I need your honest advice (the more the better)

[alexb5784]

Here's what I like about your site:

1. You put video in your posts and you have chosen good videos.
2. You have a lot of content.
4. You've placed related articles after each post.
3. Your ads are nicely placed below the videos.

Here's where you can make some improvement:

1. Stop using all the bold colors.
2. Define who your target audience is.
3. Create a new menu bar, use something like this
4. Design a new logo, the one you have is hard to read.
5. Place an ad in the place of the search function. You can move the search function to the right sidebar.
6. Place all the links to articles in the "Articles" section and create an "Archive" section.
7. Create a "Best of" section to list your most popular articles.

That's all I can think of right now. Now I have to split because I'm meeting a friend for Friday night dinner!

Cheers and good luck

[Power]

Thank you for your replies Sam988, Logodae and alexb5784

[Bitsy]

No.

I read article 2. Before I write anything else, I'll mention that I think I must have really high standards for things I would read and especially for writing, because I have read what others have written, but especially because I have read a lot of stuff on the Internet that looks like it has been written by borderline illiterates, and this seems to be the status quo now.

Without commenting on grammar or spelling, which actually are as important as everything else when writing, and extremely important to me, the content was all over the place. There were no transitions between some paragraphs and I couldn't figure out how one paragraph had anything to do with the next in certain places. Much was assumed and little was actually explained or described, made clear by the writing.

Grammar and spelling are critical for several reasons. For one thing, they go to the credibility of the author. Anyone who can't write a grammatically correct sentence can hardly be educated. Someone who doesn't make an effort to spell everything correctly is careless or lazy and if careless in one area, one can assume a person is careless overall.

Above all, you have to care about what you're writing and if you write with so many errors (nevermind the deficiencies in the writing skills), it is clear you don't care enough about what you're writing and so why should a reader?

In a nutshell--anything worth writing is worth writing well. Thus, it's good that you are seeking to improve your writing, but I really think your success will be severely stunted if you brush grammar off like all of the less-than-mediocre writers on the Internet do. To your advantage, however, it may be that fewer and fewer people are even able to spot your grammar mistakes. For me, though, it grates on the ears/eyes and if I can't correct it, I can't tolerate reading it.

[Power]

Thank you Bitsy, your comments are very helpful and I will improve on those areas

[jenlili]

No. I wouldn't read more articles. I suggest that before you work on your style, you work on the technical matters. It's obvious English is not your native language. Well, perhaps actually I should just suggest you have an English speaker translate your article. Then have a talented editor give it a once over.

How can we judge your style when we can't get past the technical issues? I've read this whole thread. I was impressed with how many people went on about your website. I didn't even look at it. It took me a second to actually find the article on the webpage, though, and I went ahead and read the Jobs thing right abouve it, but then I didn't see a connection to the article. Nor did I see a connection to Jobs. There's no way he would publish something like that. The dude would hire a ghost writer if he can't write any better than that.

I can't honestly comment on the content of the article because the grammar is so bad as to detract completely from whatever message you might be trying to get across.

That being said, I still can give you props for writing in semi-English. I know a minimal amount of Spanish and French, but not enough to write even a badly written article.

So why and English-language website???

[machoman]

Originally Posted by Doku

Article 1: Hell no.

Reason? I could not read the thing. What's with all the colors in the different parts of the text? Seriously, what does that add to the content?

Well, I think colours do something to improve (to some extent)to our comprehension. Briean already mentioned in the instructions that he uses colours to show the importance

[Doku]

Originally Posted by machoman

Well, I think colours do something to improve (to some extent)to our comprehension. Briean already mentioned in the instructions that he uses colours to show the importance

Right... the "instructions." As someone else has said before... Nobody is going to read instructions on how to read a website. We know how to read! I find it quite... presumptuous? conceited? pretentious? that one would think that their website actually merits people spending the extra time to read instructions to learn how to read. Fortunately, to the original poster's credit, they did go back and fix things and edit out most of the color over a month ago.

[Kindred]

I read article 3 and my answer is no.

• Paragraphs lack transitional words making them hard to follow. Specifically, paragraph two, which jumps to new ideas without any links.
• Paragraphs also lack solid structure.
• You repeat the same thing several times without introducing anything new. “Success is never without failure” sums up the entire first paragraph.
• The article makes too much use of the word you. As a result, it sounds like a marketer rather than someone trying to help wrote it.
• Content is lacking and does not introduce any original ideas.
• The article appears less credible due to poor grammar and strange choice of words.
• This may be an idiosyncrasy, but bold text is extremely obnoxious inside paragraphs. Use italics for emphasis.
• The article lacks coherence and most importantly development. What value do you want the reader to take away after reading this article?

In summary plan before you write, structure your articles, introduce your own ideas, develop them, check your grammar, and get your articles edited.