FRIHOST • FORUMS • FAQ • TOS • BLOGS • DIRECTORY
You are invited to Log in or Register a Frihost Account!

YOUR Travel Area

   Frihost Forum Index -> Webmaster and Internet -> Advertise Your Website
 


Afaceinthematrix
Have you ever gone somewhere and when you got there wished you knew more about the place? Have you ever wished that you had talked to someone who lived there, or was familiar with the place? Have you ever wanted to find some of the lesser known treasures of a place that you are traveling to?

I have just finished a website that intends to help people with those things. This website has an area for articles where members can post articles about places they know of, and anyone can read these articles to find out about places before they travel there. There is also a forum where people can discuss travel destinations with people so that they can make the most of their trip. Why spend money on a trip when you don't even know about the good places to go? Here at Your Travel Area, I strive to make your trips the most worthwhile.

This is a relatively new website, so it is far from perfection. The forum code was written 4 years ago, when I first started using php so there may be bugs in it. I also am not sure about the layout. I have never cared much about layouts. I have always focused on site functions, and how useful a website is. Therefore, I am not sure if the layout is good or not. So I am hoping that people who visit my website will give me suggestions and pointers to help me make a better website for people like you to visit and get the most use out of.

The website URL is: http://www.yourtravelarea.com/index.php

So make sure to stop by and join if like to travel and the website suites your needs. Remember, I put a link exchange forum on there so if you join my website and post, I will join your site and post!
---------------------------------
Currently: 2 Articles and 1 discussion going on in the forums!
jsarnold
Obviously it's pretty new, so the lack of content isn't something to criticise, although there are of course plenty of things you can do about that.

The first thing that strikes me is accessibility. For anyone with the very common green/blue colour blindness, your site would appear completely blank. Even as someone with 'normal' colour vision, I found the contrast of lurid green on blue a dazzling and somewhat distracting combination.

I would strongly suggest you either tone down the colour choice, or provide the reader with optional colour combinations. Remember also that many people print off useful articles - and in your case this is highly likely, as they may wish to take the notes with them on holiday. However, having to print the words in bright green on white paper would make it very hard to read.

It might also be a good idea to include some kind of search facility on the site. You can even incorporate a Google search easily.

As far as content is concerned, it's always best of course to try to provide something for visitors to want to come back, but where do you obtain such content?

There are several possibilities. the cheapest is to write them yourself of course, and wait until you have written quite a lot before publication of the site. If you haven't got the time, why not pay a writer to do the work for you? I am a freelance writer, and often bid for projects like that on the various freelance websites. For example, elance.com or getafreelancer.com. You publish your needs (100 x travel articles @ 500 words each) and then writers bid for the project. You then choose the one you like the sound of, and is willing to do the work for the right price. There are plenty of willing writers who will do the work for less than a dollar per article (not me!)

If neither of these are any good, then why not simply link to articles published elsewhere, at least to begin with? You can become more contained later, but at the moment you want content.

I hope these are useful ideas for you.
DanielXP
http://www.yourtravelarea.com/articles.php?action=read&id=4

Quote:
the drinking age is five dollars.


That makes me 17 dollars!

I agree with jsarnold.


Unless you have loads of articles already and the site is fully active,
People would not post articles of there own (for free with the registering and stuff).
But other major sites what help someone usally help the site.
jsarnold
DanielXP wrote:
http://www.yourtravelarea.com/articles.php?action=read&id=4

Quote:
the drinking age is five dollars.


Ha ha! I didn't see that bit - very odd. Always best to proof read your articles before publishing them!

Also, something else odd... on the page all about the Bahamas is a Google custom search box. I entered 'Bahamas' into it, and it promptly returned no results!

Have you submitted all pages for crawling by Google yet? I notice you're using php, and whilst this shouldn't cause too many issues, it may slow down the crawling.

Have you compiled a Google site map yet? Always helpful for spiders!
Afaceinthematrix
jsarnold wrote:
Obviously it's pretty new, so the lack of content isn't something to criticise, although there are of course plenty of things you can do about that.

The first thing that strikes me is accessibility. For anyone with the very common green/blue colour blindness, your site would appear completely blank. Even as someone with 'normal' colour vision, I found the contrast of lurid green on blue a dazzling and somewhat distracting combination.

I would strongly suggest you either tone down the colour choice, or provide the reader with optional colour combinations. Remember also that many people print off useful articles - and in your case this is highly likely, as they may wish to take the notes with them on holiday. However, having to print the words in bright green on white paper would make it very hard to read.

It might also be a good idea to include some kind of search facility on the site. You can even incorporate a Google search easily.

As far as content is concerned, it's always best of course to try to provide something for visitors to want to come back, but where do you obtain such content?

There are several possibilities. the cheapest is to write them yourself of course, and wait until you have written quite a lot before publication of the site. If you haven't got the time, why not pay a writer to do the work for you? I am a freelance writer, and often bid for projects like that on the various freelance websites. For example, elance.com or getafreelancer.com. You publish your needs (100 x travel articles @ 500 words each) and then writers bid for the project. You then choose the one you like the sound of, and is willing to do the work for the right price. There are plenty of willing writers who will do the work for less than a dollar per article (not me!)

If neither of these are any good, then why not simply link to articles published elsewhere, at least to begin with? You can become more contained later, but at the moment you want content.

I hope these are useful ideas for you.


Thanks for the suggestions! I've been working hard improving the site, and I am going to spend another couple of months before I do any more advertising. I want to make it a lot better before I get more people to visit it.

Your suggestions were all helpful, and some of them I already knew needed to be done but I hadn't gotten around to it. I had realized a while back that I chose poor colors and that it needed to be fixed, but I had been too busy working on everything else with the site to fix that. I'm experimenting with the colors to get better ones.

As far as articles go, I've been working on some lately and I will start posting some of them up when I make sure that they're good. I can do the articles on my own, they hard part will be the forums. I can write my own articles, but I can't exactly carry out a forum article on my own (unless I created a bunch of fake users, but I'm not sure if that would work out well.)

P.S. My friend wrote part of that Bahamas article and I guess I didn't check it over well. I took out the "the drinking age is five dollars" when I asked him about it, he said that it was an attempt at a joke because in The Bahamas, if you have five dollars they really don't care how old you are. They'll sell you the drink.
Reply to topic    Frihost Forum Index -> Webmaster and Internet -> Advertise Your Website

FRIHOST HOME | FAQ | TOS | ABOUT US | CONTACT US | SITE MAP
© 2005-2007 Frihost, forums powered by phpBB.