Its all in the first 2 clicks

A wise search engine once told me its all in the first 2 clicks when it comes to success, the design of a website can have a real effect on a websites success because within those 2 clicks a user sees the style of your website and the ease of access to information based on your website, its why when you go to Rampant Designs, Baby Seal Productions or Stick Guy Comics that the layout/style is continuous and from click one you get an idea of what the sites like (all be it for Stick Guy you get a disclaimer). Even the blogs are set out this way you go to the blog and you get the latest posts plus easy navigation. It brings me to something I have always seen as a hits killer and that is splash screens, theres no point to them and they give the visitor no idea of your websites style and I think they break that golden rule of not owning a forum driven website where your forum gets all the attention and your website gradually fades away and the reason for that is most splash screens give you the option of viewing the website or entering the forum, now I think that most visitors who go to the sites url say domain.com want to view domain.com if they wanted to see the forum they would go to domain.com/forum or for those who want to view the forum they can easily select the forum from the navigation.

When I see a splash screen it puts me off the website for the simple reason I am there, they have got my attention using whichever method and now I want to see what the sites about so why do they keep hyping it when they could put the efforts into making me want to return again, also no matter how big your forum is and how popular it is theres hundreds of thousands of forums on the web and its alot more difficult to show how unique you are using the same software as thousands of others while with a website thats something you have thought up, designed and coded its a reflection of you and alot more unique.

My advice when it comes to websites is you should try and be unique, don't go searching on google for inspiration when Soulz designed Baby Seal Productions he just designed what he wanted it to look like, when I designed Rampant Designs I just sorted out the sizes then looked at the color scheme and Stick Guy Comics I decided simplicity was the best option. The point is those layouts are unique, they arent some immitation of a bigger website or something we found on google and I personally believe that helps websites success because its something new to the user not the same thing they see on other sites.

Sites to check out:

Rampant Designs Baby Seal Productions Stick Guy The Club BSP Blog Stick Guy Blog

Stupidity with advertisements

It still baffles me how so many website owners still tell visitors publicly to click there advertisements, companies haven't become as successful as they are at offering advertising opportunities without finding ways to stop unauthorised clicking, it still seems most webmasters (especially of smaller websites) think if they say 'hey click one ad a day' then they will make money and get away with it, for one telling people to click violates most (if not all) advertising companies terms of service but if the same people click 1 ad each day the advertisers going to pick the pattern up quickly and more than likely terminate your account, its better to look at your account and see in a month you have made $10 than for it to say several hundred then one day that your account has been banned and you get nothing, I mean a few dollars may seem like nothing but that's if you think here and now, yes it will barely (if at all) cover your websites overheads but websites rarely (if ever) gain in popularity at a straight line, in fact theres no set measure which can be used to explain it, some websites start getting popular fast while some are barely getting hits for months/years then suddenly bang they gain a lot of steam, the best description I have seen is that websites popularity increase logarithmically meaning its like a snow ball effect one user links a few friends to your website then each of those friends links more friends and they link more friends and it keeps going. Anyways the point of that little sidetrack from telling users to click ads when the alternative is you make little per month is simple, if you get banned from the company now then your losing a few dollars a month, what happens when your sites big and you want to make money from advertising, sure theres a lot of companies out there but they may not meet your needs (for example I chose bidvertiser because they pay through paypal while most others I saw used cheque.

The point is always look to the future, it may seem like a nice way to try and make cash now but if you get banned then the money you will lose from advertising will sting. I like the idea of advertisements since they can be a nice way of making revenue to pay for the website and (in theory) mean webmasters wont continually put up donate now buttons with every post, although some probably still will to try and get every last bit of money they can, I have donate buttons on Baby Seal Productions and Rampant Designs but they are placed on there own page because if someone wants to give me money, I wont stop them but I refuse to pressure anyone to donate money by saying something like 'Save this site', 'Keep this website open' and so on, mainly because I wanted to open the site, the work I do on them is because I enjoy it (same as the webmasters who run there relevant sites on the network) and thats why I continue to do it, yes money probably would make me do more but I am happy with the websites current progress .


Anyways to just summarise, my tips with ads on your website:

If there pay per click don't tell people to constantly click them at least once a day because it creates an obvious pattern, Don't tell them on the website with the ads to click the ads to support the site and finally ignore how little your making now and think how much you could be making over time.

This is where I would insert some joke telling you to click my ads but lets not risk violating any TOS just for my crappy sense of humor.

Also expect a new blog soon, this is my 13th blog and I am not superstitious, I just don't want to die.

Sites to check out:

Rampant Designs Baby Seal Productions Stick Guy The Club BSP Blog Stick Guy Blog

Webmaster and Admin wheres the diversity

Me again, which shouldn't be a big shock since this is my blog, I was talking with a friend recently and joked about how he always opens with a generic comment and he said it helps get peoples attention (or something like that, I had been drinking at the time - hmm pear cider :D).

So hope every ones having a great day(was that nice enough, let me know, leave comments or PM me on the club.

Anyways I was on a forum earlier and there was a big issue with someone complaining about the admin but suggested his admin skills reflected him as a webmaster, this raised an issue with me I have had for a while, so many people link admins and webmasters as the same thing when there the same thing. Most admins are pretty much useless when it comes to websites, I have even seen forum staff refer to themselves as webmasters when the only site they have owned is a page generated one (such as geocities and tripod) where they couldn't even make text bold.

The point of this post is to show what in my opinion an admin and a webmaster does, as I consider myself to be both (because I run/design websites and I administrate forums).

Webmaster

Compared to administrators a rarity, there seems to be so few people who actually know anything about web design/running a website, I have seen far too many forums where theres no one who can create a basic html page, some I have worked for as admin and then been pushed into re-designing or upgrading because the owner/admins are clueless to anything that isn't BBCode. In fact from recent memory theres only one website I worked for that I offered to do the layout for and that was jakeisawesome.com (which has since closed), the rest I was forced into. So to summarise webmasters are the guys who can run the website and keep it running without needing help for every little thing.

Administrator

It seems these days every ones an admin, its simple to just sign up for a free forum, I have seen smaller forums which as soon as they launch say get 10 posts and become an admin, my first admin job that wasn't on a site I owned was pretty much handed to me and as a result I received a lot of bitterness and while I feel I did well in the long run when I admined there all I was is what I would call a glorified moderator, I ran the boards but did nothing technical, it was after that the owner of jakeisawesome.com Thomas Rule the owner of Stick Guy who had then launched a forum (the smack talk forums) where I was eventually made admin and was offered the opportunity to work on the technical side, modifying the VBulletin templates, creating skins and working with basic php.

Its hard to define the position of an admin, I usually call myself a technical admin as I usually deal with the technical aspects of forums and let Soulz deal with the people side of The Club, I would also call Soulz an admin because while I adminster over the technical side he adminsters over the front end and adds content such as smilies and skins.


To sum things up it feels like the lines separating admins and webmasters have become blurry in a time where webmasters are fading away, why would anyone want to learn web design when they could just create a myspace and load it with crap. Finding a webmaster is a lucky thing because you are usually in a better situation if something messes up since a webmaster can quickly fix it, while the average forum admin would be clueless.

Sites to check out:

Rampant Designs Baby Seal Productions Stick Guy The Club BSP Blog Stick Guy Blog

Anti Virus Software

2 blogs in one day? I must be drunk (well technically since UK time its after 12 there a day apart but still 2 blogs close together.)

On to the topic of this discussion, anti-virus its a big thing and there is so much choice available, I have used so many including:

Avast
Panda
F-Secure
Mcafee
Norton


Now by far Norton is the best I have used but obviously it has several issues:

Cost
It makes your computer slow
Cost
oh and Cost

The reason I say cost so much is because in all honesty at times it feels like daylight robbery, I had used Norton Internet Security 2006 until February this year when the subscription was up for renewal, anyways I signed onto Symantec's website to renew the subscription when I decided just to purchase the 2007 upgrade package. About a week later buyers remorse really kicked in when the £10 I paid for delivery turned out to be 2 DVD cases (it had System Works Basic) in a brown envelope (no padding) and was sent second class, normally I wouldn't care but that was nowhere near worth £10, in fact I have had similar things delivered from Amazon Zshops for less than half the price. Anyways Norton was an easy install and like all my previous experiences with Norton software needed around 10 reboots while installing. Remorse kicked in yet again last month when PC shops started selling the software for £30 with 3 user licenses, compared to my 1 user upgrade package for £50.

Despite my issues with Norton I have to admit, if you are looking to buy a Internet Security Suite then Norton's the way to go but if you are looking for a free alternative the most popular seems to be Avast.

Also remember no matter what anyone tells you, security software is essential, even if you have firefox its still open to vulnerabilities, as outlined in the interesting read FireFox Myths

Anyways till next time (hopefully not a few hours from now also if you like this article Digg It and feel free to visit the other sites on the network

Rampant Designs
Baby Seal Productions
Stick Guy
The Club

Sites to check out:

Rampant Designs Baby Seal Productions Stick Guy The Club BSP Blog Stick Guy Blog