ForumsStarting a Business

Hi Michael,

First off, I looked at your site and I apologize if this is a bit rude but your web design is nothing... eye catching. I mean, it's quite ordinary and it's something that looks no better than my first design when I was 18 and just learning HTML. What I've learned about web design is that, "if it doesn't sell, what's the point?"

Your light blue borders make your site look very cheap. Your logos in the corner just adds to that and serves no purpose. Your AdSense ads is poorly integrated into your site. If you're trying to make money from that, it needs to blend in as part of your content almost. There's too many contrasting colors. They draw attention away from all the important things but again, served no purpose.

It's a poor design and needs an updated design quick. I've done many re-designs for people for free from my forum. I had experienced professional designers look over my work and say that their company usually charges about $4,000 to do what I've done for people.

If you could minimize the use of different colors and structure your layout it will look great.

As for writing about your business in detail, the best thing to do is just sit down with a piece of paper and pen and just write. Just write what comes to mind about your business. What it does, its purpose, its goals, YOUR goals, your purpose in the business, your competition, your industry, the technologies you apply, how you apply it, where you learned it from, how much experience you had with it, why you got into the business, why the business is important.

The list can go on and on, but it's important that you just WRITE. Good luck.

LOL, okay, you're right about me using tables then. As far as visually, it was better, but compared to your CSS and XHTML web standards now, no way was my page any better than yours. I'm glad you at least have that going for you. Good job on that.

A suggestion on that as well though, it's a standard to keep your CSS codes on a separate file. It's better for loading time especially for when your site grows. Take a look at my FairAdsNetwork site for example.

I use this line of code in every page:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/styles/light-fan.css" />
Once you start a membership site, it will also be a good idea to load CSS files in series. I have a series of 3 CSS files that build on the previous file and allows a user to gradually get more with less lag.

It keeps my file size smaller. I also use another technology that allows me to create the pages in html templates so that the header, footer and sidebar are never reloaded. That also helps me keep the loading time even less while make making the design look nice.

If you haven't already, look into AJAX and DOM scripting. They're a great enhancement for CSS and XHTML programming.

In hopes of ending this debate:

After further reviewing your site I found................

I would rather end this debate as it has no positive end result.

So let us stop now why we are ahead.

To change this two way back and forth, When you posted "
Some advice on how a new business owner would
define their business in detail please" Are you talking about a Business Plan or a Mission Statement.
Please explain what you are looking for.
Thanks, LUCKIEST

posting general questions, gets general answers