Website Review and Suggestions

**Lashtal** · 04-13-2008, 11:26 AM

So, this is the first website i've ever made: http://myspace-codesandlayouts.com

Tell me what I ought to consider, as far as SEO or anything else is considered.

I don't care how harsh, or how mean you gotta' be; just tell me like it is

**170 Designs** · 04-13-2008, 11:46 AM

Hi Lashtal,
Here's my feedback:
- You have too much going on there, especially around the top. You want to definitely push the name of the site and the logo more. Maybe make the logo bigger?
- I would better organize the main content area and try jazzing it up a bit. Add some color to it, maybe background to the whole page
- Try adding the title or category of each featured layout so the users know what it is
- Try eliminating the white space and bringing the site together somehow. Right now there is a lot of white space.

All in all, not a bad start, but there is room for improvement

Nice job.

Matt

**cartmanez** · 04-13-2008, 12:21 PM

Hi Lashtal!

- I didn't identify this gaudy image at the top as a logo. I would advise you to first limit the logo to the name of the domain. Then you can (carefully) add some images, colours, etc.
- I appreciate the simplicity of your page-style, I don't like those excessive design-sites which take aeons to load.

In general you did a quite good job on this page, but you really have to fix the logo-thing.

Greets,

Mats

**Lpspider** · 04-13-2008, 04:44 PM

Contrary to what cartmanez said, I don't like the simplicity. The layout is very basic. There's too much white space, in my opinion. I would also, as some other suggested, revise the logo and add title's for each page.

**omar1piamba** · 04-13-2008, 10:27 PM

Hi,
I do like the colors and the combination of them, I think colors are according to the content of the page...
I just suggest to change some font-sizes and make them a little bigger...In spite of wearing glasses, it was a little difficult for me to read some names on the left menu...

A friend from Colombia

**enviroman** · 04-13-2008, 11:05 PM

Hi Lashtal,

Do you have a visitor counter installed for your website? I have for all my websites which which include the blog linked to above and if you are viewing my blog with a big screen, you will be questioning why I have "wasted space" on both sides of the content. However, my visitor counter tells me that there are still 5 to 20% of my visitors with screen resolution of 800x600 and if you want to view how they see it, try typing or copy-pasting
javascript:top.resizeTo(800,600)
into the web browser address bar and press the ENTER key. You will no longer see any wasted space nor will there be a horizontal space bar at the bottom of the page. That means my small screen visitor can view the whole of my content without having to scroll, and you know how lazy people can be.

I checked yours with FireFox and it resulted in some part of your website hidden and to see the hidden parts, I will have to use the horizontal space bar at the bottom. Lazy surfers wouldn't do that and will quickly surf away. Only dedicated readers or those who found very interesting content in your website will take the trouble.

For me, I design my website (blogs) for minimum denomination which is 800x600 screen resolution as I don't want to discourage small screen visitors from visiting my sites. And small screens will be with us still for quite some time because of notbook, laptop computers and die hard "don't want to throw anything away" plus a lot of small screens ending up in less developed countries.

Even very respectabable websites like BBC News is designed for small screen visitors. Further, there is this so called visibility study. For more info, see Why I use this narrow plain template.

**AffCon** · 04-13-2008, 11:49 PM

Hey Lashtal,

A few tips:

I would standardize things a little and not go with 10 or 15 different fonts.

Bring the width down to a size where most everyone can view without side scrolling. I have a 1280 width resolution and still have to side scroll to view your site.

Fix all the links at the bottom, none of them work.

It could work because MySpace layouts are still popular, but you gotta fix some basic things.

Alan

**melanko** · 04-14-2008, 12:31 AM

For a Myspace layout site it does get the job done. I'd say, to reiterate what some of the others have said, you're advertisements are taking up more real estate on the site than your logo. So make that logo stand out a lot more.

For your navigation on the side, it works but could definitely use some more pizazz. To stand out.

Overall though, for your targeted audience, the site fully works its purpose.

