Mathalino.net my success in web development
First of all, allow me to tell that my sole purpose of posting this thread is not to promote the website but an honest request for a critique to my design and the business behind the site as a whole. This only happens that the website I am posting is a webhosting site.
Second, let me share to you that I am not a professional developer nor a graduate with any computer related course. It just happen that I am very passionate in building website and brought me into the point where I was able to put up a webhosting business.
Without further ado, here is my site: http://mathalino.net
The Design
I build many websites before, both online and offline, many are self hosted and some are from Bloggers.com, WordPress.com, LiveJournal, etc. But all of what I've done were so far tweaking of some free themes and changing the colors in .css files to look it more unique. I never created a theme from scratch because honestly, I don't know how. I fall in love with the Drupal CMS and build two community websites with it and I also like the ease of WordPress for blogging. With all my websites, I used only free themes and tweak them a little bit to fit my taste.
This is my very first time doing a design from scratch, aka hard coding
everything. I used HTML, so my pages are simple static pages. I found it more satisfying than tweaking some work of others. Everything from the image are self pick, some I made it myself but most are downloaded from the web and redesign it with FireWorks. If you are familiar with my header, it is the banner of BlackIce cPanel theme.
The Business
I will accept your payment (of course) even if you are from the opposite side of the globe, but my target market are the people within my direct vicinity. Some of my friends and colleague who know nothing about building website but are interested in blogging. One also is a small business in my place (Tacloban City, Philippines) who ask me for web development service and so I host the files in my server. I have 4 active costumers to date from my one week of launching, not bad.
My server is located in the US and from HG, I am a reseller of a shared hosting to be more honest. The domains I offered are through eNom and the SSL I used is from NameCheap. If you are familiar with all of these, you can clearly see how tight is my budget.
The System
I used WHMCS for handling clients, I cannot share more because this is my first time with this thing but I managed to set it up.
My title to this post is somewhat a claim, and YES it is. I have a day job (a mathematics professor in one university of our place), but mostly I am in front of a computer for the passion of doing website. It is a success, as I see it.
I hope you will give me some feedback of what I have done. Anything you can add specially if you are doing the same business too. How to handle costumers or telling me if I am in the right track or not. Advice on how to get a global client will be much appreciated.
peebee posted this at 16:10 — 25th November 2009.
They have: 1 posts
Joined: Nov 2009
My first reaction when the page came up was "oooh grey!". As in, you have 65m colours or whatever available but the dominant theme is black and white. I'm not advocating going mad with colour, but the dominance of grey makes the site a little dull and unattractive.
On the other hand, the proposition and prices are clearly presented in the 4 images across the page, which is good.
Would you consider integrating the 'Compare All Hosting Plans' link (the magnifying glass image) into the block of 4 images ('Personal', 'Starter'...etc.)? Won't people want to compare packages before they 'order now'? (Also, on a smaller screen the comparison link may be off the page and therefore missed.)
I didn't really understand the link between website hosting and the stuff below "Affordable WordPress Hosting". Is that another 'product' or part of the hosting packages?
Finally, I think the design gets more and more disorganised and 'un-designed' the further you go down the page! Maybe those options and icons down the right hand side and bottom should have a different colour background?
Hope that's of some help!
Pete
webwiz posted this at 23:51 — 25th November 2009.
He has: 629 posts
Joined: May 2007
I think I'm gonna subscribe to your "One Click Sript Installation" just to find out what is a sript...
The W3C validator reports 45 errors on the home page...
Cordially, David
--
delete from internet where user_agent="MSIE" and version < 8;
RTFVerterra posted this at 12:25 — 26th November 2009.
He has: 109 posts
Joined: Dec 2008
Hello peebee, thank you for your critique, I will take it seriously specially the "Compare All Hosting Plan Links" and the background for the right hand side with icons. About the color grey, it's a personal preference and I think I will retain it but maybe add some color to the header. About the "Affordable WordPress Hosting", yes I need to improve it. Thank you very much, I appreciate your effort of evaluating carefully my presentation.
Hi webwiz, I mean the popular CMS for "One Click Sript Installation", with regards to W3C validation error, I will consider it but not for now.
More comments are welcome...
Civil Engineering Review
MWick posted this at 16:56 — 28th November 2009.
They have: 23 posts
Joined: Oct 2009
I would have to say that it is too simple. Get more content and links.
RTFVerterra posted this at 03:03 — 30th November 2009.
He has: 109 posts
Joined: Dec 2008
Update: I migrated to Drupal, I found out that static html is hard to maintain specially if you do an update to multiple pages. I retain the same look and feel by creating my very own Drupal theme.
Civil Engineering Review
rhodry_korb posted this at 00:50 — 1st December 2009.
They have: 7 posts
Joined: Dec 2009
Take a look at the W3C Validator you have many errors and several warnings, and I have to agree maybe too much grey.
pr0gr4mm3r posted this at 02:38 — 1st December 2009.
He has: 1,502 posts
Joined: Sep 2006
The colors aren't bad. I'm not sure I would have the links to the articles & downloads when there is no content. I would hide those links until there is content to see.
I always advise against offering "unlimited" plans. Obviously you are not going to be able to host the next eBay. You need to have limits, and not buried in the ToS, but in plain site for your customers to see so there are no surprises.
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