My First Website...how does it look?

[Pyper900]

This might be a silly request, but since my decision to start my website was inspired through this very forum, I figured I'd take a shot.

Would anyone else be willing to visit my site and provide me with a critique? I need to know if the content seems relevant, if I have too many links taking people away from my site, and if it is generally easy to navigate.

My launch date was April 1st '09, and I work full time (hopefully not for long), so I haven't had a huge amount of time for content yet.

It has a vBulletin forum which has a pitiful number of members, but it seems to be growing slowly.

I'm just very new to this and am not sure if I'm on the right path.

Big Problems With Little Children

[AttractIt]

Hi Pyper,

First of all, if I don't know for the first 5 seconds about what the website is about,
I go out.
And it's not only me.

You have a good domain name (though not in the spirit of positive thinking, but heck, nobody is prefect)

beside the domain name, I didn't understand what you wanted,
It takes too much for the header pic to be shown, and even after it loaded,
why this pic?

I would go for another font (it looks like Time magazine), go for a more childy font,
That will talk the parents.

I think that's it or now,

I hope I hope I wasn't too hard...

Cheers,

[Brutha]

That animate welcome gif is completely irritating. A webside shouldn't make sounds without being allowed by the user to do so.

[mysticmadness]

why the RSS link is down. it should be at the top. i also think that reading content was getting difficult for me due to the kind of slim font used.
by the way, whats the motive of your blog money, journal or authoritativenes or all.

[James81]

I'll give you some advice for you forum aspect of it.

When you are first starting a forum, the hardest part is making people who visit believe that there is activity there, and that they aren't going to have to sit around and wait for a reply for hours. They want INSTANT results.

So, until you get a consistent active userbase, you want to make the forum smaller, so that you have the appearance of busier forums. Instead of having so many different differentiations in the beginning, make each forum broad as you can so that you can maximize the interest of your userbase and concentrate them so that they post more.

But most importantly, you need to get the traffic to your website. The more new traffic you get, the more members you'll get in the forums.

[David Cain]

All great suggestions so far, I agree with all of them. Like MM said, have an obvious RSS button up at the top, so the user doesn't have to scroll down.

The welcome graphic is cool-looking, but takes up too much space and is too distracting.

I would also get rid of the forum for now. Starting a forum without existing traffic is pretty pointless; a conversation will never get started from scratch. Add it when you have a lot more regulars. Only very busy sites can support active forums, IMO.

Have an obvious link to your best stuff, right there on the front page.

Looks good, but that header graphic really dominates the page and doesn't add much value.

[SimonaRich]

You need to purchase or download some good template, because now there is no site structure.

[Pyper900]

Thanks everyone for the great advice.

I've fielded complaints from other people about the flash too, so I've completely reworked the layout. I put the rss in a much more obvious place and put a post feed in the sidebar frame.

I understand the comments about the forum, but I'm going to leave it alone for now.

I obviously need to spend a lot of time writing more content, but i'm feeling better about it now.

Has anyone else ever used trafficswarm to drive page views?