new website - work in progress

[fusilierb]

Well I finally started working on a real website for myself this weekend. I've got most of the backend finished and am just starting on the front end (interface) now. The basic look and feel is finished and I am working on content and would love to get any feedback as the content part will be where I'm weakest.Last night I bought my domain name and pointed it to my .mac account. So this is all running off my .mac account now and I'm using iweb to do the layout and programming (which is turning out to be a nice, if not a bit limited, little web development app). I will probably get hosting space through Godaddy, as I really want a database to deliver the song content, so that I can tag all the music like a real library does and allow searches off of style, instrumentation, bpm, etc, but for now I'm going to just use the mac blogging feature to post songs. There will also be a download store developed before this is all over.I've got all the social networking ties in place so that I can post to one place and have those posts propagate out to all the other sites without me having to really spend much time managing them. ReverbNation is powering all the music related stat tracking and streaming and lastFM will be the place where all the music will be separated out in albums so that I can try to build up a streaming count with them for stronger placements. And Goggle Analytics is powering all the website stats so I can see who is visiting, where they are from and track promos, etc. That takes care of all the backend stuff. So far my total investment comes out to $14 bucks to secure the domain name for two years and & $10 bucks to purchase a decent looking template. Since I'm doing all the development, I don't really charge myself that much for programming so I can keep the costs for this down to barely nothing, which is my goal. All of the other stuff, players and mailing list signups and tracking is free, thanks social networking people and google!I now need to write a bio and nail down the wording of all the pages, my real weak spot. I will also need to finish uploading all my music and will have to write descriptions of the pieces, yuck! So if you get a chance, please check out my work in progress. I'm looking for feedback on the look and feel and the navigation through the site to see if it feels intuitive.Here it is in all its unfinished glory:www.bryanfusilier.comThanks for your time!B

[suzdoyle]

Hi Bryan;I think you're off to a good start. A few suggestions:1. Make the social networking links smaller -- here's a site that has a nice icon-based rollover way of accessing them:http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/li ... _care.php2. Decide about third person vs. first person in your text.3. Nice template, although graphics are loading slowly (and I have fast DSL!). 4. It would be good to add clients/ placements down the road. And think about answering the question "What makes you different from others out there?" And lean your words towards that.5. Here's a good tutorial site on all kinds of HTML coding. It's got very visual step by step guidelines to doing all kinds of tinkering with your code. E.g. how to create/ add tables/ anchor links, etc. http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/6. Cross-linking to others helps to get you higher up in search engines.7. "One stop solution" may evoke a negative response in those who equate it with Hitler's "Final Solution" slogan. Might be good to find another way to say this.8. Other than that, I think this is a good start. ! Good luck. Macs rule! ,Suz