Written on October 13th, 2007 at 03:10 am by Darren Rowse
Sourcebench - a ProBlogger Community Blog Consulting Project
It’s time for the first ProBlogger Community Blog Consulting Session. I’ve explained what this is in my last post and would ask you to read it before you leave a comment below.
The blog that we’re going to look at this week is Sourcebench. Thorsten is the blogger behind this blog and his email asking for help said this:
My latest addition to the blogosphere is http://www.sourcebench.com. I invested a lot of time and money in this blog - into its content and the design but somehow i cannot get it reach that I want. I am stuck with around 300 visitors per day. Could you give me a clue what i am doing wrong or how I could improve?
As I’ve written in my previous post - I now want to invite you, the ProBlogger community, to offer your advice, suggestions and constructive critique into the mix. I’ll then attempt to summarize our collective advice early next week.
To help you in your feedback - here are a few questions you might want to answer and some areas you might want to focus upon:
- What do you like about this blog?
- What could it do better?
Particularly - you might want to comment in these areas:
- Design - navigation, usability etc
- Content - including ideas for posts that might be worth writing that could go viral
- Promotion - what tips would you give this blogger for getting the word out there about this specific blog?
- SEO - could it be improved
- Monetization - what techniques might work better?
Try to keep your suggestions as constructive, practical and as specific to this blog as possible.
Looking forward to seeing your advice.
84 Responses to “Sourcebench - a ProBlogger Community Blog Consulting Project”
DazzlinDonna
October 13th, 2007 4:10 am
Socialize, socialize, socialize! Where are the social buttons? Make it easy for me to tell others about it. I’m lazy. Don’t make me have to do any work beyond clicking a button. :)
Thorsten
October 13th, 2007 4:17 am
Hi All,
i just want to introduce myself. I am the lucky guy that Darren gave this opportunity to be the first in this series.
I am looking forward to your feedback no matter if good or bad. It will help me to make the page better.
Thorsten
Marko Novak
October 13th, 2007 4:17 am
From the design point of view: I would reduce the header. It doesn’t need that much space and it pushes content below the page fold.
Marko Novak
October 13th, 2007 4:19 am
Also I think you used to many whitespace. It’s cool to use some, but that’s to much.
Manthem
October 13th, 2007 4:20 am
The header looks like a big ole waste of space. If I have to scroll down past the fold to start reading content, I most likely won’t be returning. It’s almost as if the header acts as a permanent splash page.
The font size is also a bit small. Sure it looks clean, but I really don’t want to have to strain to read text. I think it’s time the internet embraces larger fonts.
Also, ‘You must be logged in to post a comment.’ Please, please, please disable this. I don’t want to have to register at every blog I would like to leave a comment on.
Brian Purkiss
October 13th, 2007 4:21 am
Ok - here’s my tid-bits.
Too much empty space in the header… (even with the pop-up txt when hovering over the nav)
The content is too far down.
The ‘Welcome to Sourcebench’ takes up too much space.
Overall, there’s too much empty space. The trick is to keep it full, but not busy. (unless you’re going for a minimalism layout - which it doesn’t appear that he is.)
An about page would be nice.
More focus on the content would be helpful as well.
Bitten
October 13th, 2007 4:21 am
When I first came to that site I saw a big logo and not much text. It looked kind of empty or deserted. The design of the top of the site is quite usual and unoriginal. The only “eye catcher” is the little picture on the logo. So, the first sight of this site isn’t very attractive.
To see the content of that site you have to scroll really down which is quite frustrating for a visitor. The middle area of the site looks pretty boring with only white and green colors. More variety in there!
The font in the site is quite small. It’s not too easy to read text in a small font.
Well, that’s all I wanted to say.
Matej
October 13th, 2007 4:27 am
IMHO:
You don’t use your header space, to much space
I hate tag clouds, looks unprofessional for me (on every blog)
Content it to low
Overall, I don’t like how posts are managed. not to much space on homepage for them, On post page, I don’t like tittles on the left side
I don’t like payperpost :P
That’s what I would change.Sorry for not commenting about content and promotion, I’m really busy ATM
Samuel
October 13th, 2007 4:28 am
The writing needs to be fixed. At the moment there are a number of inconsistencies, and some sentences while they are understandable - unless you are Perez Hilton - the writing after just a few minutes would push me away, never to return again. Things that particularly need attention are: capital letters, spaces within parentheses, and just basic writing. Perhaps the idea of a ‘writing fresher course’ might be an idea that would be great to look at.
Also, and this is a particular bug of mine, I hate it when you are reading a blog about web design - and the blog looks basic, similar, and the same as many other blogs. Fontwise, and lookwise, the theme might as well be a Blogger theme ‘lifted’ to fit whatever platform is being used at the moment, so perhaps look at that. Because if you are the expert at webdesign - surely I should be able to see that in your blog, or else how do I believe that you are said expert?
ChrisB
October 13th, 2007 4:35 am
My first impressions upon seeing the site:
1) What does this site do?
You’re met by a mostly blank screen. Simplicity is good, but I think you’ve taken it too far. First thing I need to see is a good reason to not hit [back].
2) Related to that last comment, you need to have some prominently displayed key content. Offer the reader more than a blog — offer them links to a few information packed articles about the topic that you have written. Even if they’re just blog posts, have direct links above the fold.
3) I’m not a fan of tag clouds, but the one on this site is unique — I’ve never seen a cloud where some words were too small to read. I advise against that.
4) I recommend moving your navigation up to the top or side. It shows a snippet of what you offer, so that might help catch people’s attention.
5) You’ve got a lot of white space at the top. You don’t want to clutter the site, but that’s valuable real estate; I’d recommend moving something up there.
Bontb
October 13th, 2007 4:39 am
I think this site needs little bit more of seo, and different type of topic names. Write something that isn’t there or in questionable way. Like How to, Free, Get ….
Make your Topics more consistence I notice at one topic you write all lower case letters then on other topic you put all first letter in capital. Stay on 1st letter capital always, this will improve your ranking.
I could go on and on about it, if you have any questions let me know.
Nice domain name though….
The How-To Geek
October 13th, 2007 4:44 am
1) Your fonts are extremely painful to read. Use the same font and size that Darren uses.
2) The header takes up half the page. If I have to scroll to see the content, I won’t come back.
3) Widgets suck, Social buttons suck, Social sites suck.
4) Content is king, once you fix the first two items.
The How-To Geek
October 13th, 2007 4:52 am
Should have mentioned above, I’m also in the tech space…
You are welcome to drop me a line, email is on my sidebar.
Travis Seitler
October 13th, 2007 4:53 am
What I Love #1: The illustrations!
Quick Tip #1: Take the preview of the most recent post, and put it in the header area (beside the logo).
Quick Tip #2: Enlarge the text, even if only for the “welcome to” intro paragraph. You want to draw attention there.
Mary-Ann Horley
October 13th, 2007 5:01 am
1) The sidebar is too wide
2) I’m not mad of Trebuchet as a body font, it’s too busy
3) The blog generally looks like you’re doing it for the money. I know it’s important, but what makes blogs great is that they’re passionate experts writing about what they love. There’s no shortage of writers who are just putting in their time.
Aaron Brazell
October 13th, 2007 5:03 am
I haven’t read previous comments - intentionally. So sorry if I duplicate anyone. :-)
I took a look at this site and I immediately asked myself what the heck the site was about. It wasn’t clear until I took clicks around that this was a service-oriented site. YOU are providing services to a CLIENT. At first take, I wondered if this was a collaboration kind of site.
Secondly, I don’t really see cohesiveness about the content that is presented. At the very bottom of your Services page, you say:
Putting aside the fact that the copy sounds overly salesy, that is the entire site’s mission statement and it’s buried at the bottom of your Services page. This needs to be what is prominently stated (with better copy) on the front page and followed through in different ways on all the other pages. Emphasize, emphasize and re-emphasize what it is you do and why the reader/client should care.
