Newbie: Just put up my first site! Please check it out

[JimboJetSet]

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Hiya, about a month ago I said hi here and asked some questions. So now I've put up my first site about UFOs and alien contactees.

I'm yet to add most of the stuff into the online store section but you can see some book links are in there already.

I'm also going to add a sign-up to a newsletter and some product links on the left column of every page. Relevant to each section.

Please let me know what you think. And watch that Alien Interview. Its so mad!


www.futureofmankind.co.uk

[pricethat]

"an Assessment of Earth's Destiny"

On serious note, looks like your going to need to do a little more than just have an online store link. Links from your article pages directly to products on that theme or books with more information on the articles you have made would probably be better.

Possibly, and im only guessing here maybe limiting the amount of the article people see until they have signed up so you get their emails perhaps. I mean sign up to read the rest of the article- some of those articles are maybe 2 A4 pages long. Im sure people would do that and it would also encourage people as they are signed in to use that forum of yours as well.

I think you would make sales from the articles pages directly to books that contain information on that article and others. The online store link and subsequent page i feel are going to be very hit and miss.

[JimboJetSet]

Thanks Pricethat! I think you got some great ideas there. Dont you think having to sign-up might put people off though? I know I get put off myself half the time when confronted with having to sign-up to see something. Though if its free then its not that much effort as long as I dont have to type in all my addresses, date of birth and number of one night stands etc etc!

It sounds like a great idea to get a community going though. I'll definately put product links in all the articles though.

Cheers

[Keith]

Great start Jimbo and Pricethats linking ideas are sound, however first and foremost you should concentrate on building up quality traffic, reciprocal links with like minded sites, submission to directories such as www.dmoz.org will all help your cause, also you could create a rss feed of your articles and submit that to newsfeed directories.

good luck

[JimboJetSet]

Thanks Keith I'll get onto it straight away!

[sammia]

Following on from Keith's advice about quality traffic you might want to look at some SEO elements of your site. Basic SEO will really help draw the visitors you want.

Would more people be searching to find UFO info by using the phrase Future of Mankind or phrases like Alien Sightings, UFO, alien visitation or whatever.

You are using Future of Mankind - Homepage as the title of the homepage but you might want to look at putting your hottest search keyphrase first: Alien sightings - Future of Mankind for example.

In the intro paragraph on the homepage you use the terms extra-terrestrial and ET but not UFO or alien though I'd guess the latter two were more frequently searched for.

You are not using a description tag or keyword tag. Google references the description tag in the search results (though not always) and though devalued Yahoo still uses the keyword tag.

Love all that alien stuff. Good luck with the site.

[JimboJetSet]

Thanks Sammia. I was going to get around to changing the meta tags but thanks for reminding me and yes I'll use your suggestion for changing the wording slightly too.

Many many thanks!

Looks like someones overloading the mysql server though because my website is currently saying:

Warning: mysql_connect(): Too many connections in /home/fhlinux210/f/futureofmankind.co.uk/user/htdocs/db_connect.php on line 3
Could not connect: Too many connections



I'm with Streamline.net...

[drivetowin]

If you're on shared hosting it may not be you overloading the mysql server but the cumulative effect of all of the sites that share your server.

Contact your host and ask them to restart the mysql server (unless you've got cpanel/whm and can do it yourself)

[ian]

Not sure if you have to, but are you closing the connection once you've run your sql ?

[JimboJetSet]

I've submitted a support ticket and theyve already put up a notice on the server status page stating:

Date/Time 07/02/2006 22:20:07
Following an attempt by one user to overload the mysql server, mysql6.streamline.net is suffering slowness.

We are working as fast as possible to resolve this issue and will update this page once this has been resolved.

which is satisfactory for me. I know these things happen. Might it be one of you veterans overloading mysql6.streamline.net with your billion hits a day websites?

Anyway, I am sure I always close the mysql connection with a

		// Free resultset
		mysql_free_result($result);
		
		// Closing connection
		mysql_close($link);

I think I should double check every php page though just to be sure.

Cheers

James

[renegade]

Hi James, that's a really nice first site. The only thing I'd change is the width of the items, it's quite hard on the eyes to read across long horizontal lines.
I'd probably fix the width and add ads down the right.

[dunklk]

Fantastic site Jimbo; really impressed, I agree with the others though. You need to cash in on the quality content with a lot more contextual links through to relevant affiliates... there is a huge amount of potential there with such a lot of great content. And, adding adverts down the right hand side would maybe be a good idea too. In terms of SEO, think about adding a site map, the search engines seem to like them.

[JimboJetSet]

Yeah thanks I'm trying to figure out how to add the righthand column in. Its just some CSS adjustments I think.

I'm also gonna add "discuss this article" links to each article that take users to the forum.

Whats the best way to do a sitemap? Just another link on the left side menu that goes to "sitemap.php" called "Site Map"? I thought the menu was basically a sitemap in effect. Isnt it?

Many many thanks!

ps. My site only came back up today so I have a load of work to do!!!