate.excite.com or if you want to see examples, you can go to http://affiliate.excite.com/content_examples.html

----------
the Op Center
http://www.military-net.com