Hi there! Please spare me a few moments and take a look at my website and comment on it. The url is http://bodjie.homestead.com And here are the facts for your information: I'm a self-learning webmaster, I never had any training on website building, html, CSS, etc The website I'm talking about is my first and only "project", it is 3 months old I get very very poor traffic daily I'd be happy it hits 50 on any given day (how pathetic!) As a consequence, the website even has a more pathetic performance as far as adsense earnings is concerned that its not worth mentioning it here anymore. I would appreciate it very much if you could give me honest, no-nonesense and constructive comment on my website. Please just make your comments readily understandable to a newbie webmaster like me. I'm asking for reviews on the website because I suspect there might be something wrong with it (I just don't know whether its in its design, navigation, content, etc.) that's why its suffering from a poor volume of traffic. I hope you will be generous with your opinions. Thanks a lot in advance!
start cleaning up your code to begin first steps toward success http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http://bodjie.homestead.com/ start top to bottom error by error
Thank you, hans, for your quick and very constructive response. Errors in the site's code have been bugging me from the start. I've helplessly watched as they pile up on each other over time. Unfortunately, as I have said above, I'm still groping in the dark as far as coding is concerned. The only information I get to learn about coding in bits and pieces is through webmasters' forums like DP and by searching for information about how to do it on the web. I forgot to mention beforehand that in building my website, I rely solely on the website builder from my web host. Its a copy/paste, drag/drop transaction and I've been trying to find a way how to tinker with the site's code using it. For example, I can't find a way (using the said website building software I'm talking about) to correct, edit, or whatever, the following errors as reported by the W3 Validator: Error Line 75, Column 83: there is no attribute "SCROLL". …k="#0000CC" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" scroll="auto" background="/defaultUser/images/b Line 79, Column 388: cannot generate system identifier for general entity "r". …hapes/shapes.dll?CMD=GetRectangleGif&r=255&g=204&b=153" height="1" width="130 Line 79, Column 389: reference to entity "r" for which no system identifier could be generated. …apes/shapes.dll?CMD=GetRectangleGif&r=255&g=204&b=153" height="1" width="130" And loads of other errors! I just posted a few examples here to give you an idea of what errors are giving me so much frustration I cannot do anything about. I have a feeling I would eventually know my way around with coding (if others can, then why can't I? ) but without any idea how I can break into where my code is, I feel helpless. Perhaps you can show me how to do it? Thanks again for your observation! I really appreciate it.
if you are serious about learning web design / HTML then I really recommend a true HTML editor. I use Quanta Plus since many years - it's included in most ( all?) quality Linux distributions such as in my openSuSE Linux. most onsite or other site-builders such as frontpage etc create horrible errors and huge code-pages. if you plan to have one day a site of your own ( domain ) then most likely you'll chose Linux hosting and thus may prefer to have Linux offline for your publishing work as well. Hence there you would find all tools such as Quanta Plus, linkchecker, HTML validation, etc besides a few smalller sections of my site such as photo gallery and blog - I do all my pages handcoding using Quanta plus.
Are these errors the ones pulling down my website in terms of traffic, hans? I'm asking because if they do, then there is no chance I'll ever have my own domain in the future. I don't think I'll ever know rectifying errors if I'll never ever get these errors that I have now corrected.
there's a lot free ebooks to learn html within 3 days or less.. take some time and read them you will be able to fixe some erros and then read about niches.. if you want make money using google i dont think thats a good website to start off..
to know the answer to your question you would have to analyze each and every error top to bottom that would be a waste of time using any of the professional HTML editors ( NOT page editors as you do now ) it is easy to have fully validated code. sooner or later you'll have to learn it anyway webmaster is a JOB just like car racing mechanic or airplane mechanic, study and practice is required just as for any other job! there are plenty of excellent tutorials out there if once you have your professional setup ( like a full Linux dist on your PC ) tutorial such as w3schools.com etc without quality there is no real and lasting success no matter what job you chose.
Thanks, Aust, for joining! You got an eye-opener there for me! First off, I created the website out of my love for our dog and because when I started, I really didn't have any idea about niches. It's good I joined DP. Now, I'm starting to get ideas. I'll find the ebooks on html coding you're talking about that should give me a head start and see what I can do after going through them. By the way, is the pet/dog niche already crowded or too competitive for a start on making some money in online advertsing?
One of the best HTML editors I've ever used is 1stPage. It has full support for popular languages (HTML, XHTML, PHP, ASP, Cold Fusion, Javascript, CSS, SSI and Perl), tag auto-complete (which really comes in handy), design view which is basically a WYSIWYG editor, ability to preview in multiple browsers, and lots lots more. There's two versions available, 1st Page 2000 and First Page 2006. If you have a pretty decent system with at least 512MB RAM (I'd recommend at least 1GB...it can really be a memory hog), I'd go with 2006. It's also free to download, and has a nag screen, but with all the features it has, you can't beat it. You can find more info at http://www.evrsoft.com
Joomla and Drupal are both pretty decent CMS systems. However, I don't think a CMS system would work on Homestead servers (they used to not have php or mysql support, I don't know if that's changed over the years). Edit: They apparently have some sort of database support, but you'd probably have to have Homestead set it up for you, which would end up costing you more.
Thank you, clark71822, for the inputs! I'll try to go over 1stPage. I've come across Joomla but haven't done any serious reading about it yet. Drupal I just read the name a lot of times surfing the web. I'll try to ask Homestead about the idea of me using another site editor. I hope they allow it. Had I known about these editors, I would have used them right from the start. I don't have the expertise to make comparisons about them but after using Homestead's site-builder, I now slowly feel its limitations that are really preventing me from doing the improvements I need to do on my website. Thanks again, clark71822!
Thanks for the offer, pcselfrepair! I'll think about that. Any other comment/observation/opinion about my site?