Thirdly, I’d put some kind of case study “widget” somewhere prominent on the front page. In fact, as a site with not that many page, you should find a way to sectionalize the front page (smartly) so that content and “the message” of each one is conveyed at the front. Careful not to get busy or haphazard about it - simplicity is good.
All in all, my main advice is about cohesive message - bringing it all together. Remember you have about 3 seconds to sell a potential client on why you’re better than the next guy. It’s a hard industry, the field is saturated. Find a way to tie it altogether and you bring yourself lots of gold.
Mike
October 13th, 2007 5:04 am
The RSS button kind of blends in to everything else and makes it hard to find if somebody wants to subscribe. I’d make it a different color then the rest of the links so it pops out more and move it to somewhere a little less hidden. Maybe up in the white space in the header. ALso, the green links are tough for me to read. They look a little too washed out.
I just noticed that when you mouseover the links in below the header a text description shows up in the whitespace of the header. I would stop that mouseover effect and put something more permanent in the header.
I’d get rid of the tag cloud but if you really want to keep it, I’d get rid of the html open/close brackets. It makes the tag cloud look more cluttered and sloppy.
Good luck making sorting through all of the feedback I’m sure you’ll get from this.
Tom Hanna
October 13th, 2007 5:05 am
Three possibilities for improving your blog “above the fold” where it’s weakest.
1. Completely eliminate the header above the navigation.
2. Move the “Welcome to Sourcebench” material up into the right hand side of the header.
3. It looks like you’re design savvy enough to do this, though I am not. Put the headlines from your latest posts in the right hand side of the header so some actual content stands out. If you’re careful, I think you can do this without looking cluttered, which I think is what you were going for with your design, and still get some actual content into the attention grabbing space. Obviously this is my recommended suggestion as I spent the most time on it.
One other note. Yahoo said it couldn’t find your RSS the first time I tried to subscribe. This may be a downside to relying on Feedburner.
Carla
October 13th, 2007 5:07 am
Design wise, I like the overall look. I don’t think it looks like a “rip off” as Samuel stated.
I do agree that the header is too big. And I had a hard time figuring out what the site was supposed to be. Initially it looks like it is just a blog.
If you want to offer code snippets, that needs to be more obvious.
Even going to “sourcebench,” it looked like it was just more of the blog.
The drop down menu selection to go to different content areas isn’t very user friendly to me. A submenu with the different selections would be easier.
The title and post text layout seems really awkward to me. Aesthetically it looks nice, but it’s hard to read.
Domtan
October 13th, 2007 5:23 am
Positive first impressions - a very neat and tidy blog. With a minimalist design (that’s always a plus point). Very easy on the eyes. With endearing glossy icons and images.
improvement areas:
White Space - Too much white space. Far too much space. But it’s more of a perception rather than factual. The rest of the blog’s white space ratio is actually… ok-ish.
Solution: This perception can be easily eliminated with a new header design. A new header with, not so much white space. As it’s the current header mostly giving a domino effect of a ‘too much space’ to the rest of the site. That’s the first perception the visitors pick up when they reach the site - too much white space (created by the header).
Font - Font is a bit too small.
Solution: Goes without saying. Increase the font size a little, that’s all.
Welcome speech - The welcome is speech is not really necessary. It’s taking up space, and adding even more ’white-space’ perception factor to the rest of the blog. A welcome speech is only relevant once (for new visitors only). It’s not really doing anything for returning visitors. They already know what your blog is about.
Solution: Create an ‘About’ page and put the Welcome Speech in there. By removing your ‘Welcome Speech’ in your homepage, you’ll be then introducing your returning loyal readers to the meaty point of the site - your content. And of course, it also eliminates the white space syndrome. Killing two birds with one welcome speech removal.
Overall, it’s a very smooth sleek site. Good luck with it.
Emad Ibrahim
October 13th, 2007 5:31 am
It looks ok but like others have noted, the header is too big and wasteful.
I didn’t find it particularly easy to navigate either. Your homepage is wasted, put some current content there maybe latest posts, most read, most commented, etc… move all that intro stuff to an “About Us” page or something like that.
I am also not 100% sure what the site is about and who exactly you are targeting. Why should I come back?
Rick
October 13th, 2007 5:36 am
Off to a great start keep working!
Few Comments:
Whitespace - dead horse, no need for me to beat it anymore.. fonts & layout need some love - compare yours to others that are successful and make changes.
Social - I have to quote from the movie “Rudy”.. “you’re 5 foot nothin.. ah hundred and nothin” basically you have no backlinks, not many deep links and no PR to speak of and you’re a new blog in a crowded space.. stop peeking at the numbers everyday and focus on content - tape the words “quality content everyday” on your monitor..
Content is king - ask yourself why you read the blogs you read? is it because they are pretty? probably not - pretty usually comes after they have coined some bank. I have to assume you are somewhat of an authority on the “source” topic or you would not have started a blog - if you are an authority then i would suggest that you start talking about code.. break down some real life code sources and make it easy for morons like me to understand.. wow me.. entertain me and make me want to come back. I already have a bahzillion feeds now so you better add value to get on my list.
BlogBuddies - Join forces with the other folks in the same space, post comments, become friends and have them review.
That’s all i got right now - my Starbuck’s Blackeye is empty and i cant focus anymore.. lol
Alain
October 13th, 2007 5:37 am
I really like the overall aesthetics of the website. Its design is fresh and unique. The biggest issue I’ve got with the design is how much space the header takes up. It could be reduced by half or more and that would help bring the rest of the content up above the fold.
I also find that the tag cloud has some hard to read font colors.
Ian
October 13th, 2007 5:43 am
This looks like a very good start to me. The style is loose and friendly, and the little construction guy is great.
Some specific changes I think you could make that’d help:
1. Put a featured post up in the header area. Just the first 20-30 words. That’ll let folks see what you’re about right away, and let them dig in.
2. Make your typeface about 2 points larger. Increase the size of the left-hand column. It should get more real estate than the right-hand column.
3. Move the ‘about us’ type text to a separate page. It’s not necessary, and it’s pushing the content that folks want to see further down.
4. Your search tool should show the first couple sentences of each search result (in my opinion).
5. For SEO: Pick a keyword or phrase that describes your organization and use it in the title tags throughout the site. It should go FIRST on the home page. So if Sourcebench is about web developer tools, it would be “Web Developer Tools - Sourcebench”. Deeper in the site, the article title should go first.
6. SEO, 2: Double the number of characters in your description meta tags.
7. A strategic point: I think mixing your business stuff together with the blog is fine, but this is a bit TOO mixed. It’s hard to realize that you’re a company I can hire. Somehow you need to organize the home page to better meld the blog and the business’ call to action. Sorry I can’t be more specific on this one, but somehow I have to look at the home page and say “Oh, cool, Sourcebench the company. And they have a blog!”
Hope this helps,
Ian
Naomi Dunford
October 13th, 2007 5:49 am
Even though I should probably be working on site development for actual paying clients right now, I couldn’t resist this opportunity.
Thorsten, I love your colors and I really like your logo. I like your use of whitespace, although I think it’s probably too much. The most useful piece of information on your homepage is where you say the site is “by web developers for web developers”. Fortunately, that’s near the top, but I would display it more prominently by putting the text in your header. That would probably also help you somewhat from an SEO standpoint. (Also, there should be a comma in there - by web developers, for web developers.) I really like what you said about surviving the day. I would change the text at the top to something like “Everything a web enthusiast needs to survive the day”. I struggled with this on my own site until I realized that the advice, tips, and tricks would be self-evident.
I couldn’t quite figure out if your site was primarily a sales vehicle or a blog. Traditionally, people can only really cope with one thing at once. I would either focus on the blog side and allow people to click on a “Hire Us” button, or focus on the sales side and have a link to your blog which would be secondary. Personally, I always prefer blogs as I like to know the people I’m hiring, especially when there’s little chance I’ll ever meet them.
