New Xara Site - this time my own

[InfoCentral]

What is with the Google ads on the sidebar? Is this a free website that you pay by allowing adware?

[slavelle]

@infocentral: Google ads are to help "free" sites make money. There is no "adware" just ads displayed on the page. It's really an experiment on my part to see how it all works and whether people actually click on them. I have clients ask me about adding these to their sites and I now have a little experience where I can give them a general idea of how it works. In my case, I get about 25 hits a day on the site and over the last several months I've made $2.30 on the ads.

I also have affilliate links on the site, which get some clicks but have yet to generate any revenue. I also take Paypal donations.

This site was created to help others who use Sonar and Vdrums primarily, and the videos and such have proven to be useful amongst the people on their forum that have checked them out. So I put out a "tip jar" in the Paypal donations and if I earn anything on the other stuff, great, but like I said, it's mostly an experiment.

@TXChuck2U: I'd love to add some more color here and there. Got any suggestions of another complementary one? There is some of that orange, white, and various shades of blue. What else goes in there? I probably need to redo the banner graphic anyway (it's a bit of the front panel of the drum brain0.

@sledger: I've started splitting out the videos onto their own pages from the Sonar page rather than being popups. This will help we attract more traffic and better analyze what's getting looked at. Not done yet, but at least have the motion. I also fixed the "part1" video that was previously not working - I apparently mowed down the "replace with flash" part of that layer somewhere along the line.

Thanks for the feedback.

[jimhanus]

slavelle,
I like the colors and layout, but personally find white text hard to read (although I too have used it in the past). I don't like the 2 different colored links, blue and orange. Mouse-over blue changes color but orange doesn't.

[cursor]

Howdy Slavelle. I just drove through your website.

• On the About page, "endevors" should be endeavors".
• Personally, I would increase your paragraph line spacing from 100% to about 110% (or so). It appears just a little too tight for comfortable reading.
• The "Sonar Drum Maps" video took a full minute to load. All others loaded in substantially less time.
• The text at the bottom of your 'Behringer BCF2000 pt.1' pop-up reads, "There’s still some other useful informaton in theis video, so don’t just skip it." Note the misspelling of "theis".
• I prefer the text layout on your 'V-drums' and Line6' pages to the placeholder employed for your 'Sonar' page (w/ scrollbar).
• I like your choice of colors for text and background.

[slavelle]

Cursor,

Thanks for your notes. I will correct the typos - thanks.

I like the Vdrums page better too, but I wanted to be able to add to the Sonar page more frequently in a Blog-like manner by just adding some HTML in an external file,which works, but like you, I'm not crazy about the presentation. Maybe it would be less of a bother if it were a longer box with less scroll, so it wasn't so apparent that it's a little scrolling box. I'll have to refigure on those video launching buttons at the bottom if I do that, however, as no one would ever see them (after trying to read through my diatribes about how to use the tools!).

The Sonar Drum Maps video was done a little differently than the others. I need to readdress that one, as it's a pretty popular video (about 100 views a month) and would be better to stream like the others do rather than basically having to download the whole thing. It's an export issue that I will need to address to get that one to be the same.

Thanks again for the feedback - if I could get part of my life back to address my own personal stuff, that would be great!