So you just finished creating your own website, or you have had your site for a while and want feedback on its design and functionality. Perhaps you just want some opinions on your sites cosmetic looks. Even if you aren’t, consider submitting your site to the forums listed below for some constructive criticism. Too often, we create and design websites and we don’t look at it from “outside the box”. Having others view and critique your site can be beneficial in many ways!

1. It will introduce your site to many that may not have known its existence until now.

2. Allowing others to review your site may point out small glitches (perhaps browser issues, misspellings, etc) that you overlooked, or were never brought to your attention.

3. Gain some link popularity. By posting your site (with its link of course) for review, you automatically establish yourself another back-link which will ultimately help with your rankings.

4. As you take the time to submit your site, and speak with others about its design, content, and functionality, you have the opportunity to perhaps meet other professionals, web designers, site owners, and maybe even develop a new friendship or two in these communities.
Below is a listing of 21 web communities (Forums) that allow you to post your website and / or forum for review; either by the members, staff, or both (Most forum Moderators and Admins will give you their opinion, and some may in fact write you a complete review in lue of just a quick comment!).

Sometimes, it’s hard to allow others to comment and provide feedback on things we have worked so hard on, only to hear what we could have done differently, but you may find, that allot of the feedback you get will be positive, and may even point out some serious issue that you simply have overlooked. So what are you waiting for? Have a look at the forums below. Registration is free for all and you might just get a tip or two that could make a significant change in your site.

Website URL: http://www.adminfusion.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://codingforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=37
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: A community for all forum administrators to come together, strategize, share stories, and improve their forums.

Website URL: http://www.codingforums.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://adminfusion.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=71
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: Web coding and development forums. Discuss JavaScript, PHP, CGI, general web building.

Website URL: http://www.daniweb.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/forum55.html
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: Tech support, programming, web development, and Internet marketing community. Forums to get free computer help and support.

Website URL: http://www.designerstalk.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.designerstalk.com/forums/showcase/
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: A forum for designers to discuss ideas and get feedback on graphic and web design.

Website URL: http://www.devshed.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://forums.devshed.com/website-critiques-89/
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: A forum for developers of many different technologies including PHP, SQL, ASP, Perl, and Java. Includes HTML tools, free tutorials, development software, shareware and freeware downloads.

Website URL: http://forums.digitalpoint.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=23
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: Discussion related to search engines, including optimization, marketing, tools and other technical aspects.

Website URL: http://www.dnforum.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.dnforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=183
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: The place to talk, buy and sell domains. Includes webmaster resources, web design forums, marketplace, and more.

Website URL: http://www.earnersforum.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.earnersforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=29
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: A discussion forum for those earning money on the web. Includes webmaster resources, monetization advice, and more.

Website URL: http://www.htmlforums.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.htmlforums.com/f-website-review-20.html/
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: Discussion forum that offers free HTML and web development help to webmasters, web developers and small business owners.

Website URL: http://talk.iwebtool.com/

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://talk.iwebtool.com/website_reviews_forum.html
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: A discussion forum covering topics such as Search Engines, web development, marketing, monetization, web tools, and other webmaster related subjects.

Website URL: http://www.namepros.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.namepros.com/web-design-reviews/
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: Buy, Sell, And Discuss Domain Names. A marketplace and community for domain name owners. Includes webmaster resources such as web design and review.

Website URL: http://www.ozzu.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.ozzu.com/forum39.html
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: Webmaster discussion on numerous topics including Website design, programming, scripting, hosting, server administration, search engines, and operating.

Website URL: http://www.searchengineforums.com/

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.searchengineforums.com/apps/searchengine.forums/action::topiclist/forum::site-reviews/
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: Discussion forums dedicated to the topics of search engine optimization and industry issues. Includes forums on marketing, building and hosting your website.

Website URL: http://www.seochat.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://forums.seochat.com/site-reviews-17/
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: Discussion forums dedicated to the topics of search engine optimization.

Website URL: http://www.sitepoint.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=12
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: A community in which webmasters can ask for help with topics such as site design, site programming, web hosting, site promotion and running an online business.

Website URL: http://www.talkfreelance.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://talkfreelance.com/f22-the-gallery-showcase.html
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: Web design forum for webmasters and freelance developers interested in website design, programming, search engine optimization (SEO), html, and more.

Website URL: http://www.theadminzone.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=77
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: A discussion forum with resources for forum owners and administrators.

Website URL: http://www.v7n.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.v7n.com/forums/website-review/
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: John Scott’s Internet marketing and web development resource. Learn how to create and market a website professionally on the Internet.

Website URL: http://www.webdeveloper.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=29
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: Where Web Developers and Designers Learn How to Build Web Sites, Program in HTML, Java and JavaScript and More.