On the blog issue, while the blogging community is getting bigger, it’s hardly big yet. Most people don’t even know what an RSS feed is. In my experience, it’s generally a good idea to follow somewhat of a traditional layout, at least when it comes to blog posts. I know you’re trying to be edgy, and I think it could work, but on your homepage you should probably at least list the dates or authors of your posts to make it clear that they’re posts and not random snippets of information.
A few more design issues:
I also hate tag clouds. Unless very well executed, they tend to look silly and certain topics are conspicuous by their over- or under-representation.
If you plan to make any money from your advertising, you’ll want to put something above the fold. If not, I would get rid of most of it.
Definitely display your categories more prominently. People don’t like to scroll, and you’re displaying your best stuff down there. I love the idea of the reviews but if I hadn’t scrolled way down, I wouldn’t have seen them.
When you click through to your archives and there is a long list of posts, the reading pane is very narrow. That’s not too big of a deal on the short posts, but in your CSS Tutorial Websites post, for example, there was a long time there when the reading pane was only a few inches across, and I’m on a 22″ monitor. Granted, if your readers are site developers they might all be sporting 30″, but for the average Joe, that’s going to be too narrow.
Overall, I like the site. Anything that looks like Collis Ta’eed’s stuff is alright by me. I think you have a strong foundation to work from and you’re incredibly brave to do open yourself up to this kind of scrutiny. best of luck!
Ben Yoskovitz
October 13th, 2007 5:55 am
A lot of the advice already has been right-on. It’s nice to see specific advice being offered, although it might make it hard to sort it all out.
I’ll take a different approach and give some general advice:
“If it walks like a blog, and talks like a blog, it must be a blog.”
When arriving at your site, I didn’t realize it was a blog. So I left. (This was when I visited previously, because I have.)
If you want interaction from the community, you want people to talk about the site, you want increased traffic then make it look like a blog.
Darren’s one of the few people I’ve seen go away from that with his home page design (to a degree). He’s able to do that because he’s pushing the blogging envelope. You don’t have to in order to have a successful blog.
I’m all for innovation, and I’m the biggest supporter of great design having an impact on the success of a blog, but what you have there…first time reaction of a visitor…isn’t a blog.
Guillermo
October 13th, 2007 5:58 am
Header: Too much. Too big.
White: Too white. Clean but… difficult to read.
Font: C’mon buddy! You want to make me blind? Help me!
I was not able to get to the point soon. It took me too long to figure out what is the good stuff and where is it.
The idea is good.
Good luck.
aaron
October 13th, 2007 6:00 am
I agree that the first thing I noticed was the fact that it seemed you were placing more focus on the tag cloud than the actual blog posts. I’d also tighten the header to include less whitespace.
Josh
October 13th, 2007 6:11 am
OK, forgive me for being rough, but I think the best way to improve things like this is to just tell it like it is.
Well, the first thing I noticed is that the header seems way too big. The man navigation doesn’t even show up until halfway down the screen, and I’m on a 1024 resolution. I don’t even see any of your posts above the fold. I might not even know this was a blog if I just stumbled onto it without scrolling.
My suggestion would be putting the current nav bar where the blue bar at the top of the page is now and cutting out the header altogether. The only thing there is the logo anyway - just put that next to the about text (and even that could probably be condensed) and you’ve saved who knows how many pixels of space.
Also, on my screen, many of the words in the “50 most common keywords” just aren’t readable. The ones that are smaller and lighter just look white-on-white to me.
I think the content itself looks fine as far as I can tell. I might put a time stamp on the posts or something. Even with the list of entries, it’s hard to tell if it’s a blog or just a static list of articles to me. (yeah, i know it says “latest posts” but I think it’s easy to miss that)
You also seem to have an awful lot of wasted space - especially on the posts themselves. I’d suggest upping the font size a couple notches. Small font on white justs seems to hurt my eyes after a while.
I also think the ads are too low. The more prominent the ads, the more likely people will be willing to pay for them. The spots for ads are three screens (two clicks on the sidebar) down on the page for me. I’d think that’s an awfully low place to put ads.
I think in general the design looks fine. Perhaps a few lines or something though to separate things out (and why does only the common keywords have a sort-of divider next to it?)
Canadian Dream
October 13th, 2007 6:16 am
First off, very cool design I love the little cartoon guy, but it does need some work.
Here’s a quick list of what I would change:
- Drop you current header and move up your ‘Welcome’ section’ as your new header
- Shorten your welcome to paragraph to 25 words MAX. Keep it short because you have exactly five seconds to convience me to stay and read more. Basically start off with the thought the most important thing I have to tell you about this blog is…
- Replace the tag cloud with a list of tags and keep the tag list to a maxium of 25 items. I should be able to nagivate quickly to see what your write about.
-Increase the wide of your post column and give me a larger preview of each post or better yet the full post.
-Change the colour of your feed button and just have the word ’subscribe’ beside it. Also try adding an option to subscribe by email. You need these to stand out a bit.
I could go on, but I think you get the idea from most of the other comments so far.
By the way I also love the colour scheme.
Best of luck,
Tim
Adam Miller
October 13th, 2007 6:16 am
Hi Thorsten,
I’m reasonably new to the blogosphere (at least seriously), but thought I’d share a few thoughts.
1) Header: The header is a little on the large side. Looking at the mouseovers on the navigation page, its nice to have the information pop up, but could you also perhaps move the general intro info (the welcome paragraph below) as a default text in the same area? This would still leave some whitespace, but would bring some content above the fold.
2) Design: I like your colour scheme, but think the other layout could be tweaked a bit. The rule that I always try to follow is content is king. You can monetize, but the content should be given the place of honour.
3) Tag Cloud: I’m on the fence about tag clouds, I keep adding and removing mine to my site, but regardless of that debate, I’d put fewer tags there. I think with 50 some are being lost in the shuffle, especially since some are too small/light to be read. You focus a lot on some nice whitespace earlier, and then have an extremely cluttered tag cloud, it can send conflicting messages.
4) Navigation: I’d move this higher or to the side. I think it might get lost down at the bottom. Though, I think the black is a nice contrast, and that may need to change if you move it . . . (on a related note, I oddly enough just discovered that Darren has the same thing on his page . . . I’d never looked down that far before!)
5) Content: As I said before, I’m trying to work with the rule content is king. Make the posts a little easier to read, perhaps touch up the grammar just a touch. Also, if I didn’t click on one of the titles, I wouldn’t have known there was more. If you can drive people deeper into your site with a read more link, you get a better chance to keep them there. If all I see is just a short little blurb, and no visual sign that there is more to read, it looks like a lot of little paragraphs without a whole lot of content. You’ve put the time into writing it, make sure people know its there so they can read it! :)
6) Share on the web: Like mentioned above, I’d find a way to make the content easier to share socially. Doesn’t need to be obnoxious, but give the easy option for those who want to send it around.
As I’ve said, I’m still relatively new into the serious world of blogging, but these are a few thoughts I’ve had. All in all, I think you’ve got a great base to start from, it just needs to be tweaked a bit!
Good luck!
Adam
LiveWorkBalance
Michael Martine
October 13th, 2007 6:19 am
Just about everyone has said what I would say (header too big, purpose of site not obvious). But let me offer an example that is doing what Sourcebench should be doing (complete with cute cartoon characters): Freelance Switch. I think you guys could learn a lot by seeing what they do and applying it to your community. Also, look at what SitePoint has done. They are a huge, thriving community, and you can learn from their example.
Speaking of cartoon characters: real web developers come in a few more flavors than male and white. Perhaps your cartoon characters should, too.
You say you want Sourcebench to be a community of web developers, but I don’t see any obvious community tools or signs that a community exists. The words “hire us” are much more obvious than the fact that there are tools for people to use. You want to show people immediately that there is some benefit to staying on the site.
