Hey all,

www.ifyourstuck.com

Let me first give you a run down of what my site should be doing!
1.Community much like this one, help and supporting eachother on any computer related problem.
2.Completly free no pop-ups (becuase i hate them)
3.Will have some tutorials (once i have some free time)
4.Resource Centre - Downloads, templates, extras

Thats about it. Please note that i only made this website on the 7th March and the forum has been up since the 6th 2008!

Any feedback would be grately appreciated and much loved as i am really trying to get this one to work. I did have a site before this one (www.digitalwiki.co.uk) adn i tried my hardest to get it going but one thing that didnt help was the name. So now i went for ifyourstuck.com or shortned to IFS for a punchy delivery.

Thanks in advance for your review and it is much appreciated before i go too far.

IfYourStuck.Com

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[Www.IfYourStuck.Com]
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IFS,

I really like the overall look and feel for your site.

Here are a couple of issues I noticed:

This issue only occurs in Firefox (in IE, it looks fine), so just wanted to point out the browser differences... On the left hand sidebar, under "search", the field where you enter the search query overlaps with the left blue border. Not a big deal, but it stood out.

I am not a big fan of hit counters. A lot of people also say that it's not very professional. It's much better to install a tracking software, like Google Analytics or StatCounter.

Finally, this is an issue that almost always comes up here when someone is starting a forum. How will you market the forum? It takes a lot of traffic to sustain an active forum. I think what members of Website Babble (especially Lisa the owner) will suggest that you work on your website first, and over time when you start getting a lot of traffic, you can capitalize on that traffic to sustain an active forum.

Overall, though, your website looks great. Good job!

Sherif

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ssmorgan,

I have seen that issue too and i am working on a fix. I use both IE and Firefox to test the site and i cant quite find why the difference is happening.

I understand the Forum takes traffic to sustain, but i implamented it earlier to i could make the site and forum have the same feel kinda.

I am working on the website daily and will hopefully have some more content soon. Tutorial take some time writing i can tell ya!

Thanks again for your input it is much appreciated

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oh I don't blame you one bit, I bet tutorials consume a lot of time!

The thing that I have heard other members in this forum discuss is that if a site visitor visits your forum and sees that there is no activity, they may not really know that the forum is new, and they would assume that it's dead, so they may not stick around...

Of course, this is cycle has to break at some point, i.e. at some point, forum visitors will start posting even though there are not a lot of activity... but that's why a large amount of traffic would help, because some of them will stick around, contribute to the forum, and will initiate and maintain the momentum.

I am not saying you should scrap the forum... just summarizing some of the info that has been discussed here in the past... and it's definitely useful to know that off hand, to think about, and keep in mind

Sherif

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Tough Time Finding or Researching A Niche? Affiliate Niche Club will help!

Yes i can see your point and thanks for the info. Would a statement on the fron page saying that its new and not many posts have been made yet help?

I have started initiating other website sites in sharing some links such as tagrookie.com also a member here.

Thanks again for some great knoweldge.

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I have fixed this problem. In IE for some reason it looks fine, in Firefox is was overlapping, it was down to it not being centered. Easy fix, long time to find! Also i have removed the hit counter, i will sign up for a hidden type. I take it thats what you mean.

IFS

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I am very glad you took my comments constructively. To be honest, I do not know if this will work or not, because I have never started a forum before. But based on my naive view, I think it would work.

Here is something you could do... use http://www.aweber.com, and maybe give away one of your best tutorials as an incentive to sign up for your "mailing list" or "newsletter" or something like that.

Once you collect a handsome amount of opt-in, send a quick email to let them know that if they haven't been participating in the forum, then they should consider it, because it's growing, helpful, etc. (of course, you will have to work on the wording)

And needless to say, because this is true with any web-based project, it's important to remind yourself to remain patient... but I am pretty sure you already knew that

Browser differences is always an issue... glad the fix was easy, because I can tell you from experience, sometimes it's a bit tricky to make it look the same on both browsers

Yep, that's exactly what I meant.

Keep up the great work.

Sherif

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Tough Time Finding or Researching A Niche? Affiliate Niche Club will help!

It's funny you should say about a newsletter as the reason i found this forum was trying to find a free newsletter tutorial on 2createawebsite.com

It was actually one of my thoughts to get this going with a newsletter as i do receive many from pay for help websites and they have some interesting things in that keep me signed up to the newsletter only. But there promotion works, so thanks for re-instating my idea i didn't know if it would work.

Also one more question if you dont mind. Would some stock questions on the forum help? Say if i made an account called Stock Questions and then asked a section of questions throughout and gave a section of answers to go with them as i kind of boost to the forum, and to show people we do have answers?

Thanks for all your help guys, its great and really appreciated

IFS

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I think the newsletter idea is great, I am glad I reinforced what you were already thinking.

I think it would work in your favor to have common FAQ posted in different categories in your forum even if you posted the questions and their answers as the Admin.

As part of your research in the market or niche you're in, you understand what people in this niche are looking for or struggling with, and a list of frequently asked questions (and their answers) would be a great way to address those questions.

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Thanks a lot for all your help,

I will put it all into practice and see where i get to. I hope i can contribute some of my knowledge to the people on this forum as a way of thanks for all your help.

IFS

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IFS,

I am really glad I could help.

Looking forward to continuing to babble with you

Sherif

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Tough Time Finding or Researching A Niche? Affiliate Niche Club will help!

I look at the site and I must say it is truly informative. Also it appears that this is where your heart is as far as website creation after veiwing the first site and then this one, which you have made a lot of improvements.

With the eception of the things that Sharif pointed out the site is great keep up the good work..


Rashid

Thanks for the vote of confidence, i believe i have made a big improvement since my last try and i am taking my time in getting this one working.

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