Please Review Me!

[Gerrym]

Hi All,

Just really getting going on this and would like a quick review before I get too far along. Intend to use rsstoblog to automate this and have links from this site to non-blog sites on the different types of insurance.

http://bestinsuranceportal.com/

Thanks much!

Gerry

[ProfitBlogger]

What type of feedback exactly are you looking for?

Actually if you're just using RSS To Blog there's not muc to review since the writing / content is not yours anyways

[Gerrym]

Originally Posted by TheWordpressGuy

What type of feedback exactly are you looking for?

Actually if you're just using RSS To Blog there's not muc to review since the writing / content is not yours anyways

Hi,

I'm not sure what all you looked at. About a third of the posts are mine with rss or article directory material making up the rest. My plan is to try to keep up this ratio as much as possible to try to give the search engines a little fresh food.

I am also writing articles and submitting to EzineArticles, GoArticles and SearchFeed but am not posting these same articles to the blog. Should I be doing this?

My resource boxes have links back to the blog. I know it will take awhile to get the full effect of the back links driving traffic but should start to pay off with adsense click throughs, I think.

I may be missing something here, but isn't my plan what we are supposed to be doing? I'm really interested in feedback on the static front page, header and general layout.

If I am way off track, I'd sure like to know so I can get it corrected.

Thanks!

Gerry

[marketplanhq]

I think you've made a great start. it's clean and attractive.

However, the body text is gray. That makes it harder to read.

The light gray links are *very* hard to read.

The pale gray type (such as the date of each post) is illegible.

I know that gray type is terribly trendy these days, and it probably came with your theme, but it's the first thing you should change.

Black on white type is the easiest to read, especially in long posts.

After all, if people can easily read your blog, they stay long enough to click on ads and possibly make you some money. They may even recommend it to friends.

If they leave right away because the text is tiring to read, or it's too hard to read the titles of the categories and the list of recent posts, you lose the chance to influence them. And they are less likely to return or to recommend the site to friends.

I hope this helps.

Good luck with your site!

Kathleen in Texas

[Gerrym]

Hi Kathleen -

Thanks very much for your input. It really helps to have someone who doesn't have a vested interest take a look at something. Being quite new, I was not quite sure how to edit the css to change the color of the font. I made a stab at it and think it helps.

I agree that the trendy gray is bad and have not used some themes I have otherwise liked because of the difficulty in reading them. Now that I have my feet wet, so to speak, I can try others. At least with Wordpress if I goof I can upload the theme and start all over again.

Again - Thanks!

Gerry

[marketplanhq]

You're very welcome. I hate editing CSS files, too, but there seems to be no alternative for getting what you want.

I have an "easy" book on CSS, but it's like Greek. Experimenting is the only thing that has helped so far. I just wish it didn't take so much time.

Now I'm working on getting the leading right. In the main theme I'm using the category listings in the Blogroll are closer to what comes before them than to what they actually modify or pertain to.

And the horrible thing is that when I compared the CSS files for the two themes I've used so far (one with heavy editing so that it looks different on different sites), the two files almost looked like they were written in different coding languages.

Not really, but the codes were arranged and formatted quite differently. Both correct, I guess, but comparing them didn't help in finding what I was looking for.

Guessing and experimenting hasn't worked, so now I have to actually study! <grin>