I love the name Sourcebench! It’s a fantastic name.
AaronTN
October 13th, 2007 6:20 am
Okay, design-wise, I would say too little on the top part of the page. If you want to keep the welcome section at the top, use it in the header, if not, then slice down the header and use more real estate to help people know why they would want to read down.
The keywords take up too much space. If you want to do some sort of keyword thing, then reduce it to just a few keywords, like top 10 or something like that. It will help with trying to understand what the site is about. I like the subscribe button, very much right in front of you so that you know how to subscribe and what the feed is.
The content is almost secondary to the sidebar.
Decrease the real estate on the right side and thin it out. It is not your main focus, the content is. Thin out the sidebar and have less white space on the sides of the sidebar and content.
There is a lot of stuff going on in the whitespace at the bottom that would work better as links in the sidebar, or even in the nav section in the bottom.
The nav section is good on the bottom in the individual posts and pages, but for a less novice user, they wouldn’t know how to get from point a to point b on the main page.
You also might want to try just a shade darker green for the text. It is kind of fuzzy in with all of the white.
You have your 5 most recent posts on the main page, you may want a list of the 10 previous entries in a quick link section so people can see if there is other stuff they want to read.
I do really like the navigation and design of the blog page though, all except for the header size.
Ben
October 13th, 2007 6:34 am
1. Font is too small, even with my bifocals it is really tough to read.
2. Tag cloud is impossible to read and is really irritating.
3. Double header seems to be a waste.
4. The light green on white is tough to read.
5. I do like the cartoon guy. Nice branding idea.
That’s my take on your site. Personally, I would probably not read it on a regular basis because the content doesn’t appeal to me.
bob@projecta.com
October 13th, 2007 6:35 am
Good job on starting the site - you are much further along than I am on my other endeavors!
One oddity is the homepage content is left and the side navigation is right. Then on the individual pages/blog posts the nav is left and the content is right. I’ve never seen that before. Minor, but it threw me off - wasn’t consistent.
The links could be darker, or bolder. I agree th font size needs to be larger too with good spacing.
Deb
October 13th, 2007 6:40 am
My comments are about how this artifact functions as a communication’s device. I don’t say that to show off I want to place my comments in context so they can be understood. They will be different from the SEO and Web 2.0 types.
Overview: I like clean and uncluttered. This goes too far, so that the general impression on opening the landing page feels lost and unanchored; and the navigation bar cuts the screen in half so the header no longer looks like a header but an unfinished page. The text seems to have adequate contrast but the font weight and size is too small and too light.
Likes: Light background and dark text. While citrus green is not a personal favorite I think once you get the artistic proportion ironed out it will work well with the white/gray/soldier blue. I like that the sidebar is simple and not a bunch of flashers.
Dislikes: The caricatures have issues. The guy(s) have facial features reminiscent of gangsters in old movies but wear Mr. Rogers’ sweater and sneakers. The guy next to the welcome statement really looks unfriendly although they all could use a little tweaking. Also while I think the intent with the guys having their backs toward the viewer is to look like they are writing on a board, it would be more effective for them to face the viewer and hold pointers instead.
The footer is a bit heavy for the rest of the page. It leaves the reader wondering why more of the header and body couldn’t include some of these elements. Balance overall is something you should probably take a good look at from a design artistry point of view.
Personally I do not like tag clouds; I just don’t. That aside however, yours is a problem in that the higher weighted keywords are not strongly attached to the stated mission of your blog. The last thing you would want is to have a disconnect in messages on your landing page. I suggest you eliminate it until your keyword searches catch up and match what you say you are about.
My final comments are about the writing. I realize that this is a techie blog and not English literature. However, attention to detail is important in programming and one way to demonstrate that is through careful attention to grammar and usage in your text. You would do well to invest in a professional text editor to condense and clean the writing to give you a chance to get what is already published up to snuff. One other text issue is in your “contact” box. The last statement at the bottom of the box reads: “If this is something you want to do…” This is your sales pitch. You must not waffle or apologize when asking for the sale.
So I hope you read my input from the standpoint in which is it offered. Best of luck to you.
The Happy Rock
October 13th, 2007 6:42 am
I am not an expert, but from a casual user it was way to hard to figure out what the site was about, and how it could benefit me.
The homepage should be able to quickly sell me on what you are offering and why it is worth time.
Even after reading the ‘into paragraph’ I still had no idea what I would really get out of the site.
Sell me.
I feel like I have the same problem on my site.
Dave C.
October 13th, 2007 6:43 am
Being a designer and a fairly novice blogger, I think I’ll keep my comments to the design aspects.
Overall, the design is clean and accessible initially. The navigation is easy to find and read. The layout is intuitive. There’s a lot of positives, but there are a few things that got my attention from the start.
Header - The header is sparse to a fault I think. With so much extra white space, it almost looks like somethign is missing, like the image is slow to load.
Logo - Honestly, I don’t get it. For someone that has no idea what Sourcebench is about, the logo doesn’t help them, especially if they have no idea what means. Cartoon figures are becoming popular, but these seem a bit arbitrary.
Navigation - I would change HOME to BLOG. Also, the SOURCEBENCH link isn’t plainly obvious even after you roll over it. I honestly don’t know why I’m on the site because you don’t explain what you’re about. Maybe an About quote or page would be beneficial. This also affects the HIRE US button because why would I care about hiring Sourcebench when it’s not obvious what you do exactly. “Don’t Make Me Think” - Steven Krug.
Tag Cloud - Plain and simple, this is hard to read anything smaller than 3rd level strength. The sub H6 type in gray against white automatically lead people to read the larger black type, which is great if that’s the only subject(s) you want them to read about. Otherwise, I would change the type style on this to something more fluid, larger and not light gray.
Code Snippets - Under the Sourcebench link, you’ve got a few posts about coding options. I’m sure that programmers automatically understand what you’re referring to, but with no explanation, non-programmers have no idea what the point of these posts are. Maybe a simple explanation before you launch into the code.
I’m on the fence about the post headlines on the Sourcebench. I kind of like the fact that they’re off to the side, making them unique, but what you lose is the obvious break in the body copy from one post to the next. When you’ve got multiple posts on a page like this, the headlines serve not just as titles, but to break up the text to make things easier to read.
If you want to keep the headlines on the side, you could change that gray to white gradient behind the body copy to start gray at the top and move down to white instead of both directions. That would give the implied linebreak you need, I think.
Hope that wasn’t too harsh. I’m pretty critical when it comes to design and usability. I think you’ve got a unique idea here and could make this site really killer with a few minor changes.
Benson
October 13th, 2007 6:45 am
First of all, a compliment: I love the domain name, and think the general site design idea is great.
That being said, here’s a few things to fix IMHO:
1) WAY too much header space. It’s very empty space, and you can’t actually tell there are posts unless you scroll.
2) Speaking of posts, make them more of a priority on your homepage. As a first time reader, I had to actually search for them.
3) I, like others, hate Tag Clouds. In your blog’s case, it’s not really a distraction for me, it’s just taking up a good chunk of space.
4) Indicate that there’s more to the post than just what you have on your homepage. At first site, it looks like the post is just one paragraph long.
5) Make your RSS button a bit more prominent. As it is now, it blends in well…too well.
6) As another commentator said, I can’t quite figure out if your blog is designed to advertise services you provide, is your personal blog, or is a community blog. If you’re looking to generate advertising, as it looks like you are, you’re probably going to need to move the ads above the fold. The placement in the footer is going to be an extremely, if not near impossible, sell.
But as stated, I like the idea of the design and think you’ve chosen an excellent domain and site name.
Best of luck in your blogging pursuit.
Starfeeder
October 13th, 2007 6:49 am
First think, I agree that the header could use some work, not so much the size of it(1900×1600 resolution at work and home) but that space doesn’t do much for me…
As I was scrolling down I noticed there was a “Whats new at source bench sticky post” I would move that to where the “Welcome to Sourcebench” is at and move that welcome message into the header.
