Ideas and Critique Welcome!

Hi Firegirl,

I like the site! The use of whitespace looks good! You may want to think about maybe putting some images on the page to dress it up, It's personal preference I guess. But all in all I like it!

The ads on the left are to dark - black on dark blue, so aren't seen.

While the content is good/interesting it's nothing new as it's being taken from the big sites.
Not sure how long you've had the site going but an archive would show you arent a fly by nighter type of site.
At the moment I think there are to many ads as they out number the contents.

The 'home' page linkname isn't really a home page, it's more of a 'general' start page, maybe change the index to more of a blurb about the site and contents, having the fixed content on there might also help you get placed in search engines.
The blogs and forums may not be a good idea as the stories can be outdated very quickly. the church of bones would be around for a while but the pc stuff wouldn't be

For me personally, although the stories are good I wouldn't be back for updates as the site doesn't fit my screen and makes me scroll side ways (at 800x600)

Ask your visitors to bookmark your site, but give them a reason to do so. Explain what the site is and why your site needs to be on their regular routine of surfing.

The ads on the left on the main page are very hard to read.

I like it, it is nice and clean. The only thing is the ads on the left, the blue looks really wierd with the background.

Hi Firegirl,
I like the grean colour and the site is nicely laid out.

for what its worth here is my advice

I don't think many people click advertisements I've been using websites with the google type ads on for years and never clicked one.
I don't even read them its like ad blindness. You need to get your adverts in the content in the middle of the page, its not a crime to put an affiliate link on the end of an article.

Great advice so far guys. Very good idea Nomax5. I am still experimenting on the overall layout. Please keep them coming guys, I am listening!

I came back becasue I forgot what I was going to say lol
why not put a "make homepage" button on there it has a google search which is a popular home page.
and an add to favorites button too.

PS I have my adverts in my content btw. in fact I don't make any distinction between adverts and content
"adverts are content when you're looking to buy stuff" my new philosophy

Ok i havent read the others feedback, so sorry if I repeat something they already said.

First its a three-column fluid layout, looks ok, then theres the choice of green which is ok if you dig it. But then I noticed the texts of your super-clix ad and other texts on that green area seems to disappear(pertaining to the left column)... use a lighter shade of green there for the texts... that could work. and the first impression it gave me is your too eager to post your ads all over the place... why not re-think your ad placement... you can put it in between the content area if you please, and a more favorable preview in either of those columns.

The banner ad on the top drags the focus out from the site since its so imposing its getting more attention than your content... Although I would like to commend you for a good placement and look of the title image, search box an the main page buttons. make some roll-overs for those buttons to make it pop-out more... I guess if you used verdana as your font here, this could work wonders for the content area, since the buttons uses a somewhat similar font. Also color the header titles of the content, it will look a little more polished.

You have done great with the site, theres some minor things you can do to make it much better, and I would like to commend you for the good use of whitespace for the preview of the articles, the top and bottom spacings make it look readable which is very important...

Good luck with the site!

Thanks guys for all the comments. All have been noted. Unfortunately, I only have so much control over the super-clix ads and how they look. I might end up getting rid of them, they don't provide any traffic anyways. Let me know if there is anything else you want to suggest. Thanks!

The site is nice, but it's a little sparse right now - though I guess over time it will have more content.

Since you mentioned wanting to make money with the ads, you should really make some changes - visitors are much more likely to click ads if they're incorporated more into the main design. People don't usually click ads that are in the left and right columns, and the top and bottom aren't so popular either - to get attention, the ads need to be interspersed with the content. Also try googling 'Adsense Blending' - that should give you some ideas for how to blend the ads with the site.

ps. I found some of the stories interesting

Ok guys. I have made some changes, although I have not really been able to add more content (that darn job thing gets in the way). Please take another look and tell me what you think. Also, if you have any ideas for content or if anyone wants to help me gain some traffic let me know! Thanks for all your help!

The ad integration is much better. I see the ads at the bottom are from super-clix.com - I'm not familiar with their service, but on the front page of their site it says their ads are contextually based, which basically means they look at the content of the page and deliver ads that are targeted to that content. Google's AdSense ads are also contextually based, and Adsense's Terms of Service specifically say that you cannot use any other contextually based advertising on the same page as their ads. So you have to choose one or the other. Since super-clix show Adsense ads on their own homepage, they don't seem to have a lot of confidence in their own service! I'd go with Adsense. You can also find other companies that deliver similar ads that are NOT contextually based, that's fine.