Political Websites and Poetry

This webmaster's review has come just in time for Independence Day...

Anthony, creator of http://www.republicanoffensive.org, writes:

I'm building this site for my brother. It's the first site that i've work on,and I don't know what to add to it to make it look more appealing.

Note to readers: Don't worry, I will not use this review as a soapbox for my political views. I promise to maintain objectivity and remain non-partisan. I mean, unbiased.

Anthony. Where to begin? How about with the good (as I usually do). Your coding is relatively neat and tentatively validates (meaning you're missing some metadata for the validator), although it appears you still have some inline styles and a few too many span tags. However, I don't know how many classes you really need with such little formatting. But we'll get to that in a second. Okay, more good. Hmm...your navigation is very clear and not confusing, always a plus.

Well, that's that. Bad stuff time.

Design: you have none. You want a way to improve your site? Normally I say start with content, but I personally dislike people who try to impose their political views (or any views, for that matter) on others regardless of whether I agree with them or not, so I'd say start with design. Right now it looks like a 12-year-old found Frontpage on his computer and decided to create a website between nap and snacktime. If you don't have Photoshop, there are plenty of cheap and/or free graphic editing programs out there. If you do have Photoshop, use it! Put some graphics in there. Make your site visually appealing! If you suck at design, well, see if you can get your brother to find someone to design for you. I'm sure he's got some connections.

Content: you have very little. You have essentially 10-15 paragraphs of content. The sites you're competing with for traffic have probably over 1000 times the amount of content you have. Literally. Assuming you get any traffic at all, do you think you're going to get any repeat visitors when you've only got two, maybe three "articles"? Maybe if you turned your whole site into your "my thoughts" section and used something like TypePad or Blogger, threw in even a modicum of design, and posted "your thoughts" every day, you would generate some traffic. Maybe.

Forums: get rid of them. Nothing looks worse than a site with empty forums. Maybe if you develop some sort of a following, you can put them back in, but I would wait until the site has been up for a while and people have been commenting. Assuming you give them some sort of interface with which to comment.

My summary, in five rhyming couplets:

While it seems like this is a short review,
I've actually given you a lot to do.

I understand this is your first site,
Which is why I'm helping you make it right.

Write more! Opine! Scathe! Vent!
Bash or support our president!

But if you want visitors to return,
Design and content should be your utmost concern.

Good luck and godspeed to you and your brother,
I hope I have helped you like I have the others.