Maybe some more graphical icons or something, I love the artwork, but it was very minimal and I almost thought it was another make money blog, but for a design/development blog I expect more graphics…
Overall look is clean and sophisticated, love those drawings :)
I would also try to put the archives and categories up higher somewhere, I thought that the guy only had made 5 posts or so…
About the footer, I thought it was a different site when I scrolled all the way down, the design flow from broken for me. The ad units looked like buttons for a different layout.
Once I figured out it was a web development resource I scanned his blog postings to look for “tutorials” Saw the CSS tutorial thats a plus, but wanted more posts on tutorials, best practices, SEO, dev tools, how to use dev tools, easy PHP tricks for non-php guys etc etc…
The next content I was looking for was archives and categories to find out what else I could get from this site, but that was all the way down in the footer.
Once I got into his posts my time on his site went up a bit more… exploring links etc etc… though I much prefer tutorials to be on the page I’m already at, instead of having to go to another external link to read up on a tutorial.
plonkee
October 13th, 2007 7:04 am
Hmm. It makes me feel like I’m using the wrong shape monitor and mine should be more portrait orientation.
The white space makes it feel empty, like its new there isn’t much going on yet.
I’m not in the target group, but the content didn’t seem very hook-y. Then again, I’m read blogs because I like to read as much as I want to know about the topic.
Chad
October 13th, 2007 7:27 am
My first impressions are that the blog loads very slowly. Find some ways to reduce the number of images and image file sizes. Second, the header is way too large. I’d reduce the size of the logo in the header and reduce the height. Third, I’d either get rid of the ‘Welcome to Sourcebench’ block altogether or significantly reduce it’s height. You have way too much content below the page fold.
Some of your ‘50 Most Common Keywords’ are colored too lightly and blend in with the page background. Take a look at these fonts and get them changed. I might consider moving the advertising block above the ‘Most Common Keywords’ block for additional advertiser exposure.
For your latest post, I would have it take up the entire content width as well as make the font larger than your previous posts. This is to give it a little more exposure than previous, older posts.
criTix
October 13th, 2007 7:31 am
seriously good looking site! Designs good, I would even say it almost needs MORE ads, to make the place a little less sparse - maybe one more in the header. Also blog rush????
I am sure this post on problogger will knock it up a bit over 300 on its own tbh ;)
Shawn Hoefer
October 13th, 2007 7:47 am
I didn’t read all of the comments… there’s a lot of ‘em and they appear to be, for the more part, quite well thought out.
My $.02? If you’re going to use the cloud, get it balanced. could not read the small tags and the big tags were a little too prominent. Personally, I’d get rid of it… never liked ‘em anyways.
Ditto everyone else on the header. Too open and too much ‘below the fold.’ I dislike the roll-over texts. There’s no need to tell me that the button labeled ‘contact’ will allow me to contact you.
The color scheme is nice. The icons are cute, if non-descript (without the thought bubbles) but I would consider using a wee bit more contrast throughout.
Roberta
October 13th, 2007 8:17 am
Firstly, I want to say that I really like the crisp color of the footer. My attention was immediately drawn to that as far as the entire page is concerned.
I don’t really care for the green, because there is so much of it. The color behind the header looks like it was made with the stripe generator. I would start off by changing the post title color to something a little brighter, not pastel, but something like a blue. It would contrast well with the green that’s going on.
I really like how open the blog looks. It’s very easy to read.
The navigation bar looks like Blogger, a lot. The header space is a little big for my tastes and makes me have to scroll down for the actual content. I’d put the little guy next to the Welcome intro, right into the header.
I see on the navigation menu, there’s a “hire us” link. I would put something on the main page that makes me want to hire you. Tell us why we should hire you and what you’d do for us. Are there any freebies as far as tools go? Is this site useful? These are questions I think of when looking for web design stuff.
In the keywords section, we all know it’s a tag cloud, I’d remove the “”s.
Nice utilization of the footer as advertising space.
Overall the site could use some minor tweaks and changes, but I like the cleanliness of it. I also really like the fact that the ads are all together in their respective spots, instead of cluttered all over the place.
There’s my two cents.
elysa
October 13th, 2007 8:55 am
I am a graphic designer so most of my input is design related.
My initial response is that there is a lot of wasted real-estate at the top. I feel like the intro section and the header could easily be combined.
Second – what’s my call to action? Why is Whats (should be What’s) new at the bottom? The whole bottom section (categories, archives, etc) seams like an after though visually. If you are marketing towards designer’s & developers attention to detail is a must.
I don’t think monthly archives are important, that space should be used for most popular posts or our favorites. Why would I click on July 2007? I would click on a post topic that interests me.
I like your little illustration guys. Under latest posts could the guys represent categories – maybe only 5 different guys – design, development, etc.
Community friends – there is only 1 thing? That’s an odd title for that
Empty advertising space – I would check out how Young Go Getters handles the unused ad space – it’s much more attention grabbing then Advertise Here.
Don’t be afraid to use colored background to separate your sections. Everything is running together.
I didn’t know the text popped up on the header until I read that on the comments here.
jen at semantically driven
October 13th, 2007 9:38 am
Hi, I haven’t read through all the comments above, but I do agree on the size of the header comments I did read. It is too big. The snippet for what the site is about could be moved up.
Also, I can’t find a detailed what the site is about page. If I were to hire you then I’d want to know more about who I was hiring, what sort of work you had done, that sort of thing.
One last thing, write using proper capitalisation etc. The post where you mention that ProBlogger is commenting, you’ve used a small i instead of a big I. Just a small thing, but helps make the site look a lot more professional.
Last of all, good luck disseminating all this feedback and using it constructively.
Simon
October 13th, 2007 10:59 am
I like the cartoon character designs, reminds me of freelance switch. However, the layout of the design isn’t all it could be. The size of the header and the strange placement of the welcome section makes it look like it’s not quite finished. Personally, I think I’d look at either moving the welcome text to the header, or doing something else to it so that the header of your most recent post title appears “above the fold”. It also looks like you haven’t quite decided whether you wanted to have a blog style, or a magazine style, so you’ve kind of got a mixture of both. The smallest text in your tag cloud is also far too small to actually read.
On the content, you seem to have a strange mixture of bery beginner orientated posts mixed with code snippets which aren’t documented and other random content. I’d suggest being a bot more focused and commenting your “code only” posts.
Joe
October 13th, 2007 11:11 am
For what it’s worth, The little guy pointing to the individual post titles looks a little too uninviting. His back is to the readers.
You may want to turn him around so he looks friendly and is trying to help readers find your content.
But I do like the use of the character otherwise. Nice touch.
Skellie
October 13th, 2007 11:22 am
1. There is no content visible ‘above the fold’. The ‘Welcome to Sourcebench’ graphic and message could be moved into the header, alongside the logo. This would shift the content higher and engage new visitors.
2. The content is not given enough prominence. Headlines should be larger and more eye-catching. Posts should be dated, so visitors know the site is frequently updated. The writing man graphic could be removed to make the post area wider. At the moment it’s too narrow and would ensure a meaty post would be a few feet long.
3. A new blog shouldn’t require sign ups to comment. You want to make the process as easy as possible to start building up social proof for your site. Later on you can start to be picky. Looking at the main page, you wouldn’t even know that you *can* comment.
4. The 50 most common keywords is not what should be emphasized in the top of the sidebar. It’s a usability problem — most of the links are illegible and tiny. A list of categories wins over a tag cloud every time. There’s a perfectly good category list hiding in the footer that should be bought up to replace the common keywords cloud.
5. The first thing many new visitors will look for is an About page, which is not present at the moment. I’d suggest adding a link to an About page next to the ‘home’ button.