**Pervara** · 04-14-2008, 12:40 AM

the first thing that sticks out is 'what do i do" so maybe you need to clean the fisrt page a little and put in an intro or have a description intro at top

also this kind of page i dont think is SEO friendly - Google spider may not capture much - have done coding ?

**Moxxnixx** · 04-14-2008, 01:16 AM

Adding to what was already said above, there is a problem with your layout highlighting.
When I click on a layout code, another layout highlights instead of the one I clicked.

The name is myspace-codesandlayouts, but I only see layouts. Where are the codes?

**Susanwang** · 04-14-2008, 04:10 AM

Interesting site, larger font will be better.

**Lashtal** · 04-14-2008, 07:13 AM

170designs,

I get what you're saying with the White-Space.

I wanted to "Open The Site Up", basically.

All the "Layouts and Codes" sites i've seen are always very mushed together. And they don't make you feel comfortable being there at all. They just want you to either get a layout and leave (as fast as you can) or accidentally click on one of their ads, if you've mistaken it for the site's Actual Content.

And, while I know that is definitely their intention.

I wanted to create something that felt Open; gave people "Room to move in" and left them feeling comfortable, enjoying their stay. Hoping they'd remember the aproach was drastically different than the other guys-and perhaps-go there a little more often

lol, that is the theory behind it.

I have yet to see if it actually works as I intended however.

**Lashtal** · 04-14-2008, 07:19 AM

environ,

you dropped some knowledge on me.

That is definitely something I had thought about; How my visitors view the site. I will definitely have to look in to this a little more, do some research, before I spend a year trying to readjust everything.

But that's definitely something valuable to think about.

**Lashtal** · 04-14-2008, 07:26 AM

Moxxnixx,

I found out that was because I tried to use javascript with the code boxes to Automatically Select the code within the box. But, for some reason, it automatically selects One Of The Boxes' Code At Random versus selects the one the user readily desires.

I will have to fix that.

The codes, are on their way.

**Lashtal** · 04-14-2008, 07:28 AM

Is it a good idea to list all of those other sites (my competitors) at the bottom of my page for positive SEO?

or, Will that do more harm than good in the long run?

**Lashtal** · 07:31 AM

Oh, and in case you were wondering:

While I wanted to give the site A LOT of space. I wanted to make the presence of the ads Very Prevalent.

the videos, for instance, are bulky as heck.

But: I am hoping the user of my site gets curious at the image displayed in the video screen enough to actually click it to see what it's all about.

**Lashtal** · 04-14-2008, 07:55 AM

And, when you mean "give a title to each page"; are you talking about adding a Meta Description to each page?

Or, do you mean, just titling the tab in your browser to say what the page is called?

**cartmanez** · 04-14-2008, 09:01 AM

Adding both meta descriptions and individual titles would be the best way.

**NaughtyGirl** · 04-15-2008, 03:26 PM

Wow.. where to start.

First, the site is too wide. I have a pretty wide screen and I still have to scroll to the side to take it all in.

It looks like the main thing ruining the width is your ad column on the right. Remove the videos, they are much too big, and keep all your ads in a narrow column, preferably as narrow as your left column where you have your menu.

Your left menu column text is sometimes too big for its space, thus cutting off its letters. The 'rainbow' colors is a bit annoying, but if you meant to do that.. well.. YAY you. If you didn't mean to do either I would suggest to standardize the font, making it all one color and one size.

Also at the very top, you have 3 sections, your logo, and more ads in the next two. Resize your logo so that its the same width as your left column menu, and do the same to the center and right sections. Line all the sections up - up and down. It will make it look a lot more organized.

It looks like you did this in HTML, I might be wrong, and my suggestion is to make a page with a table with 3 columns and 2 rows. Change the side columns to be 20% and the middle to be 80%. This will line up everything quite easily for you.

Good luck!

**Lashtal** · 04-16-2008, 02:32 AM

I appreciate the time it took you to do this

I am surprised to see how many people didn't like the different fonts and letters used in the side menu.

In theory, I thought it would give the categories some sense of Distinction.

But, in reality, i'm finding not a lot of people like that approach. lol

It is another thing i'll have to think about with this project.