Look for Website Critique - Main Street Insider

Hi all,
I`m looking for opinions on my newly created site. This site is being started as a sort of hobby of mine right now with plans in the future to have it become a full scale business.
The purpose of the site is to help individuals’ research stocks and provide personal finance/small business tips. I do this by providing business news articles from small and medium sized newspapers from around the country. I wanted to create a site that would allow the intended viewer to read a brief description of an article, then decide weather its worth their time to read it.
I hired a freelance web designer to help build the site. I understand that the site could have more bells and whistles but at this time I’m trying to control cost. I would also welcome suggestion that I could implement during the next phase of the site (when I actually get significant traffic and invest the ad revenue back into the site).
URL: www.mainstreetinsider.com
Thank you for taking the time to look at the site.
Sign In or Register to comment.
Comments
First I`ll tackle the easy one.
Webline,
I am working with Adbrite to get rid of all ads pertaining to Singles,Weapons and Marijuna, they have just recently popped up. I definately don`t want those shown on the site.
Craig,
I really aprreciate the feed back!
- I agree the banner ads need changed, I wanted just text ads but somehow I ended up with the banner ads. I will change this!
- Layout: Do you like the 2 column box layoff or do you mean change everything? I would like the site to look as simple as possible. I`m assuming the line height you are talking about is the sentences in the article descriptions.
- Mission Statement: I agree, I`m thinking about putting a mission statement under my Main Street banner
- Person Views: I plan to put my personal views about certain articles and the overall stock market/economy under the Main Street News section.
Let me know what you think, thanks again.
I don`t know where you`re hosting now, but I have my sites at GoDaddy.com and I am very happy with them and their customer service.
I also provide reasonable and reliable hosting vwebworld.com
~Roland
As for hosting, I don`t know what Wild West gives you but GoDaddy serves the purpose for most people with small sites.
You have a forum attached though. If that forum starts getting a lot of use, you`ll start creating a lot of queries, and if there are images, videos or other attachments added, you`ll out-grow GoDaddy.
You also have no control over your php.config either with them,... I believe. Someone correct me if I`m wrong.
Personally, I use Dreamhost: http://www.dreamhost.com/ Unlimited domains, databases, email addy`s, ftp users and an almost unusable amount of disk space and bandwidth. Right now they`re offering unlimited space and bandwidth for a limited time.( See terms) I`m currently hosting 6 forum based sites and I`m not touching the bandwidth meter.
There are others though. If you don`t like the idea of a shared server, then you have to look for dedicated.
I also got an email about this host recently: http://www.thinkhost.com/
That deal looks pretty good but I haven`t dug deep into the specifics.
Otherwise, I like the site, you seem very informed and know what to pass on to possible readers.A couple links where broken when I looked but I have a feeling you`re working on the site as I type this.
Bluto, thanks for the hosting companies I`ll definately check into them and I`ll probably speak to vwebworld as well.
Thanks again all, keep the feedback coming!