Overall: The main issue I have with the design is that the content is not what’s emphasized. Start emphasizing the content, make it easier to navigate and things will happen for you, Thorsten :)
Mark
October 13th, 2007 11:42 am
Greetings -
First, Darren, we all know that you are crazy busy but maybe you can do a weekly community critique of one of your reader’s sites as a way to give back…if not, very nice thing that you are doing for SourceBench to help improve his site.
For SourceBench, I would just point out that the graphics look a little “clip arty” and if I am hiring professional developers I want their site to look like they have created custom graphics.
All the best, and I wish SourceBench great success.
Mark
Bobby
October 13th, 2007 11:49 am
I agree with some of the earlier comments. The first thing I noticed is how the keywords, community and ads on right side take up half the page horizontally.
The Join The Team, What’s New and Contacts sections need something other than white backgrounds to make them stand out. It was a little hard to follow where these sections started and ended visually with the background being the same color.
The Site is good in that it has a wide variety of content. It loaded in a decent amount of time on my first visit. Over all it is a good start. We all have to start somewhere.
Chris Howard
October 13th, 2007 12:00 pm
Thorsten, you’ve made a great start. Many folks would love 300 visitors a day. :)
Rick’s comments here are well worth reading.
Many folks have made comments here that are helpful, but most are about design and don’t really get to the core issue about increasing traffic.
That said, design is important for your blog because your site is about web design and development, and everything said by readers above should be addressed as your credibility depends upon it.
But about the bigger issue of increasing traffic, I challenge readers to focus on that rather the site’s design.
You probably are already doing the things required. Plateau’s are not uncommon and you just have to persevere.
But as a refresher:
1) Network, network, network. Get out in the world and post comments on other relevant blogs and sites. Link to other folks’ stuff you like. Also post on any other sites of interest - that at least leaves a link to your site. If people like what you say, they’ll click the link in your name to check your site.
2) As Rick said, content is king. Write consistently but focus on quality rather than quantity. One good post every two days is better than two average posts every day. Also, don’t be afraid to write something a bit controversial. Also, regards quantity, the more often you post, the quicker they die, as people tend to move on to new posts.
3) Put hooks in your posts. Always ask a question and also you don’t have to cover every possibility. Some of my best posts have died in the backside because I failed to ask the readers a question, or left them with nothing to add. You’ve got to make readers want to comment. And once they comment, they’ll come back to see if someone responded. And then it mushrooms.
4) Create and encourage community/discussion. Eg. remove registration for comments and always respond to all valid comments.
5) As Donna said in the first response, socialize. Digg, Technorati, Del.icio,us etc.
6) Hang out at sites like ProBlogger because the game keeps changing and these guys are up with the latest goings on.
7) If you can, write your own lead-ins with hooks for your RSS feeds. This is what shows in the RSS feed if you don’t show the full post. The lead-in should hook the reader into wanting to click thru to the post.
8) Design your site to reflect what you’re about and also so it adds credibility to your posts. And of course, make it easy on the eye and to navigate. If you write long posts, use headings to make them easier to read.
I put design last because once you get a reader, content is more important than design. In fact, I read a lot of sites just on their RSS feeds, never visiting the site, so design is irrelevant. And they’re obviously failing in their posts to hook me into commenting.
Kirk Warren
October 13th, 2007 12:17 pm
My first impression is the huge banner full of white space. I run at 1680 x 1050 resolution and with about 3/4 of my screen devoted to Firefox, I see almost no content, just a banner and a Welcome sign. Below the fold = death for most content in my opinion and you have page after page of content below the fold of the viewable space upon entering your site.
Not sure how to fix this problem, but a possible shrinking of the banner wouldn’t hurt. Maybe half the height it currently is or try experimenting with different sizes. You could combine the huge bit of white space on the right of your banner with the Welcome Message to free up enough space to show some content above the fold.
Next up is the huge devotion to the Tag Cloud that seems broken. I understand and use the concept of the cloud on my own page. Here, however, is a cloud where almost all of the keywords are too tiny to even read coupled with a grey font that makes it even harder to read. I like the theme you are going with the coding for your keywords, but that further compounds the difficulty in picking out keywords for me from your cloud.
I have not seen any studies done on Tag Clouds, but I do know they look prettier and feel more accessible while giving me a good idea about what kind of content is written about on any given site. Much better than the standard list of a million words most go with. My thoughts for fixing it is to work on the font colour to make it more friendly on the eyes. On top of that, either increase the default size for the smallest tags featured or increase the number of posts required to make it into the tag so those smaller tags do not get featured. As it is, that Cloud simply does nothing except point me directly at “” and everything else requires too much effort to pick out.
These 2 concerns are the first things that hit me the minute I enter your page and distract me from reaching your content. One blocks out all recent content and forces me to actively pagedown / scroll excessively to read it. The other makes it almost impossible to easily reach your previous posts through the cloud, effectively wasting a huge chunk of space on the side bar.
Next up is your actual postings. I honestly did not know there was more to your posts upon my initial scan of your front page. I think the first thing you should do is add a “Click Here To Read More” type link below each posting. People are stupid and there have been numerous studies done that show that if you want people to click something, beat them over the head with it. People click more on links that literally have the words “Click Here” underlined with the usual HTML link default. They respond more to it than “Click”, “Read More”, “Hit the Jump”, and so on. That post you made about ProBlogger on your site is a prime example. I read it on your front page and thought that was it. Tell me to click it. Make it known that people can comment on that post with a Comments link with the post and the number of comments associated with the post similar to ProBlogger’s posts.
That’s all I have for now. Hope this doesn’t come off too negatively. I like the colour scheme and little character mascot you are using and the writing and grammar seem sound upon basic inspection. Good luck and I hope ProBlogger’s reader critiques help you with your site.
Kirk Warren
The Weekly Crisis
http://www.weeklycrisis.com
Kirk Warren
October 13th, 2007 12:34 pm
Oh ya, I did a quick Photoshop of your site to show a nice, quick and functional way to fix the header problem while freeing up more of your site below the fold so it is visible.
You can view it here.
http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/4738/sourcebenchvm3.jpg
It just removes your entire banner and shifts everything upwards. Something to think about at least.
CJ
October 13th, 2007 12:37 pm
Pros: I like your illustrations. The header image and other images on the site are unique.
The color scheme fits with the overall subject of the blog.
I like the single post format.
You use WordPress. That in and of itself is a major ‘pro’.
Cons: Your header area is being wasted. This is prime real estate and the first thing that the majority of your readers will see. At a minimum, I would move the “Welcome to Sourcebench” text into the header, to the right of the logo, and move the content up. Move your content up so that it starts “above the fold”.
Your advertisements are too far down on the sidebar. This really devalues your ads, as they aren’t as widely seen. Move them to the top of the sidebar.
I would put the tag cloud down at the bottom of the page in the footer area. Try putting your categories in the sidebar, as well as possibly a link to the tag cloud (so that people who prefer to use that for navigation will be able to find it easily - those who hate it don’t need to look at it!) Also, by doing this you can make your font size larger and make all of the tags visible.
Since your blog is relatively new, get rid of the “archives” links in the footer. It shows that you’ve only been around for a couple months, and that you’re not posting that regularly (since September isn’t even listed).
Move the navigation in the footer either into the sidebar or the header. Probably 90% of your visitors will never see it.
Make your grammar and writing style more consistent. PROOFREAD! Use spell check! If your grammar is horrible, then ask someone who has excellent grammar to proofread for you and then listen to them!
Get rid of the requirement to login prior to commenting. That really drops the number of comments that you’ll get. Just require an email address in order to comment. You can even set your site to require all comments to be moderated if you’re worried about spam (this is what I do since I’m completely paranoid, and I’m glad I do since Akismet doesn’t always pick up every spam comment).
Hire a journalist to write your website content. You’re copy writing leaves a lot to be desired. It sounds very ’spammy’, and again, your grammar isn’t that good. A journalist will write in a way that people want to read, and will make your content seem valuable, instead of like a sales pitch.
