Before I start on writing on this topic, let me tell you that the website I?ll be talking about is my first true portal in the cyberspace. Kindly have a look at the following facts ’n figures just to build the background scenario:
Website: https://itprofiles.net
Pages: approx. 950
Members: more than 4, 500
Clients: 19 (till date)
Hits: 1000/day (approx.)
Awards Won: 7 (so far)
This review mainly talks about the various stages I went through while developing the website (designing aspects focused). I’ve tried to keep it simple and not much messed up with the technical and management language jargons. I guess, now let the review do the rest of the talking.
-----------------
October 29, 2002 - the day when I launched IT Profiles.net ( http://www.itprofiles.net) online with a background thought of establishing a nowhere else found place where both experienced users and newbies can gain and share the hot IT aspects! Covering hot topics like Web Design & Technology, Hacking (Security end), Multimedia & Animations and Networking.
Please have a look at the image located at https://itprofiles.net/images/itprofiles_v1.jpg . Initially, the sections like ’Animations & Greetings’, ’MailGroup’ were not existing! Later, I singed up with Yahoo! to gain the mailgroup access for the site. Still there were no sections specifically named ’MailGroup’, it was only a connectivity to the correspondence page situated at yahoo.com.
I was happy enough by seeing the improvement in the number of visitors per day. Most of them regarded me about the site design as a ’decent black & white website’! .....What? Were they praising the site or indicating for some improvements? What did they mean by ’black & white’? I kept on wondering and discussed it with my friends and cousins. They also suggested to add some colorful images to make site more attractive. I added a Poll asking the users about their comments on the site outlooks. You can see, I started working on the new face of the site!
And the result was the second version of the website (image located at https://itprofiles.net/images/itprofiles_v2.jpg ). Only the homepage design was changed. There weren’t much modifications in the programming, but some. Now, the site design (particularly the homepage) was quite attractive. All the other pages remained same as that were in the earlier version. But, yes now there were sections like ’Xtremely Animated’, ’Xpress’ and ’MailGroup’ along with further improvements in sections like ’Hacker Realm’ (now modified as unique ’Hacking’) and ’JavaScripts’.
’MailGroup’ was a complete section now and independent from yahoo.com. Each member of the site is having their profiles online in the MailGroup, they can mail to the whole group, or an individual; they can read and post messages; they can answer to the polls created and/or create their own and a lot more.
’Xtremely Animated’ section was also growing and new animations and greeting cards were being loaded in time. The users were not allowed to send the greeting cards they like to their friends and relatives, instead a downloadable link was given for each animation to store them to their local disks.
With this design the site won several awards which gave a unique identity to the whole project. The first was Golden Web Award which I got in March ’03. Later on Elite Award, Diamond Web Award, Golden Crane Award and several other awards were added to the site prosperity. Furthermore, the site traffic was increasing day by day. During the June month (2003), the site reported a total visiting of more than 24, 500 visitors which was not just by chance! The site was now added to almost all the major search engines. I would like to display a list of all the major search engines which are linking to the IT Profiles®.
google.com, yahoo.com (inktomi.com), altavista.com, msn.com, askjeeves.com, teoma.com, jayde.com, netscape.com, khoj.com, hotbot.com, overture.com, about.com, canada.com, webprowire.com, iwon.com, search.com, searches.com, search123.com, searchscout.com, searchomega.com, kanoodle.com, metasearch.com, lycos.com, alexa.com, fast.com, alltheweb.com, entireweb.com, dogpile.com, aol.com, syncinfo.com, 56t.net, webcrawler.com, rediff.com, indiatimes.com and more than 20 others!
Still my friends kept on telling me their dislikes about the IT Profiles logo (you can see it both in version 1 & 2). They thought it is little bigger and still a ’black & white’ concept! I didn’t agree to their point of view, because I thought of making a limpid site rather than a dazzling with a lot of .gif’s! And, the current design was matching the logo, too, as per my thinking. Nevertheless, I began the work to modify the site logo somewhat. Many logos were made during this process of modifying the logo with further improvements each time. And, I thought of changing the whole website look, not just modifying this time! Because the childhood construction of the new logo made me imagine about the entire design and navigation of the site with totally new looks!
Once you have a new idea, your desire to make it the reality can’t let you wait. The fruit of this idea is now what you are watching, a new face to the whole site with completely new navigation and improved programming backgrounds.
I believe that a good website is always under construction. You can not say that it’s complete now, because each day you sit and work with it, you realize that still there is a lot to further improve! As you can say, there’s nothing like perfection; one can improve as much as possible. There may be limitations to one’s progress, but there are certainly no limitations to improvement. If you stop, someone else will lead!
Today the website is having more than 4, 500 members and an impressive client list who advertised in it during last year. With approximately 1, 000 hits per day, the site is growing very rapidly, I can say. You can search through the site ( http://www.itprofiles.net) and you will find all these impressive statistics.
I love my website, the creation which I will remember whole my life doesn?t matter whatever I do in the coming years, but what impresses me much is my members who share the same passion on the net with me. I love my site, but I am devoted to my members.
Just as I have put the words in one of my multimedia profiler webpage,
?If you ask me how I work then let me ask you how do you enjoy the work I do? Whenever you create a website, you don?t just create a website; you create an environment and it?s own special surroundings which attract each one! I give my soul to my developments. A site is something more than just a site and I believe that it?s the easiest way to communicate with people. ?.. There are two things to aim at in life: first to get what you want and after that to enjoy it. And my enjoyment is in seeing people enjoying my creations!?
Keep Walking.
-------------------
Comments: Everyone’s invited!