10 Ways To Improve Your Site
Here’s a little article on how to improve your site in 10 simple steps. Of course all of my articles are my opinion so you could do what I suggest but I won’t guarantee that everyone will adore your site. I do guarantee that if you follow my suggestions, people will find your site a little more mature & professional. 
- 1. Use spell check.
- 2. Turn the profanity down.
- 3. Your font should be bigger than 9 pt and/or 95%.
- 4. Don’t use clashing neon colors.
- 5. Install WordPress.
- 6. Make your own layouts.
- 7. Be visitor friendly.
- 8. Be friendly to your visitors.
- 9. Be funny
- 10. Add pictures
Yes, that’s right, use it. Most, if not all, internet browsers come with spell check built in so it would be wise to right click on the words that have red underlinings to spell the word correctly. You can’t expect people to take you seriously if you have a billion spelling mistakes and you ignore all grammatical rules. If you’re 13 years old and you want to come off as mature you can’t possibly think you are if you tawk LLyke dish because you’ll come off as illiterate. Make sure that you proofread your writings before publishing them.
It is really embarrassing when you’re reviewing a site and you’ve misspelled something but criticized someone for their poor grammar and/or spelling. I’ve seen a lot of reviewers do this and I personally think they shouldn’t even be allowed to review another person’s site if they themselves don’t find the time to proofread their review. Here’s a simple grammar lesson for you:
your = possessive
you’re = contraction for “you are”
their = possessive
they’re = contraction for “they are”
there = location
to = preposition
too = signifies agreement. Example: I love ice cream too!
two = a number
whose = possessive
who’s = contraction for “who is”
its = possessive
it’s = contraction for “it is”
lose = to be deprived of. Example: Did you lose your book?
loose = unrestrained. Example: My shoe laces are loose.
Conjugation of “to be”
I am
You are
He, She, It, One is
We are
They are
When you use two names in a sentence: Sally and John are dating.
Why? Two names = two people = plural. The pronoun for Sally and John would be “they”. If you are Sally and your boyfriend is John, you would say: John and I are dating or We are dating.
Only use profanity when ABSOLUTELY necessary to get your point across but otherwise, dropping a bunch of “fuck”, “shit”, “ass”, “bitch”, “cunt”, “slut”, “whore”, “bizzo”, “skizzo”, “nigguh”, etc (that’s honestly the most profanity I’ve written in one sentence) is just not classy. It was hard for me just to type all of those but if you want people to take you seriously and professionally, don’t drop f-bombs the way America dropped the A-bomb on Japan. You wouldn’t see CNN.com all lathered up in profanity, would you? If you don’t want to be that serious, just use profanity when absolutely necessary. Sometimes, profanity can give a story a little character and humor. I said sometimes for a reason because most bloggers write “ghetto-ly” and it just destroys the English language. Respect the language but most of all, have some respect for yourself. Ask yourself if it is really absolutely necessary for you to use that word to talk about someone? Could you use another adjective instead?
My eyes aren’t too bad, I’m a little nearsighted but I’m not blind. But I think I speak on behalf of a lot of the internet community when I say, make your font size bigger than 9 pt and/or 95%. If your font is honestly smaller than 9 pt, this is what I normally do: CTRL + UP SCROLL x3 so that it becomes at least 12 pt. It is so incredibly straining on people’s eyes when your font is so darn small. 9 pt is normally fine but when you’re below 8 pt, you need to make your font way bigger. There are sites with fonts of 5 or 6 pt and I feel like I need a magnifying glass to read the text! It’s not cute anymore! It was never cute! Make your font bigger!
Also, your line height should not be squishy! It should be about 5 or so pixels larger than your font size! I encourage that you use em, percentages, or pixels when you code your CSS because pt is not the same on every computer. Make your font at least 14-16+ px or 95%+ if you want to get around what most people see as 9 pt – 10 pt. My iMac reads pt as super small and I’m not the only person with a big screen out there. If you want your fonts to look the same on every single monitor, use pixels, em, or percentages and make sure that they aren’t tiny!
CSS is so incredibly easy to code and colors aren’t hard to match together but for some reason, some Myspace sites do a horrendous job of creating a non-blinding CSS sheet. Neon colors can look great on black. When you put a bright color over another bright color, what do you think you get? BLINDING colors. Examples: Red on cyan. Pink on Cyan. In fact, any color other than a close white color or black over cyan = blinding! Don’t try to blind your visitors, make your site more visitor friendly. Use colors that don’t clash.
Notice that I didn’t say “a blogging system”, I said WordPress. Not CuteNews, FanUpdate, or any other blogging system, WordPress. Download it here: click me. Why? Because you honestly can’t do any better than WordPress. It is the most pristine, topnotch, and professional blogging system that is absolutely free. How professional? CNN, Playstation, Yahoo, Wired, MTV, Forbes, PerezHilton.com etc all use…WordPress. No other blogging system will allow you to so wonderfully customize and control your website. The fact that you can customize your URLs to “pretty URLs” is just amazing. You can always spot a WordPress blog a mile away just from glancing at the URL. Best of all, you can easily eliminate spam.
Or at least hire someone to customize a layout for you. Using pre-mades is alright for a blog but if you’re a resources site, it looks really bad if you can’t make your own layout. Don’t use MS Paint to make a layout, use Photoshop and follow some tutorials online to create a simplistic theme that is easy on the eyes.
Turn your site into a visitor friendly site by making your layout simple and not complex. Don’t have 3 sidebars and a footer, make things simple and easy on the eyes. Don’t hide the navigation on your header, make it clear for people to see!
When they leave you a comment, return their comment. When they leave you a thoughtful comment on your blog, return their comment and leave a thoughtful comment on their blog.
Good humor and witty jokes will always make your site that much more interesting to visit.
The mind adores visual imagery so as often as you can, draw people in by using or adding photographs of anything. If you’re blogging about food or writing an article on a restaurant, take pictures and add them to your site! People will love that they can see what you’re talking about.