Wanted: Domain Appraisal PCs review

ScottJ · Oct 3, 2008

Well I am just over a week in with PCs and happy with the progress, installed Wordpress and using it by myself for the first time, this checklist was handy.

Had a logo done, man. I used these guys which cost £165 for the logo design or £250 if you want business cards done with it as well.

Installed plugins and a theme along with the logo and made some posts to give it some substance, welcome any thoughts on the look/feel of the site.

It gets around 40 type-ins per day so has been around 100 visitors per day in the last week.

julian · Oct 3, 2008

its good - hard to fault...

looks the part - joe bloggs will be all over your adsense like a cheap suit

accelerator · Oct 3, 2008

ScottJ said:
Installed plugins and a theme along with the logo and made some posts to give it some substance, welcome any thoughts on the look/feel of the site.

My thoughts:

- For a logo you paid for, it does seem a little on the basic side, or did you choose this from a number of options they gave you?

- The News section is not focused on PCs, is this something you're going to change?

- I would probably put some adds within the body text, i.e. main left hand column, as well.

- I think you need a table of the best places to buy PCs online as well.

- I don't see why there's a mobile phones category as this could be handled by a standalone site.

Rgds

accelerator · Oct 3, 2008

Also, I think the RSS feed icons top right could do with being orange and not black and white.

Rgds

stender · Oct 3, 2008

am liking. v good

ScottJ · Oct 3, 2008

Thanks, the content is not settled as yet, more to help give a feel for the site by filling text/images so will change.

The logo is basic, I had 15 to choose from but resisted the urge to get anything too fancy or that would date easily: basic/plain, clear, red and incl the .co.uk part was the brief so I'm happy with plain as I couldn't do it myself.

Table of places to buy PCs will be the blogroll which needs to be completed.

RSS icon colour changed to orange.

retired_member32 · Oct 3, 2008

i like the feel of it too,but scott you must have been mad to pay that much for that logo imo,saying that it does go with your favicon.

mark

golddiggerguy · Oct 3, 2008

Theme ?

Word Press is a great tool to use for mini sites. Scott where did you get the theme from or what's it called? Usually it's in the footer the author or site it came from.

Or have you been a bad lad

bensd · Oct 3, 2008

Nice site Scott. Great domain to build on!

golddiggerguy said:
Scott where did you get the theme from or what's it called?

It looks like it's based on the revolution theme.

-Ben

mat · Oct 3, 2008

Im a fan of that theme and have used it on a few sites.

I do think it was a bit of a crazy move paying £150 for that logo. You could knock that up in 5 minutes on a pretty basic graphics package.

bensd · Oct 3, 2008

£150 does seem a bit steep. They seem to have done a nice job though with designing business cards etc (as seen on their website).

stender · Oct 3, 2008

I like the logo. Plain but effective and wont date. I would of had a go at doing you one for fraction on a pay if you use it basis.

retired_member16 · Oct 3, 2008

I dont think its far enough developed to comment on to be honest but if I did I would say

a) Adsense has no place on a domain as strong as that.
b) The YouTube clips are cheap and nasty.
c) The menu is not prominent enough
d) The logo is a little poor.
e) Going for a blog style format is the wrong way to go in my opinion.
f) Using 'category' in the menu systems is a big no-no
d) How will you get round the capitilisation issue in SE?

bb99 · Oct 3, 2008

ScottJ said:
The logo is basic, I had 15 to choose from but resisted the urge to get anything too fancy or that would date easily: basic/plain, clear, red and incl the .co.uk part was the brief so I'm happy with plain as I couldn't do it myself.

Haven't seen the other 14 but I think you picked the wrong one

The designer's porfolio is excellent though.

Fully appreciate that you want something not too fancy, but I think the one being used is just too "ordinary" and doesn't really lend itself to creating a brand.

Good luck with it though, afterall Google doesn't read logos

ScottJ · Oct 3, 2008

Adsense and the Youtube clip are placeholders for now and may/may not stay depending on what I decide to put there later on, probably later on I'll incorporate top/fav/popular posts & comments or the like so content is not finalised.

Granted the logo is plain but even at that outwith my skills

I'm happy with it but agree that I could have been more adventurous, it's important to me for it to have the .co.uk and clarity and it achieves the remit I gave.

I use 'no index' for categories, that way I can add a post to a couple of categories without worrying about dup content, only the posts get indexed so not an issue as far as I am aware.

The site ranks top 10 for 'PCs' and for 'pcs' so not sure what you mean by capitalisation issue?

The theme is a paid for revolution based one, if you search google you can find discount codes for them.

mojoco · Oct 3, 2008

I like the overall look of the site.

The logo looks OK to me, I would add a strapline to it.

The adsense on the top distracts from the overall quality, I think you can get away with the adsense on the right hand side though if it was me I would have no adsense at all.

The youtube clip seems pointless and cheapens the page.