Thread: Please review my brand new Basic Directory

First of all ... this is my first try to make a website. Domain is about 30 days old.

So, as a beginner, I bet I lost many things in my view, in the past few days i've learned a lot, but i am surely not implemented all things right.

the website is : http://www.basic-directory.com

So i need opinions about:

1) layout , graphics improvement advices
2) content advices, directory structure advices
3) SEO advices, i am not sure i used the keywords correctly.
4) overall opinions, i am ready to accept negative opinions , negative comments will always lead to better improvements.
5) What to add next in my site, to improve users experience, and make them come back to my site.

Thanks in advance,
Poison

Your footer text goes right to the edge of the screen. Also, you have some text that is in justify format, and some that is not. Justify is for block quotes.

Originally Posted by camp185

Your footer text goes right to the edge of the screen. Also, you have some text that is in justify format, and some that is not. Justify is for block quotes.

what browser do you use ? please tell me, as you're the first who notice that !

I think that works well except to the template which is quite normal with other directory, but making the categories expandable is really a great idea, and the navigation is easy to use too!

i think you got a lot of work ahead of you. Not bad for a beginner.

I use the latest version of firefox. Try Browsershots . org to see how your site looks with other browsers and their various versions.

Also, your menu boxes have inconsistencies as well. All of them have same style header, that is good, but all of the lists are in different formats. You have some that are small black, some blue bold, some blue bold with small black, and some that are black and bold. Your visitors will not be able to determine levels of emphasis just by looking. Then comparing all of those menus with the content, and it is just mixed up even more. You need to work on defining a consistent level.

Think like this, these are just examples in concept so do whatever:
all h1 tags, 1.5em
all h2 tags: 1.2
all h3 tags: 1.1
all p tags: 1.0
All emphasized text "bold"
All super emphasized text "red and bold"
all hyperlinks blue

Keyword here is all.

Originally Posted by camp185

I use the latest version of firefox. Try Browsershots . org to see how your site looks with other browsers and their various versions.

man, thank you for that site, Browsershots . org. It's fantastic, it helped me a lot.

yes, I found some combination between browsers and operating systems that make my site loading awful, but mostly on Win2k, and Ubuntu (never heard of it). Also , seems like I am having problems when it's viewed on MSIE 5.5 or 6.0 installed on WinXP. And on also several browsers that I never heard of them, and I checked among my last month visitors stats to see the browsers used, and seems like that are used by 0 - 0.5 % of total users.

Loading on Firefox didn't look bad to me, only when tested on Firefox 1.5 / Firefox 2.0.04, both installed on Win2000.

Browsershot is great, but I hate waiting for it to load. Here is one I use a lot for rendering IE. URL = ipinfo . info / netrenderer This site does it really fast, but just for IE. Sorry about the no link, not at 15 posts yet.

Originally Posted by camp185

Browsershot is great, but I hate waiting for it to load. Here is one I use a lot for rendering IE. URL = ipinfo . info / netrenderer This site does it really fast, but just for IE. Sorry about the no link, not at 15 posts yet.

http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/

Thanks, I will test that site also.