Post more consistently. Make sure you’re posting at least once a week, and once a day is good IF you can post quality content that regularly. I notice that you’ll post 4-5+ articles on a single day, and then won’t post for days (or even weeks) after that. Use your blogs advance posting feature (in WP, just change the timestamp of the post to a date in the future). This makes it look like you’re posting regularly without having to actually post every single day. You can pre-write your posts for a couple of days, a week, even a month if you’re feeling ambitious.
In the footer, your site says that it’s valid XHTML and CSS. But, if someone actually clicks on those links, it clearly states that you’re not even close to being valid (66 errors for the XHTML). If you’re promoting yourselves as being developers and designers, at least make sure that your own site is validating! This can also affect your SEO if the errors that you’re getting are putting up ‘roadblocks’ to search spiders. Do whatever you need to to get these errors fixed!
I’m hoping that this was helpful. I tried to stay out of the personal preference issues and go for strictly a usability and technical critique. (What I like to see in a blog is probably completely different than what a lot of others like to see, and my opinions on features or design are likely different than the opinions of many others, and vice versa. After all, I like tag clouds but it’s obvious that many others do not share my opinion. You just have to figure out if your target market has a strong opinion in either direction).
Miracle
October 13th, 2007 1:53 pm
Suggestions:
remove this: The Sourcebench team is happy to hear from you. Just leave us a small message and we will be right back at your service. replace with your welcome message and rss feed
Remove or greatly lower your tag cloud: its just wasted space and moves the visitor away from your more functional navigation.
Move your sponsors to the top of right sidebar then follow it by the call for more contributors on the site
Move your bottom navigation to a left sidebar. You have alot of information on the page and the visitor will feel confused and frustrated to try and navigate your site. They will leave before finding the bottom. If you have the categories and navigation on the left. It is easy to find.
On the bottom, you can put the contact us information, the news section for sourcebench, and links to new items. This will give information that you want people to see on every page without throwing it in their face.
On the posts page, do not separate the title and author info into a separate column than the content. Too much eye movement.
keep the right bar’s sponsors and call for help on all pages. You can probably use the same page template for the index and every single page. Definitely consider adding a social bookmarking tool like addthis.
At the end of each post, put a sales line for you to be hired to help. i.e. Like the information you are reading? Click here to hire sourcebench to solve your problem.
Your hire us page should be shorter and be written for the web.
I would consider removing the “why we love new ideas” heading and replacing it with “we are the right team”. You already have a heading called “new ideas are our stimulus”. This is more time for someone to chance not hiring you.
At the end of hire us page, you need a major click to action. Something large and just says “do this as it is the only logical next step”. This call should only be one to two sentences and an easy to click link.
Consider putting the “your solutions” link information on the sourcebench website. When you move to a second website, you have to learn to trust a whole new website.
Finally, at the very top of the website, consider putting a simple tagline in the blue box
On the positive, I really love the design and idea behind the website. It is easy colors on the eyes, and the little cartoons makes the usually boring techy stuff seem fun. They navigation may be misplaced, but it is very simple to understand. It is not too overloaded with unnecesary information and once the navigational elements are found, it is simple to find the right click through. The best part of any site is its originality and you have it. I have not seen many community driven code help sites. You can supply code help for the most novice to the individuals whom have degrees from MIT.
John Lockwood
October 13th, 2007 3:52 pm
I to liked the illustrations but as one commenter mentioned I would compress the header, or get the guy with the wrench more toward the top.
The promise of web developer technical information was intriguing, but then most of what I could see of the tag cloud was about freelancing and jobs rather than the technical stuff. The less-prominent tag cloud elements are barely visible, rather than just de-emphasized. I would try to move the tag cloud down, clarify it, and move some of the bottom navigation elements to one of the sidebars.
I had to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to find the navigation elements to the archives, where I started to find some good stuff about Apache. The snippets idea for example is cool, but should be more readily accessible. I saw some code formatting issues on some of the main (index) pages, but these disappeared on the permalink pages.
Best of luck with your site, and thanks for being open to improvement — I’m sure if you keep wanting to improve things you will! I hope I wasn’t too negative.
Thorsten
October 13th, 2007 5:10 pm
Hi All,
i am really impressed about the valuable feedback i get here. You are great and very constructive. I really appreciate all the time you spend to review my site and post here. Don’t worry about posting negative feedback as this is exactly what helps me to improve the site.
So far i already got a lot of great ideas from the posts here and once Darren posts his resume i will start implementing changes to the site and i am sure that thanks to your help the page will turn out much better than it is right now.
As for the way of writing and the suggestion to hire a journalist i fully agree. I for myself am german which results in bad english grammar and a frequent mismatch of capitalized letters :) I am still searching for contributors to this project but as it is more like a side project which was more likely to be used as a place for me and my developers to store snippets and other useful information within the team the money i can invest is limited. Every money we make with it goes back in the project.
After all the feedback i will do a relaunch of this site with new design and better content as soon as possible. I did not expect to get this well formed stream of information here and i am really going to put this feedback to a use.
So far great thanks to all of you for your help and time.
Please continue!
Thorsten
Jalaj
October 13th, 2007 5:45 pm
“” is time wasted by developers, asking problogger for help, in turn wasting other’s by letting them to review the site…
Darren it was a nice choice to start with this site…
sourcebench developers are not clear for what the site is for…
it’s a project… it’s a blog… no it’s a “Hire Us” appeal..
What’s the site… nothing but a wordpress blog (even developers don’t intend to call it by other name…)
watch for the blog posts… nothing special…if the developers say ” I am stuck with around 300 visitors per day. ” they are lucky/lying
Want to comment on some posts? then you need to register first! who cares? and the developers who feel like following problogger’s success, did they ever cared to see if problogger itself requires to register before commenting?
I followed to a page with two comments and the comments are made by two named persons… I said named because there was no link to anyone’s profile or site…
rest… developers should now have an idea of it.
nitinpai
October 13th, 2007 6:50 pm
Negatives
=================================
Whitespace - too much
Colors - Monotonous green
Text - strain for the eye
Tag Cloud - amongst the worst I have ever seen
Layout - I don’t understand it. (Posts at the top, RSS button in the middle and two columns in the block over the footer. Looks like a disordered sidebar to me.
Header Menu - wrongly places and not visible clearly (Should be placed on the top most blue bar like problogger has)
Positives
=======================================
Footer - Quite Pleasing and nice menu’s out there
Design - Looks good. Would be better if you mix n match some other colors apart from green
====================================
Hope my view helps the owner in some way. Now please could somebody give me a review of my blog. :)
Kerch McConlogue
October 13th, 2007 11:48 pm
Most of what I think has already been mentioned.. but I didn’t notice this in the comments.
Yes, of COURSE, we all know to click on the title of the post to get the rest of the information. But a recent study by Marketing Sherpa found that without the CLICK HERE to read more.. or some variation, people just don’t do it.
I almost missed the cool CSS stuff you posted because it wasn’t clear in the snippet on the front page that there WAS more.
PS. I totally agree with the person(s) who suggested cleaning up the writing. I’m really not so picky, when reading blogs, that the grammar be perfect. But when the sentences are so long and run on, by the end, I forget what was at the beginning. So.. start by shortening ALL your sentences!
KCLau
October 14th, 2007 12:08 am
Why commenting require login? This feature reduce the number of comment vastly.
Corinne Edwards
October 14th, 2007 2:46 am
Cute characters.
My first reaction was what does Sourcebench mean? What is a sourcebench?
Maybe a sub title would help!
Good luck!
Carla
October 14th, 2007 3:09 am
After commenting yesterday, I had another thought about your title/post structure. The look is unique, but sometimes there is a reason for the tried and true . . . it just works.
I have two ideas.
