Website Review and Suggestions

**conus** · 10-15-2006, 12:22 AM

I'm fairly new at this. This site's purpose is to provide information to amateur astronomers and astrophotographers. I've written much of the content myself, but am getting permission from other authors to reprint tutorials and articles.

The site has been up for two months and is getting about 25 unique visitors a day. In two months it's gotten about 5000 page views. About 8% of the people are getting there via Google and MSN. Does this seem about right? I know it takes a while to get good ranking, but dies it seem asif I'm getting there at a decent rate?

Any opinions about the site would be much appreciated.

http://www.backyardvoyager.com/

**Extinct** · 10-31-2006, 08:25 AM

Looking good

First of all I see you are using tables to make your layout. I've said it a few times already and I'll say it again. take the effort to learn CSS. It isn't that difficult and well worth the investment of time. Except for the flash part I don't see anything that couldn't be done with CSS. It also means that you can do without the javascript. Yes theer are people that have javascript switched off, and I don't know if the page will still be usable in that case.

You seem to have a fixed pagesize but for the first page this means you have a lot of blank space after your text. try to make it more fluid.

Also try to make your font sizeable. For those astronomers that have gone blind by peering through a telescope

Other than that your site really seems to provide interesting information, which is what the internet is all about after all. Keep up the good work.

**itshotli** · 10-31-2006, 10:23 AM

There seems to be alot of empty space from the middle to the end of the linked page...I also would see what it looks like without the Underscore in the title.

**new new** · 10-31-2006, 09:49 PM

my advice is too google your content and find sites that are similar to yours,exchange links,post on forums.

in time it will grow.

keep up the good work

**Zenjen** · 11-01-2006, 02:55 AM

I think 25 uniques a day is not that bad. I think you are doing well, specially if the hits are coming from via search engines. The pages are all informative, you must have put a lot of effort getting all those articles. If there's really anything that I'd like to be improved on your site it's the monotonuos color of the texts. I think adding a little color to your headings would spice up the site.

**ChrisT** · 11-01-2006, 05:32 AM

Very nice site, I like it a lot,

Keep it like this

regards,
Chris

**jason_bristol** · 11-01-2006, 06:46 AM

Nice site. I'm a bit of an astronomer myself and I've bookmarked it. You have some really good images. Excellent navigation and good content. I currently use http://www.space-talk.com/ for a astronomy forum. This is a really good forum. A lot of people there have there own astronomy sites listed there. You can compare with them.

1.The only few things that could perhaps be changed is the Gray background. Abit to dull. Try using a repeating space image or something. not sure.

2. I think you could come up with a logo.

3. I think the site could become a bit more web 2.0. One of the reasons is that it seems a bit self contained. meaning there are no links to other resources in your attempt to keep the vistors.

**Hoosier_Buddy** · 10:18 PM

Not to bad, nice photos.

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**Galaxian** · 11-02-2006, 07:09 PM

Nice site as I said before. I like space alot.

If you ever need help setting up forums I'll help, I have set up many before.