Part 2 : Site mistakes, design failures, and seeking cooperation

So where are the other "webmaster resource" sites that don't come near your visitor numbers going wrong?
That's a tough one because I don't often visit sites that would be in competition with mine. I view that like a sports team. The great sports teams are less concerned about what the other team does than in doing what they can do to the best of their ability.

Others may not promote their site enough, they may not optimize it for search engines, they may not network with others, their content may not be all that original or creative, their presentation may not be original, their site may lack a personality of its own, they may be too restrictive or demanding - there are just so many little things that make a difference it's hard to be specific in general.

...specific in general? Ah, well...

One thing I have noticed on a lot of sites is that too many folks settle for "good" when just a little more effort would have brought them to excellence. There isn't that much distance between good and excellent, but they are worlds apart, if you follow that twisted logic.

Although one of your site's biggest features is your backgrounds and graphic designs, the pages still load quickly. In your opinion, what are the key design failures to avoid?
When it comes to saving graphics, that's where a lot of folks get lazy. Instead of optimizing the graphics for fast downloading while retaining image quality, they just save them at the default settings.

With most graphics I save and resave them over and over, trying out different compression levels to find the best balance. Some site owners don't have concern for the download speed of sites using their graphics, and aren't too concerned about their own because everyone expects pages full of graphics to download slowly. Right? It doesn't have to be that way. Again, it only takes a little more effort to do something better.

Another thing is you get what you pay for. If you're not willing to pay for a good host then you'll suffer the consequences, one of which is overcrowded servers that perform slowly.

And finally, a lot of webmasters never learn to code HTML. They use a drag and drop WYSIWYG editor and don't realize the code those programs create is often bloated with excess that slowsdown your pages. When I worked for a local company as a web designer I had to redesign a site for a music association. On one page I reduced the page size from 110k to just 35k simply by removing excess code. It's amazing how inefficient some of them really are.

You're fairly generous with allowing others to use your own designs and graphics, but what's your take on electronic copyright and design theft?
grrr.... I give because I believe the good you do comes back to you. But I don't condone theft. Most people don't realize how easy it is to be caught stealing, and I've caught plenty. When I find sites or ezines that have stolen my content I ask them to remove it and stop stealing. If they don't comply I have their site shut down. It's that simple. I don't even have to look for them anymore. With about 90,000 ezine subscribers, my "family" tells me when I'm being ripped off. It's hard to hide from 90,000 people because there's a lot of diversity in a group that large. The ironic thing is, I often give permission to reprint content if I'm asked. I do limit how much any one site or ezine can use and do ask for proper credit, but that's only reasonable.

When I find sites linking directly to my images and stealing my bandwidth, I tell them they are welcome to use the images but must not link directly to them, and most folks comply. Some don't. I've had those sites shut down too. That may sound harsh, but there is no reason I should have to pay for someone else's bandwidth. It's a huge problem for graphics sites, and many have been shut down because they couldn't afford the extra charges caused by illegal linking. I've had to go from less expensive to more expensive hosting solutions because of this problem. It's why I took the time to learn how to identify the violators and to learn how to stop them.

Once, when I was feeling ornery because one person illegally linking to my graphics refused to comply and made a point of telling me I couldn't stop him, I made a big graphic that said "My name is ___, and I like to have sex with animals" and replaced the original image with that. Since they were linking to it, it showed up on their page. Of course, I renamed the graphic on my page so it wouldn't show up on my site. Then I wrote the site owner and told him to go look at his site. Needless to say he complied with my request to stop linking directly within minutes.

Most of the time though, folks just don't realize they shouldn't do that. They don't understand they are actually stealing nor do they realize they can be prosecuted and sent to jail like any common criminal. So I always educate them first and seek cooperation.

Continued...