SITE REVIEW: Free Website Templates

Hello all,

I am good with coding but awfully lousy with design. I established a website a couple of weeks ago and like to get your inputs on both design and SEO.

Site address is: Free Website Templates

Thanks in advance.

Mustafa

Ok, here is a review from me.

1. I like the blog feel you got going... the color choice and the style is going good for you and are easy on the eyes.

2. Coming from one of the reviews you did... you got a lot of google ads etc on your site there. I disabled my ad-blocker this time and noticed you had 8 ads and 1 more waiting to be filled. Those sponsors and one google ad at the top like you got there would suffice, or put the google ad under the sponsor spot like you got there with that other ad.

3. A logo (as an image) and possibly a favicon could be beneficial to your site.

4. What makes you different from other free website template sites? Do you have your own templates there that others don't? I've seeing so many copies of the same exact design provided by different template sites.

5. The "A word from us" is a bit wordy in my opinion. I can't bring myself to read all of it, and it brings the main content (the templates) below a few more inches. I'm using a 23" LG LED monitor right now (on my friend's computer... my monitor is 27"), and the first template barely fits at the bottom of my screen.

6. I like how you got those statistics click-able to their respective template types that they are showing the statistics for... haven't seeing that one yet on any other site and I think it makes the site a lot more user-friendly. Good job.

7. The word bubble (whatever it is... the blue box at the bottom of the page once you scroll down) has a LOT of words in it, and I've never really seeing it in the main content column... I usually seeing it at the right menu column. Not saying it's bad, just that I'm not used to finding that thing there.

8. The pagination should go on top of the ad rather then under it in my opinion. And it wouldn't hurt if you also put it on top of the listing as well... some people might come back and want to visit a certain page, and scrolling that much down could be time consuming.

9. Another pagination suggestion. What if I want to go to page 76? I'd have to go through a lot of clicking to get there. I think you should add the feature of putting in a page number in a text box and having that get you to the page you requested.

10. You've got a lot of content there... that is good.

11. I just noticed that in searches an ad appears like a web template appears (as a post). That got me confused for a moment for some reason... if the results is more then 1 page, that ad appears on all those pages... maybe limit that ad to the first page only? The first page is the most important page anyway and would be adequate for the user to see it. Repeatedly having to scroll past that only makes you move your index finger that much more, wasting 1-2 seconds more of your time. (Just noticed that the same ad appears in regular posts and not just searches).

12. I just found a bug in your system... Click on "6" in your pagination and then back on "1". This bug happens when you are on page 6 and over. And if you click on page "132" the same bug happens. Looks like if it's the last page, it leads you to the wrong link. It's supposed to lead you to the following page if you click on page "1":



but instead, it leads me to:



and the same happens to page 132, except the start=132 instead of 0.

13. Same thing happens when I press on "<<" or on ">>"... and if I'm on page "9" and press on "<<" (thinking it would either get me to page "8" or page "1", it tries to get me to page "70". I don't think that is the intended purpose of those buttons. It also tries to lead me to start=70 instead of /page/70/ when it should either lead me to /page/8/ or page/1/. I figure it's either the UrlRewrite (.htaccess) is at fault here or the actual PHP... I would check with the .htaccess first though.

14. Maybe make that search bar a little more visible. It's a bit dark.

15. Now that I noticed it, your site design looks a bit like codesonsales. I don't think you want that.



That's it for now... I can't think of anything else. Good luck with your project

Dear Bogey,

thank you very much for your valuable inputs.

1- A word from us removed for now, will prepare another page and be linked to front page.

2- The bug fixed!

3- Put pagination on top as well.

4- Will put jump to xxxx page drop down asap.

5- Codesonsales is my site as well but the designs are totally different, looks exactly like themeforest (it is a themeforest clone):P As well as the other sites Do you mean freecodestore(.)com? It is joomla template and will get rid off that. The same script will be used there as well but with different design.

6- Fixed pagination bugs

7- Will take care of search result page as well.

8- Search text bacground is lighter and the wordings are brighter now.

Will you cehck again whenever you have free time?

Thanks again,

Mustafa

Regarding that rating/star stuff, I will post the script to forum today.

Added a search result page Looks better I guess.

thnx for the advice

regards,

Mustafa