http://www.ralford.net/

http://www.ralford.net/

I think I'm ready for round two. I've had my site up for about 2 months now, but I can't seem to turn it into what I want it to be. I'm gearing towards a community weblog, but right now it's just me posting because no one else will. I understand that anyone can post junk right now if they wanted, but the idea is that there would be moderators as more people became members and began posting.

My question is how do I get people to be "brave" enough to post? I want them to post about technology/tutorials/software/hardware or all of the above. Any tips? I think once people start, it will help, but I'm having trouble getting an initial flow of posters.

A second goal of the website is to provide a common area of knowledge for users - tutorials, articles, news of interest. But I want the users to provide the content.

None of the layout is set in stone. I'm willing to change the site around to make it more friendly (also to accomodate more users).

hi... nice site I am not sure about the blue text on a blue background as this may cause some problems the contrast between the links which are in a darker blue and the background colour is particularly low.... regarding increasing the number of posters, are people registering and not posting or are your visitors not converting to registered users. I look at the registration which is good but I couldn't see any kind of privacy policy which would make me reluctant to supply a genuine email address also there doesn't appear to be anything actually inviting me to contribute when I first enter the home page. I went to your about page but only struggled to read it because I was following up your request for feedback normally I would just have hit the back button the blue is a bit harsh and the text again is too dark for that background.

All in all a great site, very nice but needs a little tweaking

People are not registering (need to register to post), and they are not commenting either (anyone can comment). I like your point - there is no real benefit for someone who signs up. I will work on some sort of privacy policy.

Any more suggestions from anyone?

You need to do something about the color of your text. The links are good but the blue text on the blue gradient-ish background just doesn't work, especialy when I forget to turn off my gamming gamma and brightness options, it makes it even harder to read. I had to highlight your text to read parts of it, never a good thing.

What you could do is leave IE users with sore eyes since they don't mind our sore fingers and put an alpha-transparent background to the text using a 1x1px PNG, don't forget to exclude IE browsers from this.

Or you could change the text color, whatever you do it's up to you, but your text is hard to read...

Great looking site, and I personally don't have a problem with the text, but I can see how others might. Sticks, because it does actually look really good on top like that. Great use of those dark colors.

I like it.

I think in order for you to attract people to post their own info, you should offer them something in return. Perhaps you can allow them to link to their own sites although that can backfire on you (you'll need a strong moderator).

I'm going to actually take back what I said before and simply say stick with the color scheme. Looking at it again today, it's very nice and does in fact read well.

I'm afraid I don't agree with funkyfoof on the link part though. This is a blog and people come for the content, not the ability to post their own links. Having the abilty to make comments, and perhaps put their links in there should be more than enough.

Thanks for all of your input.

I plan on expanding the site quite a bit, but I don't want to put hours of programming time in for the users if I won't have users. Once (IF) I start getting users, I plan on adding extra options such as sigs and a selectable style sheet. I also want to add a +/- button or two so users can kill the adds on the side. Maybe even add a feature so they can choose the positioning of sidebars.

I think that some of the reason I don't have users is because people only see me posting, so it just looks like a single person blog. Do you think it would be worth putting a block at the top of the home page that tells people what the site is about? Or would this be too distracting? I experimented with a little bit, but I thought it took away from the content.

I would definately consider putting something at the top of the page inviting people to contribute... as you say it does look like a single person blog and at little encouragement wont hurt. You can always remove it once others start posting.
How are you promoting the site?

I've submitted to a number of search engines, and a few sites that track RSS feeds of weblogs. Other than that, I haven't done any real promotion. One or two sites that I belong to has a link in my sig, but that's about it. I suppose I have done no "real" promotion.

What did you have in mind?