Hodgedup.com tell me what you think

Looks good!

I think you do need preview pics though.

 

I thought about that and when I was looking at a little test of it without thumbs just looked so much cleaner. Also, I would like to think the captions are enough to make people want to click.

Maybe I'm wrong.


Later I plan on making related pictures and having thumbs.

 

I think you might be.

But you could always test it out to see which works best.

 

Good idea. I'll run it this way for a little while and if I'm not getting good click throughs on the picture links and if I'm not I'll change it.

So far the feedback on that part has been good, well except for yours.

 

I'd have a funny <something> of the day/moment appearing when the main page is loaded with a link to view more of funny <somethings> in this category. That something could be a pic or a short joke. The former would be ideal, IMO

 

People don't read. Id try to make a thumbnail too. If your host has imagemagick, it should be pretty easy to do.

For your weird news, I think you should not link to the news site, but reword them a little and keep them on your site instead. Your site will be a lot more sticky that way - and you won't lose so many people clicking away.

 

Yeah I thought about that. The problem with it though is I make up all of my other content so I like to actually link to real stuff.

 

Still needs some work, imho:

 

Good work, lots of energy!

Hodgedup, I dont like color scheme - looks somehow historic. I mean, association is wild west. That brown color..

Add more pictures. Make site look more colorfull. Changing colors in more happy one you will not loose.

Fonts - that Arial does not fit. Put ms sans serif?

I would change category / type images to a smaller and without strong border .

I wish you many happy visitors with 200% CTR

 

I just wanted to say I really appreciate every suggestion everyone has given me and they have helped my site tremendously so far. I am going to incorporate a lot of the newest suggestions into my site as well.

I researched a lot of entertainment sites and tried to take what worked and throw away what didn’t seem to be working and then add my own spin on things. Right now the site is at the second stage of development. I have several more stages of development to add features, enhance usability, and increase the site’s SEO properties. To me this site, like everything about me, is a constant work in progress.

Basically what I’m trying to accomplish is to sell myself through the site as well as the site itself. That’s why the content I put out there is all stuff I create, except for the pictures, videos, and daily links, which I add to increase my content so there’s always a lot out there.

One of the things I'm trying to do is to not pander to the lowest common denominator and make something a little bit different then everything else that's out there. I don't want to dumb down my site.

Of course I'm saying that now and in a month or 2 after I realize 20 smart visitors a day doesn't pay the hosting then I'll we’ll see.

The other thing I’m trying to do is create something a little bit different then what’s already out there. The content is a little darker or more twisted then a simple blond joke so that’s why I’ve tried to not put bright happy colors. I’ve also tried to use colors that reflect more of who I am and what the site is about, but I do want it to be aesthetically pleasing.

I hope that provides a little more info on what I’m trying to do and like I said earlier thank you for all of the comments and keep them coming.

 

I believe that it's great the way it is. But there is always room for adjustments and improvements as time goes by.

 

hey hodgy, you didn't do anything about my suggestion http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=457090#post457090 I'm sure it would improve your serps

 

Yeah I don't do any programming and the pages for the majority of the site are created from a database using scripts. I told my programmer about adding a spot so I can enter in page titles and he will be doing that next.

There are some other SEO related enhancements that are next on the list for him to program.

 

You should rethink the link colors. The white link on the beige background is difficult to read (impossible when it goes gray). Why not switch round the mouseover color to be the link color and white to be visited?

Btw, eeeeww!
http://www.hodgedup.com/skidmark

 

Another tip: shrink the size of the intro text to move things up the page, thats valuable real estate. + include a few images

 

Where do you see this white link occuring? I didn't specify any to be white that I can think of. I will have to look into this. Also what browser?

Before I cause confusion, I am the one working on the colors.

 

Browser is Opera. Always catches any bugs in a site.

 

a few more:

The Menus/ links are very generic. Where possible put "funny videos".

Under each video leave a space to comment - it will generate you some extra content on the video pages (not just the forum)

The left archives calendar doesnt sit properly in safari.

URLs could be /hodgedup-news/ rather than hodgedup-news.php - it makes it non language specific.

As there is no top menu, put adsense links along the top (below "you should feel bad for laughing")

If you are using a drop shadow like that in the logo then I would save it as a jpg to stop it pixelating.

Where is the 'submit content' button?

Decide whether to refer to http://www.hodgedup.com or http://hodgedup.com - the site currently points to both in different places (see the footer nav for an example).
Some have been indexed this way too.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=safari&rls=en&sa=G&q=site:hodgedup.com

 

Looks good Hodge, I would check on your images, looks like you have a dead one at the first. I will throw you up a link when my blog comes back online.

 

That's right.

Are you saying that left menu items or the categories are too generic? Like the Main Menu should say funny videos instead of videos?

Yeah that’s part of the ongoing rewrite.

It’s at the bottom of the home page. I moved it down there to say room on that top real estate, but I should put it on more of the content pages.


Decide whether to refer to http://www.hodgedup.com or http://hodgedup.com - the site currently points to both in different places (see the footer nav for an example).
Some have been indexed this way too.

Thanks for that. I’ll get that fixed up.

Where at? And thank you.

Thank you all for continuing to provide sugggestions.