First to put the post title above the actual post, then float the details in a division so the post content flows around it.
heading
details (float right)
post content
Or if you really like the left alignment with the details, make the heading/post more of an outline structure. I think that would make it a little more readable.
heading here ……………………
detail1 post content
detail2
If that is “clip arty,” I’d like to know where you’re getting your clip art.
Nancy
October 14th, 2007 3:10 am
I love that little character. I don’t know why, but associating a little cartoon-person or mascot with a site always makes me like it so much more.
I have to agree with those who’ve said there’s too much space wasted at the top. I like to see a little bit of content when I visit a site without having to scroll down.
I also have to second those who’ve mentioned the logging-in feature with the comments. I think that tends to discourage would-be commenters from commenting.
Finally, I was a little confused about the “blog” part of your blog at first. Your posts don’t include the sort of stuff I see at most blogs (”23 comments,” “digg this,” a date stamp), and because those visual cues weren’t there, I had to wonder whether or not this was really a blog. (I realize you only post snippets on your front page, and that a lot of the “bloggy” things are on your individual post pages, but that was my first impression nonetheless.)
Thanks for allowing us to critique you, Thorsten, and best of luck with your relaunch!
GettyCash
October 14th, 2007 3:55 am
Nice design, luv the cartoon guy
UltraRob
October 14th, 2007 4:40 am
Sourcebench is a site for developers. One thing you don’t want on a developer site is JavaScript errors. It’s really annoying to get a popup in IE about a script error. Most non-developers don’t have script debugging on so they won’t see it.
Giving away scripts is nice but there’s only a few. Even with just a few, the navigation isn’t good enough. I’d go looking elsewhere rather than trying to figure out how to navigate and search.
I hate tag clouds. I’ve never seen one that seemed useful to me.
You have some useful content it’s just hard to find. Keep adding more good content. Make it easier to read and find using some of the other suggestions and I think you’ll have a great site.
Rich Owings
October 14th, 2007 5:39 am
When I was starting out, I spent a HUGE amount of time on message boards, answering questions. I would always have a link in my signature of course, but I would also link to relevant posts in a non-spammy way, making sure that I was really providing a valuable resource in the process. This got me traffic AND backlinks.
Also, general SEO advice. Go for long tail search terms, not generic ones.
Misty Khan
October 14th, 2007 6:26 am
1) I like your little mascot guy - the beginnings of some good branding so why don’t you take more advantage of him? Give him a name. Bring him to life. He’s a great opportunity to spice up your site.
2) OK, it looks like your site is aimed at developers from the front page to be a resource for them. But then there is a hire us page - is that aimed at non-developers who want to hire you to develop a site for them or for developers who need some extra help? These are going to be two very different audiences - I think you need to pick one to concentrate on.
3) If you are trying to convince people to hire you to design their sites, you might want to clean up your grammer a bit. I love the look and feel, and I hardly write in the Queen’s English myself (I’m a Texan after all), but if someone is going to hire you to develop their site, they are going to hold you to an ultra high standard.
I feel your frustration and your pain - hang in there though and best of luck!
Andrew Ferguson
October 14th, 2007 6:37 am
I tend to agree with a lot of what’s been said:
–Too much whitespace
–Your content is way too far down (header is too large)
–Not enough quality content
–commenting requires a login (This is a massive barrier to me
as a reader. I avoid sites that do this. Try Akismet if you’re having spam problems)
–Your writing could use some work. I’m generally forgiving of middling writing when dealing with blogs; it’s an informal medium, right? But when I come across really simple grammatical mistakes, I tend to go elsewhere without a backward glance.
–In the same vein, the overall look and feel of the blog screams ‘commercial’ or almost ’spammy’. There’s no sense of community or involvement in the blogosphere. Just something hoping to grab google traffic.
–Footer navigation CAN work, but it doesn’t seem to in this case.
Here’s some other stuff that may not have been mentioned
–Your RSS feed is parsing some of the php you’re posting, or at the very least eating it. Scroll down to PHP Environment Overview while viewing your RSS Feed in Firefox 2.0. The whole paragraph of text and the first few lines of php are gone. It makes the posts look like coding errors.
–So I’m at an individual post right now… where’;s your RSS feed? There’s two more prominent links on the homepage, but on the individual page template there’s one tiny textlink that I didn’t even notice on my first pass
Hope this helps :)
Ruth
October 14th, 2007 10:27 am
Although I’m an avid reader of Pro-blogger I haven’t made the step of creating my own blog. I’ve have however, been a club leader on the ivillage message board network for over five years and hope I do have some insights that might me helpful. First while the cartoon characters on the header are cute it leaves the reader wondering what the sight offers the reader. Perhaps making the header smaller would help. Also your mission statement is too wordy as are some of your articles. There are extra words that make the paragraphs confusing. There are many helpful hints to editing an article. Here are three to try. First print the article out . You’d be amazed how much easier it is to catch mistakes or wordiness when you are looking at a piece of paper rather than a screen. Second, read the article aloud. Does it flow as it would in a conversation? Third, ask someone to read the article and make suggestions. I know that is hard because writers become attached to their work, but it forces us to see through someone else’s eyes. The cartoon guy that is used like a “bullet” to announce recent articles is a nice feature. Hope you have gained some great tips from the many comments. Thank you for allowing us to review your site.
Ruth
October 14th, 2007 10:38 am
I just re-read my post and found a few mistakes. Seems like I didn’t follow my own advice before hitting that submit button.
Anthony Lawrence
October 14th, 2007 10:59 am
I was turned off immediately by the cutesy cartoon characters - didn’t feel like the site was serious.
As some others noted, the writing is painful: “as much people as they can”, “so what we got here” - this kind of stuff is everywhere and just turned me off.
Then the http://www.sourcebench.com/blog/ has broken stuff on it - hardly makes me confident that anything you might have to say about design is worth reading, does it?
SingForHim @ Real Life
October 14th, 2007 2:45 pm
I love the tags around the title on the header. I also love that you are so interested in contributions from the web community. It is clear that you value others’ ideas. Love the guy. I agree with the person who said to give him a name and personify him more.
I would
a) condense the introduction into a tagline for the header, and move all the other stuff to an about page. Maybe “Sourcebench: a community toolbox for developers, by developers”
b) get rid of the tag cloud, and make all the tags readable.
c) work on grammar and capitalization (ie: capitalize the word “I”) cut out every unnecessary word.
e) Don’t begin so many sentences with “Sourcebench……” You can think of a more creative way to open a sentence.
f) Move the footer navigation to the side bar. I would probably not have gotten far enough down the page to see the footer if I weren’t trying to review it.
g) I’m not sure I would know that the front page posts were snippets. You may want to add a “read more” link or something under them.
Thilo
October 14th, 2007 10:45 pm
I can’t read most of the tags. You should change that.
Jack
October 15th, 2007 12:46 am
Where is the link back to Wordpress? That’s the least you can do to help a group of developers that spend hours on end to develop and maintain a platform for you to create a blog on. Its ironic that you say the blog is for developers.
JxPx
October 15th, 2007 5:11 am
I didn’t read every comment, but I think I might have one point that no one else covered and that is…
Where is your favicon?
Jason
October 15th, 2007 8:52 am
Looks good to me. Maybe a bash some Mombo users. That might spark some interest. =)
Kidding…
But really, how does the content differentiate from other alike blogs?
My only advice is to ask yourself:
What do you want to read on a daily basis? Is it going to make me skip the new episode of the Simpsons? Or is it the same stuff I can find at the PR 8 development blog?
Lila
October 15th, 2007 1:00 pm
There are so many things to be done. First thing is header of your blog occupying large space that means you are not using header part properly.
Second ,place search to the right part as many bloggers do and Darren has done the same.
Third, your site will look better if you removed (This site is designed by web developers for web developers to create a community and toolbox for developers, designers and everyone who is interested in web development.) and place at the bottom part. You will be better if you only put what you’ve written after that.Because that will be your int