I finished development on my newest project, a social bookmarking site along the lines of reddit, digg, newvine and others. Like most developers, I built it because there were features I felt were missing in others, or they had more than I wanted, or not enough. Made the site live Friday. Requesting anyone who can to take a look and offer feedback. I'm very interested in what someone beside the few developer friends I have shown it too think! Tizags in a nutshell: Submit links to interesting pages or sites Outbound links are direct, no 'nofollow' Tag based classification A WORKING search (hear that reddit fans?) Positive or negative filter by tags or user Super double secret probation algo that keeps new links on the front page long enough for them to be seen (unlike reddit and digg where down voters can keep your link from ever even showing up!) Report feature for inappropriate links Save Links Add Friends and more Please take a look:http://tizags.com Thanks-
I think it probably does do what you say it does but it is mega busy, could it also end up foul with the search engines due to the amount of links on the front page? Less is sometimes best
Thanks for the feedback Outlaw! Do you think more whitespace would make it less busy? Each submitted link is displayed the same way and has the same associated links. As for too many links, not sure what to do about that. Each tag has to be a link, and applicable functions associated with each link need to be accessible. After years of tinkering with site, I've decided more than basic SEO is a waste of time. For every 'rule' some SEO specialist tells you, there are dozens of examples of sites that break it that rank well. Here's my guide on how to rank in ANY search engine Using good design principles, build a site visitors find useful or interesting Update the site regularly to keep it useful and interesting Best way to make a site useful or interesting: Give visitors an investment in the site (build a community) Do that and in six months you'll have a robust and growing site.
Just like what outlaws said. The site looks really busy, but hey, I love developing sites that look busy. At the end, keeping it simple (less) makes it more friendly for most users.
hatching, chatpup Thanks for the comments! hatching - not sure I can take anything off the screen, but I'll play with white space, see if I can make it feel more 'open'
This is some of best advice that can be given. The site has a good layout and design, but as others have mentioned, a little busy. Good Luck!
nice site, looks like a mixture of digg and delicious the higher you get the page rank of the site the more people will use it. if you buy loads of unique blog posts, text links ect.. you should get better, 1 question... i dont see any ads on this site. how do you propose to make money on it? good luck matey! i hope the project does well for you
JasonB Another one of my guiding principles: don't build a website to make money, build a website to get traffic. Once you get traffic, you'll figure out a way to make money. Seriously though, no point in trying any sort of advertising or anything until it's starts generating frequent and regular hits.
I don't have too many issues with this design... but I think it could be improved a bit.. The 2px dark brown border around the 2 primary content sections, try lightening that significantly, to where it's only slightly darker than the background color Not all too certain if I like the standard blue font color Right align the "Show Page: 1 2 3" and stick it on the same line as "Page 1 : 1 - 25" Need a bit more distinction between the "posted by" and "tags" area, and the actual article descriptions. Perhaps encase those 2 lines in a div with a background color slightly darker than that baige color.
good stuff, dreamache, thanks, I dimmed the border, added a separator between description and post info section will do the realign page numbers too - I like that I tried different color and style for the links, but ultimately went back to the basic. I wanted a way for the user to take in at a glance the links on a page, and blue underlined text has been ingrained into our web dna now....
Tizags Update: Finished the Tizags rss feed. The feed serves the top 10 Tizags links from the home page. If the site continues to get more users and the demand is there, I'll add RSS to member's save lists. Tinkered with the ranking algo; wanted a little less emphasis on the number of votes and more on time. This guarantees new links will get visibility on the home page - unlike reddit or digg where very few ever make it. Corrected formating error in search results page, both with the links listing and the tag cloud. A user asked for the capability to easily open links in a new window, so added an icon at the end of each link listing that allows just that. Changed maximum individual tag length from 20 to 25 characters. In a comment post on reddit, a user wished for a way to hide links, since, in that user's opinion, the report a link feature was a joke. So now on Tizags you can hide a link; simply click 'hide' on any link and the page will refresh with that link no longer showing. To manage your hidden links, click on 'profile' in the upper right, then the 'manage hidden links' (in case you hid one you didn't mean to). Added a favicon Tinkered with tag sizing to get more contrast between sizes. Added a 'clear tag feature'. Now shows what tag you are filtering on (if any) and gives the option to clear it. Changed the new link insert to automatically add a vote from the person who submitted the link. The supposition is if you're submitting it, you're voting for it. Added title tag to tag links; title includes number of posts that have that tag. Added a redirect script to always resolve the URL to http://tizags.com. 1) Keeps the URL shorter, 2) reduced risk of dupe content for www versus non-www version. Worked out a method using an synchronous AJAX call to increment a click counter for the links, while at the same time keep direct links. So when you click a link, the click gets counted, but it doesn't have to go through a redirect to do it. Future plans include incorporating number of clicks into the ranking algo. Changed the default from 10 links on the home page to 25. Ten just didn't seem to be enough.
I would change the grey background color, it's too bland at the moment. Also, you may want to give a few different font options just in case your visitors don't have Verdana.
That's definitely an improvement, makes your tizags column stand out more. I didn't read the content earlier but you've created a very marketable site. Good luck with it.
Very cluttered looking. Also, the +/- links for each URL are too small IMO. Color scheme could use some work too.
looked at pligg - it sucks if you don't like the color scheme, offer some suggestions does digg have tags when you enter a story? didn't think so - neither does reddit. can you get a submission to the front page on either? didn't think so. don't you get tired of waiting for digg to load - I know I do.