Web Hosting Talk : Advertising Forums : Community Reviews : Web Site Reviews : New Host Review Site

[Travis]

Hello all,

I have a few scraps of (yet another) host review site put together, and I'd like to get some feedback. Comments, suggestions, criticism, and bug reports are all welcome.

It's at:

http://207.173.159.107

(It's actually hostkarma.com, but the domain probably isn't in the root servers yet as you're reading this.)

Thanks for your time!

[cbaker17]

Its not bad, but its not good either, its too plain, looks like the 3000 host review sites out there.

[Travis]

Well, I guess I'll take that as a compliment, since what you see was hacked together from scratch in about six hours.

It does look a little plain, yes. Aesthetics can be helped later - right now I'm more concerned about functionality. Maybe I should load it up with a few hundred animated banners and buttons like most hosting review sites - would that help?

[Chicken]

Well just adding blinky things to distract us from the design isn't going to do much. It looks conseratively functional I'd say. Nothing bad, nothing extremely good. It works.

[Travis]

Chicken,

I figure you know this, but I was joking about the animated banner ads. I think we're all so used to seeing host review sites splattered with them that it looks strange without them.

I guess I should have been more specific in regard to what type of feedback I was looking for. I can dink with the visual design later, but I'd like to address functionality first.

Thanks for your input...

[akashik]

Here's a functionality quirk for you. Write review in the top menu is exactly the same as add review further down. I don't think that should be like that should it?

"The HOSTKarma site is hosted by QWK.Net, LLC as a service to the webmaster community. QWK.Net also provides general web hosting services. QWK.Net does not filter, modify, or block reviews of its own or any other services. If you are concerned about conflicts of interest, however, you should disregard reviews of QWK.Net services on this site"

Umm, ok. In all honesty it might be better to just grab another domain and use that as your host service, keeping them separate. I understand where you're going with that, but all the old jaded so and so's like myself generally just have a chuckle when it comes to statements like that.

[Travis]

Well, the duplicate "Add Review" links are intentional, for now - one has to fill space somehow until there's more available. Besides, we really want to get people writing reviews, so the more links to the form, the better.

In regard to the hosting service - QWK.Net *is* on a separate domain, and as separate as possible. QWK.Net actually pre-dates HOSTKarma by about 2 1/2 years.

I put a lot of thought into the disclosure section. It's tough enough to convince people that the site really will be neutral, especially when it's run by the principal of a web hosting company. I figure it's better to just get it out on the table, though, rather than have people discover it on their own and feel deceived.

If anyone has any suggestions about better treatments of the issue, I'm all ears.

[Google]

It looks good but the content is not that good i mean what person would search for a webhosting company by their name if they don't even know yet thats why they are searching.

[Travis]

Well, there are dozens of hosting search engines out there that let you search by feature, etc. The idea here is to get reviews on your "short list" of candidates that you're considering hosting with.

That said, I'll probably add hosting plan comparisons later on.