SITE REVIEW: Metacafe's Top Videos

Hi, the site is http://www.ilumu.com - Metacafe's Top Videos

It's basically the best of Metacafe's videos all on 1 site.

Pretty bland at the moment as I don't want to blog it down with ads and junk,

Cheers

Its too dark and the ads are hurting me lol
I do not see whats so special about yours from that of google
you have ads everywhere.
I am not sure how many times i have to stress this.

WORK ON YOUR READERS DO NOT SPAM ADSENSE ADS
YOU NEED READERS AND VISITORS TO GET ADSENSE CLICKS

my 2 cents for you my friend

Ok - first off, ever since that silly study about using darker Google has been published, tons of sites EXACTLY like yours have popped up all over. No offence, but it isn't really original. (Personally, if I want a "darker Google," I just pop in a Firefox extension to make the real Google darker, so I don't have to switch at all.) No offence intended, mind you, I'm just pointing it out.

You've got WAY too many advertisements. I realize that you want to make some cash from your site, but with no real content (i.e. something that is original to your site), you've got no business having that many ads.

None of your code is valid - 48 errors in your main code, 24 errors in your CSS. For a site with as little code as yours has, that's really bad. Also, what's with the 157 lines of nothing in your source before your code actually starts?

On the upside, your site does work in every browser I tested it in (IE 6 & 7, Firefox 2, Maxthon 2, Opera 9, Netscape 9, Lynx, Safari 3 for Windows).

Ditch the "Bookmark this Page" and "Set has Homepage" links - neither works in non-IE browsers, so having them there is just bad form. Consider instead a much more useful link - one to add the your search to the search bar. That would not only be better (and, if you set it up correctly, work in every browser with a customizable search bar), but would make switching from Google to Ilumu much more painless.

One thing I do like about your site is your logo - the red and yellow half-circles look pretty cool. However, I can't help but wonder why you've got Google's favicon, when you could be using your own favicon featuring your neat logo.

You should also consider altering the "Search" button to match the rest of your site. It isn't too hard to do with a little CSS, and it would make the button blend in better. Something like:


Overall, design-wise: you've got a nice logo and your site works, but you need to clean up and repair your code, cut out some advertisements, and ditch the useless links on the main page. Concept-wise: it's been done, and it's been done a lot. Again, no offence, but is your site really necessary? Unless you add something (or better, a few somethings) to set it apart from other sites of the same type, I would say no, it isn't.

it hurting my eyes also ^__^

what is your advantage compare to google?

Maybe you can build it where users can search from all search engines in just one site. Just a suggestion..

Hi hob,
thanks for the comments, they're really useful.
is there a quick way of testing site compatibilty?
with regard to colors, are they ok as they are?
thanks guys!

whats the point in having that showed to people on your website?

its too dark

I personaly think there are to many of these sites. I like the look but it needs more as said above such as being able to search multiple search engines or have a news ticker or something

I was wondering the same thing.

I think you simply use the code from google adsense for your website, just to generate search revenue, I'm sorry but nothing very unique or great about
thanks

Sorry, but I am not impressed.

I heard about similar sites earlier (http://www.ninja.com/ was the first one i heard about), and frankly, I think the large number of google ads at the top kills the idea...I mean, if you could customize it so that the ads appear to the right, just like google, then perhaps they wouldn't annoy people as much
though, I doubt google will ever allow you to do that, because they'd lose a lot of revenue

Go to http://www.google.com and type "blackle" (without quotes) in the search bar, hit enter and you get to a black google. That said, yes the ads are a bit too hard on the eyes and there's no advantage for me using ilumu over Google.

As mentioned, the logo really looks nice.

That has actually being noticed by "OZZUNIANS" before...

general-discussion/blackle-t82025.html

Right there is nothing great about the site...only for adsense sake, it is obvious...also the design is not good, nothing attract me...