Mini-site development - novice

[neddy]

Killing two birds with one stone

I recently purchased XSite Pro2 so that my 14 yo son could do some sites for me. I needed to do more than park my sites - and my son was desperate to earn some dough so he could buy an electric guitar.

And I'm not a site developer, and never want to be! (No offence intended to all you wonderful designers out there!).

For a novice, I think he has done a pretty good job, and I'm very proud of him! Obviously there is potential though to improve and monetise these sites further. I would be interested in some constructive critiques from fellow domainers!

These are some of his creations:

www.Bowral.com.au

www.Gundagai.com.au

www.Tewantin.com.au

www.KakaduTravel.com.au

www.SandyPoint.com.au

With his school commitments, Karate and band practise (he has formed his own band!), he will only be able to do one site a week for me.

The other great thing about doing projects like these at his age is that it teaches him new skills and gives him a good foundation for life ahead.

Cheers, Ned

 

[Honan]

Congratulations Ned in getting your son involved
You deserve to be proud
He has done an excellent job

My only suggestion is that on the contact pages, use a form rather than displaying an email addy

 

[neddy]

Congratulations Ned in getting your son involved
You deserve to be proud
He has done an excellent job

My only suggestion is that on the contact pages, use a form rather than displaying an email addy

Thanks Joe - appreciate your comments and your suggestion.

 

[Data Glasses]

he will be a happier person if he has music in his life

 

[djuqa]

Constructive Critique

1/ Lose the light green text , black or dark blue is best
2/ Lose the green borders on the adsense ads

 

[DavidL]

Nice sites - my only suggestion is to try and vary the layout/design for future ones. If Google recognise the same format for dozens of sites, they might penalise their ranking because they've been developed en masse.

A few years ago, we rolled out a couple of hundred sites, all with unique content but after an initial indexing and flurry of traffic, Google dumped us

 

[Shaun]

Ned,

You mentioned you were getting your son involved and I take my hat off to you. You should be very proud.

He has done an excellent job.

Hopefully he starts making some money off these sites and his enthusiasm will only grow. Hopefully he gets all of his mates involved and you help spawn the next generation of domainers!!!

 

[paz]

They look good!

I started when I was around 14 too, my only suggestion is to learn HTML and CSS as soon as possible so you aren't as restricted by programs.

 

[neddy]

Nice sites - my only suggestion is to try and vary the layout/design for future ones. If Google recognise the same format for dozens of sites, they might penalise their ranking because they've been developed en masse.

A few years ago, we rolled out a couple of hundred sites, all with unique content but after an initial indexing and flurry of traffic, Google dumped us

Thanks for the comments David - I appreciate them. We're only probably going to do 10 to 15 Geo sites in this format, so hopefully that might be ok.

In your experience, do parking sites like WhyPark suffer this problem with Google? They obviously have heaps of standard templates that everyone uses.

 

[neddy]

Constructive Critique

1/ Lose the light green text , black or dark blue is best
2/ Lose the green borders on the adsense ads

Thanks Djuqa - did some changes as per your suggestions. How do they look now?

You mentioned you were getting your son involved and I take my hat off to you. You should be very proud.

He has done an excellent job.

Thanks Shaun for your kind words - I am proud, and I just showed my son this thread, and he feels pretty good too!

They look good!

I started when I was around 14 too, my only suggestion is to learn HTML and CSS as soon as possible so you aren't as restricted by programs.

Ditto Paz - many thanks.

Cheers, Ned

 

[djuqa]

Thanks Djuqa - did some changes as per your suggestions. How do they look now?

Great
Some people have a very limited response to light green.

 

[marketingweb]

Well done on getting your son involved. I started doing stuff at that age also when the web was "brand new" (i'm 30 now), just wished i'd kept building my skills rather than being out of it for 10 years and then having a lot of updating to do - but i'm getting there.

I think they are great and he has done a good job overall. ONLY thing which is a "massive tiny thing" is the "logos" or words with the name could be done a bit nicer to look more professional. I'm not saying you need professional logos done, but the difference for me between a site I would look at and one I would not trust is right there in that text - eg the Gundagai one in red looks quite rough.

Don't discourage your son though, encourage him to learn more as he shows potential. Specifically, including learning a tiny bit about fonts (but avoid comic sands!), as well as how to find a function/option called "anti-alias" in whatever image editing software he is using - basically this smooths out the edges of a font in an image so the font doesn't go all pixilated like these are.

Best of luck and PM me if you want any more help with these.

Matt
http://www.marketingweb.com.au

 

[neddy]

Hey Matt - many thanks for your comments and suggestions. Definitely take them on board, and may well be PM'ing you soon!

Cheers, Ned

 

[FirstPageResults]

I think thats a great way for your son to earn some pocket money Ned.

Back when I was that age the first thing I build was a BBS. Seems like so long ago now!