dougie_bulldogbackup

Yeah. I think you have it spot on there in the need to create something completely different if you were going to even attempt to go down this road. There is now doubt it could be done it's just that adding a new idea to an existing platform would be easier. They have the penetration when it comes to users already and the infrastructure. If you look at how Tweetdeck and Hootsuite leveraged Twitter that might be one way to go but perhaps something to make the Facebook experience better somehow? Failing that you could always buy Friendsreunited...

I'm pretty much of the same opinion. I think most of the 'social' stuff has been done. Even if someone is to come up with any real fresh ideas they are likely to be applied by Facebook and Google before they got to market.

Really like this site. I'm a big fan of this type of design. Well done.

Welcome to the forum. Been here a couple of weeks myself and already this has been a really useful resource.

I would echo others thoughts hear in regards using a template for a web design website. Not being a web designer myself I often use templates to create sites, especially in the first instance. This way I can test an idea to see if it works before investing in a custom design that will serve me better going forward. Once I have something that works I always bring in a professional designer as it brings far better results regards branding etc. But I think as a web designer you really have to showcase your work without the use of non-custom templates. When I look for web designers I always check as to whether they are using an off the shelf template for their own site. I simply wouldn't pay for someone to just customise a template when I could easily do that myself. Whilst you may not do that if I approached you to design a site for me the impression is there that you would. I'm probably being a bit of a hypocrite here as my most successful site is still using a template... I wonder where I can find a decent web designer

Excellent post. Clothes shop is a great example of where visitors are returning to see 'what's new'.

I have had good success with pr web for paid submissions and prlog.org.uk for free or cheaper submissions. I have one release on prlog which is still bringing in solid traffic 3 months after it's original release.

Quite like the idea of providing online games to visitors. Would be interested to see if anyone has implemented this and what the results are/were?

Your right in the fact that there is little SEO value in directory links these days and for that reason less people are taking the time to submit to them. The better directories are easy to use and offer something other than just boring listings, think interactions like deals and reviews for example. I suppose if you have a particular niche in mind it might be worth a punt but I wouldn't expect it to be a money spinner unless you have some radically new concept or idea for changing how directories work.

Perhaps that's the way forward. Although I would miss the monthly call from my Gran.

Yeah. I don't think I could do a day cold calling nowadays. Part of the problem is I can see where people are coming from when it comes to calls. My home phone is a nightmare at the moment despite TPS. Double Glazing, PPI, injury claims.... A big problem is that companies aren't playing the game at all and are simply using numbers they shouldn't. You can't even complain as the chances are the name of the company they have given you is BS.

Funny you should say this. I was coming up a bit of resistance from iron lady type receptionists the other day when calling existing customers. Was fine once I got through to my client but it seems that the volume of sales/spam calls are leading companies to put up some pretty big barriers to callers.

Similar to myself. Was a bit of a lurker for a couple of months then took the plunge to join. Welcome to the forum.

Yeah. I'm going to update a couple of smaller sites using the auto update next release. If all goes well I'll start using it for production sites. Things can be easily fixed by rolling back to the backup but I just hate that feeling in the pit of my stomach when something goes wrong that I don't understand!

Using the auto update caused the site I was working on to break. Pages were corrupted as well as being unable to login to admin. I restored the backup to roll back and then manually updated with no problem. Since then I've always done it manually. Perhaps I could've worked around the two issues to come to a fix. I guess it just put me off using it.