Website URL: http://www.webhostingtalk.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=10
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: A leading discussion forum for all things related to web hosting.

Website URL: http://www.webmaster-talk.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.webmaster-talk.com/website-review-and-suggestions/
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: A discussion community of web designers, internet marketers, and programmers.

No matter what your site is about a very important key to a successful site is usability. You don’t have to be a marketing professional to make your site users friendly, all you may need is a little guidance if you are not sure what you need to do. Here are some tips to help you keep your site user friendly.

Home: When you design a home page, keep the home link accessible to the user, make sure they know where it is at all times and on every page of your site. A good tip is to keep it in the same place on each page.

Links: If you are going to have links on your site. Make sure they look like links. The underlined blue text you see on sites is a link. Designers don’t like it much but users love it because it makes it clear that the word or a phrase is a link.

Text Size: Designers sometimes use small text to save room but if the text is too a users won’t stay on a site because they have a hard time reading the text. Keep the text at a normal size about 11 will be ok.

Navigation: Navigation is the key to any site. Place your navigational bar on the top of the page under your logo or maybe even down on the left side of the page. Never change location of the navigation that would defeat the purpose for easy navigation.

Orientation: If you have a site that has a lot of pages and many different products you want the user to know where they are as much as how they got there. You want to make sure your site has a click path. It shows how they got there in case they wish to go back they can find their way again.

Content: it is really not a factor in usability but it is a main part of the site. Keep the information pertinent because most users don’t read as much as the scan. Keep it short and to the point.

Placement: Place features where users expect to find them. The user understands that each is different but try to keep in uniform with other sites so the users will not have to search for it. Also, keep banners small and on the top of a page. Keep your search box on top to the right.

The 30 Second Rule: This applies in this context, in 30 seconds a user should know what site they are on and exactly where they are on that site.

Search: If you have a lot of pages on your site, give your users a search box. Place it on the right side of the page where it is easy to find.

Speed: There is nothing more annoying that having to wait for something. Keep your site flowing and keep your Flash effects to minimum. A user wants to be on a site that is speedy.

Every day the World Wide Web expands itself more and more. There are people building and designing sites every minute of everyday all around the world. Web pages, sites or applications are all being developed for users. The great thing about technology in any medium like TV or Radio, the Internet is the only place where you can have your own space to say what ever it is you want to say. You can’t do that on TV or Radio. There are two types of sites on the web, the professional site and the personal site.

The professional sites are websites selling products and sometimes giving out technical information but a personal site is having a place like a blog to say what you feel and maybe invite others to do the same. Video sites are a form of a personal website. They have fun videos that anyone can see and maybe share a video of their own.

In the professional website arena, more goes into developing a site. Designers actually use a creator’s tool called Storyboards. They plan out their site in sequence and when it is complete then they create it and upload. Storyboarding is a very good way to layout your site and see if any changes are going to be made. When the site is done, the developers get the credit for making the site look the way it does.

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Patience is a virtue and either you have it or you don’t. There is nothing worse than waiting and there is nothing that is more annoying than waiting for a website to load. There are some methods you can do to help keep your upload time quick. The first method is to try to decrease the size of any images you may have on a site. Pictures inhibit the speed of a site. Though on some sites pictures are essential, if you keep them to a minimal size it will help improve the speed of the site.

You can use a tool called Picture Dicer or an Image Splitter that allows you to take large graphic files and put them into smaller pieces and then put back together again using a table. You can also use thumbnails to point to a larger picture. The user can click on which picture they want to see so that all of the other pictures are small; the larger picture will come after.

Another method in improving loading time your site is to cut down or eliminate Flash intros, they look great but they take way too much time to load. You can loose a lot of traffic by wasting time loading flash intros. The same can be said of Java Script. If you really don’t need it then leave it out don’t add another reason for a slow site.

If you have any audio or video pertaining to your site, don’t have it come on automatically it will slow down your loading time. It works better if you create the site so the user can turn on the audio or video. You want to keep up the upload time and having it come on automatically could freeze up the browser.

If you have a site and you have traded links with blog directories or with just other people know, some of them may require you to put their logos on your site. Which may sound fine to you but again it will slow down your loading time. Try keeping them in your server until you need them.

As we have discussed many ways to keep your upload time to a good degree, there are also other factors that can contribute to the slowness of a site. Other things to take into consideration are your hosting provider how fast is your hosting service. Another way for a site to upload slowly also depends on the type of internet connection you have. If you have dial up then there is nothing you can do to improve the upload.

An average amount of time they say should be enough time to upload a site is 15 seconds. Some people with patience will wait for up to a minute, anything after that, they are going to leave the site. Nothing is more frustrating than waiting for a site to load. Anything you can do to help is a big plus.