Website Design and Features Advice

Baddass · 2 Nov 2007 at 11:07

Hi guys,

Just looking for some feedback, ideas and thoughts really about my website which I'm looking to expand and improve. http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/

CMS - At the moment the site is just written in HTML. Some people have recommended content management systems, but i'm not sure if these would help me? Would they be of benefit? I can add the following easily via my hosting, so are any of these any good? ( Drupal, Geeklog, Joomla, Mambo Open Source, PHP-Nuke, phpWCMS, phpWebSite, Post-Nuke, Siteframe, TYPO3, Xoops)

Advertising - I've been playing with google adds recently. I don't want to cover the site with ads, but any tips on positioning and optimising these would be appreciated. How much $ do people tend to make from theirs?

Search engines - any tips on how to optimise for search engines?

Improving hits and visits - any advice on how to do so?

Feedback and advise appreciated

thanks

Baddass · 2 Nov 2007 at 12:01

thanks Red and White, excellent advice and feedback

merged into one post as well

Baddass · 2 Nov 2007 at 12:35

you can speed up the process of getting it into the msn search page by filling in this form http://beta.search.msn.co.uk/docs/submit.aspx

it wont seem to let me submit the site for some reason. maybe because it's a "co.uk"?

Baddass · 2 Nov 2007 at 14:21

voodooflux said:
It's worth getting onto Google Analytics to learn more about where your visitors come from, and perhaps knock up a Google Sitemap to make indexing easier/more thorough.

As for advertising, it may be worth picking up some ads from one of the affilate networks out there (like TradeDoubler, AffiliateFuture, AffiliateWindow, etc.) as some of the banner ads can look a bit more friendly and professional than the Google based ones, you can pick and choose which ones you want, and you can have as many or as few as you like. More info on Affiliate based advertising at the Affiliate Marketing Forums.

Quantity (and quality) of links from other sites are key when it comes to search engine placement though, so the more links you can get to your site the better.

thanks for the advice there. I've got google analytics so that is handy to get an idea of who is viewing what, and where from. Will check out the ad links you've mentioned to me too, thanks

Baddass · 2 Nov 2007 at 15:04

thanks for the feedback Cuchulain, very handy

Cuchulain said:
Use meaningful descriptions on your pages.

do you mean as the page title for each page? I was thinking of changing them all since at the mo they all start with "TFT Central - then the title of the article / review". Would changing to the review title alone help?

Use a styled list for your menu. (there's some good examples of them here: http://www.dynamicdrive.com/style/)

will take a look, will it help anything other than aesthetics?

If you end up using a CMS app. to manage the site, either get one that creates meaningful URLS and not something like "index.php?page=whatever", normally there are hacks available for search engine friendly URL's

ok, cool, nice one

H1 and H2 tags are your friends for headers/sub headers etc

can you elaborate for me?

If you do use meta content/keywords try and keep them relevant to the content actually in the page.

will do, might add meta tags to each page then individually?

Do a google sitemap here: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ upload it and reference it in your Google sitemaps acct.

will do, looking into sitemaps now

Baddass · 2 Nov 2007 at 15:04

uk_viper said:
quick pointer:

Rule 1: Don't use PHP-Nuke, phpWCMS, phpWebSite, Post-Nuke, too many security holes
Rule 2: See rule 1

noted

Baddass · 2 Nov 2007 at 15:55

i've created a google site map here: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ and uploaded it and activated via google webmaster tools. Do i need to update the sitemap file (ie re-create it) at all or often?

edit: and does it matter that site only lists the first 500 URL's?

Baddass · 2 Nov 2007 at 17:45

Rich43 said:
Never ever use tables for layout and your completely ignoring the HTML standards.

Get it up to XHTML 1.0 at least. Use div and span for layout along with CSS.

I work as a web programmer and its very annoying when people use tables for layout.

ok fair enough. This was one of my reasons for maybe switching to a CMS. I'm by no means an expert web designer hence the use of tables....it kind of does the job though, is there a problem with not being up to XHTML 1.0?

Baddass · 2 Nov 2007 at 21:55

now now guys, no need for ppl to get into arguments over me

I appreciate the input regarding XHTML so will bare that in mind

cheers

Baddass · 3 Nov 2007 at 12:58

thanks for feedback

i've updated each page with meta tags and changed the page titles to be more suitable...that's a start at least.

Baddass · 3 Nov 2007 at 13:55

lovely, thanks