Can I have review on the revised look of my site and forum. It has been a very active community with over 10,000 posts with only 173 members in about 4 months and I need your help to get it to next level. URL: http://www.webmastertradecenter.com Title: Webmasters Do Business at WTC. Do You? Description: Webmaster Trade Center is built around the same idea of a "World Trade Center". i.e. "To provide the best environment to carryout business." It is developed with a sole purpose of buy, sell and trade webmaster related products, services and resources. We are working hard to make this marketplace a best platform for webmasters to do their day to day business with an ease. Forum Software: Way too much moded SMF and changed bloc Oxygen theme Launched: Feb, 2006 Current Google PR: 5 Current Stats: Total Members: 173 Total Posts: 10372 Total Topics: 1302 Total Categories: 5 Total Boards: 57 Hope to get some thoughful reviews from you guys. Thanks! chodhry
Looks pretty good. Only tip I have is to break up that bulleted list with a space between items for easier reading. I don't even bother reading stuff that's all crammed together. I like the links on the right, nice tree thing going on. Graphics are pretty good too. One other note, surely you realize the psychological effect of using "WTC" , the whole 9/11 thing and all that. May want to think on that one. People may be turned off or whatever and not even know why. Especially since your graphic is an office building. Just a thought. GL !
Thanks NoobieBoobieDo, (hehe). hmmm. nice suggestion about adding space between items. That surely will improve the readability. BTW, there is a 3 page discussion on the same topic of using WTC going on in our forum. I had our slogan "We will never forget" a while back. I had that because I would never want to forget that event but at the same time I do not want to cry/weep for all those we lost. I would rather do something more constructive. You see I have taken off all of my ads because I do want to make this site a tru trade center of webmasters. may be an online memorial to World Trade Center and a continuous tribute to WTC from Webmaster Community. I think I will have to write it on the main page so that it may not put some of the users off as I have all the positive intentions for using this domain. What do you think?
Hi, Yes I can see how you changed up the bulleted text. However now the font is a bit smaller. This should be easy to adjust via your CSS. Here's a thought on your whole WTC problem. A simple fix would be to call it WebTC instead of WTC. That removes the whole WTC problem. Also I think it brings a little more clarity to your site. WTC is very generic, WebTC at least signifies that what you're talking about has something to do with the web. What do you think ? I think WebTC is a little more catchy but that's probably just because it was my idea
hmmm, actually it is specifically for webmasters how ever WebTC will signify that it is a Web trade center and can easily be mistakeen for a site of general traders, forex and stock marketers. So The Only option I left with is WebmasterTC or WMTC. Well I really dont like the sound of WMTC though. Isn't there any way out. I mean apart from whole WTC thing it is a memorable domain name something which you can recall even after an year, no? And Have some activity on it can't think of changing name now. So please let me know of your suggestions. Thanks!
Actually looking at it again you may not have much of a problem. This thinking hinges on one simple thing. Anytime someone is referring to the WTC of 9/11 they say, "the WTC" where as all your stuff says , "services at WTC" , "money at WTC" and so on. It's a simple thing but it may be enough to divert the mind from the negative connotation. However given this I'd avoid calling it "the WTC". IMHO
Thanks pannick for the kind words. So you dont have any problem with using "WTC" in the copy? Thanks! chodhry
hmmmm. I agree. Thats what I wasn't getting. Because rate of registration and posting declined conce i changed the slogan. I should be careful in using the words and should change the slogan i think to something more friendly or may be replace WTC with full word of "Webmaster Trade Center". Thanks for the tip though. - chodhry
ok, I have made quite a few changes on all the site according to your suggestion. "WTC" has not been used any more. So please let me know if do you think the copy still needs to be edited. Thanks! chodhry
Just so you know, I had the same initial thought about the site. Personally, I didn't find it offensive, but some people might see it as trying to profit from a major tragedy. However, it looks like you have things under control, so keep up the good work and best of luck with your site
Thanks RT, I have taken off even the google ads when they were making around 50 usd easily a month. Personally I was and still not looking for the monetry aspect. The idea of a forum solely for buy, sell and trade was and still the key and I wanted to do that. And then the idea of changing forum currencies becuase I had to make a purchase of a forum currency and I thought their should be a place on web to exchange forum currencies just like money changers in real world out there. so these were few unique ideas behind this site and I got lucky (may be) in this regard when I got this name last year. Anyways, I really will appreciate more feedback on it. Thanks! chodhry
I personally always think webmaster or graphics site always look more professional with vbulletin forum software than other ones! I like the idea of your design, your logo and how you describe your website at the index page.
Thanks man for the kind words. I agree. I actually started out this as an experiment so SMF was the best free option available. I might